Joyful Scraps

Scrapbooking weather...

It certainly feels like scrapbooking weather to me, cold and windy outside, snug and warm inside.... so why is it that not much scraping is getting done?

Well for one thing we have received this great collection of new products that I hinted at before and most of them (still trying for some images) have made their way onto the site.....

Kaiser Craft has arrived at Joyful Scraps, and arrived in a big way. I love this range from Kaiser called Flutterby, but there are so many others, see them here.

I finished another layout from the Bridal Shower, good thing too as the Hens night is this weekend....

Love this layout, such good silly fun! Once again the butterfly hearts and the flower cutouts are from the table decorations. Here is a closer look at them...

Really like that they were 'part' of the Bridal Shower and now are in the layouts!

Also wanted to say a big congratulations to Charmaine, my very talented and favourite ;) niece, who today found out that she was DUX of her floristry course! Fantastic, well done, knew you could do it! Love you lots xxxx

In other exciting news, Heidi Swapp is coming to Australia to teach! yep in December 2008 she will be teaching in Brisbane and Melbourne, sadly no Sydney :( you can find out more information on her offical website www.heidiswapp.typepad.com/create08hks Guess every one Knows what I want for Christmas!

Its exciting to go to the classes with international scrappers and it really gets your creative juices flowing, but I love the time I spend with certain friends, scrapping and chatting and just being us. I have been very blessed with such good friends and when the stress of the last few weeks got to me I decided to scrap one of the photos of us together at the last scrap away, Im already counting down the days for the next one kwim?

Dont you love this? It so doesn't look anything like it was going too.

Love this range, I remember saying that when it came in and I have used it in so many ways, I know from the sales that you love it too! This one is Wide tie, from the Boxer collection from Basic Grey, you can see them here.

Teamed with one of the sheets from the Making Memories 4 x 6 Noteworthy Album, here.

For the start of the page I used some of my Chatterbox, like these , for the paper and the flowers.

And as you can see from above the two ranges just go together so well!

Ok now before I sign off I just want to wish well all the people that are struggling at the moment, with a range of issues. Financial, Family, Work and Computers. Just know that I am sending you good thoughts and if you are reading this then please send out good thoughts too, you never know when you will need those good thoughts sent your way!

Hugs

L

Its been so quiet.....

I know that this little blog has been quiet for a while, and that is because everything else, and I do mean everything, in my life has been so busy! I haven't had a chance to blog....

Our stocktake is finally finished, sounds like such a simple thing, count the stock you have on hand. Its not that simple - but the good news is that with the stocktake done, we can now concentrate on bringing you some great bargains, so keep an eye on the site this week, bargains will be going up shortly and will be one offs.

Our new stock has been arriving - just wait till you see the new and exciting things we have planned for this financial year....

On top of all of this my dear husband managed to get a head cold, no big deal..... but then he started to cough and cough and threw the facet joints in his back out! So he has been bed ridden for this past week and in lots of pain. Today he is managing to hobble around but the pain medication means that he can't drive. I will let you in on a secret that you probably already know. Man without car = not happy Jan!

And did I mention that we are now only days away from my daughter getting married? So there has been flower girl dresses to make, beads to sew onto things. Bridal showers and hens nights, table plans and flowers. I am so lucky that she is such a wonderful girl and has two of the sweetest friends as her bridesmaids. I am sure the wedding will be lovely.....

So this is what I have been doing to keep my sanity, I have been scrapping the Bridal Shower. Just for me, when I could squeeze in a minute here and there. Have finished these three so I thought that I should share them with you....

Alisa has long loved Alice in Wonderland, and has a great affinity with hats, so what was more natural than to have a Mad Hatters Tea Party for her bridal shower...

Such lovely brides, all wearing toilet paper!

This one is just different photos that all from the Bridal shower, that don't really have a common theme, just that they were taken on that day, so that is why I called it Random Moments...

