Category Archives: I’m creating

Christmas Card Crafting

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This was supposed to be a “ten on the 10th” post, but I let that deadline slip away (since this a ‘no pressure’ Christmas season). However I have had an enormous amount of fun making Christmas cards this year. When I sent off my overseas cards (only 15 of them) I was pleased that they were all handmade; what I had forgotten to do was take any pictures! I then had the task of recreating the designs for the New Zealand card list. It would be interesting to see the differences.

As a relatively inexperienced card-maker, one of the criteria I use is that the design must be simple. As a pressed-for-time card-maker, the other is that I can construct the card in about 5 minutes. The design on the right is my ‘go to’ card design for all occasions (some of you might recognise it!) – and I think it works well as a Christmas card too. The design on the right (one I made up  myself) is only possible in 5 minutes if you have a scoring board (but it’s quite possible to make without one, it will just take you longer). It’s another design that’s very adaptable to other occasions simply by changing the colours, papers and sentiment.

The card on the left is a Stampin’ Up! design, and the one on the right was inspired by a similar card I saw here at Carta Bella’s blog.

The card on the left is my own design – and uses a Stampin’ Up! ornament punch. The origami card on the right was taught to me by Sarah Chapman in 2010, and looks more complicated than it is. It took me a few goes to get the folding right, as 2010 was quite a long time ago!

The top card is another Stampin’ Up! design, and the bottom one my own. The sentiment on the lower card is one of my favourites – it reads It’s Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.

And last but not least, another ‘lifted from the internet’ design, and one from Stampin’ Up! These are two more examples of cards that can easily be adapted with different papers to become cards for other events.

Now that I’ve completed this post I’d better get busy and send the cards out!

 

Counting down

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When I was a child one of the things that told me Christmas was coming was the steady arrival of parcels from Britain and Canada. I remember the British parcels in particular, because they were wrapped in a special sort of brown paper we don’t get in New Zealand – it’s almost striped, with a subtle tone-on-tone pattern, and a more rusty brown colour than ours. There were stamps – lots and lots of them – some with the Queen’s profile, others with a Christmas theme. I also remember the careful writing of my Aunts – Madge’s small tidy script and Sandra’s bolder, rounded hand, and my Dad’s sister Elaine’s untidy scrawl. The Canadian parcels didn’t have any string, but my Mum’s sisters clearly had a lower opinion of postal workers and had meters (yards, in those days!) of string and a multiplicity of knots to ensure the parcel would survive intact to its destination.

In the absence of parcels, nowadays my countdown begins with making the Christmas Cake. True to tradition, I aim to make it on ‘stir-up Sunday’, the Sunday-next-before-Advent. It is so called because the Collect (prayer) for the day in the old 1662 Anglican Prayer Book begins “Stir up, O Lord, the hearts of thy people…” – and was taken as a useful reminder by the women of the congregation to get on with the job of making the traditional fruit cake. I was on time this year – and our cake will have a chance to improve not only with keeping, but also with a weekly brushing with brandy!

Today I performed another part of the Christmas countdown, and wrote and posted off the overseas cards. This year I’ve managed to make them all – nothing too fancy as I needed 16 cards and so I made a few each of several designs – none of which took longer than a few minutes to make. There are two really important parts of the process for me. The first is constructing a newsletter that rounds up the events of the year for each of us, and I   love doing this. Looking back on the year gone by is a chance to reflect and enjoy again the highlights we have experienced. The second important part of writing the overseas cards is to write some words in each card that are chosen for that recipient. A little story, a wish or a shared memory – I like to add a little something special along with holiday greetings.

What do you remember from your childhood countdown to Christmas? Is this still in your life, or has something else replaced it?

Creative recharge

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I have had a wonderful time this weekend, at a Stamp Camp organised by two local Stampin’ Up! demonstrators Charlene & Paula. 25 women spent the whole weekend, with another 11 joining in as ‘day girls’ for the classes on Saturday. The weekend was filled with learning new things, getting to know new people, and lots of laughter.

