Independence Day

I was recently published in an e-book of crafts for Independence Day. The book is full of great projects for the American Independence Day, but can easily be applied to any country's Independence Day; all you need to do is simply change the color scheme to fit the colors of your flag!

My contribution to the book was a scrapbook layout designed with one of my favorite paper products: Lace paper. I found just the right paper for this layout, all blue stars. The full instructions of this layout are in the e-book and it is really easy.

Don't you think it's too hot?

I think the last few days were too hot. I decided to do a layout that will cool me down a little bit: "winter at the beach". This is a layout with my son's photos from a trip he went to with his kindergarten. They went on a trip to the beach in the middle of the winter; they collected sea shells and played in the sand. I had these photos for a while; but I could get inspired to create a LO with them.

I got my inspiration when I designed my own paper. This paper is part of my "KIDS line". All the papers were designed with real children's' drawings, my children. The rainbow in the clouds drawing was just the right one for this LO. It had a feel of winter and summer all together, gray skies with shining sun…winter at the Beach.

A few challenges:
twisted Sketches #054- bold
The ABC challenge - W is for weather
Stampin' Royalty #24 - masculine
Capture these sketches #40
Just for fun - color challenge #15
Just us girl #37 - Let's get digital
Scrap the Art challenge #9
Scrap that poetry #18 - footprints in the sand
Scrap your scrap #54 - color me happy
Totaly gorjuss #34 - for the boys

Einat

Don't just watch…Listen!

I had my first radio interview at FaveCrafts Radio. The host Tiffany Windsor contacted me and asked if I would be interested in doing an interview for her show. I said yes of course!
It was pre-recorded, because of the time difference and was aired on June 13th.
You can listen to the show, including my interview at this link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/favecrafts/2010/06/14/brett-bara-julia-andrus-einat-kessler-becky-kazana

I am also a Featured Designer at FaveCrafts website.
You can find two cool projects of mine with instructions, that you can create yourself:
http://www.favecrafts.com/Craft-Designers/Einat-Kessler#

Come check it out!

What do you do when there is almost nothing left?

That is the question I recently had to deal with. It was time for me to create another project for Kiki Art DT, but all my supplies were almost finished. I was left with mostly pink papers; I can't really use with my boys' photos, some scraps and the large chipboard puzzle shapes. What can I create with that? I put it all on my desk, looked at them, hoping an idea will come. And then it came…a great idea! Why not create a mini album from the puzzle shapes? I thought to myself…I love these fun pieces…and then it hit me, another idea, I would make a mini album titled: "The pieces of my heart" a very appropriate name for a mini album created from puzzle pieces.

I took two puzzle shapes and glued a paper on them to form the pages. In the middle of the album, I decided to have a little surprise and kept two small pages separate. Then I added photos of my family, who are…the pieces of my heart. To have nice clean edges I sanded all the pages slightly. I embellished the pages with hearts and sentiments.

I wrote a little poem on the second page:

“The pieces of my heart
Never stray too far apart
Always here close together
Keep my love strong forever!”

It just goes to show that even with only a few materials, you can create something!

Einat

Hot, Hot, Hot!

This is another layout I designed for Kiki Art DT and it shows my son's first bonfire, 6 years ago in Lag Ba'Omer. It was celebrated with all the kids from his kindergarten. In the beginning he was a little worried, but after a while he joined the fun.




















For those of you who don't know what Lag Ba'Omer is, here is the short version of the story: Lag-BaOmer is a Jewish holiday celebrated around the month of May, with outings, bonfires, and other joyous events. It all began 2000 years ago when the Roman Empire ruled the land of Israel. A young military leader named Bar-Kochva (son of the stars) succeeded in organizing a rebellion against the Romans. An army was organized and the war went on for 6 years. On the day of Lag-BaOmer, the Jewish rebels re-conquered Jerusalem and Jewish independence was restored. After the battle Bar Kochva’s men lit bonfires on the mountains to announce the victory. Since then every year it is custom to light a bonfire.

I usually don’t like layouts on black paper, but I decided this time it was just right. The colors of the fire were almost as vibrant as they were in reality against the black background.
For the fire, I cut flames from yellow and orange papers and glitter chipboards. For extra dimension I cut swirls from a patterned paper. To complete the fire I used some swirly stamps with yellow and orange inks. I tore the edges of all the photos and journaling blocks and inked them in black. This gave them a burnt scorched look.
I added the title in English and the journaling in Hebrew. The journaling says: “what fun we had at your first bonfire. We celebrated it with all your friends from kindergarten”. May 2004.

What do you think am I cute?

I usually design layouts for other people. They're either my clients who order custom made scrapbooks, or my kids whom their photos make the most of our family's scrapbooks. So I hardly design a layout with my photo. This time I made an exception. I designed a layout for my baby photos.

The paper I used is a paper of my own design. It is called Words and it is part of the TIME line. The Time line incorporates two themes: time and masculine. The different papers have more of a masculine feel to them and they all have time theme on them. This paper has words around all four sides, all of them relate to time.

But despite the masculine vibe this paper fitted perfectly to my photos. I am a big fan of circles so I decided to cut all the photos into circles and go from there.

I added embellishments and some more circles. I also used a toilet paper roll to stamp some circles with acrylic paint. So what do you think am I cute or what?

and a few challanges:
* Mission to create: Mission 18
* ScrapFit: Workout #21
* Pixie Dust Studio: Challenge #24
* Totally Gorjuss: Challenge #32
* Design Dollies: colors
* Just Scraps: Challenge #10

Einat