On each of three layouts I have used the table decorations from the day to pull them together, the heart butterflies and the flowers. I have also used the 4 x6 Making Memories Noteworthy Journaling book, loving it! and the Making Memories Noteworthy Hillary Stamp, so cute! The rub ons used in the toilet paper are Making Memories Heidi White, and then I raided my stash for paper, We R Memory Keepers and Chatterbox. The cardstock can all be found here.

Hopefully I will be posting with more regularity now, although I am not promising that!

Hope you have all kept warm, this cold weekend.

Hugs

L

Love it when things get finished...

I really love when things get finished, and sometimes around here that can take quite a while. So I used the opportunity of the weekend away to finish off this project and I love the result.

You may have first seen it back here as part of this entry. But now you can see it in all of its finished glory!

I think this is the front, which would make the next one the back....

Either way you look at it I love it. It is full of all the things that I love...

 

then starting from the other end...

So love it, I originally made it to be in my study but as I now have a scrap area it seems to be out there more. It can stand up to show either view....

I have found lately that I am much more organised when I scrap and no longer keep every little scrap thats left over. I think the point came home last year when even Samuel would no longer use my scraps!

Now what I do is have two containers in front of me, a rubbish bin and a basket that I put scraps into. The rubbish bin gets emptied every project but the scraps I let sit for a few projects then go back through them and see what I can use, that is where I got the scraps of paper for the Explore layout I did.

and this is where all the paper and cardstock came from to make this little card...

Not a bad little card to have come from such humble beginnings. Six blossoms that you can find here and three brads that you can find here and a little bit of lace ribbon from my ribbon jar. There is no sentiment on it, it will just 'be' until I know what and who it is destined to go to, Im getting a collection of these type of cards now and as I have the envelope maker that you can get here, it means that I can make a matching envelope for whatever size card I want and not have to worry about it fitting standard size envelopes.

It really is a simple little card, but who doesn't love getting a hand made card?

Hugs

L

Wet long weekend

Wow didn't that weekend go quick? I had all these plans of things I was going to be able to tick off my list over the long weekend LOL! Here it is Tuesday and well.....

This is the garden that was going to get weeded - it didn't!

This is the bike that was going to be ridden - it didn't! (who knew that to make this intentional movement on wheels thing work you not only had to buy the bike, but get on it!!)

This is a small part of the washing that did not get done!

So I guess by now you are getting the idea? But amazingly inside it was warm and dry and so the least I could do was be productive and scrap!

For this layout I kept it really simple, no journaling because I don't know the story behind it. I used black cardstock and a template and white pen to do the majority of the work. I used the Regal Flourish mini template but there is such a huge range of templates to make it so easy to doodle on your pages, have a look here. If you want to see more of this layout click here.

As it was still raining I decided to have a look through the papers that I have had for a while, I love the My Minds Eye range, anything double sided always gets me! I foraged around in my ribbons and found these, I think they are off a candle or a soap, can't quite remember. My daughter brought around this very cute little tea bag tag that says superb, she saved it thinking that her mother would scrapbook it, she was right! (it is such a great feeling to realise that my kids know me so well LOL!) And I also had these Chatterbox chipboard corners from one of the embellishment kits....

I put it all together and came up with this

this is the left page

and this is the right

Love making use of what I have, it means that then there is room for more kwim. If you want to see more of the details of this layout it is in the gallery you can find it here.

And this is one more of the layouts that I did on the weekend away, I used the Rouge de Garance kit, that has been such good value so much in it!

This is of my son Steven who in October 2007 became a father, so as you can see it was well and truly time I scrapped it! you can see more of it in the gallery here. I have a few more from the weekend away to take photos of and post so they will be coming over the next little while.

Just a reminder that our Paper sale is on now, quantities are limited to the stock at hand and they are selling out fast. So that you are not dissapointed put in your order today....... browse the selection here.

