Gong Xi Fa Cai!

A very kind Chinese lady has been giving up her spare time to teach a small number of children at my son's school how to speak Mandarin Chinese, and he really enjoys the lessons.  She gave the students Chinese lucky charms for Christmas so last week he asked me if I would make her a Happy New Year card in return.  I only had 2 hours' notice so this was a bit rushed but I was quite pleased with how it turned out.

The dragon motif & backing paper were from Craft Artist Platinum, the sentiment was downloaded from the internet & the brads/mirri card were from my stash. 

Smooth, suave & sophisticated . . .

. . . . no, not me!  But as soon as I saw the free downloads at Papercraft Inspirations magazine I knew what my husband's birthday card from our son should look like.  Once I'd downloaded the image & edited it in Craft Artist Professional to add a box round it, finishing the card was easy.  The back of the card read "But enough about me, it's your day!  Happy Birthday Dad."

 Since I discovered Craft Artist I haven't done much hands-on crafting, I really should get back to it soon but digi scrapping is just too addictive.

First digiscrapped page!

Last week I discovered Craft Artist Compact, the free version of Craft Artist.  And I love it - finally I can do something with all those photos I've taken over the years!  I've always intended to do "real" scrapbooking but never seemed to have the right embellishments for each page, and I never could quite work out how on earth the finished page was supposed to fit into an album;-)

So here's my first page; I know that if I had the full version of the software I would do things differently - the free version is great but for obvious reasons its functionality is limited. These are old pictures now, taken when my son had just turned 6 - he's now 12!  They bring back memories of a fantastic afternoon when we stumbled across a perfect beach and ended up with a cove almost to ourselves; only one other family besides us.  Then suddenly we realised that the tide was coming in & we had to pack up quickly, otherwise we'd be cut off!

Digikit free from Daisytrail; extra embellishments by Rachel Dickson (Seaswept, available from computerscrapbook.com) and sheryourscraps.blogspot.com

Husband's Christmas Card

I forgot to post a picture of this one, the inspiration for it came from here: http://cliona-at-night-owl.blogspot.com/2011/12/folded-christmas-tree-card-tutorial.html.  I wasn't entirely happy with the finished card but ran out of time!

Blue vellum, white card edged with Promarkers, snowflakes on tree stamped from stamps free in Simply Homemade magazine, backing paper free from here.