Christmas Stockings

I have certainly gone overboard with the hand-made Christmas decorations this year and the craziest part is they are all for work! This weekend I spent sewing some cute stockings for all the people who work in my 'pod' or cubicle group.

It has been quite a while since I did any significant sewing other than borders in scrapbooking layouts. I modified a pattern I found on line for these stockings and while I made a MESS of the first attempt, it was actually quite a simple process. I have received quite a few compliments from people at work about these.

Here is a close up of two of the stockings so you can see the fantastic Scrapmatts chipboard I used to embellish the MDF letters.

The colour scheme of the stockings also suits the current challenge over at one of my old Design Team blogs, The Lollipop Ladies, so I'm entering them there.

 Lastly, because Christmas is always better with glitter, here is a beer bottle I've coated in glitter to hold some fake berries. I think it's pretty cute. :)

Love a Good Lazy Weekend - Once Upon a Sketch LO

Love a good lazy weekend is the title of this LO and what I got to enjoy this weekend! For the past three months I have had the busiest weekend plans in my life and it was starting to wear me down. We were meant to head out for a BBQ with friends this Sunday but unfortunately the host got sick so we had to cancel. It did free up this weekend though, hence why I managed to create two LOs and finish off one from the expo.

 

(Removed for publication)

 

I popped by Spotlight this weekend too and picked up a paper pad of 5th and Frolic by American Crafts. The flowers were just calling out for fussy cutting and it was the perfect way to de-stress. I've worked to build up the layers and finished it all off with a Eloise flourish from Flourish With a Bling.

 

This LO was inspired by the Once Upon A... Sketch challenge for this month. The theme was 'What's your guilty please?' My journalling is on a tag being the photo and talks about how Ben and I will sleep in, relax on the lounge and have breakfast together (hence the photo of the matching tea cups) around 11am when we get a lazy weekend. Here is the sketch:

 

 

It's also pink with spots so fits the criteria for The Lollipop Ladies for this fortnight.

 

 

Lastly, Frosted Designs is also having a polka dot challenge. I've got two sheets of patterned paper with polka dots on it.

Embrace Card - Unstampabelles DT June

This month's challenge over at Unstampabelles has just gone live! It's an interesting one this month, in that you need to case (or scraplift) one of the Design Team's creations from the past 9 months.

 

 

I went with a card which allowed me to use up some of my paper scraps and a Scrapmatts chipboard butterfly. I was inspired by Merry's creation for our November monochrome theme.

 

 

You can check out all my previous DT work here in case you want to be inspired them. :)

 

Our sponsor is the fantastic Cardmaking Online with a $25.00 gift voucher. :-)

http://www.cardmakingonline.com.au

 

 

I'm also entering this into this fortnights challenge over at the Lollipop Ladies which is inspired by bug lollipops.

 

Setting The Table

My mother-in-law, Helen, always creates the most amazing Christmas table spreads each year. In Australia we take a very relaxed approach to Christmas, probably due to the fact for us it's in the middle of summer and could be boiling hot. Before I started dating Ben most of my Christmas lunches/dinners were BBQ's. Ben's family has European heritage though and they do a massive Christmas spread with two or three different roasts, a whole array of hot vegetables, dumplings and so on. I am in awe of the effort Helen and her family go to every year and wanted to capture that in a LO.

 

 

The papers are Kaisercraft and I was lucky enough to win then during one of Nadia Cannizzo's giveaways. I wouldn't normally use this range as it was a bit traditionals and flowerly for my liking but I have ended up loving this LO so thanks very much to Nadia. All the paper elements on the LO have been hand-cut by me. The chipboard is from Scrapmatts. I had purchased the baubles pre-painted red and the leaves pre-painted green so didn't even have to alter them other than to put some backing paper behind the baubles.

 

 

This is my final design team submission for The Lollipop Ladies as my term ends at the end of the year. The inspiration sweet for this fortnight was a gingerbread house. It made me think of food/decorations/home, hence the theme of my LO. The added challenge was Christmas which is pretty easy to incorporate. :) $10 voucher and guest DT spot are up for grabs so please stop on by and show us what you were inspired to create.

 

 

I have used the fantastic ScrapFriends Sketch Challenge #8 as my inspiration for this LO. If you are ever looking for a sketch to inspire you then this is where you need to go. Besides monthly sketch competitions there are also additional sketches uploaded and they all look amazing. I think I stayed pretty close to the design this time.

 

 

 

Finally, Frosted Designs is running a twelve days of Christmas competition and Day 6 required six strips of washi tape. Mine are a little bit hidden, but there are six in there (three are in the close up above)

 

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and best wishes for the new year!!

