Scrapbooking Made Simple

Of the past few days I've been talking about embroidery on a layout and emdoodling . If you're interested in trying a bit of embroidery on your layouts but don't really know where to start..... I suggest you go to: http://www.crafttvweekly.com/player.html?wid=82 and watch the webisode "I'm in Stitches by Tricia Morris". This is a great tutorial showing several different ways you can achieve either a hand stitched effect to your pages or the illusion of one. The thing I love about all the webisodes you find on this site ( craft TV weekly ) is the tutorial nature of the shows. You can easily go away from watching one of these webisodes and reproduce the techniques you learn . I also love the innovative ideas they come up with. Their ideas and designs are not only very practical for scrapbookers but also unusual and definitely original. But my most favourite thing about these webisodes is....... (yep you guessed it......)They're FREE!

As I mentioned before my sister-in-law is a very talented embroiderer. She has graciously allowed me to show you some of her work. This should give you some idea of how you could use embroidery on your work. This is a picture of her layout before the addition of embroidery. This is the layout after the addition of embroidery. And these photos show how the leaves were positioned and done. And this photo gives you a close up shot of the finished embroidery. I think the addition of embroidery to the page gives the layout "pop". It just makes it really jump out at you... don't you think?

Well ..... as you know on Friday Night I started my submission for a DT application. Then on Sunday I began another. I got a little inspired and off I went! So now I have a dilema. Do I submit both pages and hope I don't get penalised for not following instructions? Or do I chose one? This is very hard! The worst part is I can't put them up here for y'all to vote on.... So I would have to chose between them...... I'm torn! I'll let you know what I do when I figure it out. I do hate it though when I have to choose between two things I love equally. Usually I solve this by asking someone for their opinion and evaluating my response. If I'm crushed cause they chose A then I'd choose B. It's very ornorary of me I know! But that's just what I'm like. It's been a full couple of days with lots to do to get the layouts finished just how I wanted and then move onto my next idea. I've been doing a bit of embroidery on one of these layouts. I have t...

This morning I was browsing in a Thrift Shop along the waterfront of my little home town and found some gorgeous finds! I found a lovely old handkerchief that I'm going to use on one of the vintage pages of my grandmother. The embroidery is devine! I notice alot of scrappers are using embroidery stitches in their layouts lately and wish I could remember what my mum taught me. It was many many years ago and my mum would buy me little pieces of linen with a picture on it and she'd teach me how to 'fil it in' as it were. How to make daisies and bows ...... Shame I can't remember any of it now. I also found some fabulous buttons and a postcard for my mum's vintage album. I'm planning to one day go back over the album I did of my mum and add to it... Make it better. It was my first attempt at scrapbooking so it was extremly basic. And because the time available to us wasn't that long we kept all embellishments to a minimum. Just getting the pictures in, a...