where the moon shines

I received a much-awaited package today – my Project Life kit!

It’s such an amazing product, a simplified scrapooking system for those of us who don’t have as much time or creativity to build full scrapbook pages from scratch Learn more about Project Life from this video from its creator:

But I will blog about this more in more in the coming days and months, for now let me highlight how easy it was to have it shipped to the Philippines.

Easy Amazon Transaction

I ordered the kit via Amazon on the 28th of March. The cost meant that the package qualified for free shipping within the US. At the time, there was a free trial available for an Amazon program and I signed up for that. It allowed for my package to be delivered for free, within 3 days.

I loved how it was so easy to track the package from within the Amazon site, and how real-time the updates were.

My-Shopping Box

So from the store it shipped from (I’m guessing Becky’s homebase), my kit travelled to the US address assigned to me at My-ShoppingBox – a package forwarding service that consolidates your packages and sends them when and where you want them to.

Package arrived there on the 31st of March. I authorized the shipment, made the payment, and waited a full month (+ a few days) before I finally received it.

There is an easy way to track the package from My-Shopping Box as well. However, updates are not done as real-time as, say UPS. In fact, it’s only today that I actually saw the status change from Departed from US.

The service had some problems with their website last week – logins were not being accepted. I did get an answer from customer support about the issue, and they gladly gave me the status of the package upon giving them the tracking number. And guess what? They were pretty accurate. They said to expect the package on May 10 or 11, and it came today!

I love it. I don’t have time today to work on it, but I will make time this weekend. Excited!

Anyway, back to the shipping service… My-Shopping Box collects an annual membership fee. I forgot how much, but I got in for free because I’m a BDO credit card holder. There’s also supposed to be a rebate for shipping when you use your BDO/AMEX cards but I haven’t checked yet if I got any. There’s a good number of questions in their FAQ page that should help anyone decide if they’re going to sign up for the service.

You pay them per package you have shipped. To save money, you can consolidate several smaller items you purchase from different sites (or were given to you as gifts) into one package. If not all items arrive at the same time, you may have to pay a minimal storage fee if your package has been in the facility for more than 15 days. This shouldn’t be a problem as long as you plan your purchases.

Though they weigh your package and charge accordingly, it’s still cheaper to ship via this service than if I shipped directly from the seller to my home. The time it took to get the package delivered would probably be just the same – 4-6 weeks.

The convenience is that they deliver it to your door and no more unexpected exorbitant Customs fees.

Have you tried My Shopping Box or any similar service? How was your experience?

If you buy digital scrapbooking kits regularly, then you’ll know that spending $10 dollars on a Sweet Shoppe Designer collab is money well spent. This month of April, there’s another reason to go kit buying – Kibou for Japan.

Here are the details from their shop:

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, churning up a devastating tsunami that swept over cities and farmland in the northern part of the country leaving a tragic amount of destruction and devastation in its path. Recorded as 9.0 on the Richter scale, it was the most powerful quake ever to hit the country. As of March 31, the official death toll had been raised to more than 11,600, and more than 16,000 people were listed as missing. Although there may be some overlap between the two groups, the final toll is expected to reach nearly 20,000 lives lost. To help the people of Japan in our own way, Sweet Shoppe Designs has created a kit which 100% of the profits will be donated to the American Red Cross for their Japanese Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami fund.
Kibou means ‘Hope’ in Japanese, and it is a very special kit jam packed with 3 dozen papers, more than 70 elements, 2 templates and more! It will be on sale for the month of April only, and is for such a great cause that we truly hope you will help us reach out the people of Japan in their time of need.

Personally, I think it’s a good buy. Donating ten dollars to help in the rehabilitation of the devastated areas is that one small thing we all can do to help. Getting this fabulous kit is just the icing on top.

Click the image to go to SSD.

Boden ads are delivered to my Inbox every once in awhile. I signed up as an affiliate to the shopping site awhile back, but since I never got any conversions, I stopped posting their ads and link on my blogs. But I didn’t opt out from the emails, I liked looking at them and all the clothes they sell.

Today, I received another ad which in itself is already a source of page design inspiration:

Too bad I couldn’t capture the full page. It’s not one whole image but an actual page put together in HTML so right-click save would only save it in parts. I used the Snipping tool to take two screenshots just to capture everything.

I love the pattern on the coat – I wish I was bold enough to wear such a pattern and that it was actually cold enough here to wear the chic jacket. And I love how they used the same pattern on the ad border. The full page is something that can be lifted for a digiscrapbook page. Maybe my first layout will be inspired by this page. And maybe my first page this year will be about our upcoming Cebu vacation (We’re still finalizing our trip details and waiting on a possible deal for the hotel we picked. It’s sad that there’s no one ultimate resource for Cebu vacation deals like this one for Branson Missouri vacation packages, it would have made planning this trip all that easier.)

Wow, my second digital scrapbooking post in a row. It’s been awhile since I last had back to back posts about kits or anything digiscrapbooking related, but this news couldn’t wait. I’ve always been amazed about how such an amazing community the digiscrapping world makes. Many times, I have seen designers come together to give their time and talent to worthwhile causes. It happened for Haiti relief last year, and for some other families who needed help with medical bills or seed fund to bounce back after a devastating fire, for example.

And digiscrappers rally to help by buying these charity kits where proceeds are almost entirely given to the intended beneficiaries. Isn’t that wonderful?

Here’s another one of those, benefiting those affected by the floods in Queensland, Australia.

Click on the preview to go to ScrapbookBytes to purchase this kit. Even if you’re not interested in donating funds, you’re sure to get value for every dollar paid because of all the goodies that fill this kit. So if you think about it, you’re satisfying your shopping urge for kits while you help others. Ten dollars can go a long way when put together with other tens.

From Sweet Shoppe Designs, they have this limited edition collab kit to raise funds for one of their designers who was also devastated by the floods. You can read about Zoe Pearn’s story of the flood here. Brighter Days Ahead is a kit filled with hope that they may pick up the pieces and restart their lives after the flood. It is available for a limited time so go grab it now:

this is just the preview for the papers and there’s so much more to this kit. Check it out by clicking the preview.

Now I wish I had enough funds to buy both charity collabs, as well as the Scrap Matters products I put on my cart this morning. But I’m quite apprehensive about digiscrap shopping too much because they might end up gathering virtual dust while they go unused, much like my jewelry making supplies that are just kept in a box in the garage.. Well I hope not, whether paid kits or freebie downloads, I will use my stash to create beautiful pages this year.

Brought to you by The Blog Train Blog, this is February 2011′s February blog train digiscrap collab:

I’ve followed the train and download a whole lot of digital scrapbooking goodness. All for free! Okay, not entirely free, you should say THANKS of course

Start from the Blog Train HQ.