Kids Cards

And now for another change of scene! I found these cute cards on Wendy's blog and as two of my grand children were having birthdays this month (They are now age 1 and 2! How fast time flies!) I decided to make these cute little cards. They are so easy to make especially if you have the Stampin' Up! Scallop Circle die and Big Shot. Cut a double scallop circle without cutting all the way through at the top of the fold, and you will have a basic face done along with your card body.

You can see the features are (mostly) circle punches though I made the mouth circle. All you do is draw a circle on black cardstock and cut it in half, then shape the mouth a little :) The cookie was made with a circle and a scallop punch and I drew the chocolate chips in with my Chocolate Chip Stampin' Write marking pen, of course!

The cards were a hit with the grandies. And some of the adults liked them too :)

Happy Birthday to the babies!

You're Never More than a Thought Away!

When I was at the Stampin' Up! Convention in Sydney, Bonny showed us how to make cards with towers of little cups. I had fun making one of these cards today for a friend who has been facing challenge after challenge lately with family members and health issues. I hope she likes it and feels encouraged!

You just mask the little stamp off as you build your tower of course ;)

I used the Earth Elements range of inks plus Tangerine Tango, designer paper from Patterns Pack II, the Share a Cup stamp form the winter Mini catalogue, a sentiment from a stamp set from the Sale-A-Bration catty, some Soft Suede polka dot ribbon, Whisper White, Old Olive and Chocolate Chip cardstock. I used the Scallop border punch and the paper piercing tool and also fringed the bottom of the main image by hand.

If you would like step by step instructions for making this card, I have provided details at PaperCraftCentral.com

A sad event

What can you do when a friend's mother dies? It is often hard to find a useful thing to do, one that satisfies the desire to do something significant for your friend. Sometimes the little things mean so much. You can listen, and hug, and cry with the person. You can pray with them and for them. You can be there for them even when they can't talk straight because of the fatigue and strain of being with their loved one. You can bring them food and comfort in the form of little things done for them.

And you can make a card for them, with love.

Rest in peace, Joy.

A Birthday Card

It's always fun playing with a new stamp set :) I recently got 'Big Bold Birthday' from Stampin' Up! and I like the 'Make a Wish' sentiment. Here I stamped those words in Kraft ink. I punched the hearts out, tore a strip of Designer Paper to mount on Metallic Silver cardstock, added some Polka Dot Grosgrain Rich Razzleberry ribbon and a couple of clear crystals to a backing of Chocolate Chip cardstock, doodled around the edges with a white Signo pen and it was done!

Daisy Mae

Daisy Mae takes the stage as the Hearty Lady of the day. She's a farm girl, or maybe a Woman of the West, though I think real Women of the West would probably not dress in pink so much. It's a little impractical and they would probably choose denim.

I made some more Hearty Ladies and have uploaded them to my Etsy shop. They seem to be getting a little attention anyway! And they are a lot of fun to make. (I added blush to her face after I posted this).

PS: Somebody please stop me if I am delusional and these are not worth putting on Etsy!!

More Hearty Ladies

Guess what I've been doing? Populating my craft desk with Hearty Ladies! Lol! I made several today and simply have to share. This young lady was trying to tell me how shy she was, not showing both eyes and all, so I named her Coy Glance. What do you think? Is she shy, or just foolin'?

Remember you can see how I make these at PaperCraftCentral or, if you would like one, you can see them all at my Etsy Shop and pick and choose there.

I will add more, I am sure, so keep an eye out! (Like Miss Coy! Lol!)

Shady Hearty Lady

These little punch art ladies have my attention again tonight :) I made this new Hearty Lady with her sunglasses and pout and also made a tutorial for you if you would like to know how I made her.

Have you made some punch art characters? If you have I would love you to show them to me at PaperCraftCentral.com!

Hearty Lady

This demure young lady was made entirely from punched cardstock and Stampin' Write markers, plus a couple of little pearly accents :) I may show you more of these with different personalities in days to come. They are such fun to make!

Stampin' Up! Convention in Sydney!

I spent an enjoyable and excitement filled couple of days with a whole lot of Stampin' Up! demonstrators in Sydney at Convention recently. Here are some of us on one of the two false alarm fire drills we had at our Motel!! It was kind of cold on the streets at 3am! It made for a sleepy day following but the wonderful Stampin' Up! events managed to keep us awake :)

I met some lovely people on this trip, got lots of tips and techniques and also got to play with some stamp sets coming out in September (Shhh! They are secret till then! Lol!) I'll be making some projects with the new sets for you to see right away after September 1st, never fear!

In the meantime, I've given you a small peek at the little birdies I made as part of my team swap and a picture of us girls swapping. We sure had fun!

I'll be back soon :)

An update

Just a little update to let you know I am still around though I have not been on my blog much. It is with sadness that I tell you we lost my brother-in-law to leukemia a little over a week ago and we have been traveling to see the family and attend his funeral since then. He was one of my husband's brothers and it is very hard to lose him. He fought against the disease for six months before succumbing. We had