Merry Christmas!

I wish all of you a lovely Christmas. It has been great to have you all visiting and being able to visit your wonderful blogs in return all this year. Thank you for all the fun and sharing!

May 2009 be a good year for you and your family, one that contains lots of creativity and paper crafting days!

Decorating Candles

How are you doing with getting ready for Christmas? It's all 'go' here! Tonight I needed a little gift to put in a box I am giving away tomorrow, and I remembered how easy it is to personalise your own candles. So I went ahead and made one!

The details for how to decorate candles are at PaperCraftCentral, if you would like to know how to make some yourself. It's really easy and quick, and not expensive either!

Oh and I used the Stampin' Up! stamp set "City of David" to embellish this candle.

If you want some more ideas for last minute handmade Christmas gifts, I have put a few together for you.

ArticlesBase is a free, online articles directory if you have ever thought about publishing an article or two yourself :)

WARNING: I assume you know all this, but just in case.....Candles decorated with tissue should not be burned unless you place them in a hurricane lamp or similar for safety in the event that the tissue catches on fire, and please, NEVER burn ANY candle and leave it unsupervised!

Apparently there is a candle safe product available for stamping on. I am attempting to find it. If you hear of this product, would you please leave me a link or a comment so I can find it too?

Thanks in advance! Stay safe!

An Invitation and Challenge

Jaqi is delighted that more people could come visiting Dottie's blog. It helps her write the stories if she has lots of people reacting. She wrote to me from England about how much she appreciates people visiting, and sent this invitation and challenge along as well:

"If anyone would like to design a little flat doll I would be happy to add to the little family. The sizes needs to be 2 1/2" x 4 1/2" approximately, and I need a black and white image so I can colour her or him differently to look as though it looks like changes of clothes.

That would be fun if we had friends from all over the world !
cheers
Jaqi x"

So if it interests you to create a new character for Jaqi, a character who will be included in Dottie's adventures, adventures that you could read to your small friends, children or grandchildren, then please do have a go!

EDITED: By the way, Dottie is a PAPER doll, so please don't think you have to sew to be in the challenge, Tanyah!

Definitely Dottie

Oh my, what adventures Dottie gets up to! If you haven't met her yet, she has her own blog, courtesy of Jaqi who keeps and an eye on her and helps us follow along with what happens to her.

Jaqi, I take my hat of to you. You are an amazing story teller!! And paper crafter and friend, too!

Dottie's adventures are especially interesting lately because she has a new friend, from Australia of all places. Her name is Poppet.

But don't let me spoil all the surprises and news! DO go read about Dottie's adventures yourself and tell her I sent you, OK?

Kreativ Blogger Award

What a beautiful award I received from Tanyah today! Thak you so much for the encouragement and kind words, and for helping me along my ceative journey, Tan. If you haven't checked to Tanyah's amazing work, please do go have a look - you will not be disappointed!

Now it is my turn to choose some awesome creative bloggers!.....I gave out eight awards just the other day so this time I have awarded five new people. You know I love ALL of your blogs!!

The Rules for the Kreativ Blogger Award are :
1. The winner may put the logo on their blog.
2. Put a link to the person who sent you the award.
3. Nominate 5 blogs.
4. Put links to their blogs.
5. Leave a message for your nominees.

Tammy
Ness
Andrea
Chelle
Yillup

Paper Pierced Card

It's getting closer to Christmas every day, so I've been thinking about some designs for this year. I used the star template Lee kindly sent me for this one and it worked really well! Thank you again for your generosity, Lee!

This little star template (I posted a pic of it too) cannot be found in Australia! Well, I haven't found it here anywhere and I was looking for ages. It's actually a sewing notion in the USA. Lee sent me a circle and a square too. They are great!

So if anyone reading this has a craft importing business, I reckon you'd do well to look for some of these little beauties and let paper crafters know you have them!!

What is a Rub On?

Thanks for asking about what rub ons are, Grace. I plan to place some pictures up soon to show how they work. They are like transfers, decals or a form of stickers.

Nardi, thank you for asking about the quality of home-made rub ons. The end result of making your own rub ons is good - they may turn out to be a little softer or less defined than regular store-bought ones, but I like that look :)

It depends on the quality of your printer, I guess.

