I'm on vacation...

A BLOG vacation, that is.

I decided to take a step back from some of my "chores" and blogging hasn't been my top priority in quite some time (as you might have noticed) soooo... It felt like a good time to take a little vacation from it all, for a while.

Feel free to subscribe to my blog via email (in the right sidebar, below all the pretty little pictures, but above my pretty little followers' avatars :)) to be informed the second I "get back online".

Thank you, to all my loyal readers, followers and commenters, for popping by, and for leaving your marks. They mean a lot to me! :)

These are for you:



(Text says "Thanks!" in swedish.)

Au revoir!
/Z

Mad monkey...

People who know me and M well, are aware that I refer to him as "my monkeyman", "my magic monkey" or "the monkey wizard" and other quite strange things, just like that. People who DON'T know us, probably think we're rather insane.
And they're right...

Case and point:
M being silly in Vienna.



Made for Pyssloteket, using the sketch for the January challenge. :)

Longing for sunshine

Something happened in me, a few years back. From being the girl who hated being out in the sun (I have very fair skin and am quite sensitive to heat and sun. And to cold. My best friend says that my inner thermometer is broken. She's right.) I started loving the feeling of sunshine on my skin. I started longing for the scent of warmth and I enjoyed just sitting around, letting my freckles out to play.
I no longer found autumn to be the best season of the year (even if it still has its charm) and I started wishing I were somewhere else, when winter rolled around and the grey skies clouded both the light and my mind.

So now it's January of 2013 and I am tired of this grey muck. I want light. I need it.
I numb the longing with countless hours of travel-surfing. I look for cheap trips and dream about seeing all those magnificent sites in sunshiney coutries that I've yet to experience.
I make photobooks from our trips and I scrap photos like these:



LO made for, and with material from, Pyssloteket. See blogpost *here* for info! :D

How do you like winter? Do you prefer spring, summer or autumn? Do you long to get away, or have you already left for a trip, or booked one? Where would you travel if money or time wasn't an issue? Where would you live?

Share your traveling dreams, and maybe I'll see you someday, standing in front of the Treasury at Petra... Who knows?

xoxo,
Z

PS. Since I am an AWFUL blogger and update very irregularly, I added the option to subscribe to my blog via email. It's on the right hand side, if you scroll down a little. Hopefully that'll streamline your blogviewing a little, and save you some time! :D

New Year...

...new b'ak'tun - and old LOs! ;)

(I have high hopes for this b'ak'tun, by the way! ;))

I am a sucker for traditions, as long as they're fun, and here's another "old" one I embrace: to do a short LO bookend, each year. Without further ado, here are my ten faves of my own LOs, made during 2012:

 

Wishing you and yours a VERY Happy 2013 - and a great start of the brand new b'ak'tun !
xoxo
/Zarah

My (IMOHO) top 5 cards 2012

At the end of each year, the blogosphere fills up with fun posts from crafters, listing their favourite 10 cards, LOs, alter... I love those posts, and I usually participate. If I'd gone with 10, this year's card post MIGHT just contain ALL the cards I made this year, because... there weren't that many!
;)

Okay. So, I'm exaggerating slightly. But only slightly.
Anyway. Since I made so very few cards, I decided to go with my top 5 favourites, instead of 10.

Here they are:

 (Sorry about the bad image quality here. I made this on commission and it was sent off before I could get a daylight photo.)

Did you post YOUR faves? Leave a comment and I'll pop by!
:)

Merry Christmas!

Happy Kwanzaa
Glorious Hannukah
Joyuous Holidays

...and yet again: Merry Christmas!

(Material and information on these cards can be found in original You Do advent calendar-blogpost.)

Whatever your beliefs, traditions or origins - just have a MOST WONDERFUL time of the year.
I wish you all a relaxing, funfilled, memorable and absolutely amazing end to this year, and a just as fantastic beginning of the next one.

xoxo,
Z

A quick post + idea

This is another of my "if you've kept up with the You Do-blogg, you've seen this already-posts".
I kind of think it's cute enough to share again, though.

