Happy New Year!

Wow, can you believe it, another year has gone by again! I just want to wish all of my scrappy friends a wonderful 2013 filled with love, joy and happiness and lots of "scrappy time"!

To start the New Year off right "Swirlydoos" is having an "Ultimate Design Challenge" contest!

To find out more  info on this challenge please click here: Ultimate Design Challenge.

Have a safe and happy New Years eve everyone!

2 more sleeps!

Can you believe it's only two more sleeps until Christmas? It seems to have flown by. I'm off this afternoon to fly to the mainland to spend Christmas with the kids. It's always fun to watch the grandchildren on Christmas Day opening presents and seeing their eyes light up!

I want to wish all of my friends and followers on my Blog to have a wonderful Christmas with lots of love and happiness!

Christmas projects

Wow I didn't realize that it had been a few weeks since I had updated my blog. I guess it's all the running around shopping, Christmas work parties, and if your crafty like all of us scrappers and card makers you are probably racing to get projects finished. I'm happy to say that I finished all my Christmas shopping and projects today!! Yay me! I'm flying down on Sunday to the mainland to have Christmas with the kids and grandchildren. I'm looking forward to that, Christmas is always more fun with kids around.

So today I have a couple of projects I did for Christmas. This first one is for this cute paper tree.

I have seen a few of these paper trees around the internet and I thought I’d try making one like this myself. I was going to make this with one of those foam cones you can buy. But, go figure, when I want one I couldn’t find a single one. So I decided to make my own cone out of cardstock. It’s not beautiful but it worked for what I wanted it for, lol.

I used the “Forget Me Not Toile” paper from Meg’s Garden, it has nice shiny silver look to it. I cut 1 ½” strips of the paper and then cut that strip into ½” strips. Take your ½” strips of paper and curl one end of the paper around a wooden skewer (or thin paint brush) so when you remove it the one end of the paper curls up as shown in the picture. Starting at the bottom of the cone start gluing the paper strips down. When you get to the second row stagger the paper strips from the row below. Do this for each row and continue all the way to the top of the cone.

 Here's a closeup

You can see in this one picture that my cone did not go right into a point at the top. So I cut a 1 inch circle and made a tiny cone to fit over the top of the tree. Then I took a tiny red star that I had in my stash and glued that onto the cap of the tree. I did spray some shimmering mist onto my tree but you can’t really tell in this photo.

Materials used from Meg’s Garden:

Paper    - P6305  Forget Me Not Toile

Other items used:

Paper or Styrofoam Cone  (approximately 9 ½”)

Aleene’s fast grab tacky glue (or glue of your choice)

Small star for the top of the tree

I’ve being wanting to make my granddaughter a name banner for at least 6 months to go in her new bedroom. I just hadn’t found the right papers for it until I received my DT members’ package from Meg’s Garden. These beautiful floral papers from Meg’s Garden are perfect for making “pretties” for a young girl’s bedroom!

I made the banner pieces from canvas but you could use papers for the banner pieces. I happened to find these 12 x 12 canvas sheets from one of the dollar stores which worked out great as you could get 2 banner triangles from each sheet. The banner is 6 inches at the top and is 9 inches long. I took one of my flourish stamps and pink ink pad and stamped the banner pieces. I then took 2 paper doilies and glued them down so that one is just slightly higher than the other and each hang over the edge about 1”.

I made the larger fan flower from the “Ma Fleur Rose” papers. I cut the paper 1 ¾” wide and 10” long and then punched one side with one of my Martha Stewart punches. The smaller fan flower is made using the “A French Bouquet” papers. For this one I cut the paper 1” wide by 10” long. When making my folds on the fans I made them each ¼” wide and I added a pearl brad, which I had cut the prongs off of, to the center of the flowers. 

I cut my letters out on my Cricut machine at 4” and glued them down on top of my fan flowers.  I then took  some of my handmade roses as well as the 3 layer white gardenia’s, Pink/Cream Open Paper Roses and the French white open paper roses and glued them down as shown. The dark pink roses you see are actually the French white open paper roses that I painted with some of my pink ink as well as painting the center of the White Gardenia with pink ink.  I then punched my holes, added the eyelets and tied them together with the pink ribbon.

