Christmas Cards...

Greetings again friends! It's been a while since I last posted on here and I thought I would share something a bit crafty with you! Christmas is a time of giving and cheer and for me giving something from the heart is what it's all about. I adore making gifts and cards and although this year I sent my parents a beautiful store bought card (I really loved the image and message inside, they were perfect) the only other card I've decided to give out I crafted myself. Sadly, I didn't take a photo of the actual card before sealing the envelope so I will have to ask my dear friend to allow me to photograph once opened so that you can see what I'm about to describe.

For the card I took a plain blank card I bought at the dollar store and chose two pages from a magazine that would mean something to the recipient, in this case a scene from London, England and a beach scene. I traced around the card on both images I had chosen and cut them out, pasted them on either side and with marker wrote a Christmas greeting on the front. Simple, right? Inside I wrote a personal message and was done!

The envelope was a plain beige cream color so I decided to add a little to it. Here's what I used:

Magazine page, for cut-outs

Elmer's Glue Stick, for pasting

Crayola Markers in Classic Colors

Scissors and holiday stickers 

Basically, I cut-out a few images from the page I had chosen and arranged them on the envelope pasting them down right away so as to know what kind of space I had to work with. Afterward I drew a little garland around the images on the edge of the front of the envelope and then decided to write "Merry Christmas" in several languages (this was a personal choice as I know my friend will greatly appreciate the gesture). Here's a close up of the front of the envelope:

For the back of the envelope I used a sticker in the middle and wrote out some lyrics of popular holiday songs all over the back, again, just a personal touch that would be appreciated by the recipient. One just needs to get creative and know the likes of the person being given the card or gift. Here is an image of the back of the envelope:

See how easy and personal that is? I'll let you know what he thought of it once I've given it to him! Just thought I would share that simple craft idea with you all. Please, don't forget to check out my personal crafting blog, Mes Petites Creations, for more crafting and decorating ideas. May your days be sunny and bright and may all your Christmases be white!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Nadia Marie

PS: I will post a photo of the card once it's been received! 

Traveling Notebooks & PenPalling

Traveling Notebooks
Whether you have heard about them or not, you can participate in the one that SandbookNet is organizing. The idea behind the Traveling Notebook is that you will receive a notebook in the post from someone (either the Sandbook.Net team or another player in the game) and you will have to:
1) Decorate two pages - you can either tell us something about your culture, country, customs or even your lifestyle, share inspirational thoughts or anything at all that you find worth sharing. You can use whatever your heart desires to decorate the pages - clippings, deco tape, ribbons, postcards, photos, glitter, etc.
2) Take a photo of your entry and send it to us at fun(at)sandbook.net so that we can keep track where the notebook is and if you have completed the first task.
3) Send it to the next person who have signed to join the game.
Once all the people have signed, the notebook will be returned to us and we'd make photos and upload them in our Traveling Notebook Section. We'd have them in picture formats and also available in pdf format so you can look through the whole notebook once it is complete.
To sign up for the "real" Traveling Notebook - you have to fill out the form on our website. Click here to do so: Participate in Real Traveling Notebook.

Virtual Traveling Notebook
(Traveling Sheets)
We realize that the project of the "Real" Traveling Notebook is very ambitious and that it might face certain difficulties in terms of getting lost in the mail or someone breaking off the chain of the Traveling Notebook.
 

Moreover the decorated Traveling Notebook will progressively get heavier and it might present unexpected postal fees/costs for the people later on in the list, so that's why we decided to come up with an alternative, called the Virtual Traveling Notebook. For this project you will need to: decorate any number of A5 sized sheets of paper (that is 6 x 9 inches). Again you can present your country, lifestyle, customs, or any message you want to pass along and send them to our SandbookNet's postal address. As soon as we receive the decorated sheets, we will make photos of them and then tag them with your name and country (and email if you choose so) and finally upload them on our website so anyone can view them. Also when we have more sheets together, we will be making "virtual notebooks" (by combining the sheets that we have received) and making them into pdf files that you will be able to download.
To participate in any of the traveling projects you will need to state your interest by filling out the application form on our pen pal site or click here: Participate in Real Traveling Notebook.

SandbookNet is updated!

Our New Look is out: Have you explored it? If not, head to Sandbook.Net and check it out! Then don't forget to voice out your opinion about our latest update!

You may be asking or already aware why such a change was needed and made. Ever since SandbookNet's birthday on Nov 11th, 2010, we have been having a new bubbly website layout. The new design was compact, but there were issues surrounding it.

Firstly, the mailing system was misbehaving and not working. For some reason it refused to work with our design. The problem was rather annoying, since we were relying on the mailing system to distribute the magazine. Our IT Specialist was working on the mailing system and he finally managed resolve the problem. However, the magazine's size did not allow us to send the first issue as an attachment to all of our subscribers. Instead, we used the mailing system to send out a link to our website so anyone can download their copy of the magazine.

Secondly, as we understood it the hard way, the design was prone to hackers attacks as there were some unresolved problems with the code towards the website. That might sound a bit abstract, but in short it meant that we had to start working on a new design and to write a new "code". As we were in the process of updating our website, it was sadly hacked. The site was down for several hours and later on restored. That made us speed up our work.

Finally, people complained about the navigation menu, so we decided to redo it. Our new website has easy to handle menu with less drop down menus. We also took in mind the suggestions that were coming in from our Survey, so we finalized the looks and gave the site a final brush. We are looking forward to your comments on our new look!

So to all of you, from all of us and of course our friends Gaya Designs: hope you will enjoy the new look and functionality of our website! :)