Happy Easter

DIY: Washi Tape Spring Vase

Happy Good Friday everyone!

With six days off from work, this is going to be a long and fabulous weekend for me- with losts of crafting, cleaning, working on custom orders, perhaps creating some new items for my shop, but most of all spending precious time with my wonderful husband. 

For starters, here's a super quick and easy craft i just made with a clear vase, paper flowers and my favorite washi tape. 

Wordless Wednesday: Dahlia

Sketch Challenge: Sweet Little Friends

Yes, i know what you're thinking: "Another scrapbook post, really???"

Sooorry! I swear there will be "normal" DIY's real soon, so please don't leave me ;)

This month's Scrap365 sketch by Sian Fair is such a cute way to cherish family moments, if you have a house and well, a family.

We have neither; it's just us and the screechy-birds ( the last four of them), so i included a birdcage instead of a house.

This page is dedicated to our beloved sweet little feather balls, who, due to illness, spread their wings and left us to live a peaceful, happy and healthy life in rainbow-land.
Thank you for being our friends, Charly, Chaplin, Cookie, Schlumpfi, Freddy, Finni, and Rocky.

Paper: Glitz Design Sparrow Bloom ( the ccordinating back of this one)
Birdcage: Silhouette Online Store here
Frames: OTC
Ornate sticker: Ebay ( it was white; i stamped it with an aqua, pink and yellow inkpad)
Birds, border and alpha's: Heidi Grace

Happy Sunday

1. I cut my hair.
I had bangs back in 2008-2009, and i was in the mood for that look again; and so i just did it. My inspiration:

Photos via How Does She

Oh, she is so pretty! And this is me:

A really good result, considering that it is a DIY.

2. Mmmmhmmm, Grünkohl! The last one this season

3. Now that we bought a new TV for the living room, we moved the old one to our bedroom. We haven't had a TV there for five years- it's awesome!

4. I had my first customer from Ireland. Dublin, to be specific. It's a lovely city and definitely on my "must-visit-again" list

5. I have a Wonderbra- it's great :)

6. We booked our hotel in Marseille. It was the first time ever that we booked in a travel agency- and definitely the last time. Such a weird experience.

7. Once a month we allow ourselves to order food. Our dinner tonight: Mister Hang- the best chinese food in town!


Happy Sunday!

Glitz Design & Gossamer Blue Guest Design Contest

Last year while i was working on my wedding scrapbook album, i got the glorious idea of adding scrapbook supplies to my Etsy shop. So i purchased some paper from one of my most loved manufacturers, Glitz Design. Turned out that my idea wasn't as fabulous as i assumed; although not that bad in general, i realized that 12x12 sheets are difficult (and expensive) to ship, hence it doesn't make much sense to offer single sheets.
And now that i can't sell them but absolutely love them, i decided to use the paper for my own projects.

So, this is my contribution to the Glitz Design and Gossamer Blue Guest Design Contest:

"Oh Happy Day" ( or "wedding day fun")

The base are two 12x12 chevron sheets from the Cashmere Dame collection. The pattern is a dream and the thickness of the paper is just perfect; not too flimsy but still thin enough to easily tear, fold and bend it.
I used the blue side as the background and the chevron side as the main part of the design. I painted the chevron pattern with a golden laquer marker to add more contrast to the black and white, then i carefully tore the paper to create a "frame" for my photo and painted the ripped edges gold as well.

Next i used a simple cardboard tube and acrylic paint in aqua and gold to stamp the circles and add some paint-splatters.
I punched confetti from the Happy Travels bicycle sheets, mod-podged it to the chevron paper and once it was dry, i coated every little circle with a pearl pen, to create a dimensional effect. Then i punched two 1-inch circles, added some glitter in teal and gold and covered them with a pearl pen as well.

Now that was the most time-consuming part, the rest was easy-peasy: i added regular washi tape in black, gold and aqua, plus Bokeh Tape from the Uncharted Waters collection and Stripe Tape from the Love You Madly collection.
Lastly, i got a bit wild with all those beautiful stickers from my online shopping-spree last week ( Hoopla Glitzers, Hoopla Titels and Mint Grunge Teeny Alpha's).

Sketch Challenge: Picnic by the river

This is my contribution to the Imaginisce Sketch Contest at the Page Maps blog. It's a photo of me and MisterT from a bike trip and riverside picnic in 2008.

For the background, i used one of the sheets i purchased on Ebay last week. It is an older page from the Sparrow collection by Glitz Design, but that doesn't make it less pretty and I couldn't care less about the age of a collection.
In fact, this specific sheet of paper is the prettiest one i have ever seen! The colors and patterns are so incredibly beautiful- I could stare at it for hours.
One could stick nothing but the photo to the sheet, and already have the perfect scrapbook page, and it would also make a gorgeous wall decor for a nursery or living room if framed or glued to a canvas.

Sometimes when i receive an item that i purchased online, it looks different than it did on the website's photo, which is always a bit disappointing. But not this one; this one looks even prettier in reality and exceeded my expectations by far.

I just LOVE Glitz Design! But enough swooning...

I also included striped pink paper from the OTC, a mini clothespin covered with the same paper, yellow "Beach Bum" alphabet stickers by Fancy Pants, aqua Happy Travels Bicycle from Glitz Design, alphabet stickers from the Traditions Kit by K&Company, and i think all the birdie stickers are by Recollections.

And this is the sketch my layout is based on:

Wordless Wednesday: Dreaming of Spring

Happy Sunday

1. And it kept snowing and snowing and snowing...

Remember what our bird house looked like last week? Even more snow this week:

2. Two sweet readers of mine nominated my blog for the Liebster award. I'm a bit too busy at the moment, but thank you so much, Emily and Natalie!!!

3. The lavender sachets i bought on Etsy arrived- and they are adorable!!

You can find the listing here - I was the seller's first customer, so there was a little gift in my package:

Such a cute fabric flower! I just love all those wonderful people on Etsy!


4. When this happens to your box of "After eight"...

*sad face*

...you will recieve this as a compensation:

*happy face*
admittedly, we already ate a piece or two before i took this photo 

Nice. Thanks, Nestlé!


5. Shy screechy-bird Rambo ate cucumber out of my hand! Sadly, i couldn't take a photo, but this one (taken last month) is super cute too:

No, this bird is neither sick nor half-dead, she is just a lazy potatoe.


6. We have been saving money for months now, and this week we finally did it: we splurged on.....

... a new TV!!

As you can see, its size is phenomenal! Our old TV wasn't that small, but the new one looks gigantic in direct comparison.

And what's even better is that it was a real bargain.
Marked down to 735€ ( from 949€) at Amazon's Warehouse Deals, plus we received an additional 100€ discount when MisterT complained that the TV is in a much worse condition than described ( there were only supposed to be minor scratches at the frame, however there are two large but hardly visible scratches at the display and a bump in the metal of the backside)
Additionally, thanks to changing our electricity provider last month, we received a 150€ cash-back bonus that we used towards paying the TV- so all in all we actually paid only 485€ - AWESOME!

7. Since we saved big on our new TV, which is more MisterT's toy rather than mine, i splurged again and spent ca. 130€ in scrapbook supplies and washi tape within the last 15 hours. Am i insane, or what?!?


Happy Sunday!

Framed Silhouettes

Obsession "stripes" meets obsession "frames" in the aisle at TKMaxx. Within the thousandth of a second i find myself holding this:

Sketch Challenge: Spring

This is my contribution to the March challenge of Scrap 365 Magazine. The layout is based on this sketch by Kim Woods:

I used a variety of patterned paper on a plain white background, as well as washi tape ( solid yellow, mint stripes and yellow chevron), dotted fabric, paper flowers, flatback pearls and cut-outs from one of my favorite designers, Heidi Grace.
The yellow morrocan-style background is a basic shape that is included in the Silhouette Cameo software.