Materials used from Meg’s Garden:

Paper - P6296 Ma Fleur Rose

- 3400 A French Bouquet

gar wh 3 layer White Gardenias

Pink/Cream Open Paper Roses

French White Open Paper Rose

da810 Green Leaves

Other items used:

Double sided tape

Ribbon

4" Paper doilies

Letters for name

Ribbon

 

 

We Have a winner!

Thanks to everyone who joined in on the Blog Hop for Meg's Garden this past few days. We hope everyone enjoyed seeing all the creations and the eye candy that is being given away. By everyone's comments I can see you all did have fun!

My winner of the eye candy was chosen using a random number generator at random.org. So the winner of the beautiful eye candy that I am giving away is....drum roll please...MichelleMc ! Michelle please email info@megsgarden.com with your mailing address so that Meg can send you your prize.

I would also like to thank everyone for their lovely comments on my tissue box and card - they really do mean so much to me! Once again thanks again to everyone who joined in on the blog hop!

Here is the list of all the Meg's Garden DT Blog Hop winners: 

Adriana = Wendy Mac

Chantal = Irina Kittsteiner

Heather = Buffy Esser 

Denise = Jane Stirling

Jenny = little place of scrapbooking

Evgenia = Kitikas

Sylvie = Scrapadyne

Ulrika = Gittescrap

Elena = Sveta Albert

Stephanie = Michelle Mc

Vicky = Tone-lill 

Sandrine = Karen Shady

Shell = Svetoforik

Gayle = Gillian

Grand Prize (from Meg's Garden) = Ava G.

 

Blog Hop Starts Now!

Welcome to the Meg’s Garden Design Team Blog Hop!

  

If you arrived here from  Elena’s (http://eleele-handmade.blogspot.com) you are on the right track

We are circling the globe this weekend.  We start in the Adelaide Hills at Meg’s Garden in Hahndorf, South Australia & then head down the hill to Adelaide to visit Adriana, Heather, Chantal & Denise. We then hop almost all the way across Australia to Ashby, Western Australia to Jen.  After a long hop across the ocean to South Africa we visit Evgenia.  Then North to Sylvie in France, Lill in Sweden, & Elena in Belarus.   Another log hop across another ocean to Canada where we pop in to Stephanie & Vicky.  Back downunder again to Sandrine in Queensland, Shell in Victoria, then to Victor Harbor to blog at Gayle’s in South Australia & then up the hill back to Meg’s Garden.How many time zones was that??

Each blog hop will have an Eye Candy especially chosen by that blogger from Meg’s Garden! These will be shown on www.megsgarden.com  and also on that Design Team member’s blog.

Meg’s Garden is also giving away one goodies package to one lucky winner chosen from those who survived the oceans, desert & maybe some snow!What will it be??  Posting at the start of the blog hop.All you have to do is become a follower of the Meg’s Garden Blog and “like us” on Facebook, as well as visit each participating blog, become of follower of those blogs and leave a comment.

When you have visited everyone's blog return to the Meg’s Garden blog and leave us a comment letting us know how much fun you had! If you post about this blog hop on your own blog, let us know and you will be entered into the drawing twice for an extra chance to win!

We are sure you will be inspired by our talented design team!There are lots of goodies to win and you won’t want to miss out on one.

The blog hop is, of course, open to international entries.

The hop will start on 30th November, 2012 at 5pm & you have until Monday 3^rd December, 2012 at 5pm SA time (Central Summer Time South Australia) to complete the hop.The winner will be announced on the Meg’s Garden blog on 5th December (Meg’s birthday). Be sure to check back on that day to see if you have won.Have Fun!

Meg’s Garden – http://www.megsgarden.com

Now how about this pretty Tissue Box and Get Well card that I made with the beautiful "French Bouquet" papers from Meg's Garden.

I came across these great tissue boxes at the dollar store one day and picked them up as I thought they’d make great “altered” items to give as gifts. I used two pieces of the 12 x 12 French Bouquet papers for this box. The left side of these papers has this pretty wicker chair nestled in amongst the flowers and then just above the chair on the same side there is this kind of old fashioned perfume label.

Once I had my entire tissue box covered I took some white lace from Meg's Garden and glued that down along the top of each side of the box.  I then took a string of pearl beads from my stash and glued that down around the opening. For my flower cluster I used one of the pink/cream open paper roses, one rose pink open paper rose, 2 of the lilac & lavender open paper roses all from Meg's Garden,  and then used 2 pink and 2 purple hand made rosebuds. I also tucked an organza bow and a couple of grapevine twists in amongst the flowers. On the opposite corner I added a piece of the flourish.