The other advantage to using your own Rub Ons is that you can get them to say exactly what you want them to! No need to keep hunting for just the right words in a shop! You can personalise your message without any fuss!

My PC is having some problems as I have an older operating system, and I have yet to work out how to download and edit pics from my camera on the laptop. I will do that very soon (today I have a scrap booking workshop here at home so am preparing for that!) and will show you how the rub ons turn out, OK?

Proximity Award!

"This blog invests and believes the PROXIMITY -nearness in space, time and relationships! These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers, who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award."

Jaqi kindly gave me this award. You should visit her blog and the one she has made about Dottie! Jaqi knows how to tell a story and I can't wait to find out what happens to Dottie next.

Now to pass on this award. It's hard to choose between my blogging friends and I am only allowed to choose eight, so here goes:

Lee

Suzanne

Pearl

Grace

Chrissy

Nardi

Kim

Lexie

Make your own Rub Ons

Got some acetate or OHP sheets? Another thing I wrote about today is a way to custom make your own rub ons with not much more than that!

Paper Topiary Tree

The weather is continuing to be unpredictable. Today it was so hot and muggy it was hard to stay cool. They are predicting more storms, hail, winds etc for tomorrow. My brother has come to stay for a few days straight from central Queensland where they also had very destructive hail and storms. He said the hail there got to be 7cm (3.5") in diameter, which is pretty scary hail!

Well, the other 'storm' is that my PC does indeed have a virus, and I am relying on the laptop till it is fixed. Maybe tomorrow I will figure out how to upload photos from my camera to the laptop, then to edit them in a different and unfamiliar program. Maybe!

In the meantime, I decided I could show you how I made this artificial (paper) topiary tree. It really is quite easy and I think it makes a lovely holiday or special occasion decoration! Make it in any colours you choose. Here's where you can find the step-by-step instructions.

Hope you have fun with this!

Storms and the PC

We are having some amazing storms lately. This week it has stormed twice already. They are calling the first storm we had a cyclone, though it lasted only half an hour in our area. It was strong enough to lift a large aviary off a paved area under cover and shift it several feet! It was strong enough to pick up our garden furniture and dance it around the back yard! It was even strong enough to derail a freight train in our town!!!

My poor delicate little pansies were battered and there was a mini-flood that has saturated the ground in the back yard. I'm doubly glad I took pictures and made a slide show of the flowers before they were battered.

Tonight we had a wonderful display of sheet lightning, then forked lightning, then heavy rain. Our power went off for half an hour, the dog was cowering under our feet, but we managed to find plenty of candles to light our way. It's all good now, and we weren't too concerned at the time. Other people in our city didn't fare so well though - there are roofs off in a couple of suburbs and some people were hit by both storms this week, to their sorrow and their property's detriment.

To add to all this, my PC is on the blink and is behaving badly. I cannot upload photos or get to some websites, even on the laptop. Tomorrow I plan to have the PC and the laptop checked out.

To tease you, a card class I held on Wednesday was a lot of fun, so when I am able I will upload some more images of what we made :) Oh and I have wonderful shots of some things made at last weekend's craft retreat!

More later.......

Candy Bar Favors or Chocolate Bar Sliders

Have you seen any of the chocolate bar sliders people have been making these days? I have been admiring them and decided it was high time I had a go at making some. I Wound up making a few of them in different colours with different decorations on them, and thought i would share some with you. Here's a picture of one of them :)

I wrote out some instructions for making them and have shown a couple of other variations of the slider wrappers over at PaperCraftCentral. I found some cute little kangaroo chocolate bars to use, too!

If you get a chance to make some, please do let me know how they turn out!

Morayfield flowers

Our flower garden is looking so sweet I just had to take some pictures of it for you today. Don't they look nice?

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams

It is a hot and humid day so when the bell rang and I realised a delivery truck was here, I was very happy for the diversion! The delivery man left a box on my doorstep, which contained a beautiful new 8 x 8 'Everyday Display' magnetic, framed board. I just had to try it out immediately.

I just love how my DD looks in this frame!