Hope you all had a productive long weekend

Hugs

L

Sale Sale Sale

Its cold, its wet, its rainy, its perfect scrapbook weather!

What would a Sydney long weekend be without the weather? So the garden and washing may not get caught up but at least we will get a chance to scrapbook LOL!

Over at Joyful Scraps there is a sale going on, a great big fat sale! Need to clear some room for the new stock that is on its way. So the perfect opportunity to grab yourself a bargain or twelve and save save save! A huge amount of paper has been discounted starting at 25% off! All your favourite brands and styles.....

Click here to have a look.....

Here is another one of the layouts I did at the weekend away, this one is a really simple 8 1/2 x 11 single page.

I kept this page very simple, not even any journaling. I have used variations of this photo in his album already so they have the journalin on them. I wrote the date on the back to keep the page clean.

The photo was matted onto yellow cardstock that was longer on the left hand side. The stars are the wonderful new Ki Memories lace cardstock, get it here

The paper is from the Hot Off The Press, Finished in a Flash, Baby Boy Kit, here, I added a rub on that was left over from the Carolee Creations Sweet Joy rub ons, here, that I have used on lots of projects, love when a product is so versatile.

I have managed to get one layout completed in the last few days, and I love it! This is Sam

This is a double 12 x 12 layout. I took this photo before I cut the pages apart. This is still from the Rouge de Garance kit, here. So far from this kit i have made the mini album, two single 12 x 12 pages and this double 12 x 12 layout!

I just cut both sides of the flower to lift the pattern and use it as an embellishment to overlap both the journaling block and the photo.

And the cool Mustard Moon Big Honking stickers for the title, here. As I have used these before I didn't have all of the letters I needed. Such as the k and one of the n. So with a bit of snipping and cutting a l and an x became the k, and a m became a n. Bet you didn't pick it ;)

Hope you all have a lovely weekend, don't forget to stop by the store for some great bargains.

Hugs

L

What do tea and scrapbooking have in common?

So really what do tea and scrapbooking have in common? Well some of us have been known to partake in a tea when scrapbooking.....

But no, this is the set of tea containers my mother recently gave me

Pretty cool, and alas as yet not opened because it is just such a lovely colour combination! So before the weekend away I had a really good look at this packaging

Isn't that just the best colour combination! So I put the colours in my colour swatch book - thank you Stacy Julian

And while away at our wonderful weekend scrapbook extravaganza I came up with this layout

the main colours are the brown and the green, I didnt have the right green with me, even after all of that planning packing and repacking, so used what I had.

These flowers are called hazy yellow and are actually a lemon colour, perfect with the hot pink ribbon and powder blue cardstock

Plain black chipboard letters for the title and rubon journal panel and it was done!

so that is what tea and scrapbooking have in common in my house LOL!

It has been very busy around here lately and it has been productive, just not scrapbooking productive. Since coming back from our weekend we have re arranged our house to accommodate a new dining room table that is much longer than the previous one. So hopefully now family dinners won't be so tightly packed...

Excitingly this left a table that has been knocked and scrubbed and dented and well just really well loved. And I have managed, with a lot of re arranging to secure it as my scrapbook table. So then I set about trying to make a scrapbook area (see give me an inch and I will take a mile). Which has sort of come about in the alcove of our lounge room. Still trying to get it right....

My daughter, Alisa, is getting married this July so there has been lots happening on the wedding front. She is making the flower girl dresses and I am supervising and she has done a fantastic job. So we have 1 and a half dresses ready for fitting...

We also went and picked up her wedding dress, at least this time I didn't cry while in the shop....

So I wanted to share this photo with you all, taken inside the bridal store

No not the wedding dress, that has to wait until after the big day and then you will be sick of seeing all of the photos LOL! I just loved this, everyday bling! there is actually a clear glitter lacquer over the stapler as well!

Find something ordinary and make the extraordinary!

Hugs

L

Such a blast!

