Christmas is going to be here before we know it and I have something fun to share with you to make the gift-giving part of Christmas easier, more fun and personable too! My very talented and creative friends, Kayla Aimee and Wilna F. have teamed up and are offering an online DIY Holiday Workshop. It offers so much inspiration as well as free downloads for creating projects and also gives you ideas for making everyone on your list gifts this year. They have this to say about their class (here's a link to the online classroom so you can see more for yourself!):

"Our goal for the class was to truly make it a DIY holiday. We've repurposed sweaters into armwarmers and baby leggings, ornaments into centerpieces and made sure that ease and affordability went hand in hand with high quality homemade gifts. We've even included some easy craft you can do with your kids!"

There will be more than 25 projects covered in this class, which starts on November 15th. Feel free to stop over to the classroom/website and see some more sneak peeks of the projects they will be creating as well as find answers to any questions you may have about this class. I am taking it myself and am so ready to spend a couple of extra weeks this year celebrating Christmas- it's such a special holiday. I am also excited to offer each of you the chance to win a spot in this online class. KA and Wilna are letting me give away a spot to one of you lucky Nitty.Gritty. readers. Just post a comment telling me one of your favorite Christmas gifts or holiday dish that you love and a winner will be chosen on Monday! Merry early Christmas to one of you! =)

{By the way, doesn't Kayla Aimee have great hair?! She will laugh at me for posting that...but it's so true. Love you, KA! You too, Wilna!}

Every year or possibly every season someone says ‘stickers are on their way out’. Well, if stickers are ever not cool, I don’t want to be cool. I love the variety available and that they don’t just have to be stuck down… it is far more fun to layer them, ink them, cut them apart, sew them together and all manner of sticky things.

This month’s garden is filled with sticker layouts, which makes me a very happy and inspired scrapper. I loved making this layout with its sticker sandwiches (well, that’s what I call it anyway…two stickers with lots of stuff in between!) and the stamped pattern over the patterned paper. SJ took these not-quite-trash the dress photos for me and I can’t explain how much fun it was to get dressed up in wedding gear again and walk along the beach. And now I have a big stack of those photos to scrap…so you will likely be sick of them soon.

Of course there are more sticker layouts from the other Garden Girls! My favourites include this white on white action by Tia, the always adorable Jen Johner, a crazy amount of cute from Mary, border stickers gone supersweet by Caroline, digital stickers with Sheri and this just perfectly perfect layout by Nichol.

So…stickers: cool or uncool? What’s your vote?

xlovesx

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Fonts.com has launched a new collection of fonts called Nice Price. According to the site Nice Price is

A great little collection of fonts – at great prices – for scrapbookers, educators, home and small business users. These distinctive designs and your operating…

Cindy Tobey
Deena Wuest
Jen Jockisch
Kim Watson
Laura Vegas
Maggie Holmes
Sara Winnick
Susan Weinroth
Suzy Plantamura
Wendy Sue Anderson

CK sent each of the Dream Team members a welcome gift provided by these wonderful sponsors:

Adornit – Carolee’s Creations, Advantus, American Art Clay Company, American Crafts, Anna Griffin, BasicGrey, Bazzill Basics Paper, Bella Blvd, Bisous, Bo-Bunny Press, Buttons Galore, C.R. Gibson, Clearsnap, Close To My Heart, Colorbök, Core’dinations, Cornish Heritage Farms, Cosmo Cricket, The Crafter’s Workshop, Creative Memories, Die Cuts With a View, Dimensions, Doodlebug Design, Dyno Merchandise, EK Success, Elmer’s, Eyelet Outlet, Fancy Pants Designs, Fiskars Americas, GlueArts, Glue Dots International, Graphic 45, Hambly Screen Prints, Helmar Adhesives, Hero Arts, iLoveToCreate, a Duncan Enterprises Company, Imaginisce, Inkadinkado , It Takes Two, Jenni Bowlin Studio, Jillibean Soup, K&Company, Karen Foster Design, Krylon, Little Yellow Bicycle, Maya Road, McGill, Mimi Collections, Pebbles Inc., Piggy Tales, Pink Paislee, Prima, QuicKutz, River City Rubber Works, Sakura, Sandylion, Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L, ScrapGirls, Scrapper’s Guide, SEI, Singer, Sounds Easy, Spellbinders, Stampendous!, Stampin’ Up!, Technique Tuesday, Therm O Web, Unibind, We R Memory Keepers, Zva Creative

I am still waiting for my delivery but Laura took a photo of her boxes just after they were delivered....oh my HAT!! Just look at all that lovely loot~ hehehe!

