Happy Monday everyone!  I hope you all had a lovely weekend.  It’s Jenelle here with our latest LOTW winner.

The gallery is just brimming with delightful layouts at the moment and I am particularly loving all these new layouts popping up that are using SP’s newest kit, Heartfelt.  It’s such a gorgeous kit and as you are all showing us through your pages, it is soooo versatile.

This week I was so happy to see one of our gorgeous gallery girls making a spectacular return to posting in our inspiration gallery.  The lovely Carrie (aka acmckelvey) has been working very long hours but found some time to weave her digi-magic with SP’s newest kit (and a couple of other kits too) in her layout called Easter 2012.  Just take a look.

Isn’t this just beautiful?  First of all, this photograph of acmckelvey’s daughters is just so sweet (and my they have grown up fast!)  I adore the way it has been framed here along with the gorgeous clusters and paper shapes scattered throughout the layout.  Such a stunning design and every element and paper has been selected and placed with true ‘Carrie’ style.

Congratulations Carrie (acmckelvey), you have been emailed a $10 Shabby Shoppe gift card (please check your Spam folder in case it is hiding in there).  We look forward to seeing more of your beautiful work here in the gallery and if you haven’t done so already, please go and check out some of Carrie’s beautiful pages here.

Thanks for stopping by today – I do hope you’ve been inspired by our latest LOTW post and that is has you creating and uploading to the gallery soon – we really do love seeing what you create week by week.

Please join me again on Wednesday when I’ll be sharing a team ‘make-over’ inspiration post with you all!!!  Oh it’s going to be fun!  Until then, happy scrapping everyone!

JenelleLayout of the Week, Uncategorized 5 Comments

It’s that time of the week again!  Hello everyone.  Jenelle here, with the great honour of choosing this week’s Layout of the Week winner.  And I have I got a winner for you!!  A stand-out layout from one of our stand-out scrappers…  The very talented Elisabeth (aka lego) with her wonderful layout titled ‘table manners‘.  Just take a look!

Just fabulous!  Well, maybe not so fabulous when you’re the darling Paulina’s parents and your heart is skipping a beat while she does her little standing dance in her highchair!  I just loved reading your journalling lego and can completely understand – my youngest used to do the very same thing!

I really love the monochromatic colour scheme lego has used here, but those circles would have to be my absolute favourite!  What a stunning design.  I have also played a little bit of ‘I Spy’ while studying this layout and tried to work out which pieces from which Shabby Shoppe kit lego has used to make this great page.  I believe Elisabeth had nearly every SP kit she owns opened while she created this layout!

Congratulations lego – you always inspire us with your amazing designs and creative flair.  You have been emailed a $10 Shabby Shoppe gift card, so we look forward to seeing what you create next with your new purchases!  (Please also check your SPAM folder if you can’t find your gift card in your inbox).

Thanks so much for stopping by today.  We’ll see you back here tomorrow ~ Casharina has a ‘royal’ product spotlight for you all you won’t want to miss.  Until then, happy scrapping everyone!

JenelleLayout of the Week, Uncategorized 7 Comments

Happy Friday everyone!  Jenelle here, with my first ever Food Friday post… a bit daunting really, given all the culinary talents of our wonderful team here at the Shabby Shoppe, but I will give it a whirl and see how we go!!  I do love to bake and my kids are always at hand to crack the eggs, mix the ingredients, lick the beaters and do a taste test.  Thus,  my end product always looks a bit ‘rustic’ shall we say, but I do believe the process is the best part and we always have fun together in the kitchen as we go.

So, with Easter fast approaching, I thought it would be a fun activity to bake and decorate some biscuits (a.k.a. cookies) with my kids.  We have a huge collection of plastic cookie cutters in our cupboards, so we sorted through them all and found some that would suit our Easter theme!  Here’s a photo of our finished biscuits, then I’ll talk you through how you can make some too.

One of my ‘golden rules’ when cooking in the kitchen with the kids, is to make sure I am all prepared before I even tell them we’re going to be cooking!  Otherwise they get far too excited and can’t wait to start while I am still running around trying to get everything out, find ingredients and more often than not I have my head stuck in the Tupperware cupboard and eggs starts cracking on the floor behind me!

