Where has the time gone?

Hi there to all my wonderful readers. I know, this spot in ‘Blogland’ has been so so quiet – please forgive me.

This year has simply forged ahead leaving anyone slower than a bullet train standing on the platform! Have you also found that unless you rushed around, you simply could not make it to the train on time?

Now Santa’s about to arrive! On a train? Perhaps not, but I would guess that he too would have to keep up with the times and add a motor or two to his sleigh to speed up Rudolph and company.

We haven’t yet put up our tree. My son, just this minute, came to ask if we can put it up. My train is slowing down towards the station now, so I am more in the mood for some Christmas spirit, so I guess today will be the tree day.

This year I’ve had an amazing opportunity to get back into designing! I have begun designing scrapbook papers for a local company and am thrilled to say that 3 collections have already been printed. A Christmas range, a soft floral themed range and a beach range.

I am so enjoying designing again and working with Lorna, the owner of Scrap Collections is such a pleasure! Do pop by the Scrap Collections blog here and the website here.

What a feeling to actually see my designs in print!

Here are the 3 collections along with some layouts designed with the paper:

CHRISTMAS COLLECTION 2012:

 

Layout by Michelle van Wyk

PURE BLISS COLLECTION 2012:

 

 

Layout by Michelle van Wyk

layout by Nikki Preece

BEACHES COLLECTION 2012:

Layout by Lisa (Memory Shed)

Layout by Michelle van Wyk

To all you crazy cut & glue, ink & punching people out there, do let me know what you think of these papers. I would also welcome any ideas for colour schemes or themes!

Today I have a fun printable to share with you. It’s an A4 size sign. So simply click on it to enlarge, save to your computer and then print it out onto A4 size white cardstock and pop into a frame or hang it up with ribbon.

Enjoy preparing for this fabulous festive time!

Till next time

Practice

I stumbled across this quote recently and thought it to be so true.

If you want to achieve anything; be it in art, in sport, at work, the only way to improve is to practice. Then practice some more.

I find that if I haven’t painted for a couple of weeks, once I pick up a brush again, it takes a little while to get comfortable with it again. Do you ever find that?

So I made myself a little reminder….

If you like it, feel free to click on it for a larger version. then right click and save.

Frame(edited) and bird are from The Graphics Fairy.

Have a great weekend!!

Gifts Galore

Everyone loves getting gifts. I love giving them too, especially if I can decorate them beautifully. I feel it adds a little of yourself to the gift, adding a personal touch. An added benefit is that you never run out of wrapping paper!

I always make my own cards and now I also make my own gift wrap. It’s especially easy if you have an A3 printer as you can print out slightly bigger paper. If not, just print two sheets of A4 and join them. Get creative in hiding the tape – it’s really not difficult. I do it all the time with A3 paper too.

Here’s a photo of gifts I gave a friend yesterday for her birthday:

Not just for cake-toppers… I attached a cut-out of the bird to a wooden skewer and threaded it through the ribbon on the gift for just an added bit of whimsy.

The very simple card (my friend loves ‘plain & simple’)…

          

The images I used are all from my all-time-favourite-vintage-image-site : The Graphics Fairy. Karen has the most amazing images you can use for absolutely anything!

Here are the images I used: click images for link to original images

     &       

I grabbed my faithful Photoshop and edited the images till I was satisfied with them. In this case I changed the images to black & white, removed the background to the botanical & also tweaked a few other settings.

The gift paper print is printed on ordinary A3 white printing paper. The card and bird cut-out were printed onto white cardstock.

Here’s a free printable A3 sheet of the wrapping paper – my gift to you!

Love,

Ready for a weekend?

I certainly am!

Today I am sharing some photos I took this week of a part of our garden we affectionately call “The Secret Garden”. When we bought the ground, and were planning the building of the house, there was this natural grouping of wild Black Protea trees growing which we immediately earmarked for a perfect little secluded garden.

Over the past 6 years of living here, the garden has transformed a little season by season. This year, my husband has been planting Bromeliads and air plants in old twisted tree branches/ trunks which he has collected from all over.

I love the pretty entrance with the metal pergola and gate smothered in a crimson creeping rose and flanked by a purple potato bush which has made its home in a dead Protea tree. It looks so welcoming and through the gate you can just see the little 4-seater concrete table and benches.

This is where we like to have a sundowner over the weekend. In fact, my husband often ends up gardening here, pruning his Bonsai’s or planting a new log full of colourful Bromeliads while I chat away sipping wine. My parents inevitably join us and the kids pop in from time to time or run around on the lawn. The dogs are always around- especially if we’re also snacking on biltong!

Talking of wine, I have been wanting to make a little sign with this saying for ages. I just love it! So I thought I’d share it with you today in celebration of the weekend approaching.

To download, simply click on the sign - printable A4 size.

The pointing hand and background are both from The Graphics Fairy.

TGIF!!

Tuesday Tutorial : treat cones

Today is laundry day in our house. So while the washing machine is busy with its cycle, I was browsing around the internet and found this cute tutorial for making a sweet treat gift.

I got thinking how pretty it would be as a hostess gift, or perhaps a teacher’s gift filled with chocolates or soaps. It would also be ideal to put birthday money or a gift card in.

So, after adding another load of washing, I used some images from The Graphics Fairy and created two gift cones. {Nothing like being creative to make the task of doing the laundry so much more pleasant!)

