Look at this gorgeous little mini album kit I just purchased from Tarisota:

It was wonderful to sit down at the computer with Photoshop open and create some digital pages. My first digital for the year as a matter of fact! As much as I love getting my hands (and art room) dirty, it was quite relaxing to listen to some music and play with an awesome digital kit! I am talking about this one:

The kit is called Re-Creation23 and it's a collaboration between Catherine Designs and Createwings Designs available HERE. It has so, so many beautiful embellishments included in this kit and the papers are stunning! Here are three pages I created yesterday using the kit.

We love Australia Day here in Australia. We spend the public holiday celebrating in so many different ways. Today we will be having a barbie (BBQ) with a few snags (sausages) and a tinny or two (a can of beer...lol)! We fly our flags high with Aussie pride, even on our cars!

On to some creative goodness..... I actually made this last year at the beginning of December but it was sitting against the wall until I was able to find some trim or ribbon I like to go around the edges. It is finally up on the wall now and I just love looking at it when we come and go through the front door.


As you can sort of see I have a hall stand at the front door. I found it at a furniture store very cheap as the mirror had been smashed so they took a large chunk of money off it. I was planning on putting a mirror back in but never got around to it (so glad I didn't now). I thought it would be the perfect place for the magnet board. I use the House of 3 digital project kit for the months and the dates. I used my House of 3 House Warming kit to print the frame out and add some mirror paper to the inside of the frame. Similar to the one I made for my house warming album here.

I simply purchased a cheap magnetic board from my local office supply store with some plain brown wrapping paper to cover the board with. I went with the brown wrapping paper is it's really thin, perfect thickness for the magnets to still stick to the board. I used a bunch of stamps from my Kenner Road kits and some from one of Tim Holtz's collections here. I also used Tim Holtz's distressing inks to stamp them onto the brown paper and used a blending tool to ink the edges of the paper. 


I was inspired by Heidi Swapps notepad she made for her magnet board so I made a similar little notepad. I used a gorgeous teal Prima flower and added a gorgeous crystal Christmas decoration to it and stuck a magnet on the back of it.


I cut a piece of muslin, inked and frayed the edges, added a Kenner Road stamp and a vintage photo from Old School (August '09), added some hand embroidery with pearls, leaves and glass hearts, and added a hand drawn bird on canvas stuck onto some chipboard and added some vintage trim from my stash as well as some teal trim from We R Memory Keepers. I then attached all this to a vintage paper bag that I received with some free goodies from Blue Bazzar. I inked the edges of the paper bag as well to give it a more aged appearance.


I printed out the Hof3 months and dates and inked all the edges, attached some beads and wire to some of the dates and hung them from a magnetic clip with an album ring to hold the dates.
I took another vintage photo from KR kit Old School '09 and hand sewed around the edges, added some vintage trim from the same KR kit and threaded the trim with some teal embroidery thread with wooden beads in every second loop. I simply added a Prima butterfly with a magnet on the back to hand it from the board.


Lastly I took an small old frame I found in my stash and covered it with the brown paper with more TH and KR stamps and added some little teal pearls from Kaisercraft. I inserted a photo of the girls inside and added a little word bit I made in Photoshop, "You are loved". I found a gorgeous teal 'Paris' broach and added a magnet on the back of it and added it to the board.

....and yes I have been playing catch up since I returned from our vacation but I did find some time for a little scrap therapy.......aaahhhhh......just what a girl needed after such a busy holiday season. For two full days I spent in my art room playing with my Kenner Road December goodies and I have to say (yes I know I say this all the time but seriously I find it so easy to scrap with the collections kl puts together) the December collection (I usually purchase every kit KR brings out each month) has to be my new favorite collection. As I was creating each page, a new idea to use the goodies would pop into my head! Enough chit chat, here are some pages.

The photo was taken at the beach up at Coffs Harbour as the sun was setting. As I was about to take the photo Miss J reached over to her sister and said to her "let me fix your hair" hence the title....lol! It was such a sweet moment!

As promised I finally found some time to edit the Christmas gift photos. This year I had so much fun creating some of the Christmas presents for friends and family. I plan to keep the tradition going each Christmas. I loved the look on my family's faces as they unwrapped their handmade gifts. My sister especially. It took several hours to convince her to just open the gift. She said it was wrapped so beautifully she didn't want to open the gift. I had to threaten her saying that I would go home now if she didn't open it. My niece Miss C loved her gift, she has it sitting on her dresser and to my surprise, the colors in her room go perfectly with the canvas. Ok, on with some photos!

I made my 3 nephews gift card holders for their gift cards. Nothing fancy as they just tore them open as I suspected....lol. I simply stapled a bit of ribbon the the bottom of the gift card to use it to pull the gift card from the handmade envelope. Stamped them with Pink Paislee's Mistletoe and Co Impressions clear stamps and also used Fiskars a to z clear stamps that I got in one of my Teckni Colour kits from Tarisota. I used a sewing machine to seal the edges of the envelopes and stuck a Making Memories glitter foam sticker on the back to seal the envelope.


 My brother has a terrible memory (either that or he just couldn't be bothered....lol) and he always forgets our birthdays so I made him a magnetic birthday reminder calendar so he can put it on his fridge. I got the idea and the printable perpetual calendar from the Pebbles Inc blog that Celeste Smith made. A perfect and fitting gift for my lazy bones brother! I  used all Kenner Road goodies from Windy Corner (October '09 Add on kit) and Handmaiden (October '09 Main kit).

Each Christmas I change the colors I use for wrapping the presents and this year I chose gold, red, green and beige/tan/brown. Wrapping presents would have to be my favorite part of gift giving.

I was inspired by a Christmas tutorial that Kendra McCracken (this woman has such amazing talent) did for Fiskars called Cardinals and Tags Tree so I made similar ones as my gift tags for my family's presents and added American Crafts Thickers for the first letter of their names.