Celine Navarrro

This is a scraplift of a Celine Navarro LO. Celine issued a challenge on her blog to lift one of her LOs-the original can be seen here. She has such a bright, fun style, and I really enjoyed making this page. It is the first time I have painted freehand directly onto a page, and I can see myself using this technique more.

A Liitle project

Just a little project I made as a present for a friend who is expecting her 2nd baby boy- a door hanger. Wonder if she will like it?

Miss December

Well I am the December dreamgirl for Dream Street papers. I was sent a very generous package to make some projects for their Decemebr newsletter, and it is now finally out. You should be able to see the projects in the newsletter here. The mini album has been requested for display at the Dream Street stand at the winter CHA show in America- that's pretty exciting news!

The countdown for Christmas is well and truly underway. I am finding it hard to muster enthusiasm this year. The kids are older, and buying DVDs and computer games isn't much fun. So I must muster some enthusiasm and start wrapping them. I also need to think about what we are going to eat, and go do the shopping. It is so cold here at the moment, with very heavy frosts and fog. it is quite beautiful though and I was leaving for work this morning I spotted this frosty rose in my garden. It looks good enough to eat!

Decorated house

So this is my brother's house. He must also have fond memories of the excitement of driving around town on Christmas eve, because he now decorates his house for others to enjoy. His is now one of the houses that parents bring their little ones to see. It may not be the most tasteful display, but who needs good taste when you are a child at Christmas?

Christmas ramblings.

I visited Lisa's blog today, and she was talking about houses decorated for christmas. When I was a kid, growing up in Australia, my parents would take us kids all around town to look at the decorated houses. It was just so exciting- a summer's evening, lots and lots of kids out in their pj's, wide eyed with the anticipation of seeing Santa. Most of the houses had snow scenes, which was really funny considering how hot it was. A couple of the stores had Santa come to visit. He used to arrive on the roof of the store and throw out gifts into the crowd below. We would all go scrabbling about, trying hard to be one of the lucky ones to end up with a gift- usually a ruler, or eraser with the name of the shop on it. Then we would go home, knowing it was time to go to bed to wait for Santa to arrive. When my kids were little I took them to Australia one Christmas, and they too had this experience, although they don't remember. I must find the photos and scrap them. Over here in Scotland you don't see many decorated houses. Many people find them 'tacky'. Well maybe they are, if you are seeing them through adult eyes, but from a kid's point of view, they are just pure magic. My kids will have different memories of Christmas- lots of snowy ones when we lived in Aberdeenshire, and now the magic of Edinburgh at Christmas.

Take a look at the first three photos in my minibooks etc gallery, on the sidebar to the right.

The photos are an idea for a little christmas album to prepare in advance of Christmas. This was a tin of coloured pencil bought at the pound shop. Empty the pencils out, decorate the tin, make a little album. Then on christmas day when everyone has their after dinner slump, all you have to do is download and print off some photos and stick them in. This one was given to an uncle, in his 90's, whose memory is failing- a little reminder of Christmas day spent with us, to take away with him.

Scrapaganza

I've not posted about my scrapaganza experience yet, so here goes.

It was my first scrapbooking event, but will definitely not be my last! I had a great time and it was wonderful to have a little break from my everyday life, and meet some lovely people with similar interest to my own. The event was held in Haarlem, Holland, in a very comfortable hotel. There was a big cropping room and a variety of classrooms. I took 11 classes over the Saturday and Sunday, although 4 of them were the same album. This was a Making Memories class and came with a massive amount of product- gorgeous soft leather album, papers, blooms, ribbon, chipboard, rub ons, brads-you name it, it was in the kit, very very generous. I have not finished the album, but it is all boxed up and will be great to take to a crop to work on. It will be a family album- lots of black and white photos and will look gorgeous when finished. I won a prize during the class too- a MM tag curler, something I would never have bought for myself, but will use now that I own it. It attaches little metal tags to ribbon.

I did the Queen and CO Felt Frenzy class-this was a mini album using felt flowers, a nice class.

Another class was called 3D doodling, and funnily enough I was expecting doodling- but in fact the class turned out to be a double layout using rub ons and layered flowers. The papers used were very nice, but overall, a disappointing class, since there was nothing in the class that was new to me.

I did a calendar class too- this was a technique based class involving paints, masking and other techniques, and I am looking forward to finishing this soon.

The best classes I did were taken by Linda Burniston. What a laugh this lady is-she knows what she wants to achieve, she understands the importance of controlling a large group of women, and is super organised- and BOSSY! and that's great, and what makes her so funny. best of all I learned things I didn't know. One class was an acrylic album. I have not used acrylic before, and from this class I learned how to place elements on a page in a way that works for both sides of the acrylic.

The second class she took was a class with moving elements-I LOVED this class because it has given me lots of ideas about how to take these interactive pages further, and I'm looking forward to experimenting with ideas I have.

On the Saturday morning I went into Haarlem with my roommate, Maggie. It is a pretty little market town, and we enjoyed wandering around, in and out of shops, picking up bits and pieces, for example, felt placemats that can be cut and used on layouts.

The food at the hotel was plentiful and tasty- buffet style for all meals so no need to go hungry. Tea, coffee and soft drinks were on tap all day so it was a very comfortable weekend.

There were 4 shops present, and it was wonderful to be able to see all those products for real. The best part of shopping was the pizza box room. Here we could fill a pizza box with product for 25 euro. I came home with lots of rub ons and chipboard in my pizza box. I actually came back with 8kgs of products and projects. Luckily I travelled light with a large suitcase and was able bring it all back with me. There were lots of raffles over the weekend and the prizes were all fab, including stash, totes and an epson printer. I was lucky enough to win a MM embellishment kit.

Recently on UKS there has been a lot of discussions about retreats, the cost, value for money etc. Well I had always been one of those who thought I would prefer to spend money on stash, rather than an event, but not now. Scrapaganza was a real treat for me- it wasn't just about scrapping, and taking classes. I loved having a break, and I loved meeting so many new people.

I'll definitely be back!

Anyway-I have not finished one project yet, but I will, and when I do I will post here.

Meantime, todays LO is one I did for Little Silver Hat DT, a clear acetate page with machine stitching. The ribbons and sequins were all part of December's kit from Little Silver Hat.

Revamp continued

Well, I am gradually changing my blog and adding some of my favourite links in. I have lost some of those, and need to find them again before I can add them, but I can't insert a slideshow. Anyone able to help? I've got my slideshow in Photobucket ready to go. I click on add a new page element, slideshow, but then when the page comes up it isn't clear how to add in the link. Please help me if you know what to do.

whoops...

I thought I would try to revamp my blog... and I lost all my links. I am going to try again, cause I would really love a new look.