Liz Dobson taught an awesome technique class, showing us the steps behind this layout:

I have to confess to feeling completely overwhelmed to start with – but after I had made the background I felt better!

I made most of the components and laid them all out for a photo (but nothing is properly finished yet, this is just an idea of how my finished project might look):

Paula took the next class, and we learned the sponging technique that she uses to create lovely landscape cards. Charlene’s class (on Sunday morning) introduced us to watercolour crayons, aqua-painters and blender pens. I gotta get me some of those now that I know what to do with them! The card from Paula’s class is on the left, the three on the right from Charlene’s class. I am very pleased with how well they turned out, and if one of them finds its way to you, you’ll know that I had a lot of fun while making it.

I had taken along my Project Life/Photo A Day album which was several weeks behind, and this is what I worked on in the ‘free creative time’ on Friday night and Saturday. I am pleased to say that the album is now right up to date. Most of the time I like this project , but I really love it when it’s up to date!

I had also taken along a sketch from my current Shimelle class, together with photographs and papers. There was just enough time between finishing my watercolour cards and lunch to complete the layout (but journalling – the tale of making all the curtains for our house – is yet to be added):

I’m now ready for the week ahead, recharged with lots of creative energy.

Recent creativity

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I’m doing another Shimelle Lane on-line class, but as things have got quite busy on other fronts, I’ve not been able to produce many layouts (fortunately the material remains available ‘forever’).

Here’s one from an early suggestion – make a monochromatic layout.

I found this a real challenge. One of the things I have learned about my own scrapping style through the class is that I most often use only two or three colours – sometimes one or two more than that, but a monochromatic layout is a rarity. However, looking at the page above I can’t see any reason why I shouldn’t repeat this look, as I really like how it turned out. What about you – do you know your own colour tendencies (and if you are not a scrapbooker, then consider your other hobbies, or your wardrobe or home decor colour choices)?

As a result of another challenge set in the class, I chose several sets of photographs that I want to use on layouts soon (I’m trying to reach the end of my 2005 photographs). Taking each set of pictures I then set about choosing patterned papers (and in some cases background cardstock). Looking at all five sets of photos and papers it was easy to see that I gravitate towards all-over patterns, small designs rather than large ones, and that I love stripes and polka dots This new understanding is going to help me a lot when I buy patterned paper – I will leave the designs I love the look of (but am not likely to ever use) at the store!

Here’s the only set of photographs and papers that have actually made it onto a layout:

This layout also dealt nicely with another class suggestion – to use non-traditional colours to scrap Christmas pictures.

In addition to stalking Shimelle on her blog, I have also joined UK Scrappers in order to participate in her monthly challenge And Now For Something Completely Different. On the 10th of each month Shimelle posts a set of supplies needed, and on the 20th of the same month she posts a set of step-by-step instructions. For October the ‘something different’ was that there were no accompanying photographs of each step, so they were much more open to interpretation. In addition, rather than making the layout and immediately posting it to the challenge gallery, we were asked to leave it until the end of October. Although in past months the layouts have been varied by small or greater degree from the example, this time there’s a much wider range. It’s interesting to see just how varied the interpretations of one set of instructions can get!

Here is my version:

The journalling is about the lovely surprise of an almost perfect rainbow on an otherwise gloomy winter’s day – and the second surprise of finding that I’d managed to capture the rainbow through the trees in exactly the way I’d intended. Isn’t it great when that happens?

On a roll

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September’s been a productive month for scrapbook layouts (for housework, not so much). I scoured my stash and made up a ‘kit’ of patterned papers, cardstock, letter stickers and embellishments before going to a crop* a couple of weekends ago. You’ve seen the two layouts I made there in this post. Since that event I’ve kept going with the kit here at home. I have made three more layouts (including a double-pager). There is still enough left in the kit for one or two more pages, so it’s been a good exercise.