 

The Hats

I love scrapping Christmas photos all year round so it's only natural that I would do a whole heap of Christmas layouts in December. This was one of those photos I snapped on the fly just because my camera was next to me and I ended up loving the way the light was shinning through from the window. My journalling is about the multiple 'hat' traditions my family has for Christmas.

 

Mainly Kaisercraft papers here from a few of their different Christmas ranges as well as some brads and mini-blooms. Chipboard florishes are from Scrapmatts.

 

 

This is my DT LO for The Lollipop Ladies. The sweet inspiration this fortnight is candy canes with the added challenge of spirals. I have used a lot of red/white stripes from the candy cane and have the twine looping in spirals as well as the spiral button from Evalicious. How are you inspired by candy canes

 

 

Guest DT spots are able to be won each fortnight and our sponsor this fortnight is: Mad for Markers*

A choice of 3 of her M4M digi stamps.

I have also combined this challenge with the wonderful December challenge over at Once Upon A... Sketch. The theme for this month was 'It's December...' so as I mentioned I've journalled about Christmas traditions. Below is the sketch for this month, which I have rotated counter clockwise.

 

 

Lastly, Frosted Designs is running a twelve days of Christmas competition. I'm not sure if I will get all tweleve challenges completed but thought it would be fun to try. The challenge for day 4 was to use four different patterned papers.

My First Car

I purchased my first car back in 2002 and didn't bother to take photos of it until just before I traded it in back in 2006. Yes, that means I have had these photos sitting around waiting to be scrapped for the past six years! I've written a little but about my love/hate relationship with this car on the stripey paper which can be hidden behind the photo. I loved the pop-up headlights but hated the fact it alwaysbroke down and was so expensive to service.

 

 

This LO was inspired by the current challenge over at The Lollipop Ladies. This fortnight the inspiration sweet is the yummy racing car lolly, shown below with an added challenge of stripes. I would love to see your intepretation of the theme. Are you inspired by the racing theme (I almost did a LO about Go-Karting), is it the bright colours contrasting against the white, do these lollies remind you of a kids birthday party?

 

 

Guest DT spots are able to be won each fortnight and our sponsor this fortnight is: Annabelle Stamps

 

$10 Voucher (thanks to Andrea).

 

I was also inspired by the current sketch up at Another Freaking Scrappy Challenge. It's been too long since I've played over there!

 

 

Finally, the current challenge at Use Your Stuff is to use patterned paper. There's not cardstock on this LO so it qualifies. The papers are ones I've had in my stash for a couple of months now too.

 

The Big Pineapple

I am awful at scrapping chronologically! These photos were taken in 2008 during a quick escape to the Sunshine Coast. The day was overcast and stormy, that white sky is pretty realistic and not a result of photo blow out. Australia has a number of 'Big Thing' tourist attractions and the Big Pineapple is one of them. We have also driven past the Big Prawn (Ballina) and the Big Banana (Coffs Harbour) on seperate holidays but not stopped at these attractions.

 

 

The challenge for this fortnight over at The Lollipop Ladies is inspired by pineapples with an added challenge of triangles. I think my pineapple inspiration is pretty clear and I've added triangles between the two photos.

 

Guest DT spots are able to be won each fortnight and our sponsor this fortnight is: Mad for Markers*

(thanks to Sammi).

A choice of 3 of her M4M digi stamps.

Over at Use Your Stuff the theme is 'travel'. Given my photos are from a vacation I thought this would count. Both sets of orange paper and the lighter green ones are scraps I've had in my stash for ages.

She Is Beautiful

My sister HATES having her photo taken however she loves me enough to put up with it. The photographer got some amazing candid shots of her for my wedding and I've been wanting to scrap them for ages. My husband went to a weekend basketball tournament 4 hours drive away at the start of October so I booked into a class at my local scrapbooking store to keep myself busy. I ended up being the only person taking the class as one of the other ladies cancelled last minute and the other just didn't even turn up.

Here is what the LO looked like at the end of the class. I thought it was nice and good to do something a bit different to my usual style but it just didn't really pop for me.

 

 

I've always thought of classes as more of a good starting point for a LO than something that needs to be followed exactly. I've been in some classes and the other participants will be requesting the exact measurements for everything in terms of millimeters. I don't want my page to look exactly like 10 other people's, I want it to look like mine! So, I brought the pages home and had a bit of a play around and ended up with this:

 

 

You can see that I changed the left and right pages around because I prefer to have my central elements framed in a double LO. The 'beautiful' title was part of the class, I just hadn't stuck it down before I left the store. 

 

Here is my left page. I added the butterfly and pearl swirl, as well as some sentiment stickers to the photos and added my journalling. I'm laughing so hard in the first photo at something my sister had said. She really helped my stay relaxed and happy during the preparations, the perfect bridesmaid!

