Spring Fling

Well, my nieces LOVED their gifts. The snail was ordered, as I told you before, but the owl was a total surprise.

Tamar wondered why her snail didn't have a mouth, and insisted on drawing one. Remembering that she in only turning 4 in July, she did an amazing job, even if it did come out a little off center... OK, a lot off center... I still love it! She drew a big laughing mouth. All it misses are the teeth...

I'm sorry I didn't take a picture of it. I'll try to do that in the next few days, when I'm there again.



I finally finished my new kit.
As always, for lack of free time, I design my kits for the DSO color challange, So thanks, Kim, for those challanges.
And again, I owe special thanks to Atomic Cupacke.


Here it is: Spring Fling.

You can download it HERE.

Have fun.

Fun Stuff

Last weekend was a magical weekend.
It started Friday, with a wonderful workshop on plaster basket. I can't show you mine, cause it's not finished yet, but here's an example made by Nili, who taught us about the basket, taken from her Flickr.

I can only hope mine will be as beautiful...

Here’s a link to Nili’s Flickr, where you can see all 95 plaster baskets she’s made:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nili_choman/sets/72157594321303280/

We started at 10 in the morning, and left somewhere around 3 in the afternoon, and out of all that time, we spent about 2 hours on making our baskets… So you can imagine how much fun we had. LOTS.

And the magic continued on Saturday. I met a bunch of friends at Limor’s magical and wonderful craft store in Yuvalim. “Kesem Shimushi” is the name of the store and it means – practical magic. Like the name, the store is magical. I had a wonderful time browsing through the different items, and to top it all off, Limor had a table all ready for us, to sit down and work.

Here we all are standing at the table that's ready for us (well, Keren is taking the picture, so she's not in it...).

We are (right to left): Hagit, Myself, Shron, Limor, Revital, Dvora and Mor.

The picture was copied from Keren's blog, and here's a link to that post (mind you, her blog is in Hebrew, but if you read Hebrew, it is much recommended):
http://www.tapuz.co.il/blog/ViewEntry.asp?EntryId=1229632

I got to tell you, a lot of work was NOT done at that table, but a lot of talking and laughing was.
I had such a good time, that we stayed on and on and on. We got there at 10:30 in the morning (after almost two hours driving) and left at 6 in the afternoon (for another 2 hour driving). A long day, but I can hardly remember when I had more fun!

And, to top it all, I got a very-very-belated Bday gift, 9 months after my birthday (that's how long it's been since I've since Limor and Sharon.
I got this beautiful pail:




And in it was this gorgeous bag:

And in it were these amazing ribbons (I LOVE ribbons):

Then, this week, since Passover is just around the corner (tonight, actually), I needed to finish up the gifts I wanted to give.
So first came the snails. The pattern is a Tilda pattern, and I learned to make my snails from Keren, who taught me in a workshop, which was another fun evening, filled with laughter.
(Do you get the common thread here? Working together with friends always leads to more laughing than working…)

Here's the snail I made in that workshop:



And here are the two I made for my nieces:

Then I figured I needed a pin cushion, and I saw one here a while ago:

http://www.bhg.com/crafts/sewing/accessories/patchwork-pincushion/

And I remembered it cause I liked that she looked like a gift. To be honest, I was too lazy to look for it again and follow instructions, so I just made one from memory. It could be better, but I like it:

Then I remembered seeing a really cute owl online, so I looked for it, and found this:

http://moonstitches.typepad.com%20m/photos/tutowlrial/030726.html

I printed the pattern at work, and that same night, made a small owl from memory. (It's small because the pattern seemed really big to me, so I down scaled it to 75% of the size).



Last night I decided to add to my nieces a couple of owls, and this time I made them the size of the original pattern. So here's my small owl family, which is going to part tomorrow:

And since I had so much fun sawing yesterday, I also made me this little bag:




No pattern was used here. I took measurements of what i wanted to use it for, and constructed it all on my own. Again, it could be a little better, but for the first time of making a bag I'm really proud of myself.

Scrpbook A Song

That's a challenge we had at one of the Israelis forums.