Candy Bar Cards

"
I found out about a new way to make a splash for people celebrating significant birthdays - make them a Candy Bar Card! My friend Angie at Chocolate Candy Mall described how to make these to me awhile ago, and today I made one for a friend who was turning 60. That's a significant birthday! I took this one with me to our dinner out with our friend and people seemed to find it quite amusing :)

If you would like to see how I made this, I have written the instructions out over at PaperCraftCentral. Let me know if you make one of these, OK? I'd love to see how you use your chocolate bars!

And if you cannot read what I have written on the card, here are the words I used:

"Dear Bob

We know you need a BOOST now the CRUNCH(ie) has come and you have reached that (cherry)RIPE old age of 60, so here’s some advice. Take some TIME OUT to DREAM. Go on PICNICS with the (Turkish)DELIGHTful love of your life. Be (cara)MELLOW and try not to FLAKE when out with friends.

Happy Birthday to our OLD FAVOURITE friend. Have a CADBURY DAIRY MILK CHOCOLATE day!

Love from your pseudo sibling and his wife, Colin & Susan XXX"

See, DH and Bob look so much alike people mistake them for brothers. That's why I call them the Pseudo Siblings! LoL!

Thank you, Nancy

Nancy is Karen Russell's sister. She found my tribute to Karen and is passing it on to her - how wonderful is that? I had thought my little page would be overwhelmed by the outpouring of support and love to this family from around the world, and would most likely not be found by them, but it was. I am glad they know that others find them inspiring and are praying for them and thinking of them all during this difficult time.

Nancy is a papercrafter too and she has another blog about papercrafts. Go have a looksee - you'll be delighted with her work!

A Tribute to an Inspiring Woman - Karen Russell

Some of you may have visited Karen Russell's blog over the last few months and years. She is a scrapbooking lady too. She has shown remarkable strength and faith in the face of some awful personal challenges - one of her four sons contracted brain cancer as a teen and this week, he sadly lost his battle for life. When Scrapchat set a challenge to make a page about an inspiring woman who I had never met in person, who else could I choose but Karen.

Karen, if you ever see this, I hope it brings you a small measure of comfort to know you are an inspiring person. I hope you will take this as my tribute to your sorrow and loss.

Theatre Box

This past week I have had a little more time for scrapbooking, something I do miss when I don't get my 'fix'! My daughter is in theatre and I decided it was high time she had a Theatre Memorabilia Box. She was in a play just the last month and I was able to attend one of the productions, where she was Olive in the female version of The Odd Couple. Olive is the messy one! LoL!

I recently purchased a lovely memorabilia display box from Creative Memories and thought it would be ideal for her acting work to be displayed. The outside of the box is a magnetic, cloth covered display board. Inside it is also magnetic and crossed with ribbons. On the third panel there is a lovely big pocket, a hook, and an elastic strap for holding bulky items in place. All of it can be hung on a wall. I placed an album inside this box and as DD is in a production, I plan to do pages about it, then place them in the album when more productions take place.

Think it will work?

I like it quite a lot :) Clever Creative Memories!

Watercolor Technique

Just when I think I won't have time to craft, I get some time! Yay!

I've been experimenting with cards for Christmas (I know I'm not alone! Lol!) and came up with some watercolored cards using the Stampin' Up! stamp set called "City of David". I thought they looked nice. There's some embossing and paint daubing going on in there too. I outlined how I made them on PaperCraftCentral if you would like to know more!

In Australia there is no snow at Christmas so I am always looking for ways to make cards that go with the season here. I like the effect of the starlight glittering on the sand in this image. I don't know if you can see it or the glittery stars either, but in real life you can!

Hope you like these!

Baby Cards

Well, I managed to get some crafting done quicker than I thought I would! I put together a page on PaperCraftCentral about some of the baby cards I have made in the past. I remembered a twin card idea I had used before and have shown you how to make a baby bundle embellishment too :) The original idea came from mom5boys at SplitCoastStampers.

Aren't they cute??

I hope you enjoy looking at my cards!

Grins and greetings! Oh and a RAK and prayer request.

Hi all - just thought I had best post a comment so you know I am still among the land of the living - lol! I have been busy working with my hubby in our andyman/home maintenance business learning new things that have nothing to do with paper crafting, which is kind of sad but surprisingly I am also enjoying the experience.