Watch this space!!!
KJ

Good news is that I felt good enough to scrap the other day..which meant the whole stay-at-home-and-be-sick-thing became a little more bearable for me :p So. I made a card for a person whose party is tonight but because I’m not entirely well enough (+ the reg. babysitter is sick herself :p) I’m gonna stay at home w/the kids. Jeje.

The card had to be large enough to cover a giftcard, which was sorta huge. The dimensions are 10x4,5”. Played around w/corrugated cardstock, glimmermist, cracklepaint (peeled paint..loves!) a sheet of Fancy Pants Journal book (Summer Soiree) and small leftoverpieces I had on my desk – like some Hambly transparencies & kraft stickers (love the sparrow..and the edge-stickers peeking from the rose), piece of lovely Jenni Bowlin gold rubons I’ve saved like, forever… a sheet of K&Co shaped minibook..letters from some old Heidi Swapp alphabets (love the alphas, HATE the socalled “adhesive” on them tho).

I especially love how this flower turned out. I read about this on the CK blog a while ago – credit goes to Tia Bennett on how to make this awesome cute&simple flower. I love how this 3ndypapir pattern sort of fits these kind of flowers – I had a scrap of that paper I couldn’t make myself throw away – now it’s turned into these kind of flowers dashed w/a lil glimmermist (Iridescent Gold). Here it rests on a piece of Making Memories glitterflower, whose color matches the dotty Hambly kraftsticker perfectly.

Some more closeups…..did I mention I love this kraft-sparrow from Hambly?? And the lush gold rubons from Jenni Bowlin…….mm… I painted the K&Co minialbum-sheet w/gesso and drybrushed aqua on it, before spraying glimmermist (Iridescent Gold goes to anything!) over it. When dry I rubbed the rubons on the top and painted the edges heavily w/cracklepaint.

This post is already huge, but I just have to add the photos of my little girlie who kept me company today. No, she’s not sick, just had a day off kindergarten because of some planning-stuff. So, as my dear son told me last night “You’re gonna have some girlietime together!!”. Uh yeah.

Girlietime = me taking photos of her…cause I’ve been missing taking photos!! And I’ve been missing the amazing weather we have atm (just my luck – sunny and lovely outside when I’ve been inside sick).

"Wait, I forgot something!" she said. And returned with her sunglasses.
Hum yeah. I sort of made her wear that tutu. She’ll thank me for that later.
Sorta. Hush.

Struggled somewhat w/the wb here. Hm. Looks a bit bland no? This was in the shade of the house – with WB put to shade. Had to correct the wb slightly postproduction though.

I read that some photographers become sad when their children learns to automatically put on their “cameraface” once they reach for their cameras. I totally get them. She loves to pose, and while mommy thinks she’s still cute mommy’s got lots of these kind of photos so mommy tries to snap away especially when she’s between poses.

Right now she’s sitting next to me on her own pc singing along to Regina Spektor. *love*

I bought her this tutu last Christmas. She doesn’t really like it. She refused to wear it the first four-five months?? Sigh. But hey…she’s growing so fast – one day it’ll be too late for her to put on a tutu sorta (heaven knows it’s way too late for me *cough*) so….believe me, it’s for her own good – now she has some photos of herself in a tutu! :p

I edited this photo of Amalie then went back to the original SOOC-piccie (bottom) and thought. Hm. The SOOC piccie is indeed good. Yet I spend a few more minutes each piccie, trying to find a better way to edit it. Like. Why do I insist on spending so much time editing when I really need to just cut down the time editing? I dunno. I think part of the fun lies in the postprocessing too. To see what you can do with the negative (SOOC). It’s…sort of fun :)

Have a nice weekend :)

Get instructions from the Crop Mom website on transforming puzzle pieces into this adorable mini album. Click here to go to tutorial.

Get more inspiration from her gallery.

Jill at A Matter of Memories has posted a review of Sherry Steveson’s book The Scrapbook Embellishment Handbook. Click here to go to the review.

