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!