It took me just a few seconds to know which song I choose, but the harder part was to decide how to design the page itself.
The song speaks a lot about pain, and the images that came to my mind were jagged black and red. I didn't want to use that, so i kept thinking. The month was ending, and I still had no new ideas, until, suddenly, three days before the month ended, I had it.
I chose a sentence from the end of the song, and immediately knew what image is going to be at the center of my page. You probably know it, I got it in my mail several times, and now found it online, and I have no idea who created it, so I don't know who I'm supposed to give credit to...
But I love it. And it fit perfectly.

Here's my page:
The song is "Now You're Coming Back" sung by Miri Masika, written and composed by Erik Berman.


The line from the song, written on the page in Hebrew, reads: "Today I'm smiling even to the one in the mirror".

The rest of the elements on my page are my creation, with special thanks to Atomic Cupcake.

And then I remembered the two first pages I ever created.

Both were done on songs written by the late Ehud Manor, shortly after his death. Ehud Manor was one of the more important and noted song-writers in Israel, and he is very missed.

This page is done for the song: "Days of Binyamina".
Words by Ehud Manor, Music by Mati Caspi.

The lines from the song, written on the page are:
"Whatever happened to the child who spoke to the stars,
Who told secrets to yellow-weeds and seagulls,
Who counted every freckle quietly and fell asleep in the sand,
What happened to him one day that he got up and disappeared?"

The page was painted with acrilic paints, and the stars are glued on for extra sparkle.

This is a second page done on Ehud Manor's songs.
This song is called "My Second Childhood".
Words by Ehud Manor, Music by Mati Caspi.

The line from the song, written on the page, is:
"This is my second childhood... with you".


This page was painted with water-based colored pencils.

Purim !

Purim, to those who aren't familiar with it, is a Jewish holiday, where we put on customs (well, kids mostly) and send "mishloach manot" ("sending of portions" according to The Book of Esther).
So this is the "Mishloach Manot" I made. It's made of 2 coffee tins (empty, of course), that I cleaned & covered.

The first, I wrapped in a brownish paper, and glued on it green bristol paper doodles cut in my brand new Cuttlebug machine. The tiny flowers were punched out of scrap paper, and then I covered everything with a transparent sticky book cover.

The second, I wrapped in a grayish paper, and glued on it paper paisleys cut in my brand new Cuttlebug machine. Those paisley - some of them - are made with tiny bits & pieces such as flowers, leaves and dots. Then I covered everything with a transparent sticky book cover.

The card I added was not what I planned. I started out wanting to use an embossing folder in my Cuttlebug, and when I got the result - the whole card changed. It's a simple card, but very fitting, in my opinion.

And to end it all - a little handmade gift - a beaded key chain:

Garden Fun

Here's my brand new kit. Hope you like it, I had a great time creating it.


Special thanks to Atomic Cupcake.

Download HERE

Download HERE

Don't forget to let me know how you like it. Comments are much appreciated.

To hunt or not to hunt, that is the question

If you check my blog frequently, you've probably noticed I haven't hunted in two weeks.
Last week I posted a huge freebie, which took me a long time to work on, leaving no time to hunt, and this week I was just wondering if I should continue or not.

I started hunting a long time ago, when I first entered the world of digital scrapbooking. After a long time, having many many sources, I decided to open this blog and share my hunting with others.
Lately - the last few months actually - I started designing for myself and found that I rarely hunt for me, but mostly for this blog. Since I hardly get any comments on my hunts, I don't even know if other people use my hunts or find them effective and helpful.

So please let me know if you have use for these hunts, and if you want me to continue hunting for you.
Thanks.

My New Mini-Mega-Kit

I know Valentine came and went, but It took me a long time to get this kit ready, especially when I had almost no time this month to work on it...
So here it is, finally, my Valentine's Mini-Mega-Kit.

In this kit you'll find:
24 Papers
24 Buttons
13 Ribbons
8 Bows
10 Arrows
7 Flowers
3 Sequins
18 Word Blocks (9 words in 2 colors)

Special thanks to atomic cupcake.

Download paper pack 1

Download paper pack 2

Download elements

Have fun, and don't forget to ket me know what you think of it.

All comments are very welcome.