Scrapbooking Made Simple

For anyone who is looking to learn a thing or two the very talented Mandy Collins (who you will see in Australian Scrapbook Ideas Magazine) is doing online classes... check these out:  Pearl Maple: Designing & Creating

Had a great class today with a wonderful bunch of ladies. A few of my favourite regulars were there to make it extra special.  My number two child my 8 year old daughter came to help me today and it was great having an assistant... I think I might try and have an assistant for all my classes! We made the "Love" canvas you see below. It is amazing how differently the canvas's all turn out depending on how thick or thin you lay your glimmermist.  I always say though lay down a fine mist and build it up.. you can easily go darker if you want to but you can't easily go backwards from dark to light.. not without painting over the canvas and starting again at least. In this class the girls learn't two techniques for using decorative edge scissors. (One of my favourite things to do each class is to give you a few new techniques for making your own embellishments and if I can also include a new way to use an old tool, I'm really happy!) I prefer to spend my scrap ...

This selection of home decor was created using glimmermist. I love how they turned out.  The costs were kept down by making as many embellishments as possible. All of the flowers are handmade which definitely keeps the cost down. I cut the titles on my cricut and the gate hinge and key and keyhole on my sizzix. The beautiful prima birdcages were a bit of a splurge for me as you know I like to keep the costs down.  These are my June, July and August classes at Arnolds Scrapbook Store ( Shop T4.02 743 Deception Bay Road Rothwell, Brisbane, QLD.  (07) 3293 4390). I misted my backgrounds using TCW stencils then cut acetate shapes on my cricut (clock & Heart) and then my titles on my cricut. Then I cut the keyhole, hinge and key using my sizzix die. The flowers are all handmade using a variety of different methods to achieve a soft floral display.

I went to the Scrapbook and Papercraft convention yesterday and attended a class by Jane Clark (Editor of Cardmaking Stamping & Papercraft Magazine) where we made these two cards. This class was excellent value and fun to do and now I'm hooked on making these cards. Can't wait for the weather to warm up a little so I can venture into my garage to do some crafting of these beauties. The lion moves on the first card and a ballernina (middle one) on the second card. As you know I don't make alot of cards usually..... but I think I've caught the bug now. I usually like to use left over pieces of paper from my Beyond the Page Item or Scrapbook Page which all match perfectly to make a card so I'm not wasting off cuts of paper. But now I think I'll be doing cards specifically for the fun of it! Thanks Jane!

This is a cute little booklet I made from two sheets of patterned paper.  The first piece is folded to form the book with all the hidden nooks for tags or photos. The second piece is used to make the tags. I made this project for the trainee teacher who has been helping out in DD1's classroom this year. She has made a positive impact on DD1 and I wanted to let her know that. This little booklet seemed the best way to do that.  If you want to know how to make this book just leave me a comment and if enough people are interested I'll do you a quick video.

This is the coolest thing! The woman who made this is seriously talented. The story is great and rhymes so nicely and the pop ups are great.  I love this concept and think I might have to give it a go myself..... hard to not copy this one though as it is so fabulous.

I have some fabulous photos of me and my BFF's..I'm a very lucky girl cause I have a few..... so of course these need to be scrapbooked to make them look even more beautiful (LOL). Here is a layout I did recently.... So how did I save money on this layout? Well I used scraps of patterned paper from other previous layouts..... I misted my background to save on using a patterned paper, I made flowers (of course)..... hmmm I made my own embellishments (Butterfly is glitter on acetate; I didn't stamp the image onto acetate I just placed my acetate over an image and used art glitter glue to mark out the outline and then covered this in black glitter.  Then I added the other colours. Hint: leave white glitter till last! Then I cut around the image). Also I took some chipboard letters, covered them in glue and then glitter to make my title Tip: I keep all my chipboard letters in drawers after I've made a few words out of the packet and don't think there's an...

Hi Everyone, For those of you who follow me regularly you will be aware that last year my darling hubby and I renewed our wedding vows... We did this to reaffirm our committment to each other in front of friends  (old and new) and family...... Despite some of the rough times we've had, we love each other more than ever. So this was a wonderful romantic adventure for us.... and best of all .... this time he sang to me! At our first wedding his sister serenaded us but this time he sang to me as I walked down the isle to him flanked by our beautiful children. Imagine it girls, as I walked down the isle he sang "I think I loved you before I met you" (Savage Garden). (Yes I cried).   Well we got some gorgeous family photos from that event. Everyone is dressed up and colour co-ordinated. So rather than just do a scrapbook page of this day I decided to do a canvas for our wall. I really liked the finished product (which is all that counts after all as I have to look at it ev...