Christmas layouts

I wish Christmas brought the best out in my photography skills but unfortunately it doesn't. I am usually busy with other things and thoroughly preoccupied so at the end of the day I have next to no photos and those I do have are average. There is also so much clutter around on Christmas Day, wrapping paper, presents, and other people that I find it hard to achieve great shots. As this is the case I have found it difficult to scrap Christmas photos. Tell you the truth I have actually avoided scrapping Christmas photos. Now I have 2 children I can no longer neglect preserving these memories. Plus, the Scrapaholics kit for December has a distinct Christmas theme! It took me along time to create these pages and although the colours aren't everyone's idea of Christmas I love the way they are not the traditional red and greens. The cardstock is Bazzill Chiffon and the trees and die cut are from the Sandy Lion Christmas Range.



As promised I have an svg file for the title I used on the Christmas morning layout. You can find it here It is in Inkscape and ready to cut with SCAL and your Cricut.

32 sleeps and the tree is done!

The tree is finished and the first of my 15 challenges is done! Today it was the Kaisercraft Days til Christmas Beyond the Page Project. I thought as I was counting done the days on the blog I may as well get the tree finished. The paper is Kaisercraft's Countdown range. The Bling is more obvious irl than on this photo and it is mostly Kaisercraft. There are original rhinestones and circle borders. I have added stickles to give the star, numbers and flourish some bling too. This was a fun project and we'll enjoy the countdown to Christmas. I'll be teaching this class in Albury on Dec 5th, if you are in the area there are a couple of spots left so you'll have to act fast. Leave me a comment if you want to join us and I'll email you the details.

I think we will need some goodies to unwrap each day to enhance the excitement so I am off to make these next!

33 sleeps til Christmas

I feel a need to get into the Christmas spirit and as I avoid the shops at all costs it means decorating our place. As there are 33 sleeps til Christmas I thought I would start by making a wreath. I have used the fantastic files and instructions from Dan's blog. This blog is a great source of inspiration and svg files! Dan has great freebies up for a week at a time and if you miss out he does have them available for sale. If you want to buy the files for this wreath in SVG, DXF, PNG/JPG format then go to Dan's other site
The holly is cut on the Cricut using Bazzill Bling and Leapfrog, the berries are accented with Ranger's Glossy Accents and the ribbon I picked up at Spotlight.

I think it is time to issue myself a challenge. I will do 15 projects by Christmas. They won't all be Christmas related but I am guessing at least half will be. I had better get off the computer and get started on my next project! How about you? Care to join me in this challenge? I think I will make an Advent calendar and some Christmas decorations, maybe some bonbons and of course some cards.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I have eventually got my act together and made a start on Christmas cards. I know it is already November and so I really am going to need to get a move on and produce a lot of cards. I have been cheating a little and using SCAL and my Cricut to cut cards. It is certainly much quicker this way. I have used KJtagsXmas font to cut both gift tags and cards. I didn’t come up with this idea myself, check out Denise’s Blog for this and other great ideas. Denise has a heap of SVG files she shares so if you have a cutter and SCAL take a look.

Also went to the Albury Botanic Gardens yesterday for the Fairy and Dinosaur Stomp. I took the camera along, of course, and took some cute pics of the girls and couldn’t resist sharing a couple.



I also made have the SCUT file to share for the scallop I used on the November Scrapaholics layout. I usually make things in Inkscape but for some reason I did this in SCAL so sorry no SVG this time. You can go to the following link to download it http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=b38accfabc050c8bd2db6fb9a8902bda

Kaisercraft papers

Had a play with some new Kaisercraft papers last night. Monday night is the only night I watch tv and so while I sat in front of the idiot box I did some card making. It must be a mum thing - doing more than one thing at a time! The papers were from Kaiser's latest release and they are the Waterberry and What a Hoot Ranges. The papers are so new you won't even find them on the site yet! They are a great paper to work with as they are thick, double sided and have great colours and patterns.


These 4 cards were made using a half a sheet of the Brood paper from the What a Hoot Range and a half a sheet of the Enticing paper from the Waterberry Range. Don't you just love the names given to Scrapbooking Papers, who comes up with these?

I really like their new Sakura Park range too so keep your eyes out for upcoming posts with cards made using these papers.

Scrap the Day Away


Saturday was full of laughs, relaxation and scrapping. The walls of Scrapping Away were bursting with the happy sounds of ladies relaxing and reminiscing. I'm not sure how much scrapping got achieved but it was a lot of fun. I know I only managed 3 pages in the 12 hours Cool. Two of mine were for the November Scrapaholics club meet.




Pretty sure the award for achieving the most goes to Nicky, I do remember at one stage early on in the evening hearing her say she'd completed 9 pages.I do know we all wished we could spend 'just a little longer', but don't you always? There never seems to be enough time to scrapbook. Luckily at Scrapping Away there is always a table to scrap on and a bed to sleep in. We'd love to have you join us at the next class, All Day Scrap or Retreat.

Til then, scrap whenever you can

Cheers

Ruth


Card Making with SCAL


I have been having so much fun lately learning how to use Sure Cuts A Lot (SCAL). I love my Cricut cartridges, don't get me wrong! I wish I owned Graphically Speaking and Wild Card. But SCAL opens up a whole new world of fonts, dingbats and image files. In this economic climate SCAL gives you more bang for your buck. Here are a couple of cards I have made in the last few weeks using SCAL.

Thanks to Linda for the use of the card pattern shown here




So far I have only used SCAL for titles in my scrapbooks. Can't see me needing to buy many more chipboard alphabets in the future.

I have found SCAL to involve a fair bit of practise in order to use it properly. One site in particular has been invaluable in my learning is http://susanbluerobot.blogspot.com/ This lady is absolutely amazing and anyone purchasing Design Studio or SCAL would be wise to bookmark her blog.

Boys Word Book

I have been having fun this week working on a word book for my friend Susie. She has been looking after the girls for me while I tutor on Wednesdays. I got this word book from MOSD, they have great products. If you have been reading my blog a while you may remember the acrylic album I did that I got from them. I absolutely love the Word Book. It was really easy to work with and the Basic Grey Archaic papers that I used are really striking. Hope you like it too.