A Little Update

Sorry things have been a little quiet round here recently. I did have a series of seasonal posts planned for the run up to Christmas Day, but then I was ill and had to abandon it. Then Christmas preparations and spending time with my family have been more important than crafting over the festive period.

We're now in the slump between Christmas and New Year, and I don't go back to work until next Wednesday, so I should have new crafting to share again soon. 

The Weekend Starts Here

I'm only about half way through my Austrian photos, but that holiday was more three months ago now and I'm feeling the lure of more recent photos. This one is from last weekend when we met up with friends in the Lake District; it's just a silly selfie in the pub, but it was the start of a special weekend which included 45-50 of us taking over a hotel for our third Christmas Ball. 

I picked a simple sketch from The Studio Challenges blog and Christmas papers from Simple Stories even though this isn't really a Christmas page. I love the look of a hand-stitched circle and it's been ages since I did it so I took the opportunity for one here. 

I wanted a mixed font title, but I couldn't find the right combination of colours and sizes in my letter stickers so I ended up cutting this on my Silhouette. I used olive green cardstock but it got lost on the background so I spritzed it with gold mist. It's still hard to see but better than before and at least it doesn't draw your attention away from the photo.

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania
Paper - Simple Stories DIY Christmas
Stickers - Echo Park This & That Christmas, Crate Paper/Maggie Holmes
Brad - Simple Stories DIY Christmas
Thread - Anchor
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Fiskars Circle Template
Hobbycraft Star Punch
Woodware Tiny Star Punch

40th Birthday Card

My sister-in-law turned 40 recently, and I wanted to make her a new card rather than using a 'stock' card. Being short on both time and ideas, I decided to copy a design from about a year ago. That one was a Thank You card, but a change of colours and sentiment was easy enough.

The floral paper came from my Advent calendar, and the others are from a My Mind's Eye 6x6 pad. I die-cut the envelope and tags and finished with gold peel-off stickers and a sprinkling of gold mist. 

A Crafty Advent Calendar

Back at the beginning of November, there was some discussion on Facebook about the lack of any scrapbooking or craft Advent calendars being commercially available. You can now get Advent calendars with a wide array of "fillings" - chocolate, Lego, tea, make-up and candles to name just a few - but none for scrapbookers. This set me thinking, and inspired me to set up an Advent calendar swap via Facebook; I posted in a couple of UK scrapbooking groups and soon gathered together 21 like-minded individuals. We all filled our envelopes with goodies, the others sent them to me, I swapped them round and sent back 24 different envelopes filled with titbits for a crafty December.

These were my envelopes, simply 4" x 12" strips of pretty paper folded and washi-taped, decorated with a stamped tag saying 'on the nice list' and the number 14:

Sorting out all the envelopes before sending them to their new homes:

All my envelopes arranged in a basket ready for opening:

This was the first time that I've ever organised anything like this and it's been a lot of fun. I think the other ladies are enjoying it too. There have already been a few comments about what they will do for next year's swap!

Going Up

Still in Austria for this page, with pictures from a summer toboggan run. This is something that I've only seen in Austria; we went on one two years ago too (Rodelbahn). There are two tracks on the hillside, you are pulled up one on your toboggan and then you move across to the other track to hurtle back down again. Great fun, and slightly scary going round the corners.

Sadly we only have photos of us going up; whether this is due to camera malfunction or operator incompetence hasn't been settled yet. Our daughter had her hand over her face in her photo, so I'm using two of our son and me. They are so similar that they didn't sit well next to each other on the page so I looked for an alternative layout among recently published sketches, turning up this one from Stuck?! Sketches. I flipped it horizontally to suit the direction we are facing in the photos and moved the journalling down below the title. That title is clearer in real life, but I do wonder if I should have used darker letters for it.

Supplies
Paper - Pink Paislee Atlas, American CRafts/Shimelle
Letters - Fancy Pants
Tag - Pink Paislee Atlas
Flair - Imagine That!
Enamel Shapes - Pink Paislee Atlas
Pearls - Scrapberry's
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & Little B Arrows Dies

Burgl

We spent one day of our holiday in Austria this summer using the ferry from my last page to visit all the lakeside villages. As we approached one called Strobl, we could see a wooden walkway running round this hill to the left of the village. A quick look at the map revealed a circular walk around the hill (called Burgl which I think means little mountain).

I picked one large photo plus two smaller ones and arranged them in a grid with spaces left for title and journalling. Dead simple but I like it; this way the focus is on the photos.

Supplies
Paper - Pink Paislee Atlas
Letters - Hobbycraft
Sticker - Jillibean Soup
Washi Tape - Unknown
Brads - My Mind's Eye
Enamel Hearts - My Mind's Eye, American Crafts/Shimelle
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch