A Meaningful Gift for Everyone on Your Holiday List This Year

 

Of course if you don't have a small children in your life, you can get older children to take photos, use your own art or use month-themed photos.

These calendars are so easy, you just need to scan or take of photo of their drawings and upload them to your favourite photo printer, granted that they make calendars ;)

12 is a great number for dividing things up. No matter if you have 1, 2, 3 or 4 children, it all works out to an even number of drawings for each child.  But, when I 'only' had 5 children I found a way around it.  For 2 of the months, they would each draw the same thing together on the same page, for example one Easter egg or one Christmas gift each. 

When they were too little to draw but old enough to colour, I would sketch out a little drawing for them to colour in.  This also served as a model for the older ones to copy. Hector was only just two when he coloured in these lily of the valley leaves.

It's also a good idea regardless, to sketch out sample pictures, making sure that you keep the designs simple.  Not only is it easier for their little hands to draw, but they also tire of drawing so many. The easier it is, the better.

When they were too little to even hold a pencil I used photos of them with the theme of the month in mind.

On the front I always add our Christmas card photo for that year.

Cedric is in the 2013 photo, he was born in time for Christmas, but I had the calendars all made up before he was born, so he didn't contribute :D

What is your go to Christmas gift?

Some Fun and Exciting News!!

The Cut Shoppe
the Cut Shoppe blog

follow the Cut Shoppe on your favourite social media
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I'm in wonderful company!  These ladies are new to the team as well:

HEATHER ADAMS

MAGDA BOLINSKA

MARY-ANN MALDONADO

MISSY WHIDDEN

STEPHANIE STRADER

TARRAH McLEAN

 

And, these ladies are returning from last term:

 

ALLIE STEWART

AMY COOSE

DANIELLE de KONINK

GINA LIDEROS

How to use Your Cut Files to make FUN shaped cards in 7 Easy Steps :D

 

 

bat owl by PPdN Designs
hockey skate by Sarah Bailey

Here are the steps to making your own shaped cards. I've broken it down for you so that even if you are a beginner die cutter, you can make shaped cards :D  I use a silhouette, but you can adapt the steps to your electronic die cutter.

 

Step 1  Decide on a cut file whose shape would make a good card and resize it.  I like to go roughly 4X6 (10x15cm) so that it will fit in a standard envelope.

tip resize all of the pieces of the design at the beginning so that they will all fit together once the card is finished.

 

Step 2  Open the TRACE window, and selecte Trace Outer Edge, to trace around only the outside edge.  Move everything else aside for now, including the piece you just traced, leaving just the traced outer edge. 

 tip You may want to rotate the image to get a straight line on top (if you want a flip up card) or on the left side (if you want a regular card) to make a nice fold.  For example, I lined up the two points of my bat's ears on the same line on the grid.

 

Step 3 In the Replicate window, choose mirror above if you want your card to flip up or mirror left if you want your card to open like a book.

tip If the tops of your images (in a flip up card) or sides (in a regular card) don't completely touch, you may want to draw lines at each end where the images meet.  I made mine big, fat and blue below so you can see better.

 

Step 4  Next, open the Trace window and trace around the outer edge again, getting both versions of the image.  Then, you can get rid of the other images.  Don't forget the little lines if you used those.

tip  You can group the pieces before tracing to make deleting them all easier.

 

Step 5 Now, you need to make a score line so your card will fold easily.  Move your image so that one fo the lighter grey lines from the grid runs right where you want your fold to be.  This makes it easier to get a straight score line.  It doesn't matter if that means putting parts of your image off of the cutting area, you can move it all later.  Open the Line Style window and choose a dashed line.  With the Draw a line tool from the menu on the left, draw your score line.

 

Step 6 Select both the score line and the complete design and group them. (See tip from step 4)

 

Step 7  Move the piece to where you'd like it and cut!  Cut other pieces from the design as usual and have fun decorating your card :D

I'm working on my Christmas cards next! Keep an eye out for them coming here soon, along with something fun that I have in the works!! :D

 

The ’20 Things You Might Not Know About Me’ Blog Tag

the instagram photo I posted after Kris and I met up last week :D

and the dream photo of when Richelle and meet goes her ;)

Kris from withakwriting.com
Richelle from theredscorpio.com
April from Blackburgsbelle.com

Hair Brained Schemes' Shop
I have these in my bathroom
I love how sassy this one is 
I gave this one to my brother ;)

A New Earth
The Shack
Harry Potter

photo from tourism PEI

 
photo from ubibanca.lu

Shimelle's blog

Nancy from domesticraft.blogspot.com
Trish from jewelsbytrish.com
Lisa from mykreativepursuits.com

Here are the questions to copy and paste:

Question 1: How tall are you?

