New Year greetings to all in blogland

The fabulous  blocks are the ones I won from Deb’s blog.  Fonts are candles and danceman.

I made these

 

Inspired by some posts on Write, Click, Scrapbook some months ago (sorry didn’t note down who)  I made a set of cards for my nephews (17 and 20) for christmas.

Each card has a quote from one of the Star Wars movies which I found by googling and then selecting some that I thought appropriate for each person. 

The really exciting find is the forced reentry font which is dingbats of Star Wars characters – for instance the Yoda in the photo is the letter I.  The font that I used for the test is rub this!. 

I made them using text boxes in word to control placement.

2010 year long album

I have admired the December daily mixed album process for the last 2 years but I don’t ‘do’ Christmas all December and don’t feel the urge to record each day of the month so the project would not work for me. 

But I really wanted the challenge and fun of putting together a mix of page starters and later having to make them work.  I’ve done a themed year long album every year since 2006 and I like each to be different.

So I decided to put together 12 folders, each with 7 things inside which I will then use as the basis for that month.  The photo above is the January set: a business card holder page; a set of circle stickers; a frame with an oval hole; two printed out journaling blocks, a foldout album behind the picture card and a velum sheet with New Year on it.

My only rule is that I have to use all 7 things that month.  I will post  on how I approach this project as I do it.

Really enjoyed collecting an eclectic mix and putting the 12 packs together.  Photos of the other 11 are below if you want to see them all.

Are you planning a year long album project for 2010?

 

time for some craft projects?

when wandering in blogland one of the things I can’t resist is a free printable, especially templates.  I have saved lots but not used many.  Here are some of the free templates for projects from the internet that I have bookmarked recently.  Hope to get to some over the next week.

template for paper fortune cookies look fun for a New Year dinner.

Russian nesting doll card because my Mum likes nesting dolls.

free templates for lots of lovely things including cute gift boxes and a handy holder for small post-its in a matchbook cover

a tiny folder template – just like office ones but smaller.  Not sure what I’d use it for at the moment but it does look so cute I need to make one.

And because I prefer blogs with a photo here is one I prepared earlier

cards for a good cause

I saw Cindy’s post about cards for charity a while ago and have been meaning to post on it because it seems such a good idea.

One of the frustrating things with making cards is having more inspiration and stash than people and occasions needing a card. 

Cindy is organising distribution of cards to charity and she is giving prizes each month.  For more details visit cindy.  The next deadline is end of January 2010. 

I hope to get some cards made this week.  One of my Christmas gifts was a set of alpha stamps so this seems a great excuse to play with them.

 

chocolate bark - yum

Chocolate bark has to be one of the best for high yumminess for little effort.  If you have not come across chocolate bark before it is basically melted chocolate with various nice things scattered on top while it is soft.  When it has set, break into pieces.

For this one I used dark chocolate and for a festive feel added pistashio nuts, dried cranberries, glace cherries and some bits of marzipan.  I also sprinkled on a bit of seasalt because it tastes lovely with chocolate (honestly) and it looks like snow.

signs of winter

collage created using picasa.

personalised gift tags

while wandering blogland over recent weeks I picked up the idea of using photos on gift tags – sorry I can’t remember which blog. 

I liked the idea of using a photo of the person on each tag instead of their name so I made some to use for the family.

 

 

I took some close up photos of some golden christmas trees and used bits to create a collage of squares.  Then I found face photos and turned each sepia and warm so that they matched the feel fo the background.  Then I placed a photo on each square of the background, printed and cut them out.

All manipulation was done with picasa.

 

 

decorations from the garden

Doesn’t this make your fingers twitch to get in there and make things?  On Sunday I joined in at a Christmas decorations from the garden workshop run by my parents’ organic gardeners group.  People brought along ribbon, candles and other craft things and masses of greenery from their gardens.

Then we all just played with what was there and made a variety of decorations.  Wreaths were popular.  We added colour using giftwrap ribbon, wool and candles.  It was a lot of fun and everyone went home with at least one creation to festoon their walls and tables.
We have always used greenery from the garden as the  basis for decorating the house at Christmas.  What do you use from the garden?

12 on the 12th

frosty morning * cat enjoying the fire * today’s free wrapping paper in the Guardian * making Star Wars wisdom cards * photo gift tag in use * rose against the frost * buying Christmas tree * chocolate cherry treat * making mince pies * birds enjoy spare pastry * knitting * feet up by fire

Lovely start to a rainy Monday

 

Deb at purple turtle had a giveaway last week of her fabulous chalkboards and I won !!!!!  I loved these blocks when Deb first blogged a picture of them.  Of all the giveaways that I have entered recently this was the one that I most wanted to win.

I will be buying a house soon and had decided to include word art in the decor but had thought of too many words that I might use and now I can use them all.  I believe Deb will be selling these chalkboards – I’ll keep you posted.

Picasa tips 2

I use the text option in picasa a lot. I probably use text most on collages.  Once the collage has been created you can do anything to the collage that you can do to a single photo, including adding text. 

I love that it can access all of the fonts that are loaded onto my computer.  [Adding new fonts is easy – there are lots of free ones available, just google free fonts and if you don’t know how to add fonts to your computer you will get tutorials if you google that too (it varies by system so its no use me telling you how I do it on my computer.] Font on the next one is called happy.

Another aspect that I really like is the colour picker, especially that you can use the eyedropper to pick a colour from the photo.