Scrapbooking Made Simple

I was just catching up on some of my Craft TV Weekly viewing and I discovered a great tutorial that basically shows you how to make little books like the receipe book I created for christmas presents. They've tittled it "Pocket Book" but it is basically the same concept as my receipe book.... just with more pages instead of envelopes..... Anyway if you're interested you can view it here: http://www.crafttvweekly.com/player.html?wid=127

Hi everyone, sorry I didn't wish you all a Merry Christmas... I meant to ..... but i got distracted preparing for christmas. So I hope you all had a lovely christmas. Santa was very generous to me this year. My scrapbooking collection has been expanded..... With a caddy full of stamping inks and a very large collection of brush tip pens and another caddy full of stamps..... WOW! I also got the best present ever! Pop took some fabulous photos of the kids which he had put onto canvas for me for my christmas present. They look so GOOD! I'll take a photo soon and put it up to show you all. I hope you all found something you wanted under the tree. We have two birthday parties to attend before New Years so I may be a little tardy with my next post. Hope you all have a wonderful New Years and the coming year is a Happy/Healthy and Prosperous one for you all!

My Latest Off the Page Project is...... A Cubby House! Here is "Rose Cottage". Complete with carport for DS's little jeep... This cubby house took my father-in-law and DH a weekend to build. We were lucky enough to get our materials for free (only spent $80 on the roof, and some wood for the frame, hinges, door handle, letterbox, window box and one of the pailings in the verandah and the lino flooring.) as our neighbours were renovating their house. This shot is from the front showing the planter box and letterbox off to their best advantage. On the door I stencilled some roses in the corners of the door and then I stamped "welcome" on this little oval plate then I stuck down some blue roses. (for regular readers you'll notice they're the same type of rose as the ones I used on my DD's wardrobe) These roses were stencilled on the outside of the cottage. This letterbox was added as my kids love to get the mail out of the letterbox and pretend t

Here are the digi scrapped coffee mugs I told you about a few posts back. They're back from the "printer". These were really easy to do. I first created my document that I was digi scrapping and I made the size of the document 4" x 6'" (a standard photo). I then decorated that page using my digital scrapbooking papers and embellishments and finally added the photos. I then went to my local photo lab and uploaded these images to their software and chose to have them printed on mugs. (I chose the stretch option which stretches the image around the mug. So then I had to resize the image to get all my decorations on the mug). And here they are! It only took them a week to print them! So if you're thinking of doing this for a christmas present I think you may just get it back in time...... but check with your photo lab to make sure they could get it back to you before Christmas. I'm happy with the result..... hope the recipients will be too?

Here is another present I made. I made another gift set for someone consisting of calendar, receipe book, notebook and address book. These are the same as the pink and brown one I made but in a different colour scheme. Again though I only used the 4 x 6 blocks of patterned paper. And only one piece of each patterned paper was required to complete this project.

I have been very busy churning out the christmas gifts. This latest gift was very labour intensive..... I have filled a box received from a present with hand made cards. I will then give this box full of cards to someone as a present so they will always have a card for any occaision throughout the year. The best thing about this was I got to use up lots of my scraps. Here are some of the cards I made:

I attended a stampin up party recently where we were shown how to make these boxes. Simply take a piece of cardstock and fold it in half and crease the fold. Unfold then fold in half in the other direction mark the centre on each outer edge but do not crease these folds. Now fold into that centre point so you have folded over each corner. Now fold the creased centre line back up and the folded over corners will form the sides. Punch two holes in each side and thread ribbon through here and tie off to hold together. I stamped a pattern on the cardstock using my autumn leaves stamps and then stamped the same pattern on black tissue paper. I did one set in gold and one in silver and filled these with chocolates for a great gift idea.

I love to give presents I've made myself and this year is no different. Here's one present I made for my girlfriend which she seemed to like alot. It's hand made christmas tree ornaments. These decorations were made using my paper clay receipe. I used chocolate moulds to create the shapes and then purchased the wire hangers and attached the painted paper clay decorations to the wire hangers and added the beading to make them more interesting.he The green star has been created using opals embossing powders. I melted the powders and then used a cookie cutter to create the shape. When the liquid cooled I separated out the shape.