Another Birthday!

I notice my last blog was on Jonathan's b'day and now today is my dear husband's special day.  We had a busy day yesterday.  First going to watch Jonathan play in a hockey tournament, which his team won, then the family all went out to dinner to celebrate both Jonathan and Ron's birthday.  We came home for cake and tea and opening of gifts.  It was funny to watch as the cards were opened and Jonathan was looking carefully to see what techniques had been used on his cards, lol.   Not many thirteen year olds would be concerned or even think to do that.  I don't have any of Jonathan's cards to show you, but I thought I'd show you some of the handmade cards that Ron was fortunate enough to  receive they may give you some inspiration.  We have a really talented family in both England and Canada.

Did you get into the store for the Christmas stamp sale?  There's not too many left now and Linda's putting it into the  newsletter for tomorrow, so hopefully the blog readers got the pick of the bunch.  Linda's also adding some Christmas  stickers and paper on sale too.

We have a date and venue now for the Crop Weekend as well as the all day Card Class.  The Mega Crop is on April 20,21 and 22 at the Turner Centre on Taylor road, we'll announce early bird registration soon now so clear your calendar.  The Card Class will be held on Saturday March 3rd at Gagnon's Independent Grocer.

I was supposed to be working today on some of the cards for the all day class, but I couldn't get the juices flowing so instead worked on my craft room...LOL.  The upper shelf and moulding were cut today ready for installation once I get the walls painted.  I had the paint mixed as well, it's taken me foreverrrrrrrrr to choose the colour, but I finally decided on a Baer paint and it's called Restful a pretty green.  I'm like Rachel (Linda's daughter)  in that I like green very much.

Speaking of Rachel, here's a page I just finished of her foray into sewing.  I tore the large heart from mulberry paper and machine sewed it along with the two  smaller pink dot hearts onto the page.  The dressmaking form and the title I cut from my Silhouette Cameo.  The form was a free shape from Silhouette some time ago and the font was a free font on my computer called MTF Stamping Rachel now how appropriate was that!  The yellow shell like border which is also machine stitched onto the page, I created with the EK Success Arched Scallop border punch, cutting the cardstock an inch wide and punching both sides of  it.  The scallop green borders were cut using  the Classic Scallop Edgeabilities die by Spellbinders and my Cuttlebug.  Also the scallop circle mats for her headshot were cut on the Cuttlebug with more Spellbinders dies.  I was after a different look to my page than I usually achieve, so had to change what I usually do.  One thing is the journalling.  You'll notice I hand journalled which is something I rarely if ever do and of course got to the very last few words and skipped a letter in "learning..got....learing".  So now what I said to myself!  It wasn't a difficult fix though, because I simply cut some of the paper away behind the large photo.  Chose, wrote out and raised particular words to focus on a "sub-title" from the journalling portion.  Now the overall effect is that it says...Rachel busy learning to sew like gamma.  I still don't like my hand journalling, but am pleased with the overall look. 

This was my inspiration page created by Danielle Flanders.  I kept quite close to it, but "busied" it up a good bit. 

I hope these samples will inspire you to get busy recording your life events again.

My friend Edie is happily making a Disney album of her daughter's recent family trip to see Mickey.  My niece Angela has just returned from a family trip there too, so we're looking forward to seeing lots of princess pages as she has two really girly girls.

I have another page on the go, but am stuck with just what I want to say in the journalling, so will show you that later.  I always tell people to just pretend that someone is standing beside them and describe to them the content of the page.  Hmmm....not working for me this time.

There should have been an order arrive at the store today, so will look forward to seeing if there's anything exciting in it, but I think it was pretty much a re-stocking order this time.  We are still busy doing some re-merchandising in the store, so our back room is pretty full and overflowing as we change-up the fixtures a little.  Some of it you won't even notice, but hopefully the overall effect will be more efficient.

Take time reading the newsletter tomorrow, because Linda has put some interesting "stuff" in it.

Lilian

Technique Class and Special Sale

Well it was good to get back into the rythm of our Technique Class tonight.  What a lovely group of ladies we have come out to class.  They love to learn and also love to put their own spin on what they are learning too which enables us to see something different.  Tonight we also had an extra teacher in that Rachel joined us at class tonight.  Some of the ladies were really anxious to know about her new sewing machine surprising Rachel that they knew about it before she did...LOL! 

