Happy New Year!

Hoping that you all had a great Christmas and wishing you a wonderful New Year from all of us at The Scrappy Tree!  2011 was a busy year, but we're looking forward to sharing more of your company in 2012 :)

My project to share with you today is a calendar I made as a Christmas gift for my mother; I've been making one of these every year for the past few years.  In different years I have used different themes to choose my photos; I've used copies of old family pictures, I've used pictures from over the course of the previous year, and this year I used pictures from our family holiday to Florida for my wedding in September.  This year I also made a calendar for my grandmother who joined us for the celebrations.

 I used a plain Papermania desk calendar as the base for the project - they make these in a larger size if you prefer your layouts to be more 12x12 sized but the smaller size makes for a more manageable project, especially if you're making more than one!  The limited size also means you're not tempted to use more of your alphas than strictly necessary just to fill up the space, there are a lot of months to get through!

 I mainly used paper from my November Scrapagogo kit and added buttons, flowers, alphas and other embellishments for decoration.

I love that as the year goes by you get a nice surprise and some happy memories every time you turn the page for the next month :)

We'll have some more to share with you soon but for now thank you all so much for your support and your comments, we'll be trying to visit everyone to say happy new year in person but for now have a great 2012!

Happy Scrapping!

Gayle xx

Calendar Layout

Today I want to show you a Calendar layout I made, December is a very busy month for us, especially during the weekends, my page does not have a daily photo, but 6 photos that describe what we did during each weekend of the month, and I used the 7th calendar block for journaling. This pretty calendar paper is from KI Memories, they have more fun colors and shapes, if you look close you’ll notice the stitching around the inside edge it comes with, isn’t that cute?

By now you might know my obsession with Collage photos, what I did was add 6 photos to a 4” x 6” to get them in a small size, I used a Marvy 1-1/4” scallop circle punch to cut ea small photo and layered them on a square that I had previously distressed. There are not that many embellishments on the page because I needed the space to add lots of journaling.

Here at TST we are happy to begin the year with a Charity Challenge “Fuzzy Friends” http://thescrappytree.blogspot.com/2011/01/fuzzy-friends-challenge.html

What you can do:

Create a Layout, ATC collection, journal page or whatever you can think of and introduce us to your family of Fuzzy Friends. The winner will take home some awesome animal themed scrappy supplies, some healthy treats for your Fuzzy Friends and TST will donate $30 to SPCA international, in your name.The challenge will run through the month of January, ending on January 29th. Please upload a link to your blog or online gallery below or upload your picture to our online Scrappy Community HERE.

I would like to introduce Sammy:

He is our 4 year old tabby cat, we adopted him when he was 2 months old, the day we went to the Shelter someone walked in with a bucket that had 5 kittens that were found in an alley, Sammy was ours the moment we saw him, we waited for him to get checked up by the nice shelter volunteers, filled out all the paperwork and took him home, since day 2 (he spent day 1 under the couch missing his brothers and sisters *sigh*) he has favored my husband, they have a special and cute bond, but he does let me know that I am also important to him every time he keeps me company when I am crafting or when he jumps on my lap to get pet. Sammy is a part of our tiny family, we love him very much and he is extremely spoiled.

Just as a reminder, if you like to make mini albums or would like to start making them I'll be back next Wednesday with my free Mini Album Tutorial Segment, I'll be posting a supply list this weekend here: http://thescrappytree.ning.com/group/dianasmonthlyminialbumtutorial

I hope you can join me.

Great Day Wishes!

=Diana

Calendar gift

Hello! We're counting down the days to Christmas here, are you ready?? I am trying, really I am :) but the postman just doesn't like the unseasonably snowy weather we're getting here in the UK and he has some parcels I need to wrap!

At least I have some of the gifts here in the house (phew!) - thank goodness that there were supplies here to make gifts from! ;)

My project today is a calendar using family photos from the past year that I'm going to be giving to my Mum - I don't want to share too many pages because that will spoil the surprise if she spots this ;) but here's enough to give you an idea if you too are waiting for Santa to deliver your gifts on time!

January includes pictures of a trip me and Mum took to London to see Wicked the musical and shop in Harrods...

...and June simply had to include pictures from our eventful trip on a canal boat to Stratford (that's one family holiday we're sure to remember for a LONG time!)...

I made a calendar like this for my Mum last Christmas and she liked it so much she asked me to make another one this year :) last year I could only include one picture for every month, but this year I've discovered photo collages so it's going to be packed!

I used a blank calendar by Papermania and in these pictures you can see patterned paper by BoBunny and DCWV, calendar inserts by Anita's, and Thickers by American Crafts - there are also flowers from my stash but I'm afraid the good thing about this project (which is being able to use up bits and pieces) makes it difficult to name everything properly - apologies!

Hope you're managing to get everything ready without too much stress ;)

Merry Christmas! Gayle xx