The Traditions of the Season – St Nikolaus Day

I'm guest blogging over at CKC today:

It’s the 6^th December which means that children all across Germany are waking up to a boot full of chocolate and presents outside their front door after a visit from St Nikolaus (and maybe even a few “big children *wink*). Hopefully! Of course, if they’ve not been good, they might go outside to find nothing but coal and sticks in their boots instead. But since when have children at this time of year ever really found themselves on the naughty list?!?

You can read about the origins of St Nikolaus across the German speaking world here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Nikolaus) but many see this figure as the origin of our English speaking world Father Christmas or Santa Claus. This original figure was a bishop from today’s Turkey called Nikolas of Myra who had a reputation for secret gift giving. I even read somewhere that he was very shy and used to climb up on the roofs and drop sliver coins down the chimney for the poor people below. I’m always fascinated to see where our Anglo-Saxon customs originated from.

My first Christmas in Germany was a cultural experience for me with so many traditions totally different to what I was used to in the UK. And after 10 years here, I’m still learning! I remember my husband being very disappointed to find that St Nikolaus had “forgotten” him that first year so it’s something I try to remember to celebrate every year, even in a small way.

Over the years, we have cherry-picked the customs from both our backgrounds that we like the most and have created our own form of the festive season which is a lot of fun. And I know that most families out there have one or two individual little traditions that might come from their ancestors or have just developed over the years. Don’t forget that these are important to document in our scrapbook pages. Is it food you always eat? Presents you always exchange? Things from other cultures or countries? Perhaps something really quirky that’s unique to you. Or maybe there’s a new tradition you’d like to introduce to your own family?

Here’s my St Nikolaus page that I made to capture a few thoughts about our special day including the first one we celebrated together.

I used Sketch Support  One Page Sketch #15 (http://www.sketchsupport.com/2011/11/one-page-week-part-6-guest-designer.html)  and some rather older Cosmo Cricket, Jolly By Golly papers for this simple page. Great to allow these papers and product to get an airing!

Why not give it a try and create a page about one of your cultural or family customs?

All done, but feeling a bit sad all the same

It's the last week for the Jingle Belles challenge this year and I think I wasn't the only one who was mighty relieved to read that they will be continuing again next year! Yeah for Christmas all through the year!

Honestly, I can't tell you how happy I am that I decided to join in the fun way back in January. Of course, now I have to get them written and posted (another humungous hurdle!) but my pile of 60 cards is such a great relief. I love sending home-made cards for Christmas but when you have so many to make, there's not enough time to make them individually and last year I even ended up sending out a Christmas email instead ;-( This year I have more than I need. Now that feels great!

I'm going to get a photo of them all together as soon as I am home in daylight and get that posted here before I start writing them and getting them in the post.

But in the meantime, the prompt this week was "Candy Kisses" or rather food, sweets or drinks! Whatever we like to eat or drink at this time of year.

Seeing as though I couldn't make a Cadbury's chocolate card ;-) I went for my second favourite for this time of the year - a Starbucks Toffee Nut Latte. Oh, ok, I found a sweet cup of steaming coffee on my Cosmo paper and I imagine it to be a TNL!

And with that, I leave you so that I can go and stroke all those cards! 

What's your top tip for making them quick to write but still interesting to receive?

Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog Hop

Another month, another blog hop. Welcome, welcome, welcome. This is the November Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog Hop and I'm thrilled you are here.

If you have come here directly, you might want to pop back to the Counterfeit site (here) where the blog hop kicks off and we have some special hoppers today thanks to the peeps over at Scraptastic joining in.

If you have arrived here from Kim's blog, you are on the right track and next up after me is Margie. You'll find the complete list at the end of this post but do try and catch up with all today's hoppers as I'm sure you are in for a treat!

We were asked to create a home decor project. I've mentioned before that I was finding this month's kit a bit "tricky" to use. I love all the papers I've chosen but maybe not for using on pages so this challenge seemed perfect.

I was over at the Sketch Support site where their GD this month is the very talented Janice Daquila-Pardo and she'd created the most beautiful door wreath using origami leaves (see here). I decided to totally lift the idea, checked out the link she's included for the leaves, and made my own. I've been seeing these leaves all over the internet recently and have been wanting to give them a go and I'm so pleased I did. It was a super therapeutic process and I think they turned out great. I didn't have a gorgeous twig wreath like Janice had used but I did have a polystyrene one which proved easy to cover and light to hang.

Here is the pile of leaves I created while watching TV.

And then I brushed a little ink across the folds to make them more pronounced and pinned the leaves onto the wreath adding a little hot glue here and there for a bit of extra hold. Some ribbon pinned to the back for hanging and it's complete.

I confess to adding a couple of extra sheets of paper into the kit for this but all those very old Chatterbox papers that were proving a bit difficult have now found a happy home and made me happy in the process. Pat on the back for me ;-) The origami leaves were much easier than I thought they would be and I love the look of them so I may well try some other bits and pieces to see how I get on.

As promised here's the full blog hop list:

Counterfeit Kit Challenge

Scraptastic

Scraptastc DT - Heather Landry

Scraptastc DT - Juliann Marchant

Scraptastic Guest Designer - Melanie Stanczyk

Scraptastc DT - Michelle Unruh 

Crystal
Glinda
Helen
Jemma

Jen

Julie Ann
Kim

Lisa  <----- You are here!
Margie  -------> Go here next!
Milissa
Rebecca
Meridy

Don't forget that this month, Scraptastic Club is not only our inspiration kit but also our sponsor. So check out their site at  http://www.scraptasticclub.com/ and they will be giving away a $20 gift certificate to one lucky winner.

All you have to do to be entered in the drawing is either join the blog hop or comment on the blog hop...it's that easy!  The blog hops will be on November 27th and 28th.

Thanks for dropping by! Happy hopping.

Nearly there...

Prompt #47 over at Jingle Belles reminds us that this is almost the end of this year's card creation! I hadn't realised that there would be time off (for good behaviour) at the end of the year but it would appear that prompt #48 is the last one!

I missed one prompt along the way and some weeks made more than one so that means that I now have more than 50 (whooping from the rooftops) cards! Next week, I'll try and get a photo of all that organisation.

But for now, this week's prompt was to make a non-specific Christmas card. Happy Winter, Hanukah, Solstice, New Year... whatever.

Many of my cards this year have been quite neutral so I just did my usual and grabbed some pretty paper and made a snowflake card. Easy. Not award winning, but done.

Now, if only the rest of Christmas preparation was that easy!

Creating to give away

Living in Germany, I've learnt to follow the rules. Not that I wasn't a rule follower to begin with ;-) But you'll have a hard time fitting in round here if you don't learn to do the right thing.

So you might be a bit shocked to read that for the Counterfeit Kit Challenge mini-challenge #3, I *twisted* the prompt quite a bit.  ;-)

We were asked to "Craft It Forward" and be inspired by Scrapbooks Etc. who create a project each month to spread the love and to give away. November's project is placemats and their ideas can be seen here.

But first back to my first point. Well, first of all, we don't celebrate Thanksgiving over here so autumnal mats didn't really apply for me. And my November Glory kit was all fall colours so I broke away from that idea altogether and went instead for the more general idea of the inspiration and made a single mat just for the centre of the table and in a Christmas style. Of course, I needed to chose products from outside my kit but kept with the spirit of CKC by choosing some (much) older BasicGrey as well as a few other festive items.

I covered 6 coasters with paper, decorated each one and finally covered them with Mod Podge before connecting them with some baker's twine. I will be giving this to a friend who I don't see often enough and who needs to know that I'm thinking of her!

What will you make to pass it forward?

Sticking it all together

Seems these days like I only blog twice a week, and one of those is a short Jingle Belles make. Oh well, I guess that's something at least :-)

This week, the girls over at Jingle Belles challenged us to get out our stickers and get sticking.

Sticker company E.A.D. Designs is sponsoring the challenge and their DT came up with some gorgeously cute cards - I really recommend you popping over to this week's post to check them out.