So here’s what you’ll need to have out and ready to make these yummy Easter Biscuits.

• Mixing bowl
• Food processor
• Baking/Parchment paper
• Rolling pin
• Sieve
• Cookie cutters
• Piping bags
• Tea towels for sticky hands
• Baking trays lined with baking paper
• Wire cooling rack

Ingredients

• 175 grams (6oz) unsalted butter
• 200 grams (7oz) caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 and a half teaspoons vanilla essence
• 375 grams (13oz) plain flour
• Royal Icing to decorate (or any store bought icing/frosting you can pipe onto your biscuits)
• A variety of confectionery/sweets for decoration

Hands are washed, equipment and ingredients are ready, so now it’s time to start baking!

1. Line 2 baking sheets/cookie trays with parchment/baking paper.
2. Blend the softened butter, sugar and vanilla essence in a food processor until smooth (I used the plastic blade on my food processor, but check the settings in your processor’s user guide if you are unsure).
3. Next, add the egg, egg yolk and sifted flour.
4. Process this until it forms into a smooth dough.  I needed to work the dough a little myself on a floured surface to bring it together nicely.
5. Then, wrap the dough in foil/parchment/baking paper and chill in the refrigerator for around 30  minutes.
6. Pre-heat your oven to 175 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Farenheit).
7. Take dough out of fridge and unwrap.  Roll it out onto a lightly floured surface to about a quarter of an inch thickness.  (This got a bit tricky with the kids, but we used our hands a bit  and got there in the end!)
8. Cut out your Easter/Spring shapes (eggs, chicks, bunnies, flowers, butterflies etc) and place them on the baking trays.  I found it easier to flour the cookie cutter each time so it didn’t stick to the dough.
9. Pop them into the oven for around 10-12 minutes, then cool them on a wire rack.

While they are cooling, you can make your icing.  I made a Royal Icing mix that I found here, which uses egg whites.  It came out pure white in colour and adding food colourings also worked well with this mix.  If, however, you would prefer not to use egg whites, I found another recipe mix for Royal Icing here.  I simply scooped the icing into small, plastic zip-lock bags, snipped the corner and piped the icing around the edges of our biscuits.  Before the icing set (royal icing sets hard once air dried), I placed a mixture of sweets on top to help decorate them!  You could use tiny marshmallows for the bunnies’ tails, rainbow choc-chips, sprinkles, cachous, chocolate chips… the list is endless!

Last of all, we had fun bagging up the decorated biscuits to give away as Easter treats.  The Shoppe’s Sprout Confection Collection has some gorgeous tags and neat gift boxes you could use to package up these sweet treats.

Thank you so much for ‘indulging’ me in my first ever Food Friday post!  As a little treat for reading along, I’ve made up a 4×6 recipe card you can grab as a free download.  I used a card from the Shabby Shoppe’s Made from Scratch recipe templates, along with papers from Sprout and some cute stickers from Sprout Easter Additions.  Just click HERE or on the image to download.

I do hope you have a wonderful weekend ~ we’ll see you back here on Monday with our latest Layout of the Week winner.  Have you uploaded to the gallery this past week?  It may just be you!  We are always on the lookout remember!  Until then, happy scrapping everyone!

JenelleFood Stuff, Free (not desktops), Uncategorized 5 Comments

Hello everyone!  It’s Jenelle here with another great Product Spotlight for you all.  Do you have a little star?  Of course you do!  We all do!  Whether it is our own child, niece, nephew, pet, neighbour… you name them – they are all stars!!!  So for all of our little stars,  I am spotlighting the Shabby Shoppe’s wonderful co-ordinated kit called… you guessed it…  Little Star!!  Plus, it is ON SALE for a limited time in the Shoppe at the bargain price of  $3.50.

The Little Star kit is fun, rustic and full of scrapping goodness!  The papers in this kit are shabby and textured, boasting bold and bright colours.  My favourite part of this kit is the monogram alpha stamp set – each stamp looks hand-stamped.  Plus, the alpha stamp set comes in a .png file format, along with a transparent background, so you can achieve some really great stamping effects on your layouts when you use each letter.