This one was inspired by a layout in Scrapbook & Cards Today. The pocket at the top contains cards, which was all I had to remember the event (the photo is from around the same time, which had to be good enough as there weren’t any from the work project I was recording with the page).

* crop – a gathering of scrapbookers, who create pages (or cards) in the social atmosphere (this definition for my MIL, a dedicated reader of this blog!).

Happiness is …

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… cooking another successful new recipe!

From another new cookbook! When I was at the City Market recently I stopped at the Bookfeast stall and my eye fell on this:

The recipes in the book are fantastic – practical, made with ordinary ingredients, and I have made several of them already. The other night I had a go at a two-dish main, making a dahl as well as this little number:

Spiced spinach and potatoes. When I followed along with the easy-to-understand instructions, my version looked like this:

Not bad, huh?! And it had a nice wallop of taste as well. I served it with some naan bread (Tulsi’s brand, a quick thaw job from the freezer stash) and the contrast of flavour and texture made the extra fiddling about to create two dishes well worth while.

Starting Points and Glitter Girl

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I confess – I am a groupie.

The focus of my fixation? Shimelle Lane. Yes, you have heard of her before, and recently – she is the author of the Learn Something New Every Day on-line course I’m doing that has led to this burst of bloggy creativity. As well as paid-for courses, Shimelle shares her scrapbooking knowledge on her blog, and through videos on the twopeasinabucket site where she is currently producing weekly Glitter Girl episodes.

I know that other Shimelle groupies will immediately recognise this layout as being inspired by her most recent Starting Point post – but those who haven’t already seen it can find it here.

As you can see from the amount of writing on the page, I had a wonderful wander down memory-lane remembering the reasons I enjoyed horse-riding so much, and in particular this lovely-natured horse.

Yesterday I enjoyed a few hours in the company of the Scrapmates (a bunch of on-line and now in-real-life scrapbooking friends). Here are the two layouts I completed:

Can you tell that both layouts are made from the same ‘recipe’? Yet they look different enough that I could put them in the same album (although they’ll actually end up in two – the top one in a Places album, and the bottom one in a People album).

 

My signature

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It’s no secret that I love to create and place a high priority on carving out creative time in my schedule.

My sewing machine is often used to create colourful quilts. While I enjoy the process of making them, the process of giving them to the recipient is actually more fun:

I made a quilt for my niece, using lots of different cat fabrics. This was so she could have cats on her bed even in the university hostel!

The first quilt that was entirely of my own design was a play-quilt (again featuring cats), made for my great-niece. Seeing her move the cats around their various homes on the quilt was such a thrill.

I have also enjoyed making albums for non-scrapbooking friends to easily show off their baby photographs (this one is based on a template shared by Angie Lucas in the Nove/Dec 2007 issue of Simple Scrapbooks):

As well as making gifts, my enthusiasm for hand-made items has led to work with children to create colourful art and crafts. There is something almost magical in children’s enthusiasm for learning and enjoyment in their finished product:

After a holiday craft session at the library, the children happily posed with their decorative kites – look at the wide smiles (but mine was probably wider!).

Through this reflection I have learned that I am happy to have ‘handmade’ as a signature trait. I have also learned that I am grateful for the photo organisation system DH has imposed on the photo files in the computer – I can find what I am looking for!

Time for a layout

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Is there such a thing as tempting fate? I’m beginning to wonder, as almost as soon as I commented to a friend that I hadn’t had a cold for two years, I got one!

The first day I wasn’t in any state to do anything but treat myself with paracetamol and hot lemon-and-honey drinks. By the end of day two however, with the headache under control with the above drug, I was able to concentrate for a while and doctor myself with a bit of creativity (very good medicine!).

I viewed this video and then shamelessly copied the LO after I’d created a background using some of my own stamps. So happy to have made something new (and I especially like the little cut-out circle at the bottom)!