On the sides of the tissue box with the wicker chair I didn’t want to do anything other than the lace on the top edge as the paper with the flowers and chair were just so pretty all on its own. On the sides with the perfume label I added one of the 3 layer white gardenias (which I had added some pink ink to the centers) from Meg's Garden and two of my handmade tiny purple rosebuds along with a piece of the flourish to each one. I used the papers that were left over from doing the tissue box to make the Get Well card along with one of the corner pieces of the square doily papers. Here is a view from the other side of the tissue box.

So would you like to see what the eye candy is that you can win from me on this stop of the Blog Hop?  From designer Denise Ann there will be the "Green Satin & Flowers" and the "Elegance" papers. You will also be getting the Pink & White Apple Blossom flowers, the Ivory Apple Blossom Flowers, the Mia Green flowers and to finish off this eye candy some beautiful white lace! Here's a peek at it!

 

  So remember leave a comment and become a follower of my blog to get a chance to win this and don't forget to check back here on December 5th to see if you are the winner of this beautiful "Eye Candy"!

The blog hop order!

Meg’s Garden – Australia – http://megsgardenblog.blogspot.com

Adriana Bolzon – Australia - http://abinspirations.blogspot.com.au/

Heather Jacob – Australia –  http://heatherartandlife.blogspot.com.au/
Chantal VanDenberg – Australia - http://girlsjustwannascrapbook.blogspot.com.au/ 

Denise Boddey – Australia - http://passionscrapping.blogspot.com/ 

Jenny   Burns – Australia - http://burns900.blogspot.com.au  

Evgenia Petzer – South Africa - http://evgeniapetzer.blogspot.com/ 

Sylvie Peixoto  - France - http://scrapdream.canalblog.com/ 

Ulrika Blomfelt - Sweden - http://lillblommanskapar.blogspot.com.au/ 

Elena Olinivech – Belarus - http://eleele-handmade.blogspot.com/ 

Stephanie Dinnell  - Canada - http://scrappers-heavencanada.blogspot.ca/  (you are here)

Vicky Alberto – Canada - http://simplypaperandcreativity.blogspot.ca/

Sandrine Dawes – Australia - http://sandrinedawes10.blogspot.com.au/ 

Shell Carmen – Australia - http://www.anotherscrappyday.blogspot.com/ 

Gayle Price – Australia – http://blissandgesso.blogspot.com/

Now it's off to Vicky Alberto's blog for your next stop!

Vicky Alberto – Canada - http://simplypaperandcreativity.blogspot.ca/ 

Blog Hop Reminder!

Just wanted to remind everyone about the Blog Hop starting on Friday, November 30th at "Meg's Garden" at 5 pm and you have until Monday, December 3rd, 2012 at 5pm SA time (Central Summer Time South Australia) to complete the hop. There will be lots of pretties to look at on each blog and a special "Eye Candy" prize from Meg's Garden hand picked by each DT Member  to be given away to one lucky visitor to their blog! Here's the link to the Meg's Garden Blog: http://megsgardenblog.blogspot.ca/ Hope to see you all there!!

Well I've been busy doing some layouts for friends. One of my friends that I've known since elementary school had posted this photo on Facebook of her Mom, older sister and herself that was taken by one of the street photographers in downtown Vancouver, BC. This was similar to the layout I posted of my parents at the beginning of November. My friend is not a scrapbooker but the photo was just "screaming" to be scrapped - so of course I downloaded  it from her Facebook and decided I should scrap it for her! Of course I just had to use the Webster's "A Ladies Diary" for this layout, as I had on the layout of my parents. I am so in love with this paper line! I did lots of layering and distressing on the layout and I added the "Memories" tag from the collection so that when my friend got it she could add her own journaling. I'm  sending it off to my friend in the mail tomorrow along with my regular Christmas card that I send to her. I'm really hoping she likes it! Here's the finished layout.

I have been doing quite a few layouts for my BFF of her niece and her great niece over the past little while. Well her niece just had a new baby boy so I've been taking some of her photo's off Facebook of the newest addition and scrapping them for her. I'm hoping to get a few others done and then send the whole bunch of them to my friend so she can give them to her niece for Christmas. I feel like a secret Santa, lol - I love doing surprise things like this for people! Anyway her the latest layouts I've done for her. The first one is of her daughter and the second one is photos taken the day her new little guy was born.

