Hi, this is Tena Sprenger here from Big Picture Scrapbooking. I'm here to talk to you about my next year's yearlong class, Handmade Book-of-the-Month Club. I want to admit something right off the top…I love monthly clubs. Whether it's a fruit-of-the-month club, a monthly CD club, or best of all a scrapbooking kit club. You name it, I just love the anticipation of trying something new every month. And as a scrapbook instructor, I've always loved the creative process of developing new projects that are going to inspire and motivate students every month. It's really what kind of gets me going creatively as well.

My favorite type of scrapbooking projects of all have always been handmade books. Ever since I was a little kid, books have always fascinated me. I was always one of those kids that could get lost in a library and I had more books on my bookshelf than any other kind of toy. Books were always sort of like a cool thing to me…always kind of sacred. I have just always loved them. As a scrapbooker, learning the skills to make my own books always seemed like one of the coolest things of all to ever learn. It's just always been something really special to me. So having the ability to make my own books to put my own pictures and photos and artwork in has always been something that's really tickled me a lot. I really can't wait to share those sorts of things with everyone every month of the year next year, and that's exactly what we get to do…yeah!

Next year, starting in January, every single month of the year, I will be sharing new project plans with you. For every month of the year, we will be making a different sort of handmade book. Some months the projects will be more complex than others, and some months we will be starting completely from scratch and building a book from the ground up, learning binding and book covering techniques for different book structures. In other months we will be taking a premade book product and learning how to alter it, distress it and change it up so it's completely our own and unique. So, we're going to be doing all sorts of things throughout the year to create lots of different book projects to house our memories and photos and quotes and words. It's just going to be completely amazing. I really just can't even wait to get started. I have so many ideas and thoughts and…goodness gracious…I think it's just going to be incredible!

And, there is a really cool twist that goes along with this class as well, and I think you're going to like this a lot. I've always found, that at least when it comes to creating my own artwork and book projects and things, that a lot of my inspiration for the things that I create in scrapbooking and mini books and book projects, comes from a lot of the things that I read. Whether it's the cover of a book, the story line in a book, maybe the quotes from the books that I've read, I find quite a bit of inspiration from the things that I read. All the books that we will be creating this year in this Handmade Book-of-the-Month Club actually are inspired by books that I've read, which I think is pretty cool, and which leads me to let you know that there is another really cool new class available to everyone at Big Picture for free…hah! Isn't that cool! It's called Book-of-the-Month Club Reading Club. Every month of the year while we're creating our really cool handmade book projects, there will also be a book discussion going on in the reading club to talk about the book that inspired the handmade book project that we're making. But, I'll let you listen to that audio at another time. You will see the spot on the promo page for that as well, but I just wanted to let you know that there is inspiration in terms of a book for each of the projects that we will be creating throughout the year.

Every month there will be tons of cool stuff that goes into making each of the books that we will be making. Of course there will be audio messages from me, there will be a really cool project gallery that shows you the inside of each and every book that I make so you can see how I took my book to the extreme level and how I decorated the inside of my book and how I themed my book. Of course, there will be all the usual supply lists and everything so you guys can figure out how to change up your book and make your book your own, or make it like mine if you like. We're going to have video-enhanced tutorials every month. We will have on-line chats, and you will have lots of access to me on the message board. I like to interact like crazy with my classes, so get used to me being around…that's kind of how I am.

I am so looking forward to next year at Big Picture Scrapbooking, and making books every month of the year with you guys is going to be simply fantastic. So, I can't wait. I hope I see a lot of folks in class next year. It's going to be super-duper. I'm really looking forward to it. I'll be talking to you soon. Bye bye!