Happy New Year!

Photo Credit 

It's hard to believe that 365 days of counterfeiting have come and gone ... and yet here we are, celebrating the arrival of a brand new year. On behalf of the whole Counterfeit Kit Challenge team I want to wish you a very happy, healthy, prosperous & creative new year!

Your final challenge of 2013 is to document your goals, resolutions and aspirations for 2014. 

Studies show that those who take the time to write down their plans have a much higher success rate when it comes to actually achieving their goals ... so let's get our journaling pens out and start 2014 off on the right foot! Make a layout, a Project Life spread, a tag, an art canvas - anything you want, so long as your hopes for the new year are clearly defined!

Here's a peek of the layout I'm working on ...

Thanks for joining us for our month of holiday challenges and inspiration. Be sure to swing by tomorrow for a brand new kit reveal! It's a great one!!! xx

Flashback Challenge

Here's a quick challenge that should be easy to draw inspiration from: pull out your favorite layout - it's okay to play favorites this time! - and draw inspiration from it.

I decided to use a layout from Christmas three years ago.  I really liked the dangling ornaments on the page and decided to go with that.

For my new page, I made large, oversized ornaments to hold the pictures and sprinkled on some sequins.  A little tulle and baker's twine and I'm done!  Now I just need to get the pictures printed!

Quick and easy and you'll have to Christmas pictures scrapped in no time!

Until next time,
Milissa

Snowman Kit

Here's a great winter time craft to prepare for the snow that may be coming your way.  Create a snowman kit so you'll always have the accessories needed to outfit the perfect snowman!  Check out the tutorial here from the "Make It" blog to find out how.

No snow in your part of the world?  Make a pretend one by stuffing some white garbage bags with crumpled up paper.  The kids will have a blast!

2013 captured

As the December draws to a close, I like to look back at the year gone by and remember some of the details. Sometimes, we are so busy living each day with the ups and downs of regular life that we can lose track of the bigger picture. By taking each month and thinking about the highlights, I get a better feeling of all the little events that have built up to make the year.

Why not join me in going though your photo library for 2013 and picking a single photo to sum up each month of the year? By printing them out in a small format, it's easy to fit all 12 onto one page. If you just want to write a few words about the top highlights, then you can add that under each of the photos. If you want to add a lot of journalling, you could make your layout into a spread, or even use my favourite technique for adding a whole lot of journalling onto an additional 6x12 page.

I printed my photos 2.5" square to make three rows and kept the whole design really simple with just a few ink splats, a couple of embellies and a little twine so that the focus is on the title, the photos and the journalling block. I brushed a little gold mist around the photo mat to add a little depth and that was about it. No piles of layers and papers and clusters for me this time around. Just photos and words. Simple but does the job!

If you take the time to make your own 2013 captured page, it would be great if you shared over at Mr Linky (here).

Thanks for sharing our December with us. See you in the New Year!

Lisa

Indoor Snowfall

Leslie here again :~)

Although I love Christmas the calm after the storm is a delightfully quiet time that I look forward to. For me, January is "the white month" - pristine, usually snowy with the holiday cleared away & no social calendar to speak of. 

Isn't this glorious? The perfect picture of what January is to me.

 Pinterest link

Although the link does include patterns for 4 different snowflakes it doesn't connect to directions.

I decided this would be easy enough to counterfeit, though, with a simple metal wreath form sprayed white to serve for the framework to hang the snowflakes from. It appears that everything is strung with fishing line - the trick will be making that many snowflakes! 

I've already decided that I will have to hang it inside of a packing box to keep it intact from year to year.

Today's challenge is to make an old-fashioned folded & cut snowflake! Enjoy :~)

Boxing Clever

So Christmas has come and gone and what's left? A huge mound of chocolate? More food than you could ever eat? 

And … a pile of empty boxes?

 
Cardboard is beautiful
especially when exposed
Revealing the ridges
hidden beneath

Like Teak or Oak
its moving color and texture
are alluring
I like my cardboard in large pieces
The larger, the less limited
the potential
Cardboard is experimental
Cardboard is gold
Cardboard can be cut
And Cardboard can fold
I found a piece of cardboard today
and breathed my fingertips across it's surface
inhaling the hair-like filaments it grows
listening to the harmony it sang
Cardboard is beautiful
especially when exposed
Cardboard can be cut
and Cardboard can fold
***
T. Curtis 12/22/2008

Inspired yet? Here are some great ideas on how to recycle those boxes...

STORAGE BOXES

STARS

WALL ART

MONOGRAM

If you need some ideas on how to get rid of that huge mound of Chocolate, I would be happy to share my address!!!!

Wishing you the most fabulous of Boxing Days - until the next time

Do it yourself gift wrapping

My sister's gift this Christmas is a rather large box picture frame which the store kindly wrapped in brown paper.
Before I unwrapped it to re-wrap I thought "Why not just decorate that paper?"
So out came my Kaisercraft stamps and some black ink.

 

I simply stamped all over the brown paper parcel.

I chose the holly & berries and the bauble stamps, but others would work just as well.

Here's the finished gift.

The ribbon is wired so it stands up from the parcel.

 

I'm sure my sister will appreciate that I designed her wrapping myself.

 

Happy Christmas from Julene

 

'Twas The Night Before Christmas ...

... which means neither you nor I have an awful lot of scrappy time left!  I'll bet that you have plenty of photos to scrap though.  And all being well you'll have plenty more by the end of the festivities.  So how will you scrap them?  A mini-book perhaps?  Or a multi-photo page?

Here's a lovely sketch from Scrapbook & Cards Today's winter collection to inspire you:

Not a fan of double page spreads?  No problem - just pick half the sketch - like this:

I'm sure you'll agree tha, with a little adaptation, either half of the following sketch would make a brilliant single page layout:

If you need more seasonal inspiration, check out the rest of the winter collection at Scrapbook & Cards Today or pop over to Becky Fleck's December Pagemaps.

If a mini-book is more your style please pop over to my blog today where I've posted some instructions for making a word mini-book ready to fill with photos ...

Merry Christmas from Jemma!

Christmas by the Nativity

Hello, dawn here,

and we hope that your Christmas 

season is beautiful.

Your challenge today is to use
the Nativity in your crafting.

I made this LO using a card from my
Auntie.
It is a gorgeous, interactive card
and one that I wanted to keep and remember.

If you'd like to see more about this page
and another Nativity project used in a completely
different way,
please come over to my
corner of the blog world
right here.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Recycled Holiday Fun

Good morning everyone, I'm Angela and I'm hoping your day is a bright one. My children are home for the school holidays and waiting excitedly for the Christmas celebrations. So often this time of the year can be an extra expense on an already stretched budget. My children want to do things in the waiting time and we turn to some recycling for free pre-Christmas activities. I rescue items that would have ended up in landfill and the children raid the recycling bins in the kitchen corner. We make decorations, toys and anything else we can think of.

My challenge to you today is to check what you are throwing away, rescue something from it and either craft something yourself or set the children to work making something special.

Here are some ideas, I'm sure you could find hundreds more.

• Recycled paper/book pages stars with House of Revivals
• Jigsaw Garland
• Flowers from egg boxes
• DIY draw organisers
• Some games to make
• Newspaper baskets, wall hangings, toys and sewing ideas with Vannessa Janssen
• Lots of more ideas over at Inheriting Our Planet

Have some fabulously creative recycling fun and be blessed.