We just accepted several new jobs and they are huge, so now I go off to work with hubby every day. I now know how to operate a ride-on mower, clean a swimming pool, and use a push mower and leaf blower! I never thought I would enjoy this kind of work having been at desk jobs all my life till now, but it is like a sea change so far.

I will not be giving paper crafting up! I just need to work out when I can have time to craft given the new physical labour and excess of sun each day making me want to fall into bed earlier than usual...

Happy note: I received some beee-OO-tiful altered brads inthe mail from some crafting friends today. I will have to photograph and show you a few! Give me a few days and I will do just that :)

In the meantime, the lovely and compassionate and talented Lee has posted something amazing about an inspiring family. If you would like to help them, please go on over and read about it. Prayers and RAKs help so much...

Have a lovely day!

Altered Brads

Hi all - I'm back! I had a wonderful week away visiting my family and watching my DD perform in a play. She was Olive in "The Odd Couple" and I think she did a marvellous job!

I loved being away yet it was also lovely to come home.

While I was away, I did a little experimenting with altering brads for my paper craft projects. Have you ever done that? It's quite good fun! I wrote up how I did it at PaperCraftCentral, of course!

I plan to visit lots of blogs over the next few days to see what you have all been busy creating!

Stamp Positioner

I'm so glad some of you enjoyed the silly pictures I put up last post! I hope you also are brave enough to try out a new look and share it! He he!

On another topic, have you ever used a stamp positioner? I know you probably have, if you are a card maker. But if you have never used one or would like a few tips about how to get the best use out of them, I wrote a page about them on PaperCraftCentral and also linked to a video by Kristina Werner for a demonstration on how best to use them. You can check it out here.

I'm working on some cards and altered brads for a couple of swaps so I will post some new projects up in a day or so :)

Take care, everyone!

Yearbook Photos

Oh my - if you need a good giggle this site just might do it! Thanks to Chriss I had a lot of fun trying out the different looks this evening and just had to share the link! Here are the ones I am willing to share - LOL!!

From left to right and top to bottom, they are from the years 1954, 1968, 1970 and 1984. I look like my grandmother in 1954, myself in 1968 and 1984 and I'm not sure who in 1970!!


What a hoot!

Let me know if you upload some pics so I can come visit you too :)

Hot Glue Guns!

How do you use your hot glue gun? Do you have a picture of something you have created with yours? How about sharing it on PaperCraftCentral? You can now publish comments on some of the pages there and I am planning on making it possible to share even more!

I'd love to see anything you have created!! It would help others to see what can be done as well. So feel free to upload a comment/pic on the glue gun page at PaperCraftCentral, OK?

Hope your day has been a happy one. XX

Who's special in your life?

The Week #4 Scrapaway Challenge at Scrapchat is this:

BUTTONS & LACE

Our 5 design elements needed for this weeks challenge are:-

1. Your layout must have at least one piece of lace on it and at least one button.
2. You need only one photo on this weeks layout.
3. Your layout must have a title.
4. Your layout must have a journalling block of some sort.
5. You must scrap about someone who is older then you and who you have a great amount of respect for..

So I chose my wonderful mother's picture - it's from the 1950s. Doesn't she look gorgeous? I didn't want to make the layout very complicated as my mother has never been a lacy, decorative person - she likes things more classical and she does have a clean, smooth style.

The paper is from Creative Memories. The lace and button are from my stash :)

If you have never tried drawing your own scrapbook page layouts, why not give it a go? There's a page I wrote about how to get started on PaperCraftCentral.

ATCs 'explained'

Have you ever made an ATC or two or twenty? I have just been making some for Chrissy over at Artist Trading Cards and Me There's always a challenge going at Chrissy's blog and all are welcome to join in!

If you would like to know more about these fascinating little projects, there's a bit more information on my website

I'll definitely be making more of these! There's something compelling about them :) I used paint on the backgrounds of these, and doodled, and scrumpled up copied sheet music then distressed it with inks, and I kind of distressed the strawberries and their mounting papers too...there's plenty of metallic pens used on these ATCs. And I used Crystal Effects to make the berries look a little dewy. What do you think??