What a great weekend we had! So much laughing, talking, eating chocolate, singing along to the music and a bit of scrapbooking!

I was going to do a blog entry on Friday before I left but the time just got away from me kwim?

I am so bad at being good at what I take that I get myself all tied up in knots (a bit like this sentence LOL)

First I packed, then I got it all out and sorted again, culled and re packed, then I tried again and re sorted and culled more and then re packed, and then, well then I just gave in and got two more scrapbooking bags to go with the one on wheels!

So from all this I managed to get done 5 pages, 1 double page, 2 mini albums, start on another double page and do a tiny teeny amount of work in my grateful album. All in all a very productive weekend.

Over the next little while I will post up the layouts I did, Im really happy with them, love it when that happens!

There is a very special layout I want to share with you now though....

This is a double page 12 x 12 layout using the Heidi Swapp Runway range that you can get here

Isn't this a great layout! Now I will let you into a secret Carolyn who created this layout was not a scrapbooker! She came along on our weekend complete with her sewing machine and was happily quilting along - but- we corrupted her! We noticed that she was looking over shoulders and making comments, so we circled and went for the jugular - and hey presto before she knew it she was getting excited about paper and stickers and rub ons, all while the quilt lay languishing on the ironing board!

But to give Carolyn credit she did hold out until Sunday afternoon and then she succumbed and she was very happy with the results! And we are always happy to have another partner in crime LOL!

So until next time, I will leave you with this very peaceful photo of one of the buildings in our complex....

You would think that with scenery like this 'intentional movement' would not have been hard, but alas there were chocolates and scrapbook pages with my name on them inside, (I did intentionally move to the dining room).....

Hugs

L

May is just flying by....

Time seems to be whizing by at the moment, so much happening, so much to look forward to!

In 6 days time I am lucky enough to be heading off for a weekend of pure bliss! Scrapbooking heaven, catered food, old friends, new friends, no kids, no housework and a chocolate fountain! What more could any one want? Ok maybe a foot rub, wonder if its to late to organise that??

In the mean time new stock keeps arriving at the store, its really hard not to play with it all! (Check it out here.) And as you know I Love to Play anyway in the pursuit of 'intentional movement' I have a bike! My hubby and kids bought it for me for Mother's Day. It is still at the shop being assembled so I get it next week. Then well the plan is that I will Intentionally move on the bike, hope that the plan works LOL!

I have been teaching some classes this month, more planned for next month, if you are interested just email me.

We kicked off the month with this gorgeous CD mini Album:

Mine is dedicated to my husband's golf pennant season last year, poor man I think its the first mini album I have ever done for him, will have to do more. Made up of the 7Gypsies Pretoria range that you can find here.

Tonight we are doing a double page layout, that shows you how to use all those photos that don't quite make it, but add up to tell the story....

So love this range of papers, Boxer you can see all of them here. All of these go together so well you can just mix and match. These photos I really wanted to scrap as I think this will probably be the last time that Jesse will go with us to feed the ducks, he really didn't want to go this time but reluctantly agreed. And as the big white drake kept coming out of the water to get more food, Sam moved further and further back, until when he threw the food it hit Jesse in the back of the head LOL! Jesse = not impressed!

I am teaching a card class at the Vinegar Hill Memorial Community Centre (Rouse Hill Library) on Thursday the 29th of May at 10am, I think there are still spots left if you want to book in, call Kate John on (02) 8889 5200. Here is a sneak peek...

As you can see I liked the Birthday card so much that it became this months banner on the blog ;)

I will tell you about one more class that we have booked in way in advance, again with the Vinegar Hill Memorial Community Centre (Rouse Hill Library), it is a beginners scrapbooking class. We are booked in to do this class on a Thursday night in June, June 26th, so for all your friends that have been thinking about scrapbooking this might just be the class for them, you can ring Kate John on (02) 8889 5200 to book them in and start them on this road of scrapbook addiction.

