i hope you had a great weekend – around the studio, it’s been another crazy busy time for us. no surprise there, as many of you have been following the behind the scenes on facebook, twitter, and instagram about the prep we’ve been doing for our upcoming teaching event in south africa. the opportunity to teach at such an amazing destination like south africa is incredible. we absolutely love it there: the people, the art, the landscape, the culture – it’s unlike any other place we’ve ever been. in fact, this will be our third time teaching there, but the first time teaching five full day events totaling close to 500 students – crazy right? as you can imagine a great deal of planning and prep goes into something like this, and i certainly couldn’t do it alone. first thanks to mario for all of the cutting, prepping, kitting, and shipping work he’s done for this event, and thanks to paula for her work on the collaboration of the projects we will both be teaching…
i want to share a glimpse into the logistics of what goes into getting ready for a big event like this. it starts with an invite of course (thank you glenda), as this trip has been in the works for the past two years. we work on planning the itinerary, creating the schedule, choosing dates, make travel arrangements, etc. then comes the part of designing the technique filled projects for the event (sorry but those details are top secret until the event). paula and i have planned really great projects using some of new products that just launched at cha (actually, it’s that decision to wait for these new products to start shipping that has been the catalyst for these insane last couple of weeks). when we were traveling to germany earlier this month, i was writing up lists of supplies needed, and placing orders to the many companies who are sponsoring these events. since we’ve returned, we’ve been tracking orders, creating final prep lists, writing project instructions, and starting to prep what we can in the studio, it’s been non-stop work (not to mention doing my job for ranger)! so i want to take this time to give a huge thank you to ranger, advantus, and stampers anonymous for their support of product for this event…
we started getting boxes of the supplies we needed to prep, and they were piled high…
then came the task of cutting up 500 paper pads for kits (great job mario)…
and this is what 500 mini paper pads look like…
there was also lots of sorting of embellishments going on…
some required a little more prep than others, like drilling holes in 500 wishbones (once again great job mario)…
and of course die cutting 500 grungeboard hearts (let’s just say mario’s the best)…
so with the final tasks almost finished, we are shipping the last of the prep to the freight forwarder in new york tomorrow. in addition, all of the sponsoring companies also have to ship their palettes of supplies to the freight forwarder this week. then the freight forwarder will consolidate all of the shipments into one group shipment that will be air freighted to south africa. once the shipment arrives there, glenda and her team will have the task of unpacking all of the palettes of product, sort it according to the prep lists i have made, and assemble everything into the final kits the students will receive in the workshops – are you tired yet???
on march 6th we plan to arrive in south africa, the day before all of the workshops begin, to help with set up, do finishing touches on everything, and get ready for another amazing adventure of creativity and inspiration in south africa – we can’t wait…t!m
