The Scarlet Lime

Lori Jolley: Quick card tutorial

I adore the November Scarlet Lime kits and I keep finding projects to make with them! I made an easy set of cards from the November Main kit "Sugar Plum" and I'm going to show you how to make them, too.

First choose any four coordinating papers from the kit. 

Then cut one 12 x 3 3/4 inch strip from two of the papers and one 12x 1 1/2 inch strip from the other two papers.

From the the 3 3/4 inch  strips cut 

three pieces 3 3/4 x 2 3/4 inches 

and

three pieces 3 3/4 x 1 1/4 inches

From the 1 1/2 inch strips cut

three 1 1/2 x 2 3/4 inch pieces

and

three 1 1/2 x 1 1/4 inch pieces

(Each 12 inch strip should yield six smaller pieces and a teeny scrap left over)

You will need three pieces of 8 1/2 x 11 cardstock for the card backgrounds. You can choose any color or a variety of colors. The background will frame and the patterned paper pieces like a window so the color and shade of the background will change the look of the cards which can be fun.

Trim the cardstock in half so you will have six pieces that measure 8 1/2 x 5 1/2. Fold the cardstock to make card backgrounds.

Ink or distress or stamp the pieces of patterned paper if you want and start arranging the pieces onto the cards. You can arrange the papers any way you want to on your cards. I used one of each pattern but you could use two or three of the same pattern if you want. I found it was best to arrange all of the cards before I started glueing them down so I knew I wouldn't end up with all one pattern on the last card and to make sure I liked the arrangements.

Remember that most of the papers are double-sided so you can use both sides of the papers to give you more variety and color.

When you have arranged all six cards the way you like them, glue all the pieces in place.

The last step is to use all those wonderful embellishments in the kit to make your cards pretty and unique. I added some ribbon and flowers from my personal stash but all the other embellishments are from the November main kit.

Did anyone else buy yards and yards of yarn fibers when it was all the rage in scrapbooking years ago? heh- heh - I couldn't resist pulling some out and adding it to one my cards. I can't help it - I still like the whimsy of fluffy fibers - within reason, of course! 

So there you are - a set of six coordinated and easy cards to share your sentiments or to package together and give as a set. 

And just so you know - you can use more papers or cut more strips from each paper and increase the number of cards you can make!

Have fun!

Lori Jolley: Favorite Holiday Traditions Project

Since my family celebrates Thanksgiving this month, I wanted to do something to let my husband and children know that I love them and I am so very thankful for them. 

I decided I would give each one a handwritten letter so I can express some of the feelings in my heart and let them know specifically the things I love about them and the potential I see in them. I'm going to leave the notes on their pillows Thanksgiving night so they can find them and hopefully know that I am so blessed to have such wonderful people to call my own.

I used the November Main Kit "Sugar Plum" to make pretty envelopes for my Thanksgiving letters.

I just opened up a plain envelope and traced the pattern onto patterned paper from the kit and then folded the paper and glued the envelope together.

I'm using the letter stickers from the kit to put names on the envelopes and the Basic Grey pops flower and leaf stickers to seal the envelope flap closed. I added some jute twine to tie a bow for more cuteness.

And they will be ready to give my thanks and love on Thanksgiving night.

I hope you all have a blessed and happy Thanksgiving with the people you love!

 

Favorite Traditions Project--Melanie Jarocki

At the beginning of the month, I mentioned I was putting together a mini album
with my Thankful blog posts for this month. This mini is made with the Scarlet
Lime November Frugal FAB kit (plus kraft cardstock, some stitching, and
binding). Here is how things are going:

Front cover. The album is 4x6. I cut each patterned paper, plus three sheets of kraft cardstock, into 3 pieces. Two pieces were 8x6, the last piece was 4x12. I folded each piece in half to make 4x6 pages.