Heart to Heart Blog Candy

"There are an estimated 5 million Americans currently affected, with another person developing Alzheimer's every 71 seconds ... By mid-century, someone will develop the disease every 33 seconds unless we do something.
Alzheimer's disease is an escalating epidemic due to our aging population. In fact, 10 million baby boomers will develop Alzheimer's disease in their lifetime". From a letter written on behalf of the Alzheimer's Association

Did you know this week people are celebrating World Alzheimer's Day? A lovely lady named Caroline King is wanting to initiate a legacy of thanks to the carers who look after so many people with this crippling disease, in memory of her own grandmother who passed away because of it. She has asked that people make a card of thanks for someone who cares for an Alzheimer's sufferer, and in return she will give that person an entry to win an enormous amount of blog candy that has been donated by all sorts of stamping companies. The total package is worth over $1,000!

If you don't know a carer for someone with Alzheimer's disease, that's OK - Caroline has supplied an address you can send your card to and you will still be able to thank someone.

I hope you have a chance to participate. Caroline has the rules on her blog and says "All entries that follow the rules will be printed out on Friday, September 26 at @ 8 PM (central time) (MY GRANDMOTHER's BIRTHDAY)."

Do let me know if you do participate! I'm going to!

Look who arrived yesterday morning?

Look who arrived yesterday morning? Baby Ethan!

Yes, that's me holding him with proud new Dad (DS2) looking on!


I am so blessed.

He's very adorable.

I quickly made a card to take with me to the hospital today.

There's just nothing like holding a new grandchild for the first time! He is so active and alert already - he arrived a little later than everybody thought he would. And his Mummy did so well (she does NOT want to be on my blog in her hospital PJs! Hence no pic of her for now!)

Isn't he adorable?

Explosion Box Album

I made a little Explosion Box Album that I haven't put photos in yet! It is so easy to make these. If you would like to know how, go to PaperCraftCentral where I have made a tutorial about these little cuties.

Incidentally, my friend Angie has a website about chocolate. She has added my little Explosion Box project to her site! You can see it at Chocolate Candy Mall. Maybe you have a chocolate party favour you could suggest for her too?

I'd also love to hear how you have used explosion boxes. Please do tell me! And have a great day!

Got Too Many Post-It Notes?

EepyBird's Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo.

Here's an idea....

3-d Paper Flowers!

Want to know how I made the three dimensional paper flowers for the last scrapbook page I posted? I made a tutorial for you about that and it can be found on the How to Make Paper Flowers page at PaperCraftCentral now!

Please let me know if you make any and tell me what you think o fthe tutorial, okay? Thanks!

Iris Fold Fan Cards - made this week!

I used lots of designer paper, my embossing powders, Stampin' Up! stamp sets, a paper crimper, different brads and cords and fibres to make this selection of cards this week using the Iris Fold technique. If you haven't tried Iris Folding before, there is a tutorial for you about how to make these at PaperCraftCentral!

Week 2 of Project Scrapaway

It's been a busy week! I didn't get the Week 2 challenge done till tonight! This time we were asked to do a sketch that

1. Had one photo or more
2. Had hidden journaling
3. Had stitching, by hand or machine (I added faux stitching by hand! Hope it counts!)
4. Was about a life-changing experience
5. Oh dear I cannot remember the last one!

I completed a page about becoming a new mother.That was certainly a life changing experience for me, and also for my child! You can see my 'hidden journaling' tag I am sure. I made the flowers with a heart punch and a shaping tool (tutorial on PaperCraftCentral coming soon!) and I enhanced them with Creative Memories metallic pens - silver, gold and copper. I doodled the swirls as well. Hmm you can't see the faux stitching very well in the photo, but it is all around the circle as well as on the strips of paper in front of and behind the circle.

Hope you like it!

Scrap N Craft with T's Blog Party!

Over at Scrap N Craft with T 's blog (Diary of a Scrapaholic) there's a blog party going on. The lovely Tanyah is producing some wonderful tutorials and scrapping ideas too! Come on over and join in - everyone is welcome! Here's what Tanyah says about Week 1 of the party:

"We look forward to another fun week of more prizes to be given out and will be doing a step by step class this week by our
September Guest Design Team member Sharmaine.
hav fun creating everyone
Luv TanXx"

A Scrappin' Farewell

One of my online friend's husband is in the armed forces and has been posted overseas. So we online girlfriends are making her a surprise mini album for her to take with her. Here's my page!

