Eco Park Christmas Cards

The colours used by Echo Park and My Minds Eye for their Christmas collections this year are stunning. I love the Turquoise and Lime.

The baubles and trees on the cards were cut from the pattern paper.

Add a piece of silver twine and some bling,
and it will look like an expensive embellishment.

8 Christmas cards with paper from My Mind's Eye

Hi Girls,

Thank you for a wonderful day!

Here are the cards for those of you who just have

to stick down the last two pieces of paper.

Pre-Christmas Inspiration Class

On Saturday, October 29th, Elna and I hosted a Pre-Christmas Inspiration Class, 

together with the very talented Jaclyn Venter, author of "Scrap it! / Plak dit!".

29 very talented creative souls joined us for the day, where they made

8 Christmas Cards in Elna's class,

4 quick handmade gifts in my class (more of this in a later post) and

a tea-tray, where the bottom of the tray was decorated with 3D flowers and patterned papers.  You will find a similar project in Jaclyn's book or you can view the video clip from Pasella by following this link.

There was even time for some retail therapy in-Between Cupcakes and Tea...

Thank you for stopping by, and may you have a very creative week!!

The old (rusk) baking pan.

I was looking for something to display a few rings, so ..... I went searching in my cupboards and

found this beautiful well used rusk baking pan that belonged to my mother in law.

She used to spoil us with buckets full of rusks when we went to visit her. At one stage -

those were the only rusks my hubby wanted to eat!

Just look at the detail, I think that it was handmade...

maybe not, but I know it is very old.

 My mom and dad are also thinking of moving again, so she is throwing out a lot of things.

I know she has some treasures, things like these that I would love to have.

OK... so, I cut five layers of black foam to fit into the tin and glued them together.

(like sandwiches)

For the top layer I made two slits wright through the foam, lengthwise for the

rings to fit into and then glued the top layer to the rest of the foam.

On the outside, I put down some double sided tape. On top of that, two ribbons and then I tied a sugar spoon to the tin and there you have a display box for the rings!

Don't disregard the old things that comes your way, re-use and recycle them.

Keep well.

8 Quick Christmas Cards 2011

One of the items we would like to have for sale at our "Pre-Christmas Inspiration Event" on October 29th, is a kit that once completed, will leave you with 8 handmade Christmas cards to give to teachers, friends, family or even your favourite hair-dresser!?

Here are the collages of the three kits you will be able to purchase on the day...

Kit 1 - using papers from Basic Grey

Kit 2 - using papers from Daisy D

Kit 3 using papers from My Mind's Eye.


Each card measures 4" x 4" and all the embellishments have been pre-cut.
The sentiments are printed in English and Afrikaans to make it fully bilingual!?

If you live in South Africa and are interested to purchase a kit, send me an email and I'll provide more info...

Thank you for visiting and may you have a very creative week.

A project with my friend.

 After our trip to France I went to Switzerland to visit my friend Alida,

who is a -Boertjie- that has been living over there for about 30 years. 

Feeling very creative I showed her how to decoupage a small chair in a very easy way.

(Remember the coat hanger? This is done in the same way.)

Look at the absolute stunning view from our "studio"! 

First we sanded the chair to get rid of the varnish and to create a tooth for the gel. We aged the dictionary paper with strong tea, let it dry and then teared it into strips that would fit onto the chair.

 Sometimes it is easier to use your fingers to get the gel into the corners and odd places, before sticking down the paper. Remember to use your decoupage roller to get rid of the air bubbles. To protect and seal the chair, finish off with a layer of gel medium.

There is another chair up in the attic,

I wonder if she had time to finish it? 

Joseph a friend of theirs, invited me to play the Alphorn.

So one afternoon we walked over to his house near the woods. 

I tried.. and managed to produce a sound, but not a very good one!

He normally practice at about six in the evening.

Most evenings we could hear the sound coming

from the forest .... and it was magical.

This picture was taken in his garden.

 ..... and this one on the way back home, to Alida.

What IS a girl to do?

I'm sure many of you have had days when you "needed" to create, but had no access to your creative muse...

On days like that, I find it very fulfilling to pull out a kit designed by a fellow creative soul.  Something where  someone else did all the thinking for me.  No need to try and match colours, papers, embellishments, rubber-stamps, ink, etc.

During a recent visit to Perth, Western Australia, I made a point of visiting Scraptivate, one of my favourite Scrapbooking stores in town.  The ladies from their design team do some amazing work and I am always in awe of the projects they have for sale or teach in their classroom.  The way I see it, their designs are more mixed-media than scrapbooking!?

So, a few weeks ago, I pulled out one of the kits I've bought from them and spent the whole day in my studio creating this gorgeous 3-fold screen. Each screen measures about 3.75" x 8'.

For more detailed pictures, please visit Natalie's blog or go to Scraptivate's blog for more creative inspiration and just maybe you will find one of their kits for sale!?

May you have a weekend filled with creativity and why not pull out one of the (many) kits you've saved for a rainy day and get your creative mo-jo back...

Thank you for visiting!

World Card-making Day 2011

 On Saturday Elna & I hosted a class to celebrate World Card-making Day.

We used only one sheet of patterned paper from Pink Paislee to decorate

a notepad,

 a birthday calender (inside & outside)

and the envelopes of four note-cards.

The note-cards were embossed and decorated to compliment the pictures on the envelopes.

All this from only one sheet of patterned paper - and there are even one or two images left over!?

May you have a creative and colourful week...