The hydrangea paper cone:

The Toile paper cone:

The finished cone is around 9 inches (23cm) from top to bottom.

Toile Cone Gift Bag – DOWNLOAD

Hydrangea Cone Treat Bag – DOWNLOAD

Note: I found double-sided tape worked really well to secure the cones so you don’t see any cellotape on the outside.

Love,

I’m linking to:

Dance like Nobody’s Watching

Don’t you love this quote?

"You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Sing like there's nobody listening,
And live like it's heaven on earth."

- William W. Purkey

There are poems, quotes & lyrics that gained inspiration from these words, including this beautiful song “I hope you dance” by Lee Ann Womack. (I’m hoping my daughter will sing this for me one day!)…….

one of my fav’s

When I saw this little dancer digi stamp, I knew immediately that I wanted to use some of these words on the card.

So here’s the latest card I made for the Progressive challenge over at CDAC…

Want these words in some word art? 

Grab it in 3 different styles:

(click on image, right click to save)

 

Have a great weekend. (Says she with-smile-on-her-face dressed in a short-sleeved SUMMER tee!)

Printable mini gift cards

YES, this blog has been boring lately!

YES, I have been MIA! (Reasons beyond my control!)

YES, I am back!

YES, I am back with a FREE printable gift for you!

Spring is definitely in the air! As I type here, my studio door is open and it’s 8.45 in the morning – and yippee – no cold air!

Our Poplar trees started sprouting new leaves about a week ago and I’m loving the fresh clean green – can’t wait for the whole landscape to transform into that new fresh green hue so typical of spring.

 

This weekend, Reece decided it was time he learnt to ride the ride-on lawnmower. He had such fun driving around the garden on it. Guess this is his new toy! Note how he has welcomed spring too – he insists on wearing shorts and tee’s (even though the temperature is not quite there yet!).

Last week I got stuck into my studio – I cleaned, re-packed. (Actually I had to re-pack as not one, but all the shelves in my cupboard fell down and I was forced to pick everything up!). I ended up re-packing ALL my cupboards and moving furniture around… I now have a studio where I can see the floor again and only a couple of things left to find a new shelf home for. As my studio is now tidier, I can (miraculously- LOL!) find things and I am now able to craft away, so here’s something for you…

a free printable

Hope you enjoy these! I have designed a set of 6 mini gift cards. They are only around 7cm square (3 inches). There are 3 different card designs (2 of each). You can either attach them to gifts or …. give them as a gift made up as I have in this photo.

• Print out onto white A4 cardstock.
• Simply add the paper strip label and little butterfly embellishment (included on printable sheet) to finish them off and you have a pretty little gift for someone, or simply as an extra little something in a gift bag.
• I used Ranger Distress Ink (Vintage photo) around the edges of the label.
• You could add a little silk flower or some ribbon too.
• Instead of the strip, pop these into a tiny brown paper bag and glue the strip around the bag and embellish with the label and butterfly.

I’d love to see if you make these up yourself, especially if you embellish them in a different way- so do send me a photo if you do! (Either leave a a link here or send me an email).

You can click here to download a printable PDF.

Linking up here:

  

Enjoy!

Free Printable Quote

 

Hi there! Happy weekend! Hopefully we’re looking toward some slightly warmer weather! It has been freezing here! And we had – weirdly enough - 13mm of rain day before yesterday. It’s not supposed to precipitate here on the highveld in winter! Fortunately in 10 days time it’s mid-winter – yay the count-down to summer begins! Only around 1 1/2 months left and the weather will start warming and the days will get longer little by little.

Thinking of summer makes me think of flowers and pretty things, so I got creative…

I have a pretty free printable quote for you today. Simply click on the image to download it, then print onto paper, pop it in a frame and hang it on a wall or add it to a table-scape. I think I’m going to make one for my daughter’s bedroom.

Enjoy!

This pretty floral frame is from The Graphics Fairy - I edited it slightly in Photoshop.

Friendship & Feathers

I love dressing up gifts decadently. Isn’t it more interesting and intriguing to receive a gift that is deliciously decorated -where that little bit of extra care has been taken to add something special?

I usually add some ribbon- this has to be a lovely fabric ribbon or twine - and usually more than one kind too.

Don’t you love these ribbons from Ebony & Ivory?

Then, depending on what I’ve wrapped the gift in, be it a pretty gift bag {with loads of colourful co-ordinating tissue paper!}, a beautiful box or simple gift wrap, I might add a handmade flower, or other embellishment. I always add a pretty tag to finish it off.

I have a huge stash of ribbons and embellishments in my scrapbooking supplies – seriously a HUGE stash! So I can whip up a pretty gift wrap in seconds. I sometimes find that it’s the tag that gets done in a hurry as I don’t have any ready-made ones on hand.

I discovered Kard Krazy recently and decided to jump in and take up the challenge to make a tag each Tuesday. This way I can make up a variety of tags and keep them in a little box and simply grab one when there is some gift wrapping to do.

This week’s tag’s theme is  friendship, here’s my little digital tag I made :

If you click on it, you can download a ‘png’ digital image which you can use for digital scrapbooking. Click on the following tag to download:

Free Printable :

Simply print it onto cardstock, cut it out, punch a small hole in the top and add it to a gift.

Graphics on the tag are from The Graphics Fairy. Font used : Travelling Typewriter.

Enjoy your Thursday!