My heart is overflowing with happiness as I reflect on hosting my very first paper-crafting cruise! It’s hard to find the words to describe the amazing week we had in the Caribbean last week. What a true blessing it was to have 51 creative women join us for this event! A heartfelt THANK YOU to every one of you for attending—YOU are the reason this experience was so much fun!

I am incredibly thankful for my amazing helper, Kathy Belcher. She gave so many hours to help me, came to my home day after day and week after week, along with spending many hours working from her own home! (I joked that I wanted to give her a room in our house until we finished! LOL). I truly couldn’t have accomplished this without her help!

I am excited to share many photos from our week, so hold on!

This was the swag bag, filled with projects, instructions, gifts, products, and LOTS of surprises! I wanted a “multipurpose” type bag, that they could use even when they were home, or at a beach. That way when they use it, they will always have our trip memories tucked in their hearts!

You know I am a sucker for personalized things – each gal got their own bag-tag. My hubby, Dan, has an employee who works wonders on our 3-D printer!

This was the banner that was hung on each gal’s door (th magnets), so we would recognize our attendees when we were in the hallways!

Kathy made these last summer when she drove on her annual trip to the midwest (to get some relief from the AZ summer.) She did a great job on these!

We put them on the doors of our private conference rooms, as well.

I sewed these reversable fabric trash bags for the gals. Everyone received their own, and kept it them at their work station. They got to set up “camp” at their table, and didn’t have to rotate tables.

This made it easy for them to leave their work, come back, and pick up right where they left off. I got the bag pattern online and Angie Juda was the pattern maker.

I like attention to detail, so I ordered customer fabric tags. I sewed them into the side seam of the bag.

Everyone received their own super-sized cup with their name on it, of course with our logo, too! I made these by cutting vinyl on my Silhouette machine. The cups hold 24 oz!!!

Everyone received a cute little suitcase that held their own shammy inside (shammy’s cut down) in a plastic container. I made labels of all the port stops we made on the cruise and a logo luggage tag. You can see the plastic container on the left side in the photo above. It slides in and out.

Of course, everyone received a lanyard. This helped on a large ship so we could recognize people in our group, not to mention help us with all the new names we learned this week!