So, one or more stickers. I have a lot of stickers and find them hard to use so this was a great chance for me to use a couple up. In the end, I went with some still lovely but rather old 7 Gypsies 97% Complete stickers and created something soooo simple.

Cute!

I really need to get the box out now and finish off the insides (yes, I know I said I would do that a few months ago!) and get the card list together. Need to think about getting things written and ready for posting - my biggest procrastination is actually going to the post office so I need to get a head start.

It's the middle of November - Christmas is a coming! :-)

Tagged

Mini-challenge #1 over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge is about using tags on your layout.

You know that you have them - tags of all sizes, shapes and formats, sitting around doing nothing. They can be chipboard, paper, kraft. Scrapbook product. Plain old shipping tags. Bought as is, decorated up by you, cut out by hand or with a die-cut machine. Large, medium or teeny tiny. When I look around my room, I know that they are in all corners of my stash.

This should be a fun challenge for you all because I know you are all just like me! :-)

I really wanted to use one of my decorated tags from September's kit but my room is in such a state, I couldn't find them! What a terrible admission to make - this must mean I have SO much stash.

Which meant that I had to rethink my strategy. Quick!

And then I completely forgot that I had planned not to use tags as a banner. I think I make way too many banners right now, after all. And what did I do, but make a layout with a tag banner! I have to smile at myself sometimes. Must be a sign that I'm getting old...

I used my November Glory kit and it was fun to mix up the colours and break out some very old product. See that vellum? 5 years old! See that blue rub-on that didn't work so well? 4.5 years old. See those alphas? 1.5 years old.

Well, this might not be the best layout I ever created. But it was fun to mix up the products and use a long overdue photo in the process. And that can only be a good thing :-)

So, what are you going to do with your tags? This is a challenge I could come back to time and time again and seeing what the other DT's made, I have loads of other ideas. Go check them out.

Don't forget that this month, Scraptastic Club is not only our inspiration kit but also our sponsor. So check out their site at  http://www.scraptasticclub.com/ and they will be giving away a $20 gift certificate to one lucky winner.

All you have to do to be entered in the drawing is either join the blog hop or comment on the blog hop...it's that easy!  The blog hops will be on November 27th and 28th.

Sunday share

I've been quiet. No particular reason. Just life. Busy busy. I'm sure you can all understand - the list of things to do, people to see, places to go gets longer and longer. Anyway, I have been creating in the background and thought I'd share today.

This first layout was from the last day of October (informal) LOAD and I used my Balmy August kit which is amazing in its ability to keep on going. This is layout #9 and I think I might have one more left. Funny.

I make a final layout each LOAD and I just wanted to capture a few thoughts about this wonderful experience. As the layout says, this might have been the best one yet. Such fun and such a wonderful group of amazing women to share the month with.

Since I created this, I changed it to 32 layouts and 125 photos to include this layout into the count. Such a sense of achievement.

This next layout is my first layout from my Counterfeit Kit Challenge kit, November Glory. And yes, it's a little "out there". I created it for our Whimsical Musings challenge #12 which was all about "Scary" and I decided to document a little known (very peculiar) fact about me.

It was such a coincidence that I had the number die-cut paper in my kit which proved perfect. I wanted to brighten it all up a bit by adding the fussy cutting some of the Urban Lily paper in the kit. I know it's a bit clashy, but I like it.

And one last layout that I created today for day 1 of Lain's latest mini-class, Your Story Matters. As a Scrap Happy member, we were automatically enrolled and it's all about capturing some of our own stories. If you've read my blog for any length of time, you'll know this is no problem at all for me but it's still nice to just create for fun while following a specific prompt.

Sorry for the poor quality of the scan - no way to take a photo in the light we have as this time of year.

Creating this layout I realised that I could easily turn it into a whole series which would be a lot of fun. Maybe one spread for each location so I will give this some thought. I used November Glory again for this layout and based it on a layout I've made before which was designed by Nichol Magouirk.