The ladies had a great time playing with Tim Holtz Distress Inks.  Finding that although they all used the same colours, their finished cards were all unique according to how much water and how they applied that water to the ink.  Three different punches were used on the lacy border card, each giving a very different look too, as well as how the colours were layered.   The heart card had it's own opportunity for everyone to change it up both by  where the hearts were placed and also how the lines were drawn behind the hearts.  Here's a little of what we did tonight...jump on over to the Flickr site here to see more photos.

Can you imagine how, when there are 365 days in a year that one family can share so many birthdays?  Today was our Jonathan's birthday and he reached the milestone age of 13! However when I called him this morning he told me he wasn't 13 yet as his birth time was later in the day!  His dear aunt "Ninny" (Linda) told him again today as she does every year....I had a much better night's sleep last night than I did 13 (or whichever birthday it is) years ago.  She had gone over to stay with Jonathan's brother when his Mom and Dad went to the hospital for his birth.  Anyway, what I was going to tell you, was that my sister's family shares a number of birthdays with our family. Today was her granddaughter's 2nd birthday.  Her Daddy wasn't with her today as he's off training hoping once again to be on our Canadian Men's Eight rowing team in the 2012 Olympics in England.   In another four days, it will be my sister's son-in-law's birthday as well as my dear husbands special day too.  Happy Birthday to all four of these family members.

I mentioned in the opening title a Special Sale.  We have all in stock Christmas stamps are on sale for 30% off regular retail price starting tomorrow, so hurry in to get the best selection.

Lilian

A Fresh Start

I don't know about you, but I'm not a New Year Resolution kind of person.  It always seems to me that I set myself up for failure if I do that.  However, that said I'm going to try to be a better blogger for 2012.
Somehow from the fall of 2011 to now it has been really hard to find all the time I need in a day. 

Enough said on that though, Linda and I have been busy planning new classes and there's some nice stuff coming up. Have you signed up for the upcoming class this Thursday January 12th?  We think we've hit on a format that will enable us to present some nice cards and techniques within the two hour format of the class.

Did you see all the lovely stuff that Jonathan, Rachel and Emily made for Christmas gifts?  Linda put photos in the newsletter, but for those of you who may not have seen them, I'll put a few here too.
  
  These are the gifts that Emily made for her family.  The snowman jar held her Daddy's favourite bean salad that she made him herself, and she doesn't even like beans!  The scarves for Mommy and the reference book for Rachel, who was absolutely thrilled with it.

 

These are the gifts Rachel made for her family with her new found talents.  An apron for when Daddy is cooking, which is often.  Pyjama pants for Emily and herself, two pairs each no less, and a head wrap and bath mitt for Mommy.

These are the results of Jonathan's efforts.  Many people were lucky enough to receive both the glass blocks which he drilled holes into himself to insert the mini lights and also the hand cream that he mixed up.  It's really good and not greasy like many creams are.



We are still patiently, well maybe not patiently any more, waiting for the new scarf yarns to be restocked by our distributors.  The manufacturers were caught on the hop with the response to their lovely yarns, hence the wait.   We have many people asking us to call them when it comes in.  The scarves make up so fast and beautifully.

Linda and I have been doing some remerchandising in the store, so drop in to see the changes.  We encourage you to let us know if there is any product that you would like us to carry.  There is so much product available that it is hard to know if we are stocking what you would like.  We have many customers that come from great distances and encourage you if you know when you will be making a Bracebridge run, phone or email us to have us hold any product for you that you would like.  We want to provide you the best service we can and these little tips will help us to do that for you.

I realised that I hadn't put the December classes onto Flickr either, so have loaded them tonight for you to look at too.  So I think I'm now up to date and will strive to be so in the coming weeks and months.

Look forward to seeing you in the store soon, but until then, happy crafting!  Don't forget that you can subscribe to this blog and you will be notified by email when there is a new posting.  Just look down the right hand side of the blog to see where you need to put your email address in to "keep up by email."

Lilian