Sparkle & Shine!

Back again today with more Christmas/December Daily inspiration!

Is there anything sweeter than baby's first time on Santa's lap?! These sweet newborn photos are too much!

I used a carmine filter for these, and I love how they turned out. I'm not so happy that my glitter from my shaker pocket come around to my Joy to the World card, but it's there now. Still works!

This may be my favorite spread in the album! I adore this Stampin' up Santa stamp. I made the pocket cards with an American Crafts 6x6 paper pad, and I put the cheers sticker on the outside of the pockets. I cannot get enough shaker pockets, and I made my own mix here of reds, black and whites with a couple snowflakes thrown in!

More Christmas magic to come tomorrow! I hope you draw some scrappy inspiration here. 

Thanks for looking!

A Parisian banner - The Counterfeit Kit Club Blog Hop!

Hope you're enjoying the Counterfeit Kit Club's Member Blog Hop!

You should have arrived here from Julene's blog.

Next you should jump to Jemma's blog, but look around first! :)

Today I'm bringing you a home decor project that I made with my April Counterfeit kit, Les Voyageurs. I have a bit of a Parisian theme going on in my guest, half bath, and I've been meaning to make a banner to cover a beat up old shelf in there for ages. So this month's kit was perfect to inspire me to finally follow through!

I threw in the navy paper, because that is a predominant color in my bathroom. I cut banner pendants, rosettes, accents and letters. I used an Eiffel Tower cut file for the A to add a little extra Parisian flair.

For my banners that need to be durable in the home, I like to use a hot glue gun to secure the rosettes. Since they're not in the scrapbook and need to be acid free, that's a good adhesive to use to ensure they're not falling apart while hanging up!

I used some giant eyelets I had to reinforce the holes to hold the hanging yarn... Not too sure about that gold yarn yet - I may change it eventually.


And here is the banner in all its glory.

I got the navy vase at Goodwill. I got the two lovely old books at a local thrift store, and the brass tower is from Paris! The glitter tower is from the Target dollar aisle, I think, a long time ago.

I have a strangely shaped 1/2 bath, so I have accented these two walls.

Here we are with my canvas of a photo I took in Paris.

Thank you for looking & be sure to hop on over to Jemma's blog next!

Here is a list of all the pages on the hop today in case you get lost. Hope you enjoy it!

CKCB http://counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com
Lisa http://lisahausmann.blogspot.de
Princey http://princy1010.blogspot.com
Elaine http://chidkids26.blogspot.co.uk
Julene http://julenebydesign.blogspot.com.au
Natalie http://thebigdills.blogspot.com
Jemma http://just-jimjams.blogspot.co.uk

Banner mania

Do you guys love banners as much as I do?!

I feel like a banner can make a room pretty festive, and when you handmake your banner, it just adds to the festiveness! I love to use my Cricut to make banners, but nowadays there are a ton of kits you can buy to get the look for a handmade banner for less difficulty.

I love to scrapbook, but I'd like to showcase a few other ways that you can use papercrafting, so I hope you enjoy some of the banners I'm showcasing here! Be inspired!

(Sorry for the quality of some of the photos, as they're phone photos, and weren't planned for blog use.)

This is a banner I made for a baby shower earlier in the year. The baby's room is woodland theme with mint and orange colors. Another good thing about banners is that sometimes they can double as a gift for the party person, as in this case, the banner matched the baby's room.

For my son's 2nd birthday, we had a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse bash. I went a little banner crazy to decorate my house for that party! I kept the name banner (which I just freehanded the different character designs on from the Disney junior website). But I actually sold the other two party banners and some "picks" to use in cakes or vases on a local "garage" sale site. The buyer was happy to get the items without having to pay for them from a place like etsy, and they were a sunk cost since I was going to make them for my party anyway, so it was nice to get a little bit of the party price back from selling them!

I even love making tiny banners as cake toppers! This is one from my grandparents' 52nd wedding anniversary cake we had at our family Christmas celebration that happened to fall on their special day.

Of course banners for holidays are my favorites. Below is my Halloween banner. There are just so many options, it's hard to choose just one design! With this banner I also added a separate pompom string of sparkle yarn. It sheds, but worth the cute look!

For the last banner of today we celebrate this past weekend of the beginning of college football season (GO VOLS!). I made this banner with the Ribbons and Rosettes cricut cartridge, and it's pretty simple, but I love it. As the holiday season progress, this football banner migrates to under the television to make room for holiday mantel decor.

That is all the banners I have to feature today. Thank you for looking!