The specs are to use a 6" x 6" layout, include a picture of whoever makes the layout and also put in a quote about friendship. I made a tag to slip behind the layout with a personal message on it as well.

If you want to know more details about how this layout was created, copy and paste this link:

http://www.papercraftcentral.com/friendship-scrapbook.html

And if you want to know how to make the paper butterfly, copy and paste THIS link - Lol!

http://www.papercraftcentral.com/paper-butterfly.html

Week 1 Project Scrapaway

At Scrapchat we have a challenge going on for the next 10 weeks and it all got started tonight. our challenge was:

MONOCHROMATIC

Yes I want you to design a monochromatic layout with lots of tones of Blue.

Our 5 design elements needed for this challenge are:-

1. Must have at least 3 different tones of blue.
2. Must include 2 photo's.
3. Must include ribbon.
4. Must have journalling.
5. Must have a stamped image.

Remember ladies, you need to first sketch your idea and then put it into practice when you complete your layout.

Try to use all the design elements to maximise the amount of points you will receive as the winner of round one will be the one with the most points.

Please upload your sketch and layout to the gallery by 6.00pm Thursday.

We were allowed to use embellishments of different hues and to use a white or black base page if we wanted to. You can see what I came up with! This was the first time I tried sketching a layout of my own. You can see more entries here. Feel free to come on over and have a look at some of the great talent that's there.

All materials used are from Creative Memories except some of the paper flowers.

A Blinkie from Tan!

Tan from Scrap N Craft with T just bestowed this cute blinkie on me to thank me for being a Guest Design Team member for her in August! Thank YOU, Tan - it was an absolute pleasure for me :)

Tan has a 'Spring Cleaning' sale on in the month of September - do go check it out if you need to stock up!

Wordles........

......are beautiful word clouds. If you haven't discovered this free application yet, click here.

Try it with your favourite poem, song, prose passage, Bible reading, etc. You can print it out then ad use it as your own specially designed paper.

Heartsongs - a Circle Journal

What makes your heart sing? That was the topic for a Circle Journal I completed this week. It took me a long time to think of a song and of how I could do this one, though once I had made the decisions and choices, it came together pretty quickly. Do you find it works that way for you too?

Lee and Maz might notice some of their blog candy and RAKs in use here! Thank you again, my friends.

I based the pages on a 'Flutterby' kit from Kaisercraft, but all bling has been added. The song itself fits in a pocket created by the white envelopes used to make the pages for this album (how clever is that??) These CJ pages have been completed for Gypsy for a challenge over at Scrapchat.

I hope she likes them.

If you would like more information about Circle Journals I wrote something for you at PaperCraftCentral. Go here to see it!

Lee's cards

I just HAD to share the cards Lee made for me with you! I love them both and am so happy to have them - it's very special to actually have someone's inspiring work in my hands!! Thank you again, Lee. I am busy putting all that blog candy to use and will have a pic or two to show you in the next day ....

Wow! An Award!

Chrissy, thank you for awarding me!

The rules of the award are:

1. The winner can put the logo on her blog.

2. Link the person you received your award from.

3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.

4. Put links of those blogs on yours.

5. Leave a message on the blogs of the girls you’ve nominated...

I would like to pass this onto (in no particular order)

Amy,
Andrea,
Chrissie,
Lee,
Suzanne,
Lexie,
Pearl

Congratulations, everyone! Thanks for being an inspiration to me!

Blog Candy from Lee!

I was completely gob smacked to receive this box of goodies in the mail today from the lovely Lee, all the way from Colorado! I won some blog candy at Lee's wonderful Blog a few weeks ago and was honoured with choosing my first Gina K stamp set, paper piercing tool and templates Yay!) and some scrummy bling. But when the package arrived, Lee had sent me RAKs of love for me and my new granddaughter as well!!

Lee, you are a very generous and kind person to have sent me such a cornucopia of gifts! Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

You sure inspired me to do some papercrafting today as well!
I've already used some of that sweet butterfly ribbon and the note paper ....more about that later!