Have you checked out our new Gallery yet? so many cool layouts and projects in there as well as a special section for you! Yep thats right if you would like to submit a project for display in our guest gallery all you need to do is click here. I have three guest gallery projects ready to go up, so they should be up in the next few days.

A favourite design team member PeaBee has been on a creative spree and has supplied us with great inspiration. Check our PeaBee's Gallery here.

I am going to leave you today with one of the embellishments on PeaBee's layout 'the best day' I think this sums it up perfectly we should all take note...

Hope you all have a wonderful silly weekend!

Hugs

L

What is in a word?

How do you feel about the word exercise ? For me it is quite simple that word the e word does something to my mind. For example if we play the word association game this is what would happen

Exercise - tim tams

Exercise - good book

Exercise - hot chocolate

Exercise - not for me.

Get the picture? But here are the very sad facts.

Fact number 1, I am not getting any younger, in fact I seem to be getting older.

Fact number 2, I am not the fittest person you will meet

Fact number 3, When I left my jeans hanging in my wardrobe over summer, they shrunk!

So I am afraid that fact number 3 did it for me, I needed to tackle this problem of exercise. Now here is the thing that I think is interesting, Kids don't exercise, they run around like mad things, kicking balls, riding bikes, basically never sitting still, but they don't call it exercise. They call it play.....

Ah me thinks I have stumbled onto something here, if I play instead of exercise then I will do it! Well maybe not, because when I play, this is what I do....

Getting in a new range and so I sat and played. I love playing...

I really love this playing, I played with this and this and rub ons, felt ribbons and of course some drawing as well! ( I will let you know as soon as the rub ons and new items come in ;)

OK so the playing was not going to be the word to help me.

After much thought I have come up with intentionally moving. So I purchased a pedometer grabbed Sam and his friend Sam and we headed for the reserve for some intentionally moving time.

The boys took their scooters and the words they used were fun, awesome, adventure.

I just intentionally moved through the reserve taking photos...

with views like this intentionally moving is not so hard!

The boys were quite amazed when I told them the things I had seen, because it is very hard to see all those things when you are going as fast as you can on a scooter!

But so totally cool when you are slowly intentionally moving LOL!

So by the time they were tired out ( we had been there about 3 hours) I had racked up 4345 on my pedometer. That is four thousand, three hundred and forty five steps! Way cool!

I was feeling very virtuous about that. But that was Sunday and today is Wednesday and other than walking to the school and back the intentional movement has come to a bit of a stand still. And I don't think this intentionally moving caper works if you only do it once a week.

Oh well, why I try and work it out I might just go and play some more...

Hugs

L

Just where did summer go?

Well it has turned into perfect scrapping weather, don't you think? too cold to be outside, and the Sydney school holidays, well what can you say about that! rain, rain oh yes more rain... this was our family bbq during the school holidays, you know one of those events where you get to take lots of photos.....

funny I didn't take many photos, too busy trying to stay dry LOL!

I have been so busy lately, getting the new gallery open, have you had a look yet?  you can click here to see the new Gallery. There has also been lots of new products arriving, click here for the new products. And one of our customers told me that what she wanted was to be able to get the whole collection of paper with just one click, so I arranged for that to happen, with a 10% discount and these collections are proving very popular! click here to see the collections.

Now that the kids have gone back to school I am trying to make sure that I scrap each day. So far so good. Sam hasn't been very interested lately in what I have been scrapping, I think mainly because they haven't featured him. But the other night I was finishing up a title for a class and he became very interested. He likes chipboard (must get that from his mother) and loves paint (again his mother) I left it to dry and when I came back this is what I found...

He really liked the mask that had been left behind.

He is such a cool kid, he took lots of photos in different angles, just because they appealed to him. I think I could take a page out of his book and just do things because they appeal to me! Life can be so simple when you are only 10.

Happy Scrapping!

Hugs

L