KaiserCraft is calling for entries into their “Design your own rub-on” contest! The contest runs from November 1st to 20th, and entries are welcomed from all countries. Simply submit up to three unique quotations in one of three categories for a…

And well. Being sick and home apparently means I remember that I actually have children, in the sense that looking in Lightroom I can’t find any piccies of the kids (apart from once when I asked Amalie to help me w/holding a project for me) for a whole month until I imported these piccies. One whole month without having taken any piccies of my own children. Duh. Total.Shame.On.Me.

Anyways.

Testing. Piccies.
Sort of thought the layout in the prev. post was a bit muddy when I downscaled it, hence it’s in full size in the prev post. Need to test it further. And show that I actually do have children. Or something like that.

I was awake for like two hours on Halloween. Had to snap a few piccies of the kids :)

(Ok I’m lying now. I was awake for however long it took to watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire w/the kids). (Yes Adrian is borrowing my old slr. My hopes is that he’ll be interested in photography. So far no luck. Amalie’s reeeeally interested in being in front of the camera though.)

Love that the kids still love to play together. Yesterday they turned half the living-room into their own house.

(Amalie is running towards the camera yelling “Lemme see!! Lemme see!”)

Ok. Testing three things atm. Diff. ways to display the piccies (loves! So easy!), scheduling and the overall sharpness/muddiness of the piccies when published (prob just me who’s messing around).

What else?
I’m soooo excited about Lightroom 3.0!!! I particulary noticed this bit: “state-of-the-art-noisereducer” – sounds oh so fancy and hopefully awesome! (Oh, and that the Boutwells are working on some presets for Lightroom. O.o)

My layout about Eli actually won the contest “Scrapping the Music – på norsk” had for Knutsen & Ludvigsens “Dum & Deilig”. I’m just delighted I actually was able to join one of their contests…K&L ruler (one of the best concerts I’ve been to was their reunion-concert w/DumDumBoys ♥♥♥)…. Whee, thank you so much!! :)

Not gonna complain about how sick I am – I’m all about positive thoughts & am hoping by the time this post hits the Internet I’m feeling good enough to actually scrap some!! (don’t you hate it when you’re like, feeling you should have been able to do a zillion things all at once but only manage to do….nada? :( )

Still sick – but now I’m at least able to be awake most of the time and like, being bored to death because I don’t know what to do (well, I’ve got a lot to do but..) and my head constantly hurts and my throat’s got a nice little farm of cactuses growing inside of them and my attentionspan is non-excistent and bleh bleh bleh *feeling so.so.sorry for herself* Right now I can’t decide wheter to read (think I’ll save it for tonight), watch Gossip Girl (got so many eps to catch up! And HEY where’s House!?? Hasn’t been a new ep in a forever, grrrr!!!) or finish the card I have to finish within friday (should prob do that one first).

But no. Instead I figured I’d test out this Windows Live Writer thingie which Xstine wrote about (wohoo…it’ll allow you to do target = blank without having to type the code in manually – bonus!), see if it’s anything for me and stuff…I like the WYSIWYG layout so far…let’s see if it’s any good publishing and stuff too.

So.

Forgot to share the last Pencil-Lines layout. Me and Kine and her übercool insta-fun-in-a-box! :) With Kine I just had to use these Prima-papers.cutecutecute :)

Right. Time to do something. Other than feeling sorry for myself and stuff. BLeh.

Stay safe & healthy…this sucks!

With the calendar turned over to November, it’s going to get more and more difficult to ignore that the holidays will be upon us…so perhaps it’s best to stop ignoring and start embracing the Christmas season! After all, the shops already have aisles filled with Christmas chocolates and stocking stuffers, so it must nearly be time to celebrate!

It’s something that started small. One year it was just me and my pen and my book, trying to take back Christmas and rediscover my love of the holiday after a few years when Christmas lacked a certain sparkle. The second Christmas, I shared the idea with a small group of crafty friends, just to see if this reclaiming idea was something that made sense outside of my head. It did. And from there, Journal your Christmas became an online class that I shared with the rest of the world. And by ‘rest of the world’, I mean if we just found an Antarctic explorer who fancied taking part, we would have Christmas journallers from every continent.

This is the most magical time of the year, and Journal your Christmas lets you keep that magic for years to come.

