Snip, Snap, Crop

The Scrappassion International blog starts tomorrow so I am very excited to see who joins in our first challenge and also can't wait to see the designs from the other fabulous members of the team. I haven't scrapped much over Christmas as I have been dog sitting my Sister's dog - a boxer, for a number of days whilst her son is visiting with his children. Holly, the boxer is obsessed with our cat so it is a continual trial of dog in, cat out then cat in, dog out. We are on watch the whole time as they have had a few fights so far and the dog always comes off with a bleeding snout but she still has not learnt that the cat is boss and continues to prowl the house looking for her. I did manage a double pager the other night after Holly left...... More photos of Paris. I had about 260 more photos printed of the rest of my trip so I'm sure you will be seeing more and more. You will certainly get sick of seeing travel layouts...... he,he,he....... This uses some old TLC paper...

Recently I applied for a DT role with a new International challenge blog starting on the 1st of January 2011, called Scrappassion International Challenge blog . Well, I was lucky enough to be one of the four people chosen to be a part of their new International DT. I was rather excited... and still am...... Each month starting in January a new challenge for the month with be added with instructions down the right-hand side of the blog page explaining the rules of entry. I look forward to a few of my friends joining me on this journey and having fun with the challenges. I will link every month to the new challenge for you to see. At Home and Scrapped I was recently also chosen as the victim for the "Get challenged Now" challenge. The previous "chosen one" chooses the next victim and then three fellow forum go-ers give a challenge point each. Here is what I came up with: My criteria - a minimum of 5 rub-ons, minimum of 3 stamped or hand-cut swirls and finally a frame...

Well my trip to Europe was a wonderful fortnight of catching up with old friends (20+ yrs ) and more recent friends. My plan was to only visit the Netherlands and Germany however a special treat from a friend took me also to Paris and Vielsalm in Belgium. Some amazing places that I never in my wildest dreams thought I would get to see. Now I am back in the real world with school finishing up for Christmas and the arguements of kids on holidays, over who will play which video game on what machine. Just a quick share or two whilst I am here from the November CC at Scrap of Difference: Our theme was "How time flies" - So I challenged the girls to make a Christmas card seeing as Christmas has flown up so quick on many of us. It had to include a bird, and lace - either paper punched or real and be made with less than traditional colours. Belinda gave us a neat sketch to play with that was great for using up strips of scraps. The colour challenge was a pallete from "The Col...

Sometimes being a Fiskateer leads to some surprise benefits. Not only do you get great hints and tips from the forum about how to use your Fiskars tools - both scrapbooking and gardening, on the odd occasion you receive a surprise parcel in the mail to try. This happened recently when I received this great pair of pruners - The Power Gear Pruner. This product has recently received the Ease-Of-Use certification from Arthritis Australia and New Zealand. When I first opened it up I thought that I had broken it already because the handle moved unexpectedly and I was immediately disappointed with my stupidity. However, when I actually read the instructions I quickly realised that it was designed to move that way - how clever! So in actual fact I wasn't as stupid as I thought, apart from the fact that I should learn to read the instructions first and then try. Being a sufferer of Rheumatoid arthritis for almost 20 years I was pleasantly surprised by how easy the pruner was to use on quit...

My dear friend Ingeborg has her sketch blog that she started a short time ago and I have printed off the sketches but not used any yet. So, this weekend I had a play with a couple. This layout was part of a CC challenge to use eyelets and buckles and I did not have a large photo like the sketch showed so used two 4" x 6" photos instead. This was a card challenge for World Card making day, to use several patterned papers, an old preprinted chipboard element and make it a hello card for someone you have not seen for sometime. Kim gave us the challenge to create a shaker card and it is a couple of years since I have made one. I like to do them with winter scenes from old cards and a window of glitter but didn't have any scenes to work. So, I pulled out the Joy2Christmas stamps from the Stamps of Life and made a snow globe instead. I wish I had a more suitable background paper to use as I am not so happy with the result but it looks okay. Kerri challenged us to make a lo...

Happy world cardmaking day to you! I almost forgot but am about to head off and do some now before I go to bed so at least I can say I have done something. In actual fact I have been working on a layout based on one of Ingeborg's sketches but just not finished yet..... maybe tomorrow for that one. The weekend before last I headed to a Fiskars workshop at Michelle's place and we made a couple of lovely layouts and a number of cards so here are a few of my favourites to share: And before anyone asks..... yes that is me in traditional Javanese costume for my "daughter's" wedding in Indonesia in 2003. She had the kebaya (top) specially made for me and my hair is done with a sanggul, a traditional hairpiece, held on with lots of pins. I am used of this style of dress after having lived there as an Exchange Student so quite enjoyed the opportunity to dress like it again. The same weekend I had a cybercrop at Scrap of Difference . They were able to blame me for the them...

October 2008 it was, I bought some online classes called Octoberfest by Jen Hall. Well, I only got so far in doing them and did not complete them all so whilst my mojo has been holidaying lately, I decided to continue scrapping but just use Jen's wonderful classes to perhaps inspire me to get back excited about my own scrapping. Here are almost the last of the classes done now......... The most paint I have ever used on a layout - Octoberfest #31. The lovely doodled tags and embellishments on the pages from Octoberfest were all kindly drawn by Jen and delivered to us to use. I just wish I was as confident in the doodling world as she is. #30 A layout from Jaimie Emmerton based on using a cluster. This is another one of my areas where I lack expertise but I think I have managed to do an okay job with it. It certainly doesn't look as good as the example but it works for me...... #28 - A layout I loved being a boy one..... I added an extra photo to the example layout and where ...

For a few days now I have been busy working on Christmas cards again. I needed to get stuck into them as my next couple of months are busy ones as we head into the Christmas season. Now some of these are a little average.... but I have been looking at the same stickers and card toppers for the past few years trying to put them to good use as I am determined to make use of them and not throw them out. I have a heap of kiddy, shiny metallic stickers of stockings and baubles and things too which I bought for a playgroup christmas activity and we never used all the stickers so am getting rid of those too. There is just a few of Fab's challenges included and the rest are my "using up my stash" challenge to myself. This is similar to one of my previous ones but my card class ladies wanted to do it so as I don't have enough rhinestone flourishes for a class of them, I recreated the effect using an Autumn Leaves flourish stamp and kindyglitz. Some Fiskars border punches, thr...