Hand Crafted Memories

If you are interested in having a day of crafting with a group of people who will also be escaping saving over their kitchen stoves, then this is the class for you. I will be teaching a class at The Craft Box, Elsecar on 10th November. We will be making a gift set for Christmas, I know, I know but we will need to begin preparing our gifts and cards pretty soon if we haven't already started. Another sneaky peek for you Making a box frame card, Decorating a gift bag and adding a stamped image to a candle. Places are limited so give the store a ring to book yours

Well the weeks are beginning to fly by, I can't believe its a week since I posted. I've been busy making up some samples for a class idea I have had for the Craft Box at Elsecar. This will not be one of my normal scrap booking classes. Here is a sneaky peek. I'll reveal once Lynn has seen it and decided if there is a room in the busy class schedule to add it in. I've also made a card for this weeks Winter Wonderland challenge, the theme is Rudolph. I had a look around and I don't have any stamps where Rudolph is the main focus, then I remembered this little punch art Rudolph that was all over blogland last Christmas. I love his cheeky face and it fits the bill perfectly.   Can you believe its only 122 days to Christmas, don't shout at me I noticed it on the Winter Wonderland blog when I went over there just now. Better start buying the ingredients for my cake.

Red and Green are the traditional colours we associate with Christmas. They are usually my 'go to' colours for any winter image. The challenge at Winter Wonderland this week is red and green MUST be seen. As I still have a  few of the new release Lili of the Valley Christmas  images stamped on my desk. Who needs any better excuse to colour them in. I love this little image. It wasn't one that struck me immediately but just look how lovely it is when its coloured.

Lili of the Valley recently launched 16 new Christmas stamps, and are getting ready to release another 20. It was difficult enough to choose just three from the last release so what pressure am I going to face in making my next decision. I already have some from the last release that I wanted to buy, including this gorgeous little angel. I didn't buy her but my friend Lesley kindly stamped her for me  and now I'm loving her. (The stamp and Lesley.) This months challenge on the LOTV blog is to make it Festive, so I made up this lovely card. I also noticed that Winter Wonderland are asking for cute cards, well they don't come any cuter than this little angel. Already I have received hints from friends about how they would love to receive this card at Christmas. I'd better get stamping and colouring. I've entered this into the Lili's little fairies challenge as well, their theme is Christmas in August.

I have completed another page from Shimelle's challenges from last weekend. I have scrapped this style before using one of Shimelle's sketches and it was the one that immediately came to m ind for this challenge. The remit was to make a page and emphasise the vertical aspect so I got a small picture I had of me and my sister and repeated t to create a photo strip. Remember those days when you used to jump in the photo booth in Woolworths at every opportunity? NO, just me then.    As its now the weekend I am hoping to get the rest of the challenges finished, this has been a great boost to ny scrapbooks.

The Shimelle  challenge I'm posting today was for us to create a page using a favourite sketch, well that was a mission, trying to decide which of the sketches I liked most. Watching all these videos again made me want to scrap through the night, in the end I decided to just pick one and went with this . Then when I started sticking things down I just didn't stop and it doesn't even look like the original sketch apart from the stamped chevrons that I had added. But isn't that the idea of a sketch to use it as a starting point?

I am on a big roll at the moment with my scrapbooking and its all down to Shimelle's challenges over the last weekend. I even made two more pages last night after work, this is unknown for me. This page was made for the take Three 3 x 4 journaling cards and see where it takes you. Well mine took me to Paris, once you had the journaling cards teamed up with three 3 x 4 photos there wasn't much more embellishment needed. I only added two border stickers, a stamped postcard and some postmarks and it was done. I am noticing how rubbish these photos of my layouts  are coming out, I may have to retake them at some point.

Shimelle' s challenges from last weekend have really motivated my scrapbooking again. I am getting home from work and disappearing into my craft room to make another page for the challenge. I've actually set myself a little challenge to make a page each night after work.Hopefully if I stay on track I should complete all of the challenges before the deadline on Sunday.  This challenge was to use stickers, well this is something I really need to do, I buy sheets of them and then just save them, so this was easy just out my hand in the pile and out came the Christmas ones from October Afternoon .  Also last year I purchased Shimelles Journal your Christmas prompts and read them all, but that's all I did read them. This year I will make the album and in fact I have started making some of the embellishments. I've decided to journal all my Christmas memories rather than just one particular Christmas. I found out this photo and made up the first 8x8 page for my album of Ch...

This past weekend Shimelle hosted a weekend of challenges based around a kit called Best of Both Worlds . I didn't purchase the kit, I couldn't justify it with all the supplies that I have, but that's the beauty of Shimelle's challenges and workshops, you can use your own supplies. The first challenge was to use a flexible template form Noell Hyman of Paper Clippings fame. Go and check out some of her videos they are very in spring. I scraplifted the layout that Shimelle had chosen and came up with this

I love the rustic combination of Red, White and Kraft and it seems the Winter Wonderland Challenge blog does do, because that is the challenge this week. I didn't need much of an excuse to break out my new die from Memory Box , so here is my entry this week.

Last week I had a little trip to the Lili of the Valley shop, it is so full of fabulous inspiration you can't fail to get enthusiastic about getting crafty. On the counter was a beautiful wedding candle, stamped with one of their lovely images and decorated so delicately. For a week I have been thinking of this candle and wanting to make one myself.  While I was there I treated myself to three of the newly launched stamps, believe me it was very difficult sticking to only three. I'm sure more will end up at my house soon though.  As I went back to work this week I have not had much time for crafting but I managed to gather all the supplies I needed for a candle and today I finally got the chance to have a go. I love it and it was much easier than I thought it was going to be. The hardest part was colouring on tissue paper, but only because you don't have to put much ink on. I can imagine making many more of these for Christmas presents. If you fancy having a go here ...