Thanks for stopping by and we look forward to see everyone at the Blog Hop on Friday!

Meg's Garden DT project

As soon as I saw this “Green Toile” paper from Meg’s Garden I knew it would be perfect for this photo of my grandson that I took in a small Japanese garden at one of the parks where they live. I felt that the dark pink flowers in the photo brought out the bits of pink in the paper. I was telling my grandson he looked like a movie star trying to hide out from his fans with the sun glasses he was wearing…hence the title for this layout.

I love doing fussy cutting on my layouts and these beautiful papers just scream “fussy cutting” to me. So I cut out the matching flowers from the 4” x 12” strip to pop up with foam down on the matching flowers on the right side of the paper. To frame my photo I took one of the pretty square doily papers (bond25) that Meg has and cut two of the laced corners off and then laid them together to make a square diamond shape and then placed my photo down on top.

For my flower cluster I used the 3 layer white Gardenia’s and the pink/cream open paper roses from Meg’s Garden.  I decided to try to mimic the white flowers in the paper and using some of my yellow scrapping chalk I used a q-tip and colored the center and stamens of the white gardenias yellow. The tiny pink and yellow rosebuds I made – you can find the tutorial to make the rosebuds on my blog here: http://scrappers-heavencanada.blogspot.ca/2012/10/rosebud-tutorial.html

Materials used from Meg’s Garden:

Paper - P6295 Green Toile

- bond25 square doily

3 layer White Gardenia’s

Pink/Cream Open Paper Roses

Other items used:

Distress tool

Distress ink “vintage photo”

Dusty Attic chipboard fountain

Recollections crystal flourish (cut into pieces)

Handmade pink & yellow rosebuds

Butterfly graphics printed & cut out & painted with Glossy Accents

Small pieces of coordinating paper to use behind torn and folded back corner

Foam pop dots

Double sided tape

Nine Days & Counting!

Mark your calendars for the

Meg’s Garden Design Team Blog Hop!

one of the longest Blog Hops ever done – around the World.

From Wikipedia:  ‘Phileas Fogg is the main fictional character in the 1873 Jules Verne novel ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’.

Fogg attempts to circumnavigate the late Victorian world in eighty days, or less, for a wager of £20,000 with members of London’s Reform Club.  He takes the wager and leaves with Passepartout, vowing to return by 8:45 pm on Saturday 21 December 1872. Under suspicion of robbing the Bank of England,  he is followed by a detective named Fix. Fogg has no idea about Fix's true intentions and Fix (wanting to get Fogg back to England so that he can arrest him) works with Fogg in the last half of the book.

While in India he saves a widowed princess, named Aouda from  Suttee during her husband's funeral. Passepartout rescues her and she accompanies Fogg for the rest of his journey. She and Fogg eventually fall in love and marry at the end of the book. Fix, who is really supposed to arrest Fogg, attempts to sabotage him by putting him in prison near the end of the book but he is quickly released. Fogg, who has been careful to keep track of every day in his diary, believes that he arrives home on Sunday and that he has lost his bet. However, he discovers, almost too late, that he has forgotten to adjust his timekeeping for having crossed the International Date Line and he wins his bet after all.’

Phileas Fogg had 80 days to circle the globe - we are allowing 4 days only but we have an advantage over his modes of travel – he had to catch trains, ride an elephant, an air balloon & more....

Make sure you complete the list – become a follower, like us on FB & leave a comment – at each blog.

Starts 30, November 2012 for 3 days at 5:00 p.m.

Eye Candy at each blog & a prize at the end !!

Quick Card

I just wanted to share a quick card I made for a 21st Birthday. I used Websters Park Drive collection for this card. I used one of the corners from the square doily from Megs Garden, a Prima flower and a die cut leaf from Heartfelt Creations. I did some distressing with my distress tool as well as my brown ink. A very simple and quick card to make but I think it looks really nice and I hope you do too!

 

November already!

Can you believe it? I think our September weather here in BC was more like August weather that it's sort of crept up on us all. October just kind of flew by. I mean there we were on Thanksgiving weekend here  in Canada and we were out on our boat fishing in shorts and tank tops! Then it changed drastically to pouring with rain and wearing ski jackets - crazy weather. 

