Configuration box Christmas

I'm not so much a Christmas decoration person, but my mom is the world champion in Christmas deco. So I thought she would like some new decoration and I created her a Configuration box in Christmas style. I did all the basics and now it is up to her to fill the boxes with tiny Christmas stuff. She's got plenty of that, so I'm sure it is going to be a stuffed up. I was guessing she wanted it to be clean and simple and I was right about that. I suggested some other things to add on, but none of it she wanted. It was just good as it was. Yay, I did a good job. lol
I covered the sides of the lid with paper from the Tim Holtz paper stash Seasonal, inked the rest of the lid with Distress Ink Peeled Paint and added some Idea-ology Corners on the corners of the lid with Inkssentials Glue and Seal. The inside boxes are inked with Distress Ink Peeled Paint and Barn Door. The inside backs and bottoms of the boxes are also covered with papers from the Seasonal stash.
Here are some pics of the box. I took out the acetate to avoid there would be a reflection in the pictures.

Basic Grey sketch

I loved this Basic Grey sketch immediately, so I just had to make it. Even though I was way too late to participate in the challenge. I used the Hello Luscious papers, they are so cute. I took those pictures during a day of babysitting my niece Phiene. What better to do than taking her to the playground where she was running and playing around untill she knocked herself out. She went sitting on a bench and told me: now you go play ;-)

This is my take on the sketch. TFL

PP: Basic Grey Hello Luscious

Title: Hello Luscious on grungeboard with QK Heidi Swapp Handwriting. Covered it with Glossy Accents

Flowers: white embossed  with Hero Arts stamp Many Petals on Hello Luscious paper

Brads: Imaginisce I-top tool with Hello Luscious paper

Bottom strip: stamped the word Joy with Distress Ink Shabby Shutters and embossed it with Distress embossing powder Shabby Shutters

Stitching by hand (I sooo need a sewing machine...) 

Florida 2011

I realized that I never showed all the photo's of the mini album I made about the family trip to Florida last April. It was so great to be on this trip with all the people that I love the most: my father, my uncle Rinus, my cousin Angela, her husband Jan and their little girl Phiene. We rented a RV and drove around Florida, starting end ending in Orlando.
For this album I used Teresa Collins covers and all the papers are from the Simple Stories Destinations collection. The journaling cards and photo mat elements from Simple Stories are perfect to create pages for a mini album. The most time I spended for making this album was on stitching the pages (by hand!!).
Other things that I repeated throughout the book was QK typist, ribbon, small coin enveloppes and tags. For the inside of the front cover I searched the internet for an old map of Florida and printed it on cardstock.
Here are the photo's of the album:

Sassafras' Grand Finale Sale boxes

On the end of October Sassafras was having their Grand Finale box Sales and I just had to have them. I ordered both boxes (the big and small one). Today they finally arrived and OMG what a party it was to unpack it. Sassafras has been so generous, that I have to share it with you. I made a couple of pictures because it was too much to get in one picture.

Here are the paper whimsies, chipboard numbers and some flowers

Here are the cardstock alpha and sweet stickers

And different lines of paper with matching sheets of flag banners, journaling tags and foldies

Many of the paper sheets are double so I can use both sides of it.
Sassafras, thank you so much for being so generous!!

Printing journaling

Today I was reading Lydia Jackson's blog about journaling and printing it on your patterned papers. It is quite similar to how I print my journaling, but I would like to take this a little step further, so you can use any small part of paper to print your journaling on.
I took some pictures and screen prints to make it clear.

For this example I used this piece of patterned paper:

To print this way you need Word on your computer. I'll explain this for Windows 2003 / 2007 because that is what most of you will have. If you need any explanation for Windows 2010, please let me now. It is not that much different, but you just need to know where to find what you need. My screen prints are in Windows 2010 though.

Ok, first you start creating a textbox in Word. You click 'Insert', then 'Textbox'. Click in the textbox that appeared in your screen, then go to 'Format', then 'Textbox' and then 'Size'. Measure the space on your piece of paper where you want your journaling and you add those measurements in the 'Size' screen. In this case it is 8cm x 5cm (sorry, my laptop is Dutch LOL). Then move the textbox a little to the middle of the page. This is what your screen looks like:

Type your journaling in the textbox and edit it any way you want with fonts, color etc. If your journaling is too long for the textbox, just simply down size your letters. Or make them bigger if your journaling is not long enough to fill up the textbox.

Now, you don't want that square to be printed on your paper, you just want the text. Click in the textbox, then click 'Format', then 'Textbox' and then 'Colors and borders'. Choose 'no border'.

Print this on some cheap printing paper.

Place your piece of patterned paper over the printed part (sometimes it helps to hold it against the window to see through) and adhere it with some scotch tape around the edges. Be sure that there is tape over every edge and corner of the patterned paper, so it won't get stuck in your printer. And be sure there is no tape on any part where your journaling will be printed. Later on you will see why....LOL sorry I did this one in a little hurry.

Place the printing paper in your printer the exact way you did the first time. Peel off the scotch tape carefully, so it won't damage your patterned paper.
And there is your printed journaling.

As you can see, the last word is not completely printed because there was tape over it. But you get the idea.

I hope this will help you all with printing your journaling. Especially those of you who don't like there own handwriting, like myself.
If you have any questions, please ask!

Grungeboard addiction

Lots of Tim Holtz stuff on this one. I have a new addiction on my layouts lately and that is grungeboard. Before I used chipboard many times, but now I discovered grungeboard and it is so much easier to work with. On this layout I used the grungeboard alpha and embossed it with a wooden pattern (which matches nicely with the wooden house on the pictures) and inked it with Walnut Stain Distress ink.

PP: Tim Holtz - Idea-ology Shabby Vintage

Distress Inks Broken China, Spun Sugar, Walnut Stain

Grungeboard Alpha

Texture Fades embossing folder Woodgrain

On the edge die Brackets

Clearstamps Flourish

White flower ribbon colored with Distress Stain Spun Sugar