Old School Bond

My cousin has a little girl about the same age as my firstborn, Miss E.  They were born two weeks apart, with Miss E being the older one.  The two girls spend a lot of their early growing years together as my cousins make effort to meet up every week so they would bond.  Of course, we all grew up as close cousins as well so we unconciously wanted the same thing for our children.

Here's one taken at the Mid-Autumn festival where the two were delighted to see each other after a long break. 

This was made from papers from Pink Paislee's Old School and Butterfly Garden.  The trims are from Prima, including the wire that I twined and twirl.  The cage, large tag and bird are recycled cardboard from 7 Gypsies' shadow box, cut by the Tim Holtz Sizzix Dies.  I just love sparkly and glittery stuff so I had to paint my chipboard bird with pinkish glitter.   That little "old school" strip was from that little extra bit that always comes with the 12x12 paper.  Recycled it into the title as I thought yes, this is really old school kind of bonding!

Girls have all the fun yes?

Fabric Twist Flower

It's been a while since I posted tutorial, so here's one I made with a strip of leftover fabric.  I cut the side seam off the fabric and decided to turn the gorgeous bright strip into a flower that I could use for layout.

It's super easy so you can attempt this with anything that won't break.

 Step 1 : Take a piece of fabric strip or ribbon.  Fold the starting tip into half, lengthwise to start.  Add a dab of glue before starting to twist around. 

Step 2 :  Loosely twist the strip and start to curl it around the centre, adding glue along the sides as you go along.

 Step 3 : Hold the flower centre to ensure that it is flat as you continue to twist and glue round and round to build the circular shape.

Step 4 : End the remainder last bit by gluing and sticking it down to the entire back as a base.

 Viola! The finished flower should look like this.

If you love gems and pearls, you may stick a pearl or bead to use as a centre to curl around.

Have fun! Do show me your flowers if you make some.



Sweet Christmas

Blessed Christmas to one an all.   I attended an awesome service today so well put together by all the people who had one same goal, to worship Jesus.  Today is Jesus' birthday!  I like to think that all the present exchanges are like little goodie bags in celebration of His birth, the day that we receive the greatest gift of all - eternal life.

Here's a quick gift I had put together after being inspired by an MLS card made by Mich.  This is for the office exchange for a colleague of mine who occasionally snacks.  I wanted her to have a sweet year ahead and thought I'd put together something in an upcycled Snapple bottle which had a beautiful S moulded into the glass. S is for sweets, no?

 

I finished it off with a little cardboard tag, my sentiments in white souffle pen and tied together with a cute snowman ribbon from Michael's.  As for those snowflakes, they were vellum paper punched from the Martha Stewart artic snowflake punch. 

I hope she liked it as much as I did.

Dream box 3

This dream box was made for Joyce, BY's colleague who has two lovely daughters.  As I couldn't find any photos in her facebook, I decided I would make it for her to add on the photos on her own.  The main portion came with a little flip open section with insert cards for her to put photos and journal.

Cute and whimsy style, just like Joyce.

To represent her two cute girls.

The main portion came with a little flip open section with insert cards for her to put photos and journal.

Dreams in a Box 2

Here's another shadow box I made for a "love" theme for family. This was made for Cass as a surprise Christmas gift. I wanted to put together a classic romantic feel that was contemporary art-deco without being too heavy on the elements.

A little ribbon slide from Maya Road holds down a simple strip of ribbon into a two fold classic bow.

A Maya Road laser cut flocked trim makes a nice lattice for the heart trellis paper behind.  Little pearls help to bring out the curl accents.

And finished off with a stamp on a transparency, with a large heart shaped glass pebble.

Frosty the snowman

This close to Christmas I had lots of gifts to prepare and tags to make. Here's three really quick and simple tags I made in 2"-3" in size by pulling out some October Afternoon's 8x8" christmas paper from this and last year's range.

Tag One
This simple 3"x3" tag was made with a little ribbon and paper trim, with stickles glittered over all the snowflakes.  The fussy cuts on the mistletoes decorate the little hand drawn greeting.

Tag Two

This little tag had the snowman stickled in Rock Candy, and the snowflake covered with Zing metallic green embossing.  Again, decorated with hand drawn greeting and the tag slightly distressed.

Tag Three

Tiny tag made 2"x3" with leftovers.  Stickled lime green mistletoe, with a glossy lacqured snowman on distressed paper.

And to show how easy it really is to make these, here's one made by my 5 year old for her teacher.

The Secret Gift Exchange

Our little scrapbook group decided to do a mystery gift exchange this year by picking names and packing a present. We were not to tell anyone and to make a card or tag to accompany it.

This was my card take. On it, there were distress soot stickles and clearing dot embossing and a little lace trim. The tree was made from green cardstock, distressed with green inks, textures by cuttlebug's large script embossing folder, emboss ink and zing pink glitter emboss powder over the raised bit for the snow crusted effect.