On a more serious note in regards to crazy weather my thoughts and prayers are with everyone on the east coast who is having to deal with the ravages of hurricane Sandy. I just can't even imagine what you are all having to deal with right now. I don't think there is anything more scary than Mother Nature, which you have no control over! You are all in my thoughts every day!

Back to scrapping, I've been playing with the Graphic 45's "A Ladies Diary" again. I just love this collection! I've had this photo of my Mum & Dad taken of them walking down the street in downtown Vancouver, BC in 1946. My Dad was  in the Canadian Air Force and my Mum was an English War Bride and this photo would have been taken not long after she arrived in Canada. Back then not many people could afford cameras so you use to get photographers that would be on the street taking photos of people as they were walking and then try to sell the photos to the people. I'm really happy that my Dad decided they would buy the photo and I'm able to scrap it to pass down to my kids. I'm pretty sure in this day and age if people did this sort of thing on the streets now they would probably get arrested for being stalkers or something, lol.

I distressed all of my layers on this layout with my distress tool and my inks. I did some fussy cutting of some of the flowers and one of the ladies heads from the paper and then popped them up with foam dots. I just think this paper collection was perfect for this photo and I'm pretty sure I'll be using these papers on some of my parents other old photos. To see a larger version of the layout just click on the photo and hit your browsers back button to return to this page. Thanks for stopping by!

 

Happy Halloween!

Well I hope all the ghosts & goblins had a good time tonight collecting all their treats and hopefully didn't get to wet in the rain, well at least here in Campbell River it was raining, lol. We actually got more kids tonight than we've got in all 7 years living here. The little ones were just so cute when you open the door and see them in their costumes. We even had some older kids coming to the door, which was great since they were still in costume. I never mind the older kids coming if they have a costume on, it just gets annoying when they come to the door with no costumes and expect to get a treat. What was really great was every single kid who came to the door said "Thank you" and "Have a great Halloween". That really restores your faith in mankind when you meet young kids who actually have good manners and a smile on their face!

So I heard back from Heartfelt Creations and unfortunately I didn't make the final cut for their design team. I was a little disappointed but I still felt good over the fact that out of all of the applications I did make it to the semi-finalist group which I think was a pretty good deal! That gave me the confidence to apply for other design teams and I'm so happy to have made the DT for Meg's Garden! I got my papers and goodies from Meg's Garden in the mail the other day and OMG can you say "Beautiful", these papers are to die for, so, so pretty!  I can't wait to start playing with them!

I thought I'd share with you tonight the two layouts I did for the semi-finalists group using Heartfelt Creations papers, stamps and dies. The stamps and dies they sent are called the "Open Vintage Floret" set - they're so pretty, along with the matching papers. The first layout is another photo of my daughter that her friend took a couple of years ago - I love these photos...oh have I said that before, lol! The large flowers are made with the Heartfelt stamps & dies and the tiny rosebuds I made, which the tutorial I posted the other day.

The next layout I did to celebrate my 14th anniversary of the day I had surgery for breast cancer. Besides the pretty flowers made with the stamps & dies, I did some fussy cutting of the flowers from some of the matching papers, I was really quite pleased at how this layout turned out.

Well Happy Halloween everyone - I hope it was a good one!

Rosebud Tutorial

I've had a number of people comment on my rosebuds that I use in many of my layouts, so I thought I would do a tutorial on how I make mine. This tutorial was inspired by Gabrielle Pollacco's water distressed flower tutorial which you can find here: Water Distressed Flowers. This is basically the same as what Gabrielle does for the center of her flowers but I do not do any water distressing. I do not claim this as my original tutorial, it is just my way of making the rosebuds. Here is what the rosebud will look like:

 To make this rosebud you will require a small 5 petal flower punch as shown below. I bought this one at my local Walmart which I think cost me about $3.99. The flower it punches is just a little over a ½" in size. For each bud you will need to punch out 4 flowers.

Using a stylus and a push pad take three of the small flowers and push down into the center of each flower to push the petals up as shown in the photos below. For the forth flower take it and fold the flower in half and keep doing this until you have something similar to the photo.

Now you can glue your flowers on top of one another, off setting the petals slightly on each layer as shown.

You should end up with your rosebud looking something like mine below.

I find these little rosebuds are great to pop into small areas of your flower clusters, or any other area you just need something small. If you're anything like me I hate throwing smaller pieces of cardstock away and these are perfect way to use them up!

I'd like to thank Gabi for the inspiration for this tutorial and I hope you enjoyed it.  Have a great week!