Process: print out journaling from blog posts and photos every 3-4 days. Cut and put into album. Some days have a couple of photos and journaling strips. Some days have one photo, or no photo, and journaling blocks. I stitched around all of the pages to give them extra stability. So far, I've been able to keep up to date on this. I kept it fairly simple, otherwise I would not finish it. Have you made a Thankful album this month? Please leave a link--I'd love to see your work. Have a great day :)

Mimi Leinbach: Favorite Holiday Traditions Projects

Hi all! Novembers kits this month were so much fun to work with. Let's start things off with the Frugal Fab kit! I used this to create my favorite holiday traditions project...Cookie Day!

and a few details...

I also created a Thanksgiving card with this kit.

I loved the main kit this month, but also dug into some fun products from the mixed media shop...can you say Faber-Castell Gelatos and Claudine Hellmuth Paints.

and a few more details...

Lastly a gift for someone sweet! I love these notebooks by Traditions Studio.

and a bit more...

Hope this gets you in the mood for the holiday season.

Savitri Wilder: More Traditions + Projects

Hi! It's Savitri again and today I want to share one more tradition and a few pages that I created using the Frugal Fab and main kit from this month. I don't know if you noticed but, the Frugal Fab kit... oh my! For the price you get SO MUCH stuff!!! LOVE!! And the main kit... look at the above! Just PERFECT for a fall/neautral kind of paper project!!

Now, our one (big) tradition that we do before Christmas (and birthdays) is to not shop for ourselves two months before the day. It doesn't seem too bad for the rest of the family but for me, it's a bit rough. You see, my birthday is in October so technically I can't buy anything for myself from August - December. Eeek, right?!?!

I broke this little tradition one day by buying an old Bantam series Agatha Christie book. They're not easy to find and I saw one while browsing through a second hand bookshop. I came home, all proud of my finding, to a not so happy hubby. A few minutes later I became a not so happy wifey. Reason: He was going not bid on a whole set of Bantam series on Ebay :( 

You'd think I learned my lesson but well, the next year I bought an embossing gun. I guess it was supposed to be one of my stocking stuffers. In my defense, I really needed one for a Christmas card I was making :)

I have been good since but each time I pick up one of my Bantam books or embossing gun and hubby's there I'd get: "You could have all the books right now" or "I can't believe you broke the rule. Twice even!" 

I have two more pages I want to share with you today, both created using the Frugal Fab kit.

I've had these pictures from a few falls ago. I've had the prints for ages too, and finally found the time AND perfect pieces to put them together. 

I hope you have a great one and if you don't have a holiday tradition yet, or don't celebrate any of the November/December holidays that I celebrate, do something simple and generic like what we have going (and stick to it, HA!). 

Toodles!

Fave Holiday Tradition Project!

Hi everyone! It's Keshet here, to share a project about my favorite holiday tradition! 

My husband and I are Jewish and don't celebrate a lot of the traditional fall and winter holidays--no Halloween, Christmas, etc.  Up until I married my husband, I didn't really do Thanksgiving either!  So I decided to focus on a fall tradition the hubby and I started a few years ago: visiting the pumpkin patch!

We may not have kids just yet but we still love choosing pumpkins, riding hayrides, and drinking apple cider.  I created a layout to document this fun tradition:

And here's a closeup:

 

The colors in Scarlet Lime's November kit are so perfect for fall fun--so get scrapping those great holiday traditions!

Dena Hamlin: Traditions Projects November

So last week I shared a few of my favorite traditions, including a yummo recipe for some homemade caramels. Today I share with you the projects that I created based off my traditions pieces and featuring the

November Scarlet Lime Sugar Plum Main Kit

and  Free Spirit Frugal Fab Kit

both of which can be found HERE!

So let's gooooo. I love the stinking caramels so much that I wanted to use the picture and recipe on a layout that I keep in a Food Based scrapbook album that I have. (see I told you food was a HUGE part of our lives over here!) And the layout turned out something like this:

I had to sneak the felt apples from the frugal fab kit onto this layout  because they just SCREAMED to be used with these papers! And one of my favorite little bits in  the main kit this month was the Studio Calico Scraps Crepe Ribbon! That scalloped edge just made my day.  I used the packaging from the Basic Grey felt flowers as the recipe card for my caramels and created a little pocket behind my picture to tuck the recipe in. And a little side note: I almost always hand write my recipes because one of my favorite treasures today are handwritten recipes from my Gram and my Momma.

