More treemendous inspiration!

We're halfway through our December challenge at Stamping Sensations, where our theme is "Treemendous". I wanted a change from cards and Christmas stuff, so I made a little notebook.

 I cut an aperture with a Spellbinders Nested Maple Leaf die and stamped a little scene to go inside it. The trees are by Inkylicious and the fence and sheep by Hobby Art. The background hills and foreground grasses are hand drawn. The two small maple leaves are from the same die set, and the corners are cut with a Woodware punch.

 I stamped the same trees on each page for a bit of inside interest, bound it all together with my Bind-It-All, and finished it off with a ribbon hanger and fibres for decoration.

I also had to make a quick birthday card. Very clean and simple, it took me about 10 minutes!

Same maple leaf die, a Crafty Individuals tree stamp, a peel off greeting and various layers of paper.

Anyway, I hope that's given you some more tree inspiration. If you haven't entered our challenge yet, there's still plenty of time. Oh, and we have made a couple of slight changes to our rules! We realise  not everyone has time or can afford to make projects just for a specific challenge, so we have removed the restriction of 6 challenges and you can now enter any number of challenges as well as ours. Also you can enter up to three cards or projects of any type (rather than each entry having to be a different type of project). We hope that will help to make entering easier for you, and we look forward to seeing lots of lovely creations!

One more thing! We are getting very close to 1000 followers, so it's candy time at Stamping Sensations! Click on the link on my side bar to take you to the challenge post for all the details!

Trees

I love trees. I love their elegance, their colours. I love the sound the wind makes in their branches, the tracery of their silhouettes against the sky. I love walking amongst them, whether through forests of tall, mysterious pines, or in gentle woodlands of oak, ash, beech and my favourite silver birch.

In honour of trees, I made a book about them. Most of the stamps, papers and pictures I used are from Crafty Individuals. I think they must like trees too! I made the book as a present for my daughter, who also loves trees.

Post-Christmas blues (& sneezes!)

Well, after a relaxed & enjoyable Christmas up in Dumfriesshire, I've been stuck inside for the past three days with the worst cold I've had in years. Must be a Scottish bug. After 25 years working in Nottinghamshire schools I reckon I've built up immunity to most of those down here.

Anyway, at least I've managed to use the time productively and made a nature themed calendar. I made an A-frame out of thickish card for the base and decorated the pages with stamps from various companies, mainly Crafty Individuals and Graphicus. Most of the Graphicus stamps are from their new "Nature Table" and "Autumn Hedgerow" themeplates, which are simply gorgeous. The month names and numbers were a set from Hampton Art's Creative Cafe collection. I then used my Bind-It-All to assemble the calendar.