christmas card

i love a good challenge.  so i decided to enter boch's creations christmas card challenge sponsored by stop and scrap.  i used cardstock and ribbon by stampin up, patterned paper by anna griffin, scalloped bird tag by cavalini & co, and button embellishments by sassafras lass.  the challenge and giveaway is open to all, so if you're feeling crafty,  why not give it a try!

giveaway winner!

Cheryl Leong said...

wow!! tfs!!! im thankful for my family and friends, they are wonderful.

congratulations, cheryl! you are the winner of my etsy shop giveaway!  please go to my shop and choose a journal and paper pack of your choice!  thanks everyone for playing along.

happy fall! :)

Holiday Shop Update & Giveaway!

I've updated my Etsy shop with vintage paper goods, vintage Christmas ephemera and embellishment packs and vintage mixed-paper recycled journals and scrapbook mini albums.  Yay!  Blog Readers, enter code BLOG2011 at checkout for a 20% discount on your order!

I absolutely love vintage Christmas cards.  The one above is a sweet angel, embossed and made to look like a patchwork quilt.  I could see this in one of my holiday journals or used as an embellishment on a scrapbook page.

I've restocked the Christmas journals/mini albums.  Each journal/album comes with a little stash of goodies tucked into the back pocket so you are ready from day 1 to start recording those holiday/everyday memories!

The journals are filled with my favorite vintage paper: pages from holiday books and kids workbooks, ledger and graph paper, as well as current favorites such as brightly colored scrapbook and handmade paper.

 The journals also come in shades of wintry blue for those who prefer a more subtle winter pallet.  Pages are also embellished with labels and stickers from the Cavalini sticker tins.

And these are my favorite!  Precious packs of my favorite embellishments, perfect for holiday crafting!  Each pack has a glittered gift tag, and an assortment of vintage and new paper and ephemera.

here's a more detailed photo of what is in the ephemera packs: patterned scrapbook paper, handmade paper, vintage dennison seal, scalloped cardstock, glittered Christmas tag, vintage green-and-red playing card, vintage book illustration images.  Each pack comes tucked inside a glassine envelope.

Well I am excited for the holiday season to begin!  

Have a Happy Thanksgiving (if you're in the U.S) and have a wonderful weekend!  I'll be drawing a name from the comments on Tuesday, November 29th.  One lucky commenter will win a mini journal and ephemera pack of their choice!   All you have to do is leave a comment and tell me, what are you most thankful for?  

october journal pages

so, wow. october is done and gone. that was fast!!  now we're getting close to thanksgiving and christmas.  always a fun and exciting time.  i am just finishing up my october daily journal.  i'm about to start a mini "thankful thoughts" november journal.  i'm taking an online class over at something splendid.  this mini will be a little more mixed-media (yay! i get to pull out those acrylic paints!!)

so, october was filled with art and costumes and candy and manic weather (rain-sun-rain-sun-cold-hot-cold!)  i placed whatever photos i took this month in my little mini october journal and wrote little bits so i wouldn't forget the details.

october was very active for us on the homeschool front!  there were field trips and garden days and school photos and lots and lots of playgroups (which end up being really great support groups for us moms who are new to this adventure!)

i like this approach to daily journaling/scrap-booking.  i love to see my photos of our every day life with little written thoughts.  nothing complicated, just simple.

i played around in this journal with a little bit more collage-y elements.  here i'm using washi tape, sequin scrap and a playing card.

still having fun with the instax camera, too.  ran out of film tho! so i'll have to find out where to get more.  probably amazon. ;)

this month, my daughter also joined a group that meets once a week with other homeschool kids from across the bay area and they learn through play in various county parks.  it's a branch of the homeschooling philosophy known as un-schooling or free schooling where the child's interest dictate what is learned that day.  the kids spend a whole 6 hours outdoors with two nature experts who are there to answer their questions or to help organize a game and to supervise their play.  my daughter comes home soaked and muddy with tales of animal tracks, how to identify different plants in nature, how redwoods collect water, and also of her adventures building rock castles with her friends or braving a rope swing over the creek.

one day after "class" we were fortunate enough to meet up with my lil' sis who just started college.  we got to spend the afternoon with her,  and celebrated her birthday.  all right in the middle of a "school" day.  i really love how homeschooling frees up our schedule and lets us explore the world.  we have more time for adventures, more time for family and friends and more time to just ask ourselves, what do we really want to do today?

i mean, we've only got one life. we might as well live it to the fullest that we possibly can.  we are all here for different reasons. i am sure that i am here to explore and have fun.  and i love that i can do that with my two little ones in tow!

what adventures have you been up to these days?  what brings you joy?

happy halloween!

hope you have a fun and safe halloween! :)  

i {heart} october...let me count the ways...

1. simple art projects with the kids

 2. visit to the homeschool community garden (yes! tomatoes still growing in california in mid-october!)

3. leaf rubbings!

4. autumn in san jose = spring in san jose

5. celebrating birthdays with spooky cupcakes!

6. field trip to monterey bay aquarium (shh! sleeping sea lion on the rocks there!)