Need a little inspiration?  Scroll down to see some layouts from myself and the very talented Shabby Artists using this vibrant kit.  First up, a layout I created about my own little swimming star!

Did I mention that these textured papers are great for blending photos?  Rosy has done a fabulous job with blending on her layout and how cute is Kylie’s page with the circles and scattered stars?

 Casharina’s layout is so sweet – I love the way she has pinned the star ribbon on (and also made the ribbon into a banner – very clever!)  Kim has outdone herself with her amazing layout – it just makes me smile – what a star!

 Thank you so much for sharing your talent with us ladies.  You will be able to see these full size layouts in our Shabby Artist Gallery throughout the day/night, along with the full credits for each one.

Thanks so much for stopping by today.  I do hope you will swing by the Shoppe and grab yourself the Little Star kit – at that price it really is a shabby steal!!  But remember, it is only on sale for a limited time.

Please check back tomorrow - and pick up your freshly-picked FREE Desktop for March!  Until then, happy scrapping everyone!

JenelleProduct Spotlight, Uncategorized 1 Comment

Hello everyone!  It’s Jenelle here today, bringing you some tips and tricks on browsing the Shabby Shoppe’s inspiration gallery.  Now, I have been visiting this site for many years now and would you believe I have only recently worked out an easier way to view everyone’s layouts and leave comments?!?  LOL!!!  So hopefully this post helps some of you out there who may have been like me – forever clicking the ‘back’ button, trying to navigate my way through all these wonderful layouts but ending up lost!

I love seeing all the latest posts to our inspiration gallery and it is one of the first things I do when I visit the Shabby Shoppe site.  I usually open up the INSPIRATION page (I have it bookmarked for quick access), log in and then I click on 7 days , so I can easily view all the pages that have been posted in the past 7 days (you can also click on 1 day or 14 days).

I am then taken to a new page with all the layouts from the past 7 days – all lined up and very easy to view.  Sometimes there may be more than one webpage if there has been a lot of layouts uploaded that week.  I simply click ‘next page’ to continue viewing them all.   As I am doing this, I can quickly open up the layouts I’d like to view closer by holding the ctrl button on my keyboard (or command button on a Mac I believe) and left clicking my mouse.  The layouts I’ve selected are then opened up and start loading in a new tab in my browser while I continue to look through the gallery.

It is so much faster and I really like the fact that I can keep browsing while the detailed layout page loads.  I can then come back to each layout at my leisure and know it will have loaded and be ready for me!  Plus, it ensures I do not forget about a layout I may have wanted to look at (this used to happen to me a lot!).

Another trick that I have found works for me when I want to leave a comment on a layout, is to click on Post a Comment under the Photo Options tab.  I used to just scroll down under a layout and leave my comments there.  Often that meant I couldn’t actually see the layout as I typed my comment and I had to keep scrolling back up to take another look.  If I do it this way, however, I can see the layout image next to me as I type (plus I can add in all those cute little smiley faces and icons as well!)

So I hope that has helped some of you out there when it comes to browsing the gallery – I certainly find it easier and faster (but then maybe some of you already know how to do this anyway and I am just showing how ‘un-technologically advanced’ I really am!!!  LOL!!).  It really is much quicker clicking on all those tabs separately because I don’t have to wait for pages or comments to load – I simply do what I want to do then click on the next tab. No waiting time!  At the end of my browsing session I simply close the tabs I’ve viewed and click back on my main tab.  Easy!  I used to get lost when ‘straight’ clicking on layouts and sometimes I’d end up at a member’s gallery and have to search through to find the layout I was originally looking for, constantly clicking the back arrow!  Now I am a much more efficient gallery browser… how about you?  Do you have any tips on browsing our gallery or site?  You can let us know in the comments section below.

Anyway, thanks for joining me today.  Please stop by again tomorrow because SP has a terrific Project Scrap check-in post to share and I am soooo excited about Project Scrap 2012 because I am right up to date !!! (Ok, ok, it’s only been one month!!  LOL!!)  See you then and happy scrapping everyone.

JenelleTips and Tricks, Uncategorized 10 Comments