Artypants Retreat

***Warning - this is a long post***

What can I say, What an awesome time!!!

I picked Mel up and met Tania at her place and loaded up Tania's 4 wheel drive with all our stuff. Mostly scrapping stuff. Her car was chocca's. We arrived at the retreat at about 4.30pm after we stopped off at the bottle shop for some travellers.

We stayed at Camp Manyung. What a great place. We didn't have to go anywhere. Our rooms were all connected to the kitchen, meals and scraproom. It was warm and cosy, the bunks were quite large and comfortable and the service was mighty fine. We had the most delicious meals delivered to us and taken away when we were done. I even went back for seconds on the fish, and I don't do fish. We had so much food I was full all the time, but still kept eating it cause it was there and it was sooo yummy. Came home a couple of kilos heavier.

These are the pics in the scrap room, except Judy is missing. I think she was outside enjoying the sunshine reading a magazine.

Jodie warming up on the first night when we were still trying to work out how the heater works.

It took me a while to get started, not churning out much in the way of layouts at all. I think from the time I got there until 3.00am I was lucky to get 3 layouts finished. Was a bit dissappointed in myself for that lousy effort. But I soon made up for it with a total of 15 layouts completed over the whole weekend. I took along 20 layouts I had planned for and only expecting to get about 7 done. Check out the slide show below for all the pics of the layouts I did. There is one missing because I've decided to use it for my Masters entry and can't share that one for now. Also the one called 'Move Over Micayla' is one we did in a 'Musical Scraps' challenge. This is where all of us sat around the one table, did a little bit to a layout and passed it on. So this layout is actually not one of mine, but bits of about 12 other people.

There was lots of drinking as well as the eating and lots and lots of laughing. Judy and Jodie provided us all with 'Artybucks'. Throughout the weekend we collected 'Artybucks' for completing challenges etc and the one with the most at the end of the weekend one a prize. The Artypants police were out in force, taking away our 'Artybucks'. Judy and Jodie played good cop, bad cop and boy was Judy a bad cop. She took away my Artybucks for speeding when I went running through the room. She wouldn't even let us talk during our musical scraps session and kept taking away our bucks. Jodie on the other had was giving them back to us for things she liked us doing to our pages. But revenge was sweet when Bec and I took our turn in being the Arty Police. Mind you the Arty Police were very corruptable.

Jenny and Bec left the room and Bec came back in with her face painted yellow. Then I decided to add some pink swirls, then it was on for all. We all had a go a 'scrapping' Bec's face. This then became another challenge when a few of us decided to scrap the same photo of Bec's scrapped face. This is the layout I can't share yet. Jodie is going to set up a gallery on the forum where all the retreat photos and layouts will be shared so you can see what others have done.

We had a lucky dip. This was full of scrapping goodies and Artybucks. But we could only fish out the lucky dip from shredded paper using a claw, not your own hand.

There was a set of questions people had to answer. They were really difficult questions about each member of the Artypants team. People had to bribe us for the answers. I managed to score a 7 minute massage from Laura (thanks Laura) and a nice long foot massage from Lyn, awesome Lyn, thanks. I did wash my feet first though. Mel and Tania were getting my drinks for me. The one with the most correct answers won a prize. But Suzanne had the right idea. She made up her own answers (all completely wrong of course - and funny). She managed to get a prize for it at the end and didn't have to bribe anyone. Others had to beware though, she was charging people Artybuck for answers (wrong answers) and others were falling for it. PMSL.

On the Saturday night we weren't allowed to get into our PJ's until Bec said so. She then made it a challenge that we had to get into our PJ's in the dark in 2 minutes. The problem for me was I shared a room with Bec and Jodie, so Judy was the one who set our challenge. We had to change into our PJ's, change our beds around and get up onto the top bunk, in the dark all in 2 minutes. 'Bitch Judy' LOL. Well we were cackling so hard, it's amazing we were able to do it. Well actually Bec didn't. Jodie and I did it in plenty of time cause we were neat and had everything folded and in their place so we could easily find our stuff in the dark. But Bec, nooooo..... I had to even cheat and turn the light on for her and only then she only just got her pajama pants on. She's cackling "I can't find my pj's" and Jodie and I are cackling trying to get up on the top bunk. We were the only ones who failed.

Here is a photo of us all in our pj's. You may notice I am wearing penis' on my head. Anyone who did something 'dicky' had to wear them on their head until someone else did something 'dicky'. They were flashing and went floppy. I seemed to have them on my head a lot. PMSL.

Each day we voted for our favourite layouts. Saturday morning we voted for Friday nights and Saturday evening we voted for Saturday's day layouts, then Saturday night was done on Sunday. My 'Snow Much Fun' layout was voted most favourite for the Saturday night. Suzi won the 'Queen of the Crop' for having won the most favourite layouts. Others, especially Tania were chuffed just to have someone vote for their layout. So everybody was happy.

It was such a fabulous weekend and can't wait for the next one. Thank you to Judy and Jodie for doing such an awesome job organising this fantastic event. Bring on the next one!!!