Birthday Bingo

My post this week at Bubbly Scrumptious has some birthday cards made with mini bingo cards by Jenni Bowlin. I'm grabbing opportunities to be creative this year and handmade cards seem like a great place to start. You can see more about the cards HERE

Sweet Pea

I'm slowly getting back into scrapbooking after the busyness of Christmas and I've had this photo in my scrapping stack since last summer. I knew I wanted to make a page using Cosmo Cricket's Garden Variety papers when my son got a T-shirt with "Sweet Pea" written on it for his first birthday (as it's his nickname). I'm really like the paper frills and I will be doing that again on more pages! I also got to use my favourite Martha Stewart punch - the embossed button.

Little Boy Giggles

This is my page for Bubbly Scrumptious this week using Echo Park's "Little Boy" collection - love those papers! Check out the details HERE

Birthday Bling

A little birthday card from me today over at Bubbly Scrumptious. Click HERE to see more.

New Years resolution 2011

My New Year's resolution this year is to get more creative with my home and not just in my scrapbooks.

We moved into our house 5 years ago and it had cream walls and beige carpet and we haven't decorated anywhere, apart from an extrememly pink bedroom as requested by the girls! It's all just got too bland for me. I always wonder if people find my house a little disappointing as they know I'm crafty and love colour, but my house really doesn't say that at all. The final straw came just before Christmas when I read an interview with Kaffe Fassett in "Making" magazine. He said something about how your rooms should reflect you. I'm definitely not a beige person.

I'm particularly focusing on downstairs this year. I've already bought new curtain fabric in the January sales, which my Mum has very kindly offered to make into curtains for me. Aren't mum's great. I'm going to introduce more colour by making some new cushion covers - patchwork and probably knitting too, using wool and fabric I've already got. I'm also hoping to make a simple quilt to hang over the back of the sofa.

Our hallway is quite dark and the first of my new items has just been put up this evening, fairy lights as shown in the photo above. We hung Christmas lights around the mosaic mirror in my hall (which I made ages ago) and it really brightened up the space. Now the Christmas lights have been packed away, I've got some all-year-round lights instead, which cast very pretty shadows on the wall around the mirror. I've also got a large stencil to paint silhouettes of cow parsley on the wall by the front door which has been scuffed and scratched.

So many ideas, such little time! Watch this space over the next year for more things appearing in my house.

A Christmas journal

I've finally finished my Christmas journal from 2009 and it's my post for Bubbly Scrumptious today. To see more of the pages, click HERE

Christmas mini books

I can finally show you some projects that I made as Christmas projects. Every Christmas I make minibooks for parents and in-laws with the best photos from the year. With increasing numbers of children and increasing photography skills, these little books seem to get bigger and bigger!

Here's a look at some of the pages. I used a Maya Road calendar set to add the dates to the pages (the scalloped kraft ciclres on the pages) and a set of Cosmo Cricket papers.



I also made a couple of travel scrapbooks for some adventuring freinds, who helpfully upload their photos to Facebook! It's a challenge scrapping someone else's holiday photos (which weren't labelled). I managed to add some titles, with the help of Google, and I made lots of journalling spots with a scalloped circle punch and a journalling stamp so that they could add their own notes to the photos.

Here's the book I made of my friend's photos from Goa...

Our favourite recipes

This Christmas I made little recipe books for friends and family using a chipboard cake album to make the covers for each book. I included all our favourite family recipes, assigning each recipe to a family member and including their methods (licking the spoon, eating the cherries etc) and adding some photos of the children baking. To see more about this project check out my post on Bubbly Scrumptious HERE.