Now I am self admittedly NOT a card maker, I am just plain awful at it and have resigned myself to that fact....but I was moved to make some Thank You cards using the Basic Grey felt flowers and chipboard stickers from the main kit. They came together with quite a bit of ease and are going to be the perfect thing to pull out when I need to send my Thanks this holiday season:

I have passed the cooking genes on down to my daughter. She loves to bake and cook alongside me and more recently, I have been letting her take the wheel and do the majority of the baking on her own. We recently had the opportunity to go meet Paula Deen at a cookbook signing...and what calls for a day of baking more than going to meet Paula Deen??? So Zoe wanted to bake cookies for Paula using her favorite Paula Deen Monster Cookie recipe. The adorable Webster's Pages paper was the perfect way to showcase my little chef at work. And because the layout was photo heavy, I had Zoe write up her journaling on the backside of the layout. I do this quite often and find it to be very handy and fun to run across when you are going through your scrapbooks.

Soooo what have we learned today???? Well first, Dena loves food....secondly, SCRAPBOOK those favorite recipes folks...they are going to be special to somebody someday! And another little tidbit to think about: don't be afraid to put the journaling on the back of your layouts...it allows for business up front with a little party in the back (kinda like a mullet but TOTALLY better)! Plus, your readers will have fun when they run across those little surprises.

I have so many things to be thankful for this Holiday Season...and would like to say THANK YOU to Christy for having me be a little part of the Scarlet Lime Family!

and as Paula Deen would say "Best Wishes From My Craft Table to Yours...Y'all!"

Savitri Wilder: My Favorite Holiday Tradition

Hi again!! Today I want to share with you our favorite holiday tradition!! 

November and December are two very busy months for me. While I don't spend weeks planning Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas festivities I love to make sure that Thanksgiving dinner at our house is an elegant event and Christmas a fun one. 

I love to cook for others but I can't cook for a lot of people. I love to decorate too and with a small group I can pretty up a gift bag or place setting easier and quicker than for a larger group. In essence I've been using Thanksgiving as not only a get together but also a way for me to have fun making our table look pretty for us and the guests. While the style of our dinner table have varied each and every year, there seems to be one similarity between them all: Pine cones. Without realizing it pine cones have become a part of our Thanksgiving decor. 

Pine cones can be used for all sorts of pretties. Some examples are:

Pretty, huh?

Then for Christmas I always make sure that Christmas is always at home. Ever since we became parents I felt it important for our family to wake up at home on Christmas morning, to have a huge breakfast together while playing with our new toys and to just be in our jammies all day. Speaking of jammies, it's also been a tradition to give the girls a new Christmas jammies the day before Christmas. Even though it's not a surprise anymore, our oldest looks forward to opening and wearing her Christmas jammies each and every year. 

Those are a few of my family traditions. Until next time!!

Rachel Carlson: Favorite Holiday Traditions

Hello all.  Happy Fall.  YES, fall is STILL here for me.  I have been traveling since last month and finally settling into my first far away house sit in the PAC-NW.  Which means I was able to see the fall season in four different states in a month's time.  Fall arrived in Portland, Oregon about 2-3 days before I arrived...lucky me.  With that said, a tradition I have always had in the Fall season is photographing the amazing colors that Mother Nature graces us with.  In December I like to photograph the holiday lights in the neigborhood or organized holiday mega light displays.  Something about twinkly lights that makes my camera lens oh so happy.

For example, look at THOSE leaves right there in the background at the holiday market (another tradition) that I went to just last week.  WOW.  Something about the changing of the seasons that simply makes me happy. 

Best wishes for a lovely remaining Fall holiday season wherever you live.

