Teaching In South Africa

It was a trip of a life time! Around The Block was invited to teach in South Africa at the Scrapbooking Convention. The first thing I must mention is how warm and classy the ladies (and men) of South Africa are! Teaching the classes was an absolute joy!

The ladies in our classes were so excited to use our clever ATB tools - and they just loved the Paper Taggers. Click on any of these photos to see them in full size.

Here are some more photos from our classes.

This was actually our smallest class at only 60 students (delegates)! The rest of the classes were over 100 - and one over 130!

This amazing lady was an assistant in one of the classes. She was so nice to give me her “real South African diamond” necklace after I complimented her on it! How generous and sweet!

Mallory, accompanied me on the trip and helped me in the classes. Here we are with more of the volunteer assistants - they were amazing help!

This photo includes me, Louise, Margie Aslett Romney (Making Memories) and Glenda. Louise and Glenda were our wonderful hosts. They are the brains behind the whole convention. They couldn’t have been more helpful, organized, generous and fun!!!

There were 7 other teachers at the event whom we had the pleasure of traveling with and getting to know. Margie Aslett Romney (Memory Makers), Stacey Julian, Kai Mei Smith (Font Werks, Canada), Celine Navarro (Designer, France), Rachael Schulz (Designer, Australia), Jenni Bowlin (Jenni Bowlin Designs) and Kelly White (My Minds Eye).

This is Rachael Schulz. We had to use microphones and projectors because the classes were so large. Rachael brought along her best friend Kim to help teach. Love those Aussie gals!

Here is Jenni Bowlin teaching her class.

Jenni’s project…gorgeous!

Here is Margie Aslett Romney teaching. During our break, Mallory and I sat in on one of Margie’s classes, what a blast! She is so much fun. And I swear she could be a stand-up comedian if she ever left scrapbooking and wanted a new job! Her class was all about using the many scraps every scrapbooker has on hand and can’t bear to throw away.

This is Celine’s class. Her scrapbooking style is amazing and she taught delegates how to use paint and textures in their designs. Celine is a mega-talent, and one to keep your eye on for trends.

I wish I had some photos of Kai Meh’s, Stacy’s and Kelly’s classes. We were so busy teaching that we couldn’t get over to their’s to take photos. We heard they were just awesome classes.

As guest teachers we were asked to judge a huge scrapbooking contest. Here are a few of the many gorgeous and beautifully designed projects. Judging was difficult! This is Kelly White trying to make up her mind…Love your red shoes Kelly!

Here are more entries behind Mallory. In front of Mallory is the winning entry for the 3D Paper Sculpture contest. Can you believe this whole thing is made of paper? It was gorgeous! We absolutely loved all of the entries, but this turtle really stole our hearts. It even had working lights inside.

We attended a Gala Crop Evening as well where Stacey Julian gave an amazing talk. Those photos to come…Also, we had a few days after all of the hard work of the classes to go on a safari! I’ll be posting those photos in the next few days.