Gardener's Almanac
 
In this issue:
1. Welcome! 3. We Dare You!
2. January Theme: "Transparent" 4. Garden Girl Scrap Spaces
   


As the date of this First garden newsletter of the year gets further and further away from the midmonth, I get more and more reluctant to write it. The beginning of the year has been tough on our family and so my time working gets shortened quite a bit. I spent more than a week staying at home with my son sick with Pneumonia, and then ended up spending more time at home when I was given the same diagnosis. I feel like I am still slightly adrift, looking for firm ground to set my feet upon and get this year running.

I have ideas swimming in my head, thoughts on new garden projects, new Guest Projects, Artist Projects and more. I am hoping that I will more time to fully expand these thoughts and get them implemented within the first few months of the year. I am eager to move forward. I am eager to see all the new products that will arrive with the CHA show. Oh, how I love products.

We have added a new Garden Girl this month, Rhonna Farrer. Rhonna has joined us to do some Digital Scrapbooking. She has plans to introduce us all to the joys and basics of the Digital scrapbooking world. I know there are a lot of scrapbookers already fully into this unique art form, but there are so many of us not yet even aware of the basics. Rhonna is going to get us underway with that. Watch for new areas, new projects and other exciting things on the first of February.

I wish you all a Happy Creative New Year!

This months Guest Garden girl is Rebecca Leighann. I found her use of papers and colors to be so fresh and exciting. Be sure to check out her Gallery!

 

 


Transparencies are such a big craze right now. Transparent products are everywhere! Tags, negative slides, Book Plates, other embellishments and then of course, the usual printed transparencies. It was exciting to see what the Garden girls would do with this theme. In the beginning, I was thinking about the usual transparency type ideas, but was amazed when they started to think a little bit outside of that narrow scope. The Ki Bookplates, printed vellums, stickers and other interesting transparent products were showing up in their layouts and projects! Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of that???!! Very clever. Some of the layouts had huge transparencies on them, while others had a very tiny amount of transparent product on them. I didn’t think this theme was very challenging, as there are so many transparent products on the market right now. There are ideas everywhere. But as usual, the Garden Girls amazed me with their thoughtfulness and the creative ways in which they twisted this theme. I love it when they surprise me like that!! I can’t wait to see what they do with the next few themes---they are not as easy as this one was!


 

"1996"
by Jamie Waters
"Different"
by Stacey Sattler

"transparant theme: Written Word entry no.1"
by Shelley Laming
"American Girls - Garden Newsletter"
by Tracy Miller

"Theme - Birthday Tag - Transparent"
by Leslie Lightfoot
"Happy"
by Allison Kimball

"Congrats Stacey - baby tag"
by Leslie Lightfoot

 
Product Dare : Carrie Colbert : 'Ritas with Rita
The midmonth product dare is to use some of the jumbo American Crafts letter stickers. When these things first came out, I used them on every page! But you know how it is... sometimes you get so much product that you forget what all you have. Well, I "rediscovered" these the other night and can't live without them again. :) Can't wait to see what you can come up with using them!
Weekly Challenge : Tracy Miller : Weekly Challenge - Serendipitous Scraplift
(I hope I spelled "serendipitous" correctly?!)

This week's challenge is to scraplift at random. Just pick up your favorite idea book, turn it to a random page and lift what is there. Or, pick out your favorite scrapper at 2Peas and decide to scraplift the 5th layout in her gallery. Or, better yet, pick out your favorite scrapper whose style is opposite of yours and lift her fifth layout. Don't think about it - just do it!

You can do an exact lift, or just get inspired. I decided to use my DW2005 calendar for this challenge - I pulled out May 28th...oops, a Photo tip. But then I flipped it over and there was August 8 - Cathy's amazing shadowbox.

Well, I had a shadowbox and a picture and now I had the inspiration! I prefer Cathy's (of course), but I'm glad to have this one done. The background is K&Co fabric paper. For the background circles, I used Tagwear by Karen Burniston. The striped paper is Daisy D's. The stitched piece is from Lil Davis, part of an embellished background pack. The stitching down the photo is from K&Co - it is stitching in epoxy that you just stick on. The canvas pocket, watch face and big "M" are all from Lil Davis - the chipboard letters are coming soon. In the bottom right corner I stuck Wordfetti into a watch tin than put a few stones from the beach into the tin as well.

This photo is my husband and his family. He is one of 6 - the only boy. We gave everyone a copy of this picture for Christmas and I really wanted to do something special with it. Thanks Cathy for the inspiration!

So, I challenge you to just lift something - and have fun!!

   
   
Thanks to Jen Lessinger for sharing her scrap space this month!

 

"my scrap space"
by Jen Lessinger