Textured Flower Card

One of the challenges at the Stampin' Out Alzheimer's Fundraiser was to create a card that had a flower with texture. I decided to use chipboard and to dress my flower in craft ink, flocking powder and Kindy Gitz! It really has some dimension in real life! Lol!

The SOA crop is nearly over and i have been enjoying it very much. I hope you have enjoyed looking at the entries I made too :)

If you would like to know how I made the flower, you can see step-by-step instructions for it on PaperCraftCentral.

Cupcake Box

The Stampin' Out Alzheimer's crop is going well! (See widget to the right of this post for a chance to join in by donating to the cause). I finished my cupcake box last night. A lady named Kelleigh Ratzlaff gave us the template and I can see this being a sweet little gift box to give to people full of candy or a piece or two of jewelry or as a party favour box or anything else you can think of :) You can put a good handful of SOMEthing in it! Lol!

The crop finishes tomorrow but man are there some good free giveaways available to people who donate, especially in the digi line.

I'm working on another challenge - will post that when it is ready.

Happy carfting!

Stampin' Out Alzheimers

Would you like to contribute to a good cause and have some fun at the same time? PaperCraftPlanet is having a cyber crop for people who donate to their cause, Stampin' Out Alzheimers, this week. The video in this post explains. I'll be joining in where I can! Why not meet me there?

EDITED: There's a Stampin' Out Alzheimers widget in the right hand column of my blog - just click on the link to go to the donation page. When you make a donation, you will be sent a password to the cybercrop page. They are trying to raise $5,000 for the cause this week :) Thanks for your support!

Flood Rains Break the Drought

The drought is over. It has been pretty wet here this week, so much so that roads have been blocked, houses and land flooded, and people urged to stay home where they can. We had our share of rain and there's more to come. Wednesday our little creek cut off the road to our house for awhile and there were streams down both sides of my house but really we are safe and well. I kept our little old (14 yo) dog (pictured) and two old cats inside for the day on Wednesday. I might need to do that again today as the storms are building up again. You can see where the rainwater ran down the side of the house (yes, our neighbours still have their icicle lights Christmas decorations up - icicles? In Qld??) and where the water got up to on the back fence. It floated my pine bark mulch clear away and out of the yard.

Elsewhere in South East Queensland and in northern NSW we have had significant flooding. If you want to see some pictures of what I mean, ABC News has some beauties. We live in the Caboolture/Morayfield area and there are plenty of shots of commonly frequented places on that news stream so do watch for them.

We stayed away from the shopping centres and just as well because it flooded the undercover ones. Today we were able to shop as we normally would though we had to walk up the Travelator because it had been flood damaged and was still broken. No big deal!

I'm so glad the drought is broken - for now.

Peaceful Layout

It's raining steadily here and has been doing that since last night. We're promised even more rain and wind tomorrow. And it is cool-ish too.

So to remind myself that fair weather is the norm here in Australia, I though you may like to see one of the double layouts I did at Warana. It shows pictures of the ocean near DH's mother's last residence. Sadly we lost her early this month, so the pictures have a special meaning for my DH and I. It truly is a beautiful place and I hope I did them justice. There were little orange flowers in the grass which made my choice of paper flowers easy. If you click on the photo you may also see some crystal and pearl bling.

Remember to consider having a look at Tan's shop (see story in post below). All of the supplies used in this double Layout were purchased at her store.

Make a Table Card

Guess where I have been? On a Scrapchat Retreat! And it was marvelous fun. I left home Friday night and didn't get home till noon on Monday. There were fourteen girls who scrapped their hearts out all weekend. We had wonderful challenges, wonderful food, a baby shower for our most pregnant scrapper, (there were two pregnant ladies but the second one isn't due till later in the year), lots of photo opportunities with our country and western theme night, lots of photo opportunities on the beach, and lots of shopping opportunities with Tanyah bringing along her entire Scrap 'n Craft With T shop for our convenience and temptation!!! And I was tempted, and I shopped. A lot.

I'll be showing you some layouts and cards and so on over the next few days but thought I would start with our table cards. We have a tradition of making a table card out of a jumbo playing card each Retreat. Every lady gets a card as a base. She is supposed to cover the card with paper or paint or her choice of medium, then pas the card on to the next person at the table.
The next person adds another embellishment, than passes the card on and so on. We had four at my table and I wound up with a card I love. I sanded then painted the front of the card, then added turquoise dauber to the top of that. The effect looked like silk to me. I sanded and daubed the back of the card so some of the playing card would show through. Everyone signed the back of the card. As this was my second Retreat, I now have two! I plan to link these together wth a book binding ring and continue to add table cards as I attend Retreats.

Oh and before I go, if you haven't been on a Retreat but would like to be tempted with some gorgeous new products, check out Tanyah's shop. She is having a celebration as it is her shop's first birthday so is offering lots of specials. If you decide to register as a customer and place an order, please put my name in the comment box as a referer (just put Susan's Saga)? I said I would promote Tan's celebration on my Blog and she would like to know that I told you about her. Thanks!

I'll be back later with some more projects from the Retreat. Happy Crafting!

Start A Scrapbook May Card Challenge

One of the new forums I am playing at has a weekly card challenge. Start A Scrapbook gave us an example card and the idea is to use it as inspiration for making one based on the ideas you gain from that card. Here's my attempt.

It was a fun card to make. I tried a few different things such as inking the edge of the card front instead of using olour for the entire card (so the inside wound up staying white - easy to write on hey?), stamping a sort of scene on a larger piece of white paper and adhering other elements to that, and I used some scented gel pens to draw some extra circles. You may not be able to tell but the sentiment and flowers are popped up. There are cute little flower crystals as well as some Kaiser crystals on there too. All stamped images are from Stampin' Up!

What do you think?

Altered Matchbox

Have you ever altered a matchbox? An ordinary, everyday matchbox can be transformed into such a cute little gift box! I took part in a swap that asked us to use only black and white, and so I covered this one in designer paper and bling and added a little ribbon handle with some eyelets. I filled the box with black and white scrappy materials. Now I have to give it away! How sad!

If you have never altered a matchbox before, I made a tutorial about it for you on PaperCraftCentral.com. Let me know if you make one!

Looking for some new forums?

I was moseying around the Internet the other night and found some forums that look inspirational.

I've recommended Scrapchat to you all before and I heartily endorse it, especially for Aussie girls who love retreats and want inspiration and a place to display their creations as well as make some fabulous friends. The forum membership is around 200 so you can really get to know people there. We're all off on a retreat this Friday and I expect to be able to show you plenty of new things after that!

I found another forum that is based in the USA as well, and it's mainly about scrapbooking. It's called the Start A Scrapbook Community. The members there have made me feel very welcome already! And they are looking for new members, so if you want a new place to hang out, why not join in? Their aim is to reach 1,000 members and they only need five more as of today!

Another forum that seems also to be USA based but who has some international members is Rubberstampchat. They too have made me very welcome. Their membership is over 2,000 so it's a big place, with lots of ideas coming from many directions. The focus there is stamping and card making but there's plenty of paper craft diversity as well.

Another interesting place is PaperCraftPlanet. They have a Ning format so you have a page of your own as a sort of blog and people comment on your page. I'm learning the format there and it's fun - sort of like instantly finding a huge source of inspirational blogs all at once! Talk about being a kid in a candy store - lol!

Have fun and let me know if you join sany of the forums or know of some other great ones :)

Happy Crafting!