Christmas Card and Crafts

I am back at last. My husband and I are back on the road. We flew 4,000km back to the other side of the country to continue our trip around Australia in our caravan. We stayed in Perth for 4 days, settling in efore heading south. You can follow our trip if you are interested on our Robbiebago blog. I have been busy cutting out flowers and other images, In the meantime I let me show you some of the craft items I made this past Christmas. First the first time ever I made 50 of the same card design for Christmas. I really wanted to use my lovely poinsettia Spellbinders die and I fell in love with a pleated sort of card design and ends up being an almost exact copy of a card designed by Valita. Click here to see Valita's blog. The leaves were cut on a silver metallic paper with a brand new hole punch which sadly didn’t last the distance, doing less than 5 punches before breaking and punching paper only too! I took it back and replaced it with a L-Em punch that is similar in design. The swirly stamp is embossed with Gold embossing powder. It is about time too as  I don't think I have done heat embossing for a long long time. The triangular pleated feature is very simple and looks great. It is explained in great detail and on Valita's video tutorial for those who like to see it being made.
The note books were commercial notebooks I picked up at Officeworks and I covered them with lovely decorative papers and ribbons. The flowers were hand made by me and are very dimensional and glazed with UTEE. The skeleton leaf is one I bought from Print Blocks eons ago and the green leaf is hand cut and distressed. The letters hearts are chip board from my collection which I painted and/or glittered accordingly.

Camille's Scrap Album: last pages

At last we come to the end of Camille's book. I hope you have enjoyed viewing all the pages. It was a big project to me. Being my first off the page book I think I was a bit ambitious and over my head, but I kept on swimming and eventually got it finished albeit 2 years late. (I had promised it for her 21st!!! - Note to me: Never ever make promises!!!)

The medallion is stamped 5 times and hand cut leaving out a section each time making it smaller and smaller with each layer. I coloured it & glittered the purple sections for interest. The butterfly (unknown source) was hand cut & glittered.

I have always love the analogy of the caterpillar transformation and Christians are a new creation. If a person calls themselves a Christian and a transformation is not evidenced in their lives then I wonder??? but enough of that - none of us are perfect. The quote is computer generated and the shape was traced around it and handcut since my cuttlebug is 4,000 km away. The butterflies (source unknown) are also hand cut. A simple tie and you can pull it open to reveal a hidden message.

This analogy draws upon the new creation verse of 2 Corinthians 5:17
"If any man (woman too!) be in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are finished and all things become like new!"

Do let me know if you find this blog and if you have enjoyed viewing it. It is a lot of work to post it whereas I could be selfishly happy and crafting away making more stuff, but I do enjoy being inspired by other people who have gone to the trouble to make their creations available for all to enjoy and learn from, I thought it time I give back and pass on some love and I hope I can encourage some others to give it a go!

Camille's Scrap Album Pages 13 to 16

Getting close to the end now. Just one more installment after this one. I have gone into so much detail as each page is unique and worthy of showing.

The background you can see on page 13 is done with a crackled paint technique. It has 2 lots of tags that swing out to reveal a single word, such as Memories, Friends, Enjoy, Sweet, Celebrate, Love, Smile& Life. I have embellished with a couple of simple punched daisy flowers with a diamante centre. Page 14 is dry brushed background and has a simple stitched border tag with a heaven smiles quote embellished with metal flower, wire butterflies and hand ink dyed skeleton leaf.

 

Of course I have my favourite pages and 2 of them are right here below

 

 beautiful daughter of God

God breathes and the beauty of nature is revealed

You, Camille, are amongst His most beautiful creation & I am left breathless.

Adapted from some quote I picked up from somewhere and kept. 

I googled it and found scrapbook.com/quotes. It is attributed to S. Brown.

Camille You amaze us... is written by myself.

Now the flowers on these 2 pages are all made from combinations of flowers I have collected over the years mostly from budget $ type shops. I loved mixing the flowers together to get this bright and colourful collection. The butterfly is punched with my new Martha Stewart punch and a colour magazine which I glittered. I also added a pearl beaded string for the trail.

As I said it is one of my favourite pages!

Camille's Scrap Album Pages 9 to 12

Yet another installment of photos. If you have any questions, I would be only too happy to answer.

Flowers add so much to your life as do friends

 

I love to recycle and re purpose items. A friend once accused me of being stingy but I think of this as being creative. I guess one wonders where to draw the line, maybe I have stepped over it a few times and probably will again some time in the future!
The metal behind the flower on page 9 has been floating on my desk for a long time. I have no idea where it came from, but I have finally found a use for it combined with one of these wooden flowers. I think they go together very well.
The pot is a broken wooden pot I had re purposed.  I first painted it with acrylic paint. The snail is a shank button with the shank snipped off.and the flower I made using a silk flower and layers of buttons and topped with a diamante.

Pages 11 & 12 continue the idea of  introducing text on 'petals' around the page. These 2 pages are about ways to live your life. Page 11 is adapted from the  beatitudes out of the Sermon on the Mount to be found in the Gospel of Mathew Chapter 5. Page 12 has quotes and some verses, some are direct from the Bible some are quotes I like.

Camille's Scrap Album Pages 5 to 8

Here is the next installment of photos of more pages. I apologize for some of the poor quality photos. I am still learning to use my new camera and now my daughter has the album in her hot little hands I can't ask for it back just now to take more photos.

I have been a busy little bee

This is the front cover with my adapted silk flower which I glittered before placing on a stamped background. The butterfly is an embroidery patch.

Since the new year, I  have been busy in my craft room. First off I started to do my yearly clean up though I wonder if my hobby is more along the lines of collecting papercrafts rather than making papercrafts. I have so much stuff. Then in the midst of cleaning and tidying up I rediscover a scrap album that I started for one of my daughter's 21st two years ago and so I determined that I would surprise her and finish the book. I think I procrastinated more because I was a) a bit ambitious for a first time project and b) I was stumped by the fact that the book pages had a jolly big hole in the middle of each and every page.

Pages 1 & 2. The paper was coloured using the direct to paper technique, some rub ons, stamps, a heart charm, foil and gems were added for accents

Inside the little card on page 2 was computer generated.

Pages 3 & 4. Sorry, my photography skills leave a lot to be desired.

Bible verses to live by. Rub ons and felt flower ribbon adornment with stickles as centre accents

 I found these holes to be a big part of my stumbling block. In the end I decided to cover over the holes and proceed with designing the pages. I feel this decision liberated my creativity. There are so many pages I will split the photos over 2 or more blog entries. I will post a few detailed photos that I think people might be interested in viewing in closer details.

Procrastination

I don't suppose I am unique but sometimes I am ashamed of how much I can procrastinate. I can start a project and then move on to something else with all good intentions to come back to the original project and it just doesn't happen. I work best to a time frame where I have a birthday or wedding coming up and that both inspires me and motivates me to do a particular project. (Actually I am the same with housework - if I have all day long to do it, then it takes all day and I still may not get it all done, but if I know someone is coming over then I will make a wonderful effort to get it done and some baking and quite often extra cleaning done (that the visitor wouldn't even know about anyway eg clean out my freezer or some such silly thing!)
 Well the point of all this rambling is to let you know that I started my yearly tidying up of my craft room and I rediscovered a scrap album I started for my daughter's 21st. Only problem is that she turned 21 three years ago. it is about time I finish it for her. I am only going to give you teasers for now and I will post the full book when it is finished and she has it in her hot little hands! I am happy to say I finished 3 pages yesterday and added a few additional touches to otherwise finished pages and now I have only the last page to do.