Bisous Artist & Owner Suzanne Carillo & All That It's About

Something you didn't know about me

Thought I'd share a little quirk I have. Every other day I speak French.  Yeah, I know this sounds strange.  I met my husband in the South of France when I was at University there studying French. Of course we were in love...ah love in the South of France...nothing like it! but in addition to that, I sort of thought by marrying a Frenchman it would guarantee that I wouldn't lose the French I had struggled to learn.  A little "extra" I thought : ) Since Robert didn't speak much English when we came back to Canada it was more about him learning English than me keeping my French. We struck a compromise about 13 years ago, one day English, the next day French. For a while there it was mornings French, afternoons English but I figured I was getting ripped off.  Now it's a nice even split.  I have to admit though, my French is quite rusty since my husband is unlikely to correct me or teach me anything new.  Often times if I have a really important story to tell or need to argue I'll wait till my English day because I get too frustrated trying to find the right words. Sometimes that's good since I'll forget what I wanted to argue about by the next day.

Anyhow... now you know, if one day you call or see me and I say something in French...it's just because I'm still in my French mode.

Don't Get Me Wrong

I know that there are well deserving charities out there and I support some (my fav is the SPCA).  However, it's consumers who simply write that they want me to send them free products that makes me stop and think....

Free Stuff Everyone?

Okay, I need to get something off my chest...

In the scrapbooking industry why do people expect free stuff all the time?

People write in, after having visited the website for the first time and expect me to send them free products... do they go into their grocery store and say, "can you just give me this milk for free today, I want to try it out".  I don't think so.  If so, let me know where you shop because I need to reduce my grocery bill!

Has the industry "trained" people to just expect free stuff all the time? Every time people attend crops or shows they are handed tons of free goodie bags...is that what makes people think that there is no longer a value on that product? That companies should automatically send them free stuff?  I know personally that when I get those goodie bags 99% of the stuff I get I just end up tossing in the garbage anyhow... what a shame for all those companies who donated that product for marketing purposes.

I do believe in offering something for free because I think hey, if it gets people interested in scrapbooking, card making or crafting in general it's got to be a good thing.  That is why on the website we offer loads of free stuff that can be printed off. In our "free printables" section we offer high quality tags, quotes, graphics, headers that can all be printed as many times as you'd like.  We also offer free printable cards and have a fully developed online idea book with projects and ideas with instructions for free.  On top of that all of the layouts we show are an online idea book too. 

Okay...just needed to let that out.  I feel better now : - )

What When Where?

For those of you who don't know...

I forgot to mention that PDQ is of course short for pretty darn quick pre-finished double sided scrapbook cardstock that will be available late April. We will have the catalog updated on the website in the next few days so you can preview the whole line.  I am offering them as kits too.  You can finish an entire 18 page album for less than $10 USD...in an afternoon!  Just wait till you see the layouts and how unique each page can be depending how you decide to finish it!

Off to some beside-the-fire-quiet-time with hubby before the new week starts.

I'm Giving In

So here I am...giving in to the new trend of web blogging.  After a little push from some other manufacturers I know I figure this might be worthwile after all. 

For all those who don't know me...my name is Suzanne Carillo and I am the owner, operator and artist of my own company called Bisous (pronounced b-zoo)  which creates and manufactures scrapbooking papers and supplies.

My main purpose here is to let you know a little more about myself, my life and family and Bisous, my company.

My company's mission is to make scrapbooking more accessible and less time consuming for all of us out there who actually want to spend more time creating memories to scrapbook that actually scrapbooking them.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE scrapbooking...I enjoy the whole creative process...but ask me about the tons of trips, vacations, special moments and loads of photos and stories that are either on discs, or in old albums that I haven't scrapbooked yet or even looked at in years and I'll tell you...it stresses me out.  I wanted a way of scrapbooking that wasn't going to cost me $100 every time I went into the craft store to purchase some products for a few layouts and that was still going to look like I'd spent $100 and days making it.

I've been painting, drawing, crafting, creating floral designs, cake decorating, you name it pretty much all of my life.  As a creative person sometimes it's hard to get your brain to "turn off". That is how one day, maybe two and a half months ago I was taking a shower and came up with this brilliant idea to create amazing prefinished scrapbooking pages.  Heck, I was already designing most of my layouts like this in the computer after I'd created the paper designs to test to make sure that the paper designs would work well together to create good layouts...why not just sell the actual layouts?  It seemed too good and too obvious.  Someone must already be doing it and I just don't know about it.  After I'd towelled off and did a little research though it seemed no one was doing it quite like I wanted to, and their designs seemed to be very dated. I wanted something that was current, modern, stylish, chic, hip, classic.  That day I started to produce what I now call PDQ.   A brand new line of scrapbooking products that I believe will be the future of scrapbooking and most importantly, give me the opportunity to get all my precious memories scrapbooked before I'm in the old folks home.

I'll post some more later...but for now, that gives you a little idea of me and what's goin' on with Bisous.