Welcome to the Scarlet Lime Newsletter

It's December and the snow if falling like crazy here in Eastern Idaho, infact just since midnight last night, we have received at least a foot! (you can see the pictures I took this morning from our front porch) which has added to the already 2 to 3 feet of snow we already had... so if you don't have snow where you are.. you can enjoy a little bit of ours!   December is a busy month, but I still  wanted to get a small newsletter out to give you a sneak peek of what's in store for January! Plus my sister-in-law, Jayla has been hard at work, doing an entire album using our December main kit and we have some inspiration from a Scarlet Lime customer as well!  I also have a last minute gift giving idea, you can do, using some of your Scarlet Lime kit stash.. AND a fun giveaway! 

 I first wanted to thank all of you for being apart of Scarlet Lime this past year, whether you are a subscriber, or just receive the newsletters each month, we enjoy you and are grateful for your continued support of Scarlet Lime! We can't do this without YOU, so thank you!!  We (Ben and I and our family), also wanted to wish you a VERY Merry Christmas, and a HAPPY NEW YEAR! We hope 2009 brings you MUCH happiness and are full of wonderful memories you can document for your family. We love you all!

Love, Christy (and Ben!)

Easy Gift Giving Idea: Dish Towel Aprons

So this year, I was in charge of a "craft" event our church was holding. I had to create several different craft ideas and then the women in our church would sign up for the crafts they wanted to do (including scrapbooking) and then on a Saturday, they would all come and spend the entire day, making all the different projects they signed up for.  I was in charge of coming up with the ideas they would be making, which ranged from scrapbooking, to cooking, sewing,  vinyl crafts, and more. As I was coming up with the different ideas, I was visiting my local scrapbooking store one day, IScrap and Tina, who owns the store (and a good friend), was working that day. She loves to bring projects to the store, to work on while she tends the register and that particular day she was making aprons from patterns she got out of a book called  "A is for Apron by Nathalie Mornu". They were SO cute and I thought immediately that it would be a fun project to do at the craft event! My only problem is, a lot of the women aren't experienced seamstresses and for that matter, neither am I! LOL. But then the showed me another apron, she was making for her sons for  them to do "crafts" in. They were made out of a full size dishtowel (woven "tea" towels), and the great thing about them is the edges on the towels are already sewn, so you don't have to "finish" any edges.  I knew mine needed to be even simpler than that,  so we started brainstorming over a "half" apron instead. Something that wouldn't' require as much sewing. I also loved some of the looks I saw in her Apron book, one in particular with a ribbons sewn all the way up and down one of the aprons, so we came up with this apron shown at left!
It really is SO easy to make and infact is a GREAT way to use all those ribbons that come in  your kits each month! The wonderful thing about it, is you can add as little or as much ribbon as you want, and if you don't know how to sew, you can even use "no sew" heat and bond or tape, and the apron will still be wearable and washable! The base of the apron is made out of two dishcloth's. I used woven dishcloths, but you can really use any kind. Target has some REALLY cute ones, as well as the Dollar store! It's like being a kid in a candy store! LOL.. finding cute dishtowels, that would be so cute together.. and then picking out ribbons from my ribbon stash to embellish it with! I also hand sewed on buttons and flowers (also from my scrapbooking stash). So really you can use up a lot of the fun little things (charms included) from your scrapbooking kits each month!

I  know this isn't completely "scrapbooking" related, but thought it would be fun to also include it in this newsletter as a last minute gift giving idea that you can do, using some of your scrapbooking stash!

I have posted the instructions here, so enjoy!

Apron Instructions click here

So my dear Sister-in-law, Jayla (the talented gal who designs a lot of our stamps) is also a wonderful Scrapbooker! When I asked her if she would do some layouts for our December kit, she said sure right away and then told me, she had a special project she was working on for her parents for Christmas and the December kit would work PERFECT for it!  The album turned out FABULOUS, (all of the pictures are posted on the "artist gallery" of our website), it truly was amazing. She did a layout spread for each of her siblings that included a family picture, as well as a note from each of those family members on the opposite page. It was so touching and so beautiful! She brought the book over, so I could take pictures before she gave it to her mom and I am so mad at myself because I didn't take pictures of the opposites pages, that had the notes. They really were inspiring and a great idea for a Christmas gift (or anytime gift!). The book is 6x6, so easy to duplicate! Thanks Jayla again, for doing this! The pages turned out great and your techniques ROCK! Love you!

Check out Jayla's other layouts from her book click here

I love this wall hanging that Dawn Tavela made for one of her co-workers! I love how she pieces the background together and then made adorable flowers with eh other paper! So creative! Plus she punched flowers all the way around the edge of the frame as well! So cool! Thanks girl for sharing with us!