Oh Christmas Tree

Another project borrowed from the fabulous Debbie Shore. These little Christmas trees were supposed to go into some cute mini tin buckets that I found but the template I cut out ended up being a bit small so I need to make some more that are a little bit bigger for those.

Because it came out a bit smaller than planned I decided to fix a ribbon on the top and hang it on my bureau. I love the freshness of the gingham fabric with this shape. I think this, combined with the pale turquoise of the little buckets I bought, will look lovely. That's the plan, anyway :)

Hope you like it! Once again, all thanks goes to Debbie. She has her own website at http://www.shortcutstosewing.co.uk/ which is well worth a visit. The forum is friendly and knowledgeable and a nice place to visit.

Merry Christmas! x



Apologies!

Just a quick post to say sorry for the lack of posts recently. We've been having a bit of a broadband issue so with that, and trying to get things done for Christmas, it's not been all that feasible to post. Hopefully this will now be rectified!

Thanks, and if I don't speak to you before, I would like to wish everyone a very merry, and peaceful Christmas.

Love, Maxi x

Journal Your Christmas - Part 2

I'm already way behind with this project. I haven't even read the last couple of prompts although I have downloaded them so that I can when I get a minute!

The prompts themselves are a good exercise in journalling if that's something you struggle with in your scrapbooking, but don't think you can't do this class if you really aren't one who wants to put many words on a page. I've seen examples of other participants whose pages don't have much journalling and they look just as fabulous, focussing on the image side.

I think in the end I'll probably end up with a fair bit of the wordy stuff, probably an off shoot of being a writer, but that's fine with me. That's assuming I get around to putting the remaining pages together and getting the words actually on them! For the moment, the earlier pages are done, but the last week or so isn't. I've been scribbling the journalling in a notebook for when I have time to transcribe it to its rightful place.

As for the photos, I've decided that it's going to be easier (not to mention cheaper) to put in an order for all of them once I'm done. I did think about printing them out at home in order to make it look a bit more complete as I went along but I've decided the more economical way is better. In the meantime, I've made a folder in my Pictures folder called 'Journal Your Christmas 2011' and am putting the photos I want to use in there. I'm putting the relevant day in the picture's title so that when I come to it, I can go through quickly and put them into the right order and get them on the right pages (hopefully!).

Felt Flower Cushion

A while ago I saw Debbie Shore advertising her latest DVD (at the time, she since has a new one out) which was about making cushions. Now, whilst I've made plenty of cushions over the years, I love getting inspiration and seeing how others do things. I don't think you can or should ever stop learning. One particular cushion caught my eye. It was covered in floppy felt flowers and looked fabulous! I'd seen similar things in the shops but at ridiculous prices. It clinched the deal and off went my order!

I've now finally got around to making my first flower cushion. The centres of the flowers were finished off with faux pearls. I hope you like it!

Debbie now has her shop online and also puts up free videos on You Tube showing various projects and how to make them. Go and have a look here. I highly recommend it!

I really enjoyed making this cushion, although I had a couple of false starts getting the flowers on but once you get the knack it's ok. I'd also probably recommend a walking foot to put the two sides together if you have one. I didn't use one this time but I might do next time as the felt did want to 'stick' a bit.

I'd love to hear your comments so feel free to say hi below!

Happy sewing!

Journal Your Christmas

A short while ago I signed up with a class at http://www.shimelle.com/ . Shimelle Laine is a fabulous scrapbooker who inspires and encourages all who read her blog, take her classes and watch her videos.

Every year Shimelle provides a class called Journal Your Christmas. It was something she began originally as a private project several years ago to 'take back Christmas'. Like many of us, the commercialism of the whole thing had begun to sour things and this was her way of telling the Big Boys, "Err, actually, no, I don't think so. This is my Christmas and I'm going to do it my way, thanks very much." The following year she made it into a class, and has done every year since. And the cool - and very unusual - thing is that once you join, you can come back the following year and do it again for no extra charge. And the year after that, and so on.

This is my first year of doing it, and I'm excited to get involved. Like Shimelle, and many others, I'm not happy with what Christmas has become, starting in September and pressurising people to spend more and more on the latest toys, food and goodness knows what else. That's not how it's supposed to be. At least it's not in my book.

Every year, Shimelle writes a manifesto for the class. I've posted this year's below.

You can change the manifesto to suit yourself  but I think it pretty much says all it needs to just as it is. So it's printed out and ready to go in my journal.

I'll let you know how I'm getting along with the project and I'd love to hear your comments if you're taking the class too - or even if you're not! If it's the latter but you think you might be interested you can find it here

Have fun making memories :)