Every year, Journal your Christmas includes daily prompts from the 1st of December to the 6th of January, the twelfth day of Christmas. The 37 illustrated PDF files are delivered straight to your inbox so you can read them over your first cup of coffee and mull over each topic for a full day. There’s also an archive of the class materials online in case you can’t get to your email or in case something dreadful happens to your computer. And like every year, you can go it alone or be as social as you like, with a private discussion forum where you’ll find other Christmas journallers who will cheer you on and share your excitement, but if you prefer to stick to the prompts only, that’s completely fine too. And like every year, if you’re participated once, you can join us every Christmas for as long as you like at no extra cost.

In addition to ideas for writing topics and styles and notes on photos not to miss, the 37 prompts include more than 300 scrapbook pages to inspire your crafting creativity.

Of course, every Christmas needs a little something new, so this year’s additions include:
…a guide to preparing your album this month so you can scrap through the busy schedule of December
…a printable Christmas planner to help keep things from getting crazy in the countdown to the big day
…new printable accents for paper scrappers
…a digital kit absolutely crammed full of papers, templates, overlays, lettering and embellishments designed just for the class
…a bonus workbook on getting the best photographs possible this Christmas, with advice and examples from dozens of professional photographers.
so there is plenty to keep things exciting whether this is your first Christmas journal or your fifth.

Like all online scrapbooking classes at shimelle.com, Journal your Christmas includes
…permanent access to all class materials
…private forum for discussion and sharing your work
…prompts delivered straight to your inbox
…ongoing membership — pay just once and participate as many years as you would like at no additional cost.

Sign up now or gift a place to a friend as an early Christmas gift! You can pay in your choice of US Dollars or UK Pounds.

You can pay by credit/debit card (click on the left of the payment screen) or Paypal account (log in on the right of the payment screen). Please be sure to enter a valid email address as part of your payment so your prompts can be delivered to your inbox. Orders can take up to 24 hours to process, though we are usually quicker. If you haven’t received your class registration after 24 hours, just email me and we’ll make sure your registration is completed and ready for you to get started!

If you participated last year, you don’t need to do anything to join us again. In about a week you will receive an email with some updated info and reminders for you.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll share a few more sneaky looks at what you can expect this year, so keep your eyes open throughout November. (That’s this year’s cover in the first and last images.) Any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments and I’ll get right back to you with an answer! I can’t wait to get into the holiday spirit with new faces and alumni in this year’s class!

xlovesx

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Well, my craft on at least. ;) The night before Halloween I plopped myself down in our master and plopped the kids in the living room with Daddy.

And, here's what I created. :)

First up, a sign for the trick-or-treaters (we did have some!) so that they wouldn't miss the basket of Play-doh by the front door. The paper is Pink Paislee, the black glitter letter stickers are American Crafts and the other black glitter stickers are Making Memories. I cut out a smaller piece of chipboard to adhere to the back to make the piece a little sturdier. I also adhered the ribbon to that piece. Oh, and you can't really see but their is a line drawn from the letter E in ONE to the spider. :)

The other project I did was actually finishing up one I'd started AGES ago! I'd already painted the letters black and cut out and rounded the corners of the patterned paper but hadn't done anything else. So, I dug out my Shimmerz mist and went to town. I sprayed the base of the door hanger with Concrete Shimmerz and the letters with that, too. Once they dried, I inked the edges of the chipboard (actually an accordian mini book from Maya Road) and the edges of the paper (from Scenic Route). I then glued the letters to the paper and mounted the paper on the chipboard with foam adhesive. I used my Crop-a-Dile to punch two holes at the top and tied the ribbon through them.

For final touch, I added some Mrs. Grossman's green gems to the letters.

So, there they are. My Halloween scrappiness! Hope you like them! :D

Fall into Scrapbooking originally appeared on About.com Scrapbooking on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 15:07:55.

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Oh goodness, thanks so much for your enthusiasm in the comments!

Here’s our lucky commenter…

Sharon Brown Says:
I really like the sound of this, I’ve been longing to have a go at blogging but don’t really know where to start

Sharon, I’m emailing you now to get you all set to go!

If you’ve signed up, you should now have received this morning’s email. If it didn’t arrive, you can download it from the class forum but also send me an email so I can make sure your emails don’t disappear into the ether.

If you haven’t signed up yet, it’s not too late. We’re just getting started! Find all the details here and join us!

More news about a class later today…maybe a class involving a certain holiday that will be here before we know it? Check back this afternoon for all the details!

xlovesx

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