Cut 'n Paste

The winner is...

Congratulations to:
Char -D who posted on Dec.26th at 1:04 PM

I will be sending you an email shortly to get your address Char:)

Thanks so much to everyone for your movie recommendations! We've seen a few of the movies and would heartily second the glowing reviews, but there are a lot that were shared which we have yet to see, it's great to get some feedback on them.

I hope that you and yours had a wonderful Christmas!

Winter Cheer Giveaway #4

It's time for the last giveaway before Christmas! Can you believe that it's almost here?! Man, time sure does fly!

In this weeks giveaway I have a few of my favorite beauty products to share including my all time favorite: C.O. Bigelow Lip Gloss. Even when I don't put make up on, I almost always have this gloss on my lips. The winner will receive 2 tubes in an adorable bronze make up bag. I'll find a few other sample-sized products to fit in there as well. I'll also be sending the winner some winter reading pleasure, with the incredibly inspiring book Transparent Art published by Stampington magazine. Finally I'll include several scrapbooking products as well...not sure which ones yet, but I'm thinking at least one stamp (or stamp set), some rub-ons and something else too :)

So as usual, all you need to do is leave a reply to this post to be entered in the giveaway. This time, when you post, please tell me the best movie you've seen this year. Rick is on holiday this week, so we'd like to veg out and watch a bit of fluff one evening.

This giveaway is open to everyone. No matter where you live, I will happily pay shipping to your corner of the world. Giveaway will be open until Saturday around noon.

Now, as a special thank you to each of you for helping to make this year of blogging so enjoyable for me, I've made a wee giveaway that is available to EVERYONE!! Last night I spent a few hours putting these holiday tags together for you. I hope you like them! These could be used on the front of a greeting card, or on a giftbag, or glued to wrapping paper...the possibilities are endless. I've posted the tags below. All you need to do is right click and save them to your hard drive. Then print them out and use them. (You should also be able to view them much larger if you double click on the image to open up a new window)
 

I hope you enjoy the tags, and if you do use them, I would LOVE to see what you do. Please feel free to send me an email with a photo of your creation :) 

It's her lucky day!

Hi everyone, time to announce the winner of the Canadian Scrapbooker  one year subscription giveaway!

This week's lucky winner is:

DOREEN, who posted on Dec 18. at 7:04PM

(Winner was selected by entering the amount of entries into random.org, the site then randomly selected a number which I matched the the corresponding poster).

The fine people over at the magazine will also be sending a set of mugs to another lucky poster:

LISA Risser who posted on  Dec. 18 at 4:46 PM

Doreen and Lisa, please be checking your in-box for an email from me.

To each of you who entered, thank you very much for taking the time to share your thoughts on what type of articles you would like to see in the future. There are some seriously great ideas in there!

I hope that each of you have a great weekend. Our family Christmas celebrations will be beginning tonight! Yeay!

Be sure to come back on Monday as I have something special up my sleeve for Winter Giveaway #4!!

Winter Cheer Giveaway #3

Oh happy day - it's time for the next winter giveaway!!

I hope you each had a lovely weekend. Rick and I traveled down to Seattle for a concert/holiday shopping trip with some of our close friends. We were even treated to the first snowfall of the season when we emerged from our concert on Saturday night.

For this week's giveaway I have a little something special from the wonderful people I work with at the Canadian Scrapbooker magazine. Working with the editors has been a delight, and I am so proud to be associated with a magazine that is so delightfully different from others in the marketplace.

This week, Jackie and Katharina, the co-founders of the magazine, have generously offered a ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTION to the lucky winner!! They also have a Canadian Scrapbooker mug set for another winner. This giveaway is open to Canadian and US addresses only. Thank you for your understanding. Next week's giveaway will once again be open to international readers :)

For those of you who have never seen this magazine, I'll tell you a little about what it is I do for the publication. Each issue I write an article focusing on ideas for how to use a certain category of embellishments. The column is called Creative Product Rescue, and I've written on topics such as Flowers, Die Cuts, Embossing, Stickers, and tags to name a few...This week, to enter into the giveaway, I'd like you to tell me what product you'd like to see an article on...it doesn't matter if someone else has written the same thing as you, just tell me what product you'd be interested in seeing tackled!