Easy and smart: a card with a built in holder for a gift card or some cash:

What you do is this:
You fold a piece of cardstock (12x4") at 4,6 and 8, which sort of turns it into an "M" with the inner V being two times 2x4" and the outer card being 4x4".
Make a hole in the middle piece. Glue down the OUTER edges of the inner V (make sure not to get any glue in the middle or your gift won't have any room in the pocket.
Decorate.
Done!

Takes a few minutes and ends up rather cute, don't you think?

Of course, all the material used is from You Do!

Have a lovely almost-Christmas-already-day! :D
xoxo,
Z

Happy Friday!

If you're a frequent visitor to the Inzpira Magazine blog, you might have seen these in our advent calendar. If not, they're probably new to you - but you just miiiiight still recognize the paper. Yup, you're right. Same exact paper as the box I showed before! It's from You Do and I loooove it! As a matter of fact, all the material I used for these are from You Do.
Paper, bling, snowflakes, flowers, leaves, bells...

For a quick tutorial, hop on over to the original post. It's in Swedish, but I think you'll probably understand it even if you're not natively Swedish, because I made a sketch for how to cut your 12x12" paper that I believe should be fairly easy to follow. If not - leave a comment on this post and I'll make sure to update with a short step-by-step! :D

Enough talk. Here are my "milk package giftboxes":

Hope you like them!

Wishing you a lovely weekend,
Zarah

Bag it and tag it...

Hah! Caught your eye, didn't I?!

It's not as gruesome a post as watching CSI might suggest. It's actually pretty much everything you don't expect. I hope. (Because if you accociate murder, crime and corpses with gift boxes, all I can say is: My condolences. ;))

See, this post is another one of my You Do guest posts and this time, I thought I'd treat you to my third post for them. A giftbox. I very cunningly and sneakily stole the idea from Nenne and left without a trace. (Actually, I told her I would and then linked back but... Oh well. That doesn't sound even remotely as CSI'ey and intriguing, now, dows it? ;))

In other words: for information on HOW to make this box, see Nenne. You won't regret it - she rocks!
If you want to know what materials I used, pop on over to the You Do blogg and read all about it.

If you just wanna see the box, stay put, 'cause here it is:

Winter/summer. I can't make up my mind! ;)

December came, and with it the snow. It had been grey and dark, rainy and a little cold outside during November, but no snow.
Waking up on the very first day of December, though, a white powder dusted everything in sight (and it wasn't powdered sugar, either! :P). It's a little bit lighter now, and being a rather traditional Swede, I like my star-lights up in the window on the first of advent. (Actually - we cheated and put them up on Saturday, the day BEFORE - since we spent Sunday in Helsingør, watching Santa lighting the X-mas tree on Axeltorv. It's a lovely tradition!)

I enjoy this time of the year. I actually enjoy ALL the seasons and I am so happy I live in a place where there ARE seasons. Even if I am freezing all the time, now. Wearing thick knitted socks, wooly scarves, leg warmers and thermal tights underneath my clothes on a daily basis. (And I mean while indoors.)

I just have a "broken internal thermostat", as my darling friend Hannah put it. I have a low tolerance for cold. And for heat. This being said: I still enjoy them. I freeze easily and I get overheated easily, but I kind of like the sensations. Weather rocks and I COULD very well turn this into a "save-the-planet-post" but... No.
(Although I DO think we should put more effort into that, it's a post for some other time.)

Instead, I'm gonna share a layout I made for Pyssloteket, using a photo of my darling husband at Lindos, Rhodos. I took this in May and it still makes me smile like an infatuated teenager every time I see it. While he squints a little (the sun shines BRIGHT that far up among the sand coloured ruins, and Lindos lies over the water), I just love the photo. To be honest, it might have something to do with the fact that I love that man...!
But I digress. The LO. Here it is:



For a complete list of materials used, see the Pyssloteket blog post. :)

Now, a question: Do YOU do a December Daily of some kind? If you do, please share a link so I can see or read about it! I love those and I WAS planning on making on, but as usual, time kind of flew past me. I think it might be allergic to me. Or maybe I smell?! o_0

;)

Have a great week, and ENJOY the season!
Love,
Z