Warm cheers,

Dena Hamlin: Favorite Holiday Traditions

In our household the holidays can be summarized with 3 F's: Food, Family and Fun! Now I have never been one for Holiday decorating, so if you are looking for nutcrackers or Christmas villages and snowmen, well my house is going to sorely disappoint you. You shall have to go visit my sister's house instead.

 But part of our family fun is creating handmade ornaments for our Christmas tree each year. My daughter Zoe and I take a trip down to the local craft store (but not without hitting Starbucks for a peppermint mocha for Mom and caramel apple cider for daughter) and go pick out wooden and glass ornaments to decorate. Then we lay newspapers all over the floor and I let her have at it with paints and glue and glitter. It's a free- for- all of decorating madness.  We decorate our tree the weekend after Thanksgiving with the classic Charlie Brown Christmas CD serenading us as we dance around and hang ornaments. One of my favorite Christmas traditions is buying each other new pajamas and opening them on Christmas Eve! We can File this under: FUN!

The words FAMILY AND FOOD are pretty much interchangeable around here. We can't have one without the other! Holidays are centered around food. Insane, over-the-top amounts of food. Thanksgiving means not one but two dinners. I bake a small turkey lunch time dinner for Zoe, John and myself of their favorite Thanksgiving foods.  Then the main event takes place at my older sister Sasha's or my Mom's house. This is where we pull out all the stops. Food covers every open surface at the hosting familys house. We just can't help ourselves.

Christmas is the Food Heaviest Celebration of all. And is spent together as a family baking cookies and candies and sharing recipes and the fruits of our labor! I have been dubbed the "Caramel Queen" as I loooove to make handmade caramels at Christmastime. Here is my newest caramel recipe that I have tried out and found to be incredible and would work for both Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Apple Cider Caramels

 

Apple Cider Caramels
Recipe adapted by Our Best Bites from America's Dairy Farmers

2 c. high-quality apple cider (like Simply Apple)
1 c. heavy cream or whipping cream, divided
1 tsp. ground cinnamon*
Pinch nutmeg*
1/4 tsp. allspice*
1 1/2 c. sugar
1/3 c. light corn syrup
1 stick (1/2 c.) real butter, cubed

*If you'd rather, you can use 1 tsp. apple pie or pumpkin pie spice + 1/2 tsp. cinnamon instead of the full teaspoon of cinnamon plus the nutmeg and allspice.

Pour cider into a medium saucepan and boil on high for about 20 minutes or until the cider is reduced to 1/3 c. (keep a glass or silicone measuring cup handy so you can pour it out and back in again if you need to). Set aside to cool.

Line an 8" square pan with parchment paper, making sure to leave about 1" hanging over the edges for easy removal. Spray with non-stick cooking spray and set aside. In a small bowl, combine 2/3 c. cream, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and reduced apple cider. Set aside.
In a large, heavy saucepan, combine the sugar, 1/3 c. whipping cream + enough water to reach the 1/2 c. line on the measuring cup, and corn syrup. Cook over low heat until the sugar dissolves. Insert the candy thermometer and simmer until the syrup reaches 234 degrees.
Remove from heat and slowly whisk in the cream mixture. Add the cubed butter and stir until the cream and butter are fully incorporated. Return the pan to heat and re-insert the candy thermometer. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently, until the temperature reaches 248 degrees.

Remove from heat and pour the caramel into the prepared pan. Let the mixture cool completely at room temperature or in the refrigerator. Cut the caramels into 1/2" squares and wrap each caramel in wax paper. Store in an airtight container or in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

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Now it may be a little time intensive, but trust me, it is soooo worth the wait. Delicious, melt in your mouth caramels with a burst of apple and cinnamon! Your tastebuds, family and friends will thank you! I am ALWAYS on the hunt for new candy recipes to try, so if YOU have a favorite HOLIDAY COOKIE, CAKE or CANDY RECIPE, please share!!!!! The more the merrier. 

Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season!