Question 2: Do you have a hidden talent? If so, what?

Question 3: What’s your biggest blog-related pet peeve?

Question 4: What’s your biggest non-blog related pet peeve?

Question 5: What’s your favorite song?

Question 6: What’s your favorite Etsy shop that isn’t yours?

Question 7: What’s your favorite way to spend your free time when you’re alone?

Question 8: What’s your favorite junk food?

Question 9: Do you have a pet or pets? If so, what kind and what are their names?

Question 10: What are your number one favorite nonfiction and fiction books?

Question 11: What’s your favorite beauty product?

Question 12: When were you last embarrassed? What happened?

Question 13: If you could only drink one beverage (besides water) for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Question 14: What’s your favorite movie?

Question 15: What were you in high school: prom queen, nerd, cheerleader, jock, valedictorian, band geek, loner, artist, prep?

Question 16: If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?

Question 17: PC or Mac?

Question 18: Last romantic gesture from a crush, date, boy/girlfriend, spouse?

Question 19: Favorite celebrity?

Question 20: What blogger do you secretly want be best friends with?

An Easy-Peasy, Happy, Little Summer Mini Album You Can Make Today.

 

 

Amanda Robinson Studio 

I am so very excited to share this project with you, it was a lot fun to put together, I hope you like it as much as I do! The very first thing that I thought of when I saw Amanda’s cute Scribble Words die cuts was ‘Wouldn’t these make a great mini album!’ So that’s exactly what I did. :D I cut out each die cut from both sets and layered them over patterned paper.  Here’s my step by step process of how I made my album.

1. I cut the die cuts from white card stock and then decided on my background colours, I laid the white die cut on the possible patterned papers to make sure there was enough contrast to read the white words.

To read the rest, come on over to Amanda Robinson Studio.  Then don't forget to come back and show me what you made :D

A First Time Glimpse into my Home and Closet

 

 

 

I was going for a serious quidditch expression ;)

I love the way my Stacy Julian green kitchen walls look with the turquoise in the hall.  My studio calls for me to come play while I do the dishes.

 

How would you describe your style? Let me know in the comments, please!

Inspiration that empowers you

Keith's artwork

 

My secrets revealed :D My HOW and WHY of scrapbooking!

CONNIE'S SITE: clickychickcreates.com

Here are my anwsers to the questions from the blog tour.

 

My 3 FANTASTIC CREATIVE FRIENDS:

Beth Soler
I have been scrapbooking for over ten years and yes I started with Creative Memories like the majority of scrappers have. I realized the importance of documenting my family's history so scrapbooking is what I did. I am also a huge tech person and love my iPhone and as the times were changing and smartphones became more of everyday lives I decided to marry my two passions and Scrapping Wonders was born. My goal is to inspire and teach people how to get those photos off of their phones and into albums as quickly and as easily as they possibly can.
scrappingwonders.com

Lisa Harris
Hello! My name is Lisa Harris. I'm a fourth grade reading teacher at the best little elementary school in the world, and I live in Swamp People territory, aka the Great State of Louisiana. I've been an avid scrapbooker for about 14 years, and have taught scrapbooking classes for the last six. I love to share my passion for memorykeeping with others, and could talk about it endlessly. I share my ramblings on my blog, where you'll find a weekly stashbusting series, Scraps & Stash Saturday, information about my wholesale scrappy buying club, and semi-monthly workshop kits. You can find me at MyKreativePursuits.com.

Kimberly Kalil
Hey there, I'm Kimberly from sunny Southern Arizona, mom to two precious kiddos; wife to one cool dude; busy traveling consultant; crafter; digital memory keeper; and seeker of all things creative. 
I travel for business. A lot. I work (from home) as a consultant for a Danish company that makes software for newspapers. This means I travel to newspapers around the world and train their staff to use our content management and design system. I have a degree in journalism and spent many years as a writer and editor before my current job. Writing has always been my first love … still is. In my free time, I’m a freelance writer and am a regular contributor at Parenting.com.
I adore anything creative. I scrap. I sew. I paint. I take as many pictures as I can. I spend a lot of my free time working on crafty sorts of projects. I’ve been paper scrapping since college, but but converted to digi a few years back. You can find me at my blog www.kimberlykalil.com or over at my Etsy shop.

 

ClickyChick friends! Why I am sooo glad you are here!!!

clickychickcreates.com

Entre here Debby Schuh fans!

Hi there, if you are coming here from Debby Schuh's blog, WELCOME!!  If you love Debby, then we are already friends, she is amazing!

If you are looking for more photos of my album look HERE and HERE.  I also made a video where I go through it page by page. You can watch that HERE.

Hope that you like what you see here and you'll stay for a while :D