Christmas photos and crafts

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We had a great Christmas and are still enjoying our break  - trying to do something fun everyday.

The children are delighted with their presents and so are the adults. I did buy an early present for me: RadLab, which is a photoshop plugin and very handy to edit photos.My long term aim is to take photos which need little editing, but RadLab is fun to use and can add a little something for an otherwise boring photo.

Take the photo of my son above. He was decorating a small artificial tree which was going to go in his bedroom. That how it looks in real life, taken at night with a flash.

I set the camera in manual mode, exposed for the lights. It looks a little better now.

I then cleaned a bit of the wire and played with RadLab to add a bit of glow to the photo.

I have been crafting and taking photographs, but ironically I haven't taken anIy photos of my crafty projects. I use pinterest to mark interesting things I find in the web; it a great way to have a visual catalog of them. I compiled a few Christmas projects, I'll get some photos taken but in case you want save them for next here, here are the original photos and source:

Source: homemade-gifts-made-easy.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Source: homemade-gifts-made-easy.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Both are relatively easy to make. The second one would be suitable for an older child. Great way to use paper scraps.

Source: blog.maggiemakes.com via Elisa on Pinterest

This is more time consuming, but the result is beautiful.

Source: alittledelightful.blogspot.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Made with my children and one of their friends. We used cookie cutters to make the shapes and let them colour them with markers. We didn't have much time so I let them colour before baking them. To my surprise the colours remained vivid after baking.

My Memories Suite Winner!!!

Back in November I posted a giveaway for My Memories Suite.

Today I finally drew a winner:

The winner is Carol, congratulations!!! Carol, I'll contact you with the details on how to win your prize.

Thanks to all that took part.

September Summary Layout

I am glad I finished October's summary layout and have 50% of November done. Here's September's.

I used a sketch by Shimelle Laine.

I really helped me to get the layout done, I find hard to make original multiphoto layouts.

My home still remains mostly undecorated for Christmas,  but I put this little cuties up. They're placecards from Next. Now I need something red to complement them, anybody seen a red reindeer somewhere?

Red and White Christmas

Do you know when sometimes you get all crafty and bloggy after a long dry spell?

Well, that's me at the moment. I want to use at least a bit of my energy to get started with the Christmas decorations. We didn't do much decoration last year, but I want to put a little bit of effort this year and it is going to be all red and white. Except the tree decorations which will have all the colours of the rainbow as always.

Before  December, I always bring down a banner with little booties numbered from 1 to 24 and fill it tiny chocolate pieces for the children, our version of the advent calendar. But it was always a pain to find something small enough to fit 2 in each boot. And when I found it would always be unwrapped do I had to wrap 48 tiny bits of chocolate with tin foil. Boring! This year I decided that for this amount of trouble, I could so something crafty at least. That's what I did:

The circles are from a digi kit to which I added the numbers and punches. The little bags are sandwich bags. The original bags were too big, so I had to cut then into 4 smaller ones. Of course when I cut, I had to glue the bottom and sides again which took a while, but still I enjoyed making them.

And the photo is an entry for project 365.