Merry christmas

Its hard to believe Christmas has been and gone and 2010 is just around the corner.
Christmas at our house had highs and lows, the high was that my sister and her family, from Auckland come to spend Christmas with us, the low was that our Dunedin nephew come down with pneumonia the week before Christmas, so him and his mum stayed in Dunedin for the day. We missed them both at the Christmas table.

My craft work , and blog,were both left behind in the week leading up to Christmas due to the fact that Christmas was to be at our house. I did manage to make place mats for the table though, using last years Chrissy photos. I made one for all of our diner guests as a small keepsake.
The digital elements mainly come from Louise's digital kits, some I downloaded from the internet, the Christmas hat come from HERE.

This is my finished place mat...

What a fine looking bunch we are! :-D

Christmas morning mayhem...opening the parcels...

(Above) My dad, Aimee and Camden.

We were lucky to have Dom,(below) Aimee's new best friend and Shenae, Cody's girlfriend join us latter in the day.
I have to say getting good Christmas photos is always a Battle!
...tring hard to be sensible...

Merry Christmas from Andrew and I. We hope you all had a wonderful christmas.

Flowers

Christmas is coming way too fast for me again this year! So much to do and so little time!
Action in my craft room has been pretty much null and void. Although I still have Christmas cards I need to make, gift tags for my parcels, a container to decorate for a swap at Glamour girls and there is my first assignment to be completed for Up2scrap. And life outside of my craft room is full on. Never mind I will do what I can and no doubt the world will not stop if I don't achieve everything!
Thought Id show you the wonderful handmade flowers I received from a swap I took part in over at Betterscrapbooking. Which reminds me, my time on the Design Team there is almost over. Its always sad when things come to an end, but I know Megan will have a talented team lined up for next year so watch this space ....... I sure will be!

(Click on the photos to see all of the wonderful detail close up)

Thanks to all the clever ladies who took part in this swap, I'm looking forward to creating pages using these gorgeous blooms in the new year.

Great Grandad's been scrapped

Earlier this year my uncle come for a visit and had some wonderful photos with him from yesteryear. I loved this one of my grandad, it brings back many happy childhood memories of summer days spent at our gran parents house in Lincoln (near Christchurch). My grandad grew the most scrumcious berries and fruits. Anyway, I have at last scrapped this wonderful memory, here it is...
I have created a digi/hybrid page, inspired by Louise's idea's in the Up2scrap blog, check these out HERE

I made my little watering can by stamping the image onto the back of a piece of an old coke can and cutting the image out. Next I lightly scored around the image out line, turned the image over and re scored so my image stood out and looked slightly 3D. I used alcohol inks to colour the tin and carefully painting on the daisies and heart.

The butterfly and black swirl design were printed out, the butterfly is from one of Louise's digital kits. Check out her Digi Fingers blog to find super cheap and super gorgeous digital kits.

Texture was created using all sorts of things from, tulle, string, ribbon, muslin cloth, and pretty much anything I could find on the day.
All of those bright green leaves were, once again,printed from one of Louise's digital kits, as was the journaling tag.(I have so many of her kits that I cannot recall which one these were from off hand!) These leaves are all the one same leaf, just printed out a gazillion times over! I spent quite some time cutting them all out.

My grandad was a man of the land, so I have attempted to portray this in my lay-out, right down to the seeds in the tiny glass bottle. As always I have created one extremely busy page!

I remember well my grandad often saying...Live by nature girl and you carn't go wrong.

I really don't quite know what he would make of the world today if he was still here!

Fly away Bruce

Look at Bruce now......hes grown into quite a character and I'm quite attached to him, but hes a wild bird and should be free so,on Saturday Bruce had his first taste of freedom.
Here he is, free ranging on the lawn close to the aviary that has become his home.


Bruce was out for a hour but would not fly away! He just wandered around the lawn exploring and picking up twigs and leaves.
Sunday morning I had a second attempt at setting Bruce free. After some time I decided that he was not going anywhere again. However on his way back to the aviary he found his wings! It was lovely to watch Bruce circle the house roof and land near the top of one of our big old gum trees.
Bruce was free, or so I thought! A short time latter I spotted Bruce sitting on the front fence, I approached him, thinking that he would head for the sky again, but no, Bruce looked at me, opened his mouth and began squawking for his lunch!
To cut along story short, Bruce ate and went on his way and I saw no more of him on Sunday.
Monday was a little bittersweet when Bruce did not show for breakfast, or lunch. Late afternoon I crossed the road to my mum and dads vege garden, to pinch a fresh lettuce. On passing their garage I stopped in my tracks when I thought I heard a squawk...could it possibly be Bruce I wondered?? Well it turned out Bruce had been locked in my dads garage since late Sunday afternoon! When I opened the door Bruce come flying at me, landed on my shoulder, beak wide open and pointing at my face, as much to say "wheres my diner!!'
Bruce is home again, he shows no interest in heading off into the blue sky's at the moment and he has been singing ever since his return to the aviary. Does anyone know if the male, or female magpie sings, I'm still not sure of his gender?
I guess Bruce will go free one day, but just now it seems he does not want to go anywhere.

Inspiration

Dianne's Circle Journal theme was Inspirational Quotes or Sayings

I decided to do a collage using scrap pieces of paper
I popped my inspirational quote on a tag and made a pocket for it to slot into
Dianne's whole album followed this blue/fawn colour scheme, and like the others it looks scrumptious!

Butterflys

Butterfly's was the theme for Sue's Circle Journal. I found so many wonderful and inspiring butterfly quotes when I went hunting...this was the one that I used for inspiration for the two pages I completed in Sue's circle journal...

Happiness is as elusive as a fluttering butterfly

and as easily attainable as a crawling Caterpillar

Put aside the net and

let it happen.

(words to life by I think!)

Thanks to Debbie at Glamourgirls I had the perfect image to go with this quote

My page was the very last in Sues journal, which was a real plus, as it meant I got to see the whole journal finished...and it looked gorgeous.

Pop to Sues blog to see all of her journal pages, you will find it HEREI hope my journal finds its way home soon.

Not camping weather

Wouldn't you just know it...its pouring rain here tonight for the first time in ages! And do you know why???...Its because our Cam headed away on School camp this morning!! Like his mum he's unlucky with the weather.

Here is Cam, with two of his mates, Hamish and Dean, waiting patiently on the rest of the team to pick them up on their way through Duntroon this morning The boys are heading up the Ahuriri, tramping in with their packs ( about a four hour hike) and tenting for three days. My guess is it will rain until Friday!!

Cody's dog Bid is not part of the team, even though she has her lunch packed and looks ready to go!!

Better Scrapbooking want YOU!

My time on the Design team at Better Scrapbooking is fast coming to an end. Ends are always sad. Don't forget there is still time to try out for a place on next years Design Team... here is the latest note from Megan regarding this

....

Design Team 2010

By the way remember this week is your last week to try out for the Design team. Simply email four photos of your favourite layouts that depict your style of scrap booking, also write a paragraph about yourself, telling us what you love about scrap booking ans why you would like to be a member of our Design Team. Please include a photo of yourself.

As a design team member you will be asked to create layouts once a month or every other month (depending on home many DT members I decide on) and over the course of a year you could receive up to $400 worth of free scrap booking goodies to design layouts and projects with. How cool is that. So quick get those designs in.

Entries need to be emailed to megan@betterscrapbooking.co.nz before 5pm December 7th.
Winners will be announced December 18th in the G&T newsletter.

Good luck to those of you who are giving this a go. I have loved being a part of Megan's talented team.

Here are three pages I popped in the Better Scrapbooking Gallery way back in 2007!!

I'd like to think my scrapping has improved since way back then!!

Isn't it funny to look back and see how your style and tastes have changed.