7. soaking up what's left of the sun (enjoying a cherry soda float! yum!)

happy fall, everyone! hope you are enjoying this cozy, spooky, fun season.

random fall pages

here are a few pages from my little daily september journal/scrapbook.  there were a few days/memories that i didn't have photos for, but i still wanted to include in the journal. so i made a cute, scrappy title with some random alphabet stickers and wrote in all the details i could remember about the photo-less days/events.

close-up of a page.  i used some cardstock cut-outs from crate paper's random line (love it!!)

no journal of mine is complete without some hand lettering and doodling.

a little close-up of my somewhat neglected xtra large moleskine cahier...i got a little wrapped up in my 4x6 size mini book/daily album that i kind of forgot about my other journal. ;)

more page close-ups...

the above page is still in the works...needs some coloring-in of the writing, but i like how it's coming together.

and you've gotta try taking super close-up photos of your journals/artwork and then printing them as labels on sticker paper or as photos and then re-using them in your artwork/journals.  so much fun.  each page is full of new artwork just waiting to be exposed! :)

getting ready for halloween!

1. halloween banner swap with my art group: check!

the challenge was to use "non traditional" color combinations.  so, in other words: no black/orange.

so i tried different combinations: black/white/purple/red/green

i think they turned out pretty good! (or bad, i mean, it is halloween afterall!)

2. visit to a pumpkin patch: check!

the girls were lucky to be invited to a birthday party that just so happened to have been held at the cutest of cute pumpkin patches.  there was a giant pumpkin to climb inside (hence, orange-tinted photos!)

and lots of opportunities for cute photo-ops (none, of course, that came out of the cute hay-bale maze, train ride or petting zoo!  but that's ok.  we had fun and that's what matters most!)

3. time for some october journaling: check!!  not in traditional fall colors, but that's ok by me.  what are you doing to prepare for fall/autumn/halloween?

just your average fall day...

well, october has totally caught me by surprise!  and fall has suddenly arrived.  we were still having park playdates in the hot sun the last week of september and now...brrr!!  rain and clouds and socks and sitting by the heater and snuggling up with a blanket and each other to keep warm.  i live for summer. love it.  but i do appreciate the cold, cloudy, rainy, cozy season of fall.  

a journaling-pages-in-progress shot.  it is so meditative to sit and chat with friends while randomly taping things down in my journal. 

i guess we'll be saying goodbye to journaling in the sun on a blanket in the grass.  but we'll still keep being creative. even if by candle light! i am just finishing up my september daily journal/scrap/photo/book.  i'll post photos soon.  now i'm off to start one for october!  it is my new artistic interest.  you know, no matter how boring or routine you think your life is, once you start to keep a daily journal with a few photos and memories, suddenly your life seems so FULL and AMAZING.  i know that's how i feel right now.  i think that's what keeps me blogging, too.  just to capture these seemingly insignificant moments only to turn them into something more.  something so beautiful.

and yes, this is a photo of snails painting.  (fyi: no snails were harmed in the making of this painting! we used food coloring and gentle loving care)  this was part of my daughter's current science investigation.  oh, just your average day in the homeschool classroom!

so that's what i've been up to lately.  loving, living and dreaming.  i hope you are well.

photo effects & chalk art

just a little update...i've been having fun this past week participating in ella publishing's boot camp.  it was a week long event that consisted of different exercises in journaling, design, photo tricks, etc.  i learned a lot and this is just an example of how to add a different look (vintage, urban, etc) to your photos.  i love learning new tricks, especially in photoshop.  i'm shooting with the camera on my phone and it takes OK photos, but i always have to end up editing them.  i like this look and it's super easy to do (ok, as long as you know a little bit about photoshop.  but with all those tutorials out there, it won't take long to learn a few tricks yourself!)

over the weekend we went to a sidewalk chalk art festival in our neighborhood.  my stepdaughter participated along with some of her friends from art class.  they made a very cool mural with trees and fairies (photo came out too dark!).  i brought my daughter and her friends to see her big sister in action and they were inspired to draw as well.  above is just a little bit of what they did.  it was a fun day in the sun, watching artists of all ages expressing themselves.  

been working a little bit on my september daily journal. more photos soon.  fall has snuck up on me again!  the days are getting shorter which means i gotta get my photos done earlier than usual.  where does the time go?  so long summer. see you next year! 

what i've been up to...

so, september is now more than halfway over...but i decided to start a little september daily journal just for fun!  i was inspired by elise joy and her amazingly-beautiful-yet-simple journals.  (she has a ton of super cute--and affordable--classes, too!  you ought to check them out!)  my september journal is a basic 4x6 ring-bound mini book with a cardboard cover and various paper pages.  i used my favorite scrapbook paper and printed up some 4x6 photos, too.  the great thing about the ring-bound journal is you can take pages out, re-arrange and just punch holes in almost anything to add to your book!

so what else have i been up to?  took a fun class at paper source the other night.  i really needed a mom's night out and this class just seemed like the perfect little getaway!  we decorated blank calendar pages with stamps, stickers, glitter and punched out paper shapes. so simple but so pretty.  we only finished half the calendar in class so i was at risk of not completing this project once i got home! (you know how it is--projects tend to pile up fast!) but i finished up the last few pages tonite and i like how they turned out.  you could do this on regular cardstock.  just type up the months/days in a word document (or use a stamp set) and print on white card stock.  then stamp/glue/embellish as you wish.

and last, but not least, i received a lovely package of wonderful australian ephemera, paper bits and a magnificent hand-made journal (with a fun assortment of lined and hand-printed paper!) from sue.  we were partners in lawendula's paper swap this summer and it was just so much fun, i had to share it with you.  these swaps are so much fun.  you get the chance to be matched up with people from all over the world.  how cool it that? 

hope you like the new photo format!  i'm playing around with using blog templates for a more modern look.  there are some super cool blog templates and other goodies available out there by some talented and generous designers.  all of the above templates are courtesy of pugly pixel.  she has a ton of free goodies and lovlies to pretty up your blog.  

hope you are having a nice september!