One of my most favourite posts of the year! Here's my top projects this year:
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Top Picks
I always enjoy looking back at my projects throughout the year and remembering the joy and learning associated with creating them! Here are my top 10 from 2024:
This year is coming to a close and I love looking back through my blog to highlight some of my crafty accomplishments and favourite projects from this past year. It was a big year of trying new techniques, creating on a design team, and trying my hand out at tutorial videos. Here's a month-to-month recap:
Yay! I love reviewing my blog to make this post! Here's a look back at 2022:
Here we are at the end of another year! Another year of bizarre twists in world events, and while we all wait for things to straighten out and open up numerous times now, there was plenty of crafting time to be had! I always struggle to pick my top favourites of the year...I just love looking back through it all! Out of 91 posts and projects this year, I chose to highlight 21 :). I have this funny thing about needing to post this on time but I will have to go back and add in the descriptions and additional projects at a later date because I am short on time today!
January
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| Sending Lots of Love This card... |
February
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| Birthday Pinecones This card... |
March
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| Spring/Summer Coffee Lovers Blog Hop This card... |
April
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| Thanks a Latte Teacup Bouquet This card... |
May
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| Hay There Miles This card... |
June
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| Special Delivery This card... |
July
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| Anniversary Sunset This card... |
August
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| Welcome Baby Jacob This card... |
September
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| Preschool This card... |
October
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| Let's Have a S'more - Harvey is 4! This card... |
November
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| Happy 1st Birthday, Alex! This card... |
December
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| Cozy Christmas This card... |
We have reached the end of another year and it's time to do one of my favourite posts - top picks! It is refreshing to sit down and look back upon my blog over the year and even through my previous top picks posts from years past. This year has been especially long and crafting throughout it definitely helped keep my sanity! Here are some of my favourites projects from each month:
I decided to organize this post a little differently this year. Here are some of my favourite projects from 2019.
Custom
2019 brought about a chance to do some custom pieces for people, including 2 sets of wedding invitations, gift tags for a clothing shop, wedding shower invitations, thank you cards, wine tags, and wine Christmas cards. These are some of my favourite custom pieces from this year: |
| Floral Bliss Wedding Invitations |
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| MountainTots Collaboration |
New Techniques & Styles
I continued to work on my watercolour this year, tried out some stencilling, created more scenes with die cuts, and really got into layered stamps and one-layer cards. I also fell in love with plantable paper embedded with wildflower seeds! Here are some of my favourites:
Watercolour:
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| My Cup of Tea |
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| Plantable Simple Things |
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| Daisies |
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| Baby Banner |
Stencil:
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| It Is Christmas In The Heart... |
Die Cut Scenes:
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| Mountain Baby |
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| Happy 2nd Birthday |
I really worked on my picture taking skills this year to better showcase my cards. I have tried to have more of a consistent background (my white distressed crate from Kootenay Crate), take photos in natural light, and stage them with items to make the card stand out. I developed a watermark that I put on all of my photos and have come to utilize Instagram more when sharing my cards. Here are a couple of my favourite stagings this year:
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| Namaste |
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| Sending A Warm Hello |
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| Painted Tags |
Bonus Picks:
I am so happy to have my cards in my first store this year. This "beautifully inspired living" store features a collection of many Canadian made items and other home décor pieces, including my handmade cards (sold plastic-free - yay!).
This year marks 5 years of participating in Plastic Free July. This post contains a collection of changes I have made over the years to lead a more waste-free, healthy lifestyle.
My First Big Market Experience
This year also brought about the experience of my first big market experience selling my cards and tags at the Kimberley Makers Market. It was a lot of work! I used a 100 Day project, documented on my instagram account, to show how I crafted 100 days in a row to build up my market stash.
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All in all, I'm looking forward to putting this year behind me and moving into a new decade with many exciting crafty endeavours ahead of me. Cheers, 2020.
Another year has passed. A wonderful year. A peaceful year. A year filled with so much more calm and simplicity, continuing to fill my heart.
Last year I came across the greatest year-end quote that was so fitting for me. Although I included the author of the quote, I had never heard of that person. Upon looking back on my year end posts a few days ago, I was astounded to find that the author of that quote is someone amazing who I have come across this year through social media! This author finds the most appealing, fulfilling, and beautiful way to make her words feel like they are speaking directly to you. Her words are full of wisdom, optimism, and hope. Here is another Morgan Harper Nichols quote to finish off this year:
What have I learned this year? To have faith that things will work out in one way or another. To breathe. To let it be. Cheers to 2019!
Last year I came across the greatest year-end quote that was so fitting for me. Although I included the author of the quote, I had never heard of that person. Upon looking back on my year end posts a few days ago, I was astounded to find that the author of that quote is someone amazing who I have come across this year through social media! This author finds the most appealing, fulfilling, and beautiful way to make her words feel like they are speaking directly to you. Her words are full of wisdom, optimism, and hope. Here is another Morgan Harper Nichols quote to finish off this year:
Here is a look at my blog throughout the year, month by month, and the things I have learned and crafted!
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| January - You Are Pretty Amazing Getting back into the craftroom and finding time to be creative became an important goal and challenge for me. Learning how to make more simple, but satisfying cards became my mission! |
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| February - Winter Wonderland Ink blending continued to be a big theme throughout my cards this year. The Distress Oxide inks were especially fun to play with and watch the fun water effects. |
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| March - Green Latte Inspiration I am still loving to create coffee cards - my husband seems to think these are the only stamps I use - ha! This card was highlighted on the Verve blog and was fun to play around with more ink blending. I also practiced painting the cup using different ink shades to achieve a more 3D look. |
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| April - Onesie Extenders I was able to fit in some sewing projects throughout the year and was excited to create some onesie extenders for my son and for some friends too. I learned about the differences between organic fabrics and fabrics using environmentally friendly dyes versus fabrics that do not. |
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| May - Coffee Lovers in Ontario I was SO happy to be able to take a trip with Harvey and my Mom out to Ontario to see my Auntie Karen and her family this spring. We even found some time to craft together and it just so happened to be the Coffee Lovers Blog Hop! I loved visiting The Workshop in Stouffville and found these awesome blueprint coffee stamps. They have been fun to learn how to colour with markers to achieve a 3D look. |
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| June - Mandala When I first saw this beautiful mandala stencil from Studio Katia I couldn't stop imagining all of the gorgeous designs that could be done with it. Distress inks lend themselves so well to stencils like these and make an intricate design easy to accomplish! |
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| July - Waterfront Thank You This stamp set makes me think of my favourite pace on Earth - Kootenay Lake! Layering the images and using second generation stamping helped create this beautiful watercolour look. |
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| August - Keep Calm and Drink This card was one of a set of four that I made using the blueprint coffee stamps. They were fun to colour up with my Tombow markers. |
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| September - I Heart Mountain Ranges There is just something about those mountain ranges glistening as the sun hits those beautiful snowcaps. I love how this card came together, especially with the distress ink pops for the sun and the die cut sentiment. |
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| October - Forest Friends Birthday I had an idea this summer that I wanted to celebrate Harvey's 1st birthday with a forest friends theme. I sought out these cute woodland creatures from Lawn Fawn and love how the creation of this invitation came together. I also decided to better utilize my time (and cut down on waste) by only making one of these invitations and sending a picture out electronically instead. |
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| November - Winter Wishes These tags were the first that I created during the fabulous inspiration from the 25 Days of Christmas Tags during November. This really sparked the creation of my tag stash this year and provided so much creative inspiration! Here, I learned to first stamp and emboss snowflakes onto a strip of cardstock, ink it up with some oxide inks, and then punch out some tags. |
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| December - Mountain Snowfall These cards were apart of a custom collection of Christmas cards that I created especially for my friend. I enjoy tailoring cards to certain qualities and loves of close friends. I had not thought of adding white acrylic paint splatters for snow on my cards before and love how it turned out. |
Bonus Picks:
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| 'Perfect Princess' Shout Outs on Freshly Made Sketches I was so honoured and flattered this year to make some of the top picks with a few cards using Freshly Made Sketches. This card, along with the Birthday Wishes card pictured above and a fun pumpkin spice card, were celebrated! |
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| Shop Local, Eat Local, Eat Seasonally I have started to really watch my shopping, not only on cutting out plastic and being less wasteful, but by learning what is made locally, too. This coming year a goal of mine includes learning to cook more seasonally through buying local produce. This asparagus recipe using Creston asparagus was a good start this year! |
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| #ShopSmall #ShopLocal #ShopLocallyMade I love a good quality handmade product and have enjoyed searching for and finding many Canadian makers this year, especially for baby clothes and toys. I have also made it a goal to focus on quality versus quantity in the hopes of downsizing and limiting mess and waste. |
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| Coffee Lovers Blog Hop Designer Picks I was incredibly excited to hear that one of my projects for the Fall/Winter Coffee Lovers Blog Hop was highlighted out of 1113 entries! These wooden tags were an awesome find at our local Farmer's Market this summer and I loved stamping onto them and colouring them up to create Christmas tags this winter. |
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| International Tea Day On a whim I decided to sneak into my craftroom and play around with a tag set I got last year to celebrate my hot drink of choice! I love being able to find time to let my creativity flow :) |
What have I learned this year? To have faith that things will work out in one way or another. To breathe. To let it be. Cheers to 2019!
What an amazing, special year! What started out in sadness ended up moving towards happiness, hence the quote on my blog header:
Here are my top 17 picks from my crafting experiences in 2017:
February
March
April
May
October
I had been looking for a quote or something to sum up the year and finally got one when my good friend texted me this afternoon:
Cheers to 2018!
The best view comes after the hardest climb
Here are my top 17 picks from my crafting experiences in 2017:
January
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| Snow Angels I quite enjoyed this SSS card kit and loved making a shaker card |
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| Birthdays Are Cozy This card won an Honourable Mention at Art Impressions, earning me a stamp set of my choice |
February
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| Happiness Lives Here I chose this stamp set as a prize and enjoyed colouring up these cute doors on some very snowy days |
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| A Note For You Watercolour card sets have been fun to make with these Art Impressions sets |
March
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| Simply Sympathy I really liked incorporating vellum into many projects this year |
April
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| Spring Colours Gotta love that Lawn Fawn plaid |
May
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| Blossoms Here's another version of the Ai tree using some watercolour techniques |
June
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| Here Comes The Sun I love the digi sets over at Verve and knew this would be perfect for a retirement card using my Minc |
July
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| Lighthouse Inspiration I was inspired to colour up these images after spending some time at one of my favourite places: Kootenay Lake |
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| Hawaiian Hibiscus with Distress Inks I finally got into distress inks this year and this was my first project with them |
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| Let The Bliss Begin I love the look of Oxide Distress Inks on Kraft |
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| Mason Jar Pin Cushions This fun project was even better with this awesome fabric I found |
August
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| Snowflake Blueprint Tags I set out on a mission this year to build a stash of tags and these Tim Holtz blueprint images were great to use |
September
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| Fall Coffee Lovers Blog Hop 2017 I couldn't resist this digi stamp from Verve and enjoyed creating a distress ink background for it |
October
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| Photo Inspiration Fall Tree Another creation with my distress inks made for some easy cards to whip up and have on hand |
November
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| The Smallish Things This sentiment rings true for me in so many ways :) |
December
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| A Little Bit More Another great sentiment with a good reminder at this time of year |
I had been looking for a quote or something to sum up the year and finally got one when my good friend texted me this afternoon:
This year will not end
Like last year at all.
You have learned to be free.
You have learned to be strong.
You have held onto light
When the night was too long.
You have braved many fears,
You learned a new song.
And through all of these valleys
You have learned to stand tall.
This year will not end
Like last year at all.
- Morgan Harper Nichols
Cheers to 2018!