The journalling is a little hit and miss and this is something I really want to improve. I need to slow down and take more time to handwrite it carefully and think about what I want to write and how before I start. It so often turns out a bit askew like this one!

One thing I've noticed about November Glory is that there are some elements that I keep putting to one side when I flip through the items. This might suggest that these need to be recycled out of my stash and I will be keeping my eye on them for the rest of the month. I'm not forcing myself to use things I don't like but the kit is a good way to really see how I feel about this older stuff.

Anyway, the weekend is almost at an end and I hope you enjoyed it. Such wonderful November weather where we are.

More blog posts to come this week, I hope! :-)

It's *clearly* getting close to Christmas

This week, the girls over at Jingle Belles have challenged us with, "It came upon a midnight *clear*", and create a card using at least one see-through element.

I always love the look of transparency cards but mine didn't quite turn out as I'd wanted. Oh well! ;-)

But I am pushed for time and didn't want to miss a week so here it is.

I used some of my favourite MME paper inside a precious sheet of MM Mistletoe (need more!) with a cute felt deer I got for the challenge a few weeks ago and some snowflakes. Some sparkly ribbon and a sentiment finishes off this über-simple design, and another one done. Tick.

November Glory

Today is the day for the new Counterfeit Kit Challenge November kit reveal. They posted which kit is being used for inspiration yesterday and now it's our turn to show you what we did with it and how we interpreted the colours and products.

And there are some wonderful DT kits out there again this month, so I do recommend you going over to the CKC site and having a look at what we have all created. I definitely want to add in a few things to my kit after seeing what beauties the others have come up with :-)

This month's inspiration kits are the current ones over at Scraptastic Club. You can see both the kits, Autumn Splendour and Home Sweet Home, and their contents here.

Autumn Splendour

Home Sweet Home

After making two kits last month, I wanted to limit myself to one in November but I got carried away and I think it might be the biggest kit I've made so far! But the autumn colours are so MY thing and I just loved the inspiration kits so it was difficult to know when to stop.

I decided on the Autumn Splendour as inspiration and once again, had nothing from the original kit in my stash meaning I had to get creative with what I do have. I really liked the oranges, browns and autumn tones with the splash of bright blue which seemed very fresh and inviting. The die cuts, leaves and flowers also appealed so I knew that I had a good base to start working on.

The result of much pulling and sorting and exchanging is November Glory.

I haven't made a list of the products used but if anyone is interested in this information either for this kit or in the future, just let me know and I'll make one. The main reason I don't do this is that my main focus for these kits is to use up older stash that might have been sitting around for a LONG time. And this kit is no exception.

I started by selecting some cardstock in the base colours of the kit: cream, kraft, brown, rust, blue and green adding in some mustard Dotted Swiss and a sheet of Coredinations in a dusky pink. Then I went to my paper file where I keep the more standard papers (all BasicGrey and special collections are kept separately and everything else goes into a large paper file) and pulled whatever caught my eye. Stripes, spots, oranges, yellows, browns, blues, a few neutrals, a printed vellum and a die-cut sheet. There's a LOT of paper in there but honestly, some of it is years old so my philosophy this time is "use it or lose it".

After that, I added in some alphas but I expect that I will reach for some others along the way because I only added large brown letters and no doubt will need some other colours too.

Next up was embellishments and this is where it all got a bit out of hand! Flowers, buttons, brads, die cuts, wood flourishes, stickers, leaves, paper trims, binding tape, a spinner, glimmer glass, bingo cards, bling... the list goes on and on.  Again, quite a few items are really quite old so I want to challenge myself to at least try to use them by mixing them in with newer stuff. We'll see how successful that is.

Inks, mists, and twine are free items this month meaning I'll add them in as and when I want. In fact, there's no ribbon or lace in there either so they might creep in too ;-)


This month Scraptastic Club is not only our inspiration kit but also our sponsor. So check out their site at  http://www.scraptasticclub.com/ and they will be giving away a $20 gift certificate to one lucky winner.

All you have to do to be entered in the drawing is either join the blog hop or comment on the blog hop...it's that easy!  The blog hops will be on November 27th and 28th.