Happy 50th!

I was over at Catherine's blog, saw her cute Suspension card and decided to follow her link to Splitcoaststampers
to find out how to make one.

It was very timely as I have a 50th birthday party to attend tomorrow, had a brand new stamp set I wanted to play with, and it all just seemed to fall together nicely! I hope the man in question likes it - he is having a surprise cowboy party, courtesy of his loving wife, daughter and friends. So this is a secret card till tomorrow night .... shh! Lol!

If you would like to see how I made this card, go to my PaperCraftCentral site, to this page.

Materials list:

Stampin’ Up! Bronc Buster stamp set

Certainly Celery & glossy white cardstock

Black Stazon ink

White, copper, gold and green gel pens

Rust coloured cardstock – source unknown

Ink spot pads in cocoa, lemon yellow and green

Dental floss

Double sided tape

Black calligrapher’s pen and black fine felt tipped pen

Creative Memories gold letter stickers

Two Scoops paper pad designer paper

Thank you, Maz!

The post was especially exciting today. I received two boxes and a packet. The boxes were much anticipated - one contained an order from Stampin' Up! and I now have a cowboy stamp to make a surprise birthday card with for this Saturday. The next box was full of things I ordered from Gina K! I will be making some special little tins with what was in that box soon. And the packet was such a wonderful RAK from Maz, who taught me how to scrap those pages of DH and DS a few posts back! I just had to share it with you :)

Thank you so much for being so kind and generous, Maz! And talented too!!!!

A cute bookmark

So glad you enjoyed the Wombat Day story from yesterday! It's a bit of a giggle - I had never heard of it myself till yesterday, and I've lived here for decades :-D

I have been making some bookmarks-cum-calendars for people lately and thought I'd show you one.Chrissie showed me how to do this and even emailed me the calendar template - thank you, Chrissie! You are wonderful!

This bookmark is for a friend who won a stamp set from me over at Scrapchat this month. I just used a Stampin' Up! set from the new Spring Mini catalogue here, called 'A Beautiful Thing'. It makes this type of thing easy as all I had to do was use Versamark and black Stazon on any coloured cardstock to make pretty two-step stamped images. I enhanced a little with a green gel pen and a corner rounder, and a hand written message. The only other things I needed were the slit punch, the Crop-a-dile hole punch and some ric rak.

Of course, you can dress these up pretty much any way you would like to.

Oh - I am feeling lots better now, thank you to everyone who was concerned. I hope that's the end of the winter woes for me now.

Have a good evening, all!

Wombat Day

It's been awhile since i mentioned anything uniquely Australian, and I thought today would be a perfect day to do that.

I know some of you out there like Wombats. Imagine my surprise when I found out Australia has a day set aside especially for celebrating all things wombat! No, you haven't missed it yet. It's on October 22nd. Or maybe not since the graphic from the site actually has 2007 on it, but what's to stop us celebrating it this year on Oct 22nd anyway, I ask you?

You can read more about it here.

PS I'm thinking about decorating a card tin - will let you know if it actually happens in the near future :)

Gate Fold Belated Birthday

I felt like crafting today and enjoyed making this Gate-fold card as a belated birthday offering for my DD. I'm glad she knows I love her whether she receives her cards on time or not! We did speak on the phone on her actual birthday (yesterday) so I can't be that bad.

This card is also being submitted to Tan at Scrap N Craft With T as Project 2 of my Guest Design Team commitment. Most of the materials used were purchased or given to me from Tan's online shop - thank you, Tan! I had never tried shrinky dinks before. They are a lot of fun to use.

If you would like to see how I made this card, go to my PaperCraftCentral site to this page.

Materials List:

Royal blue cardstock - I made the base card with it

Basic GreyMortifica - Ochre Pattern

'Carte Postale' stamp set from Stampin' Up!

Shrinky Dinks almond

Blue & orange brads

Ribbon

Serendipity Elevation sticker (I coloured it a deeper blue)

Versacolor inks in cocoa and black

Black Stazon

Gold gel pen, black fine tipped felt pen

Gold cord

Black raffia
Stampin' Up! Rubons - A Perfect Day

Creative Memories Vellum
Corner punch from Creative Memories

Computer printed message inside