 

Here is my right page. I added an extra butterfly in the top right, the sentiment and title stickers and the pearls to highlight that the title relates to my sister.

 

The challenge for The Lollipop Ladies this fortnight is inspired by aniseed rings with an added challenge of black and white, so I'm also using this LO as my DT submission this week. I'd love to see what you can create with this inspiration.

 

 

Guest DT spots are able to be won each fortnight

and our sponsor this fortnight is: Annabelle Stamps *

$10 Voucher (thanks to Andrea).

 



Cheer Up Card

This was not the effect I was expecting when I designed this card background however I like the end result, it's so bright and colourful. The card is straight however warped slightly due to the misting and looks odd in the photo.

 

 

The challenge this fortnight at The Lollipop Ladies is Chupa Chups lollipops with an added challenge of curves. I think my sunflowers look like lollipops and the scallops give lots of extra curves.

 

The Lollipop Ladies is also have a quick DT call, just until the end of the year. If you think you might be interested all the details can be found here.

 

 

Guest DT spots are able to be won each fortnight and our sponsor this fortnight is: Mad for Markers*

(thanks to Sammi).

A choice of 3 of her M4M digi stamps.
So cool :-)

Friendship card - Lollipop Ladies DT

 

 

The challenge this fortnight at The Lollipop Ladies is mint leaves with an added challenge of glitter. The leaves made me think of flowers so I went with a card with a feature flower design. The white petals have all been edged with KindyGlitz and glitter. I think I've certainly gotten my money's worth with this die-cut, I've used it on so many designs in the past couple of months.

 

 

What does this picture inspire you to create?

 

Guest DT spots are able to be won each fortnight

and our sponsor this fortnight is: Annabelle Stamps

$10 Voucher

U2

Once again I was trying out a differing style. I think this one has a bit of a Louise Nelson feel too it, with the smaller picture, the paint splatters and the short title. I found the little photo sitting on my desk and I must have printed it out intending to use it for something else. Anyway, I knew I wanted to create an orange monochrome LO for The Lollipop Ladies so dad's shirt made this the perfect photo. Photo is my mum and dad on the last vacation we took as a family backin 2006.

 

 

Here is a close-up of the stunning Scrapmatts chipboard frame. I've used a technique I learnt from Linda Eggleton's blog in which she mixes sand with the paint to get a textured effect. You can also see the ribbon woven in, the Brown Sugar ribbons slide, a Chip Chop Shop doily and a very cute Lil' Red Rocket robot button that I had to buy even though I never thought I'd get to use it.

 

 

So as I was saying, this LO was created for The Lollipop Ladies. Their inspiration for this fortnight was gobstoppers with an additional challenge of monochromatic. I've gone with orange because it's my favourite colour. I tried to use a lot of circular elements to reflect that shape of the gobstoppers and went with the white title with black outline.

 

 

 

This LO also fits the criteria for the Southern Girls challenge which this month is 'blingy'. I have a heap of rhinestones scattered over the LO in amounst all the buttons and paint splatters.

Lollipop Ladies Sneak Peak and some more giveaways

The latest Lollipop Ladies challenge has just gone live and the theme is Gobstoppers. It was one year ago that I made my first entry for The Lollipop Ladies and the theme back then was Gobstoppers as well. This LO actually won me a place on their Design Team!

 

The extra challenge for this fortnight is to create a monochrome LO. Since orange is my favourite colour I couldn't go past creating an orange LO. Here is the sneak peak, you'll have to wait another week until it's my turn for the full reveal.

 

 

I would really love to see some more scrapbooking entries but they also accept cards or BTP submissions. Guest DT spots are able to be won each fortnight and our sponsor this fortnight is Mad for Markers. You could win a choice of 3 of her digi stamps

I also wanted to share a couple more fantastic giveaways that are being held at the moment.

 

ScrapFriends is hosting a massive giveaway with three fantastic packs up for grabs to celebrate their first birthday. This is my favourite one, probably because of all the orange. :)

 

 

One of my scrappy idols, Linda Eggleton, is also having a big giveaway with two prize packs to celebrate getting 150 followers. Personally I think you should go check out her blog just because she does fantastic work.

 

 

 



Congratulations - Baby Card

The challenge for this fortnight over at The Lollipop Ladies is inspired by Sherbies. I love these lollies, you can't lose with sherbert centres surrounded by orange flavoured chewiness. I have had another friend give birth to a little baby boy so I created a card for her inspired by the wrapper colours. The additional criteria was embossing. I went with dry embossing to create the stripes which I then highlighted by running an ink pad over the cardstock.

 

 

We'd love to see what the Sherbies inspire you to create! Please come and join us.

 

 

Guest DT spots are able to be won each fortnight and our sponsor this fortnight is: Annabelle Stamps

 

$10 Voucher (thanks to Andrea).