Summer Memories

Hi! It's Aliza (again), with another summer layout for you. I still have so many memories yet to be scrapped from last summer, which we spent in Israel. The Crafting Jewish Style papers muted tones always match my pictures, and they always look good layered together. 

Looking at these pictures I can still feel how crisp and cold that water felt as we hiked through and dunked our heads in it. It was delicious.

Well, I'm off to make some new summer memories! Enjoy!

Summer Sketch Fun

Hi! It's Aliza here. It's the first day of summer, and  everyone in my home is finally on summer vacation. It feels so good. In these lazier days of summer, what  better way to get some scrapbooking done than using a sketch for your design? Here's one for you designed by Nili:

Julie was inspired by the sketch to scrapbook photos of her daughter at preschool during the fall holidays. As a preschool teacher in a Jewish preschool, I particularly loved reading her journaling; It was a nice reminder, as I enjoy my summer vacation, why I do what I do. 

But back to Julie. Her journaling reads:

When your teachers gave me these pictures of you from the fall, it made me smile.  First of all, you look so much younger than you do now after finishing your first year of pre-school.  But also, it makes me proud to see how you're embracing the Jewish holidays and learning all our rich traditions.  Pictures from Fall 2011, written June 2012"

As for me, it"s been almost a year since my son's bar mitzvah, but I still love to reach into the stack of hundreds of photos, pull one out, and make a scrapbook layout. This is a picture of my brother in law and my nephew (who has since become a bar mitzvah himself).

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Father's Day

Hi Everyone!  Julie here.  When it came to sign up for the next round of assignments, I jumped on doing Father's Day cards.  First of all, I love making my own cards and secondly, I was looking forward to creating something that wasn't Judaic with the CJS papers.  These papers are so great for our Judaic memories but they're also so versatile that they can be used for anything.

I stuck with the idea of doing a card with each product line.  This first one with the Passover papers.  I liked making the flower with the striped paper.  

This one is with the Passover line.  The big stamp is from Unity Stamps and font is Close To My Heart.

This card is with the Hanukkah line.  I was SO happy to not use blue and take advantage of the orange and yellow as the base colors.

Hope you have a special day with the Dads in your life.  Thanks for looking!

Shavuot Layout

Shavuot around here was pretty simple. My older son was away, and we had most of our meals at home. We just had many hours of shul going, reading and playing, and eating cheesecake. Which sounds like a perfect holiday to me. So when it came time to scrapbook about Shavuot, the detail that stood out as the most special to me,was when my older son said he would miss us while he was away. As you can see, I like the small details.

I've been inspired by all the washi tape out there, and while I don't actually own any, I read somewhere that you can use strips of paper for the same effect. After stamping the page a bit, I added strips of paper from all of the Crafting Jewish Style lines, a couple of stickers, and voila! A simple page about a simple Shavuot spent at home.

Paper flowers for Shavuot from Crafting Jewish Style

 When decorating for Shavuot flowers are the way to go. Homes and synagogues are customarily filled with flowers to remind us of how flowers bloomed on Mt. Sinai at the time of the giving of the Torah. I usually decorate with whatever is growing in my garden, supplementing the bouquets with some stems from the local supermarket. I find that if  I follow my ABCs of flower arranging they usually look great!
A.cut the stems short , remove all extra foliage,and place the blooms in a low container .
B. stick to a basically monochromatic color scheme.
C. Use loose, puffy,large-headed flowers such as peonies, hydrangeas, old fashioned roses, or even carnations.

                           Shutter Beach Style                                                           Martha Stewart

This year in addition to my natural bouquets I decided to try my hand at making some paper flowers. These flowers seem to be all over the design, decorating and scrabooking sites and they look like a fun and easy activity to do with kids. I followed this tutorial from Jones Design Company with some really nice results.

Jones Design Company

Crafting Jewish Style version

What you will need:

scrapbooking or copier paper 

florist wire or pipe cleaners

scissors, pencil, low temp glue gun

How to do it:

1. Cut a out an 8" or smaller wavy circle from your paper (I used an assortment of papers from the Hanukkah and Rosh Hashanah lines)

2. Cut a spiral in the circle.

3. Starting with the outer loose end roll the spiral into a tight coil. It should begin to look lie a rosette.

4.  Release the coil and fluff a bit then hot glue the coil to the center of the spiral. Press down to adhere.

5. Glue a wire stem or pipe cleaner to the bottom of the flower. Cut out a leaf shape from green paper pinch and glue to over the stem at base of flower.

Variation: Flower place cards and/or napkin rings

Instead of gluing a stem onto the flower adhere a ribbon to the base to be tied around the napkin. Or, stamp or write your guests name on the leaf and then adhere to the base of the flower for a simple and pretty place card.

 I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. How do you decorate for Shavuot? Will you be celebrating with friend and family? Check this site out for more info about the holiday and some great recipes.

May Sketch

It's time for a new sketch. This month's sketch was designed by our own Nili. It has room for 2 photos, journaling, and plenty of space for creativity.

Lisa used the sketch to create this wonderful layout of her daughter's confirmation. She added a few doilies which very popular right now, and work perfectly for a girl layout.

Since today is the last day of Hebrew school, I decided to use the sketch to make a card for one of the teachers.  I used the Rosh HaShana collection and some Jewish-themed stamps that I had.

I hope this sketch inspires you to create. We would love to see what you've done.

Yom Ha'atzmaut according to a 3 year old

My younger daughters celebrated Yom Ha'atzmaut at their pre-school two weeks ago.  They had a big party to celebrate.  Everyone, including the teachers, face painted the Israeli flags on their cheeks.  When my husband asked M what they did in school today, the journaling is their conversation. 

It says:
Dad - How was school today?
M - Fun. We ate Israeli cake. (note: I made the cake with store bought cake mix)
Dad - Why did you eat Israeli cake?
M - Because it was Israel's birthday.
Dad - How old you think Israel is?
M - I think old.  Probably 4.




 

I guess when you're 3.5, 4 is pretty old.  

I hope you all enjoyed your Israeli cake for Yom Ha'atzmaut!
Julie