Masters are out!

Wow, I got my copy of Scrapbooking Memories today, and the masters entries are amazing! Congratulations to all the winners and the honourable mentions, especially the Boxx girls - you are all so inspiring. It brought back memories of all the hard work and late nights that went into creating those projects.

Here are my creations:
The first is my shaped layout, which was certainly the easiest of the criterion for me, and I completed this one pretty quickly.

The next was the double layout of your hopes and dreams. This was HARD for me, the fact that it had to be a double, and that I had to divulge my secrets....so I kind of copped out since I'm more of a live in the moment type of girl who really just wants to be a housewife right now and doesn't want to think too far beyond staying at home doing just that :)

Then the calendar. It took ages. I knew that I've never used a wall calendar and I wanted something functional. Originally I was going for a day to a page, but when I got that pile of pics back from the printer it was ENORMOUS, so I went for a page to a week. And it still took me ages and it was still enormous. I spent ages lining up bits of paper to feed through the printer, cutting scalloped edges, stamping owls and sticking it all together. I took bits of it on holiday to George and Margs to put together and I sat up late for many nights cutting and sticking. Then it fully took a week of running around town trying to find somewhere that could bind it for me, but it was just too thick. In the end I thought of those old spiral bound photo albums, so I bought one, pulled it apart, inked it black and punched heaps of holes up the edge of my pages and bound it by hand. And I love how it turned out. It's for Andy because he complained once that he doesn't have any pics of the kids at work. Now he will have heaps!
The last criterion was a keepsake. I struggled for ages to think of something, then I got an idea whilst looking in the craft section at good ol' Bunnings when I saw a Kaisercraft mdf placemat. I decided I would make an alphabet placemat for my niece. Bec has loved learning numbers and letters from her placemats at the dinnertable so hopefully Sophie will too. The photography bit was very time consuming, setting up all those toy animals in the backyard, but it was fun! Then I did a numbers placemat too because I wasn't sure if one was 'enough'.

So that's it, lots of effort to no avail, but some cool projects that I would never have made otherwise. Bring on next years!