December... it IS almost here!

Where did October go? And November for that matter? How are we already on the eve of December? Well... we are and this December 1st is a bittersweet blogpost for me! I, like Detta decided it was time to step away from the MSDT. Working with Jill, and the various team members over the years has been great fun, and their creativity is beyond inspiring. You all know Jill as a great store owner, but she is also a great boss, and friend. I am blessed for the time with her and MS. Thank you Jill!!!

Now, onto this whole its already December freak out moment I am having! As you look at your calendar remember a few things...

1. If your December Daily makes you crazy, put it aside, and just write down a memory from each day, then go make it in January while you eat leftover cookies. Me, I like crazy, so in a fit of freakish scrapping I put mine together yesterday. We'll see how this goes...
2. If you cherish hand made gifts, but know your aunt throws them out, stop. Stop making aunty a handmade gift and get her a gift card. Save yourself time, hurt feelings, and crafty bitterness. :)
3. Make at least one card, layout, or crafty bit of something this month that is not Christmas themed. I know, crazy talk. BUT... maybe making that layout about the beach will be just the vacation you need from the busyness!
4. Above all... stop. Take time to enjoy your family, and do something fun,meaningful, and memory worthy.

Merry Christmas to all, it has been a great ride, and I am ever thankful for Jill, MS and each of you! Your new DT crew is AMAZING too... get ready for them to rock your socks off this year!!

Farewell but not goodbye

I thought I'd use my last blog post to say thank you. Thank you for being such a great group of crafters. Thank you for being such supportive friends. Thank you for making my stint as Design Team Member and Coordinator such a pleasant, enjoyable experience. The last two years have been both fun and stressful. I loved every minute of trying to make this site an enjoyable and educational; experience every time you visit. It was also stressful in that I worried I wasn't doing enough, sometimes. However, I have been very fortunate to have led a great group of ladies on the Design Team who have helped me out tremendously. Jill has been the most generous and thoughtful "boss" I could have ever hoped for. I was very fortunate to have met her in person and found her as gracious and sweet as she is on line. I promise you would love her if you met her, too.

So, it is a bittersweet thing to say farewell to this gig. I will continue to be an active member of this site because this is my scrapbooking home. However, I have just gotten really busy with work and grandkids and even occasional photography jobs that people actually want to pay me for! That last part still surprises me. haha. I have passed the baton to Telah and I know that she will do a terrific job keeping things running smoothly around here. The new Design Team looks great and I am eagerly looking forward to seeing what they come up with. I love you all dearly.

Detta

Christmas Gift Ideas

Do you like making gift for the holiday season? If you do, then you need to check out the threads from our Thursday night Happy Hour, hosted by Christy. She had some great ideas for handmade gifts. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Weekly DT Challenge--Creating a grid on your layout

It's Tuesday and time for another weekly DT challenge! 

Sometimes I just like to create a layout with lots of photos and one of the quickest ways to do that is to create a grid on your layout base, then add your page elements in the spaces of the grid.

Here's my layout:

I created a grid with the Tim Holtz Tissue Tape, to give some structure to my layout. The grid on this page reminds me of a present, so I added a red ribbon with a button center.

 The other areas that were left on my page were the bottom for my title and the top is where I added some tags with journaling and another photo I wanted to add, but since it was a little blurry, I decided to hide it in the pocket. To create the pocket, I simply added adhesive to the sides and bottom of the photo and the tags slid in nicely behind the photo.

My challenge for you this week is to create a grid on your layout--you can use pen lines, ribbon, paper, etc. Just use your imagination and see what you can come up with!

This weeks Challenge!!!!

This week I am incharge of a few things around here so get ready for a "colorful" ride ...get it ......this week it is all about color for me and to get the week started the newest rage are all the color challenges ...so I thought that I would try one this week ....here is your color challenge ...some nice warm colors ...






This is your color palette ....please use at least 3 of the colors and you can add black, white and kraft to the project ...have fun!!! Can not wait to see what y'all come up with ....

Here is my page:

November DT Kit

We were sponsored this month by Jillibean Soup ....love this company we received all this paper, trim, labels, stickers and alphabet stickers ....I loved all the different trim and all the craft colored paper ...check out all the products from the Christmas Chestnut Collection here
Here is one of the pages that I made: