Greetings!
There is a lot going on here at Crops Plus, preparing for the sold out April Crop in just 7 weeks! Below you will find more information about the upcoming crops, contests, and more.
  
We're looking forward to seeing a lot of you in just a few weeks for the April Crop and, as always, please contact us if you have any questions.
 
See you soon!

The Crops Plus Team
PO Box 2041
Arlington, VA 22202
703-260-6105 
March Scrapbooking Tip
Improve your handwritten journaling  
When you're creating scrapbook layouts using just cardstock, photographs, and a pen, your personal handwriting becomes an important scrapbook page element, and you want it to look great. Here are ten tips to help you make your handwriting look fantastic:

1. Start with a good quality pen that writes in a fine line and doesn't skip.
2. Write slowly and deliberately.
3. Use a light box, and place a grid under your backlit cardstock. Using the gridlines, you can precisely place your journaling without drawing lines on your page.
4. Use a ruler as a journaling guide, but keep moving it down as you write each line of journaling. Doing this will keep your journaling straight, but you won't have to erase any ruler lines.
5. Stagger the beginning of each journaling line, so both the right and left sides of the text have a "ragged" edge, which enables the journaling to more uniformly fill the space.
6. Use the edges of your photographs as journaling lines.
7. Trace your journaling twice when writing on dark backgrounds with opaque markers.
8. Plan where you want to journal before you create your layout.
10. Experiment with journaling directly on a photograph using a pen meant for writing on slick surfaces, such as an American Crafts Slick Writer.
September Registration Opens May 2
Be sure to register right when it opens!
Our April crop is sold out and has a very large wait list. The September crop registration opens to the public on May 1 at 12:01am. We will have a limited number of seats, so if you would like to join us, be sure to register as soon as it opens!
April Crop + Annual Food Drive
Will you help?
We have been truly blessed to enjoy a hobby we love and friends (new and old) to share it with. To give a little bit back, every year, we hold a food drive at the April Crop. You can win special tickets for every item that you bring! Those raffle tickets will put you in the running to win a special prize worth $50!

We will be donating the food to Link, INC, a charity that exists to provide emergency food to people in need in the Herndon, Sterling, and Ashburn, Virginia communities.

More information on what items Link, INC is looking for will be sent to each registered cropper with details. Here is a picture of some of the food we were able to donate last year, over 400 pounds!
Scraps Marketplace is Coming!
A unique scrapbooking event headed your way

Would you like to shop with some of the best scrapbook businesses in the area? Would you like to sell some of your older, maybe duplicate, scrapbook stash? Would you like to take amazing scrapbook classes? We've created a fun one-day event to do just that! Scraps Marketplace is your home for scrapbook vendors, yard sale steals and stellar classes in the DC area!
 
Scraps Marketplace is a brand new venture connecting two scrapbook crop company owners: Carren Crossley from Crops Plus of Sterling, VA and Mirella Arroyo from Weekend Memories of Leesburg, VA.  We saw a need to offer a new kind of event. We had our first event last year and it was a huge success. We are excited to bring our second annual event back this year.
 
Scraps Marketplace is a vendor fair and scrapbook yard sale that will also provide scrapbook classes during a one day event. The event will be 9am - 3pm Saturday, October 22, 2016. The site for this year's Scraps Marketplace will be located at 22685 Holiday Park Drive, Dulles, VA 20166 at the Executive Conference and Training Center (ECTC). It is NOT at the Dulles Expo Center. ECTC is conveniently located off of Route 28 and Route 50 in Dulles, VA, with plenty of parking for vendors and customers!
 
You can check out our website: Scraps Marketplace and our Facebook page. We are SO SO excited to be offering this opportunity and we hope you will join us! If you are interested in vendoring or reserving one of our limited yard sale tables, we will begin taking applications on April 1st. Check out website and Facebook page then for links to the applications.
Crops Plus Survey
Register your opinion to win!
We are always looking for ways to improve Crops Plus. We want it to be the best experience offered. In order to do that, we would like your opinions. We have created a survey, which you can take here: TAKE SURVEY.  The first 100 people who take the survey will be entered to win a $25 gift certificate to AllScrapbookSteals.com. They have the best prices on scrapbooking items! The winner will be announced on Facebook and in the April newsletter on April 1.
Facebook Fans Contest
Help us reach our goal!
As of today, we have 780 fans on Facebook. We would like to reach 1,000 before the April crop. You can help by inviting your fellow paper crafting friends to like our page. If we reach our goal by the April crop, we will select one of our fans to win $100 off a future crop! You can even split that amount with a friend and each of you get $50 off! Or split with three friends and each get $25 off. However you want to share the wealth (if you choose to!). Invite your friends to like our page today!