If you're feeling lucky, check out these giveaways as well!!

A few of my friends are also hosting Winter Cheer Giveaways this week. You'll want to be sure to check them out and make yourself familiar with their fabulous blogs.
Linda Albrecht
Ranjini Malhotra

Have a great day!

update: Giveaway now closed. Thanks for playing, and please check back on Monday for Giveaway #4.

Deck the Halls

 

Here's a project that I've enjoyed working on this week. Once again I used the Country Living kit from Stampin' Up!, and once again I used the kit contents as a jumping off point for my own project.

One tip which was new for me, and  I thought you might also find interesting, is the way Stampin' Up! suggested we color raw chipboard. For a very long time now I have used acrylic paints to color chipboard. While this is not difficult by any stretch of the imagination, it does require that I use a paintbrush and wash it out when completed. However in the kit, they provided white pigment ink, and so instead of painting the raw chipboard they suggested we apply the ink directly to it. I just know, that you're shaking your head at me saying that you've been doing this for ages - seriously, I can feel you wondering how dim I am through the computer screen. But honestly, first time ever that I used ink to completely cover chipboard! And you know what? I liked it. A lot. (smile) Anything that saves me time is a winner in my books; I love that I don't have to leave my craftroom to wash out paintbrushes! So there is my little PSA for the week, courtesy of a Stampin' Up! kit.

Here are some quick instructions on how I made the banner:

1. Cover three chipboard squares with precut aqua paper. (all provided in kit) Sand edges to distress.
2. Using white pigment ink, cover raw chipboard scalloped frames. Allow ink to dry. Apply a thin coat of glue to frame, sprinkle irridescent glitter on top of glue. Allow to dry. Shake excess glitter off and pour back in the glitter container. (all provided in kit)
3. Glue white glittered frame to aqua squares.
4. Cut three strips of pink patterned paper 1 x 12 inches. (pink paper not supplied in kit. There are enough kit papers to have used them for this step, but I wanted to use pink pastel as opposed to the colors in the kit, so chose from my personal stash). Pleat each strip to create pleated rosettes. Unfortunately I ran out of time to make a tutorial for you, but a quick google search resulted in this fabulous set of instructions from Jeanne at Dream, Create Inspire. After making rosettes glue them to the center of the scalloped frame.
5. Glue vintage game pieces to center of pink rosettes. (not provided in kit)
6. Using a Japenese screw punch, punch holes to thread ribbon through. 
7. Thread winter white ribbon through holes. (provided in kit)
8. You're done! Now display and enjoy it throughout the holiday season! 

As you head into your weekend, be sure to visit my friend Linda's blog as she is hosting a Winter Cheer Giveaway which is starting today! Linda is super-duper creative, so anything handmade by her is going to be awesome. 

Have a great weekend everyone!

The winner is...

Shannon who posted on Dec 09 at 9:02AM! Congratulations. I will be emailing you as soon as I get this post up to get your mailing address.

(Winner was selected by entering the amount of entries into random.org, the site then randomly selected a number which I matched the the corresponding poster).

A warm thank you to each of you who posted on the Winter Cheer giveaway and shared your hobbies. It was very interesting to see what kinds of things you enjoy doing. I plan on posting a crafting project tomorrow and will be announcing Winter Cheer giveaway #3 on Monday, so be sure to check back!

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Now for a complete topic jump, I wanted to share with you a fascinating interview with one of my favorite interior decorators and photo stylist; Carrie Raphael. It can be found here at Restyled Home, an awesome home decor blog, which is published by a fellow Canadian. Carrie's work may be familiar to some of you as she has had her home featured several times in Country Living (the above photo is from one of the articles about her house) and has also styled articles and photos for them. Enjoy!  

Winter Cheer Giveaway #2

It's time to announce Winter Cheer Giveaway #2!! 

 

This gift is perfect for those of you who enjoy paper crafting with a vintage flair. The prize this week will be an assortment of crafting materials. Contents will include: vintage photos (some Cabinet cards, postcards, and CDVs), an assortment of mother of pearl cream and white buttons, my favorite stamp from Catslife Press ('photo log'), a set of acrylic stamps from Technique Tuesdays, and some holiday embellishments from Making Memories.

 

This giveaway is open to everyone! No matter where you live, I'll happily be paying postage to your corner of the world!

 

Simply leave a comment to this post sharing your favorite hobby with me, and I'll draw the winner this Thursday morning (Dec. 11).

 

Have a great week everyone!

 

Photography Workshop

As I shared with you on Friday, I attended a photography course this weekend in Tacoma, WA. The workshop was a Beginning Course taught by Me Ra Koh and her husband Brian. To say that it was a fabulous learning and growth experience for me is an understatement. I really had so much to learn, and felt throughout the workshop like I was finally, finally beginning to understand my camera. By the end of the weekend, for the first time ever, I felt like I understood the correlation and functions of Aperture, ISO and Shutter Speed. Eureka! I know I still have a ton to learn, but I no longer feel intimidated and now feel like I am on the road to seeing improvements in my technical skills. 

We were given the opportunity to practice our newfound knowledge with a Baby photoshoot, and I wanted to share a few of my favorite images with you. These photos were shot in manual mode (Yeay!) and, if you'll excuse the bragging,  I'm so stinkin' proud of myself! This is sweet baby Sophia, who was a delight to photograph and is 8 months old.

Enjoy!

  

Winter Gift Bag

 

If you're like me, come holiday season you enjoy trying to find pretty ways to present gifts to your family and friends. I had the opportunity to play with the Country Living Holiday Collection Stampin' Kit from Stampin' Up! this month, and I had so much fun making gift bags (amongst other things) to use this holiday season. The kit contains an exclusive stamp set, Die cut chipboard and patterned paper, Ribbon, Rhinestone brads, glitter, adhesives, stamp pads...and more!

The kit comes with instructions for creating a holiday banner, some gift tags and tree ornaments. However I decided to use the kit as a jumping off point for my own projects.

Here's how I made the Winter Gift Bag:

I bought a brown paper bag from my local craft store and used the snowflake stamp with a versa mark pad to stamp a tone-on-tone effect on the bag. I then cut a strip of red patterned paper from the kit to go across the bottom of the bag. I also cut a strip of cream cardstock, which I cut with the Fiskars Threading Water punch to get the scalloped/dotted edge.

Finally, for creating the snowflake ornament, I popped the center snowflake portion from a round circle medallion chipboard piece and ran it through my Cuttlebug machine to create the dotted embossed pattern. I then painted it with white acrylic paint. After the paint was dry, I lightly sanded it with sandpaper so that the dots stood out a bit more. Using the die cut patterned paper, which is pre-cut into the circle/snowflake shape, I popped the middle snowflake portion out and set it aside to use on a different project. I glued the remaining outer circle to the circle medallion chipboard. I then added the snowflake back into the chipboard shape. I then took another one of the pre-cut circle/snowflake shapes and this time left the snowflake in it. This piece I glued to the back of the ornament. This will keep the embossed snowflake from falling out of the ornament. You can use sandpaper to sand the edges of the ornament if desired.

Your last step is to thread floss through the ornament and tie it to the handle of the gift bag.

I hope you enjoyed this project. I am off to Seattle this morning for a Photography workshop that will be running tonight/Sat and Sun. I'm really excited and hoping to learn so much that I get brain overload, LOL!

And the Winner is...

thanks to Random.org who selected comment #17, the winner of the Winter Cheer Giveaway #1 is:

Laura D

who posted on Dec.2/11:06

Laura, I will be sending you an email as soon as this post goes up on my blog.

Be sure to check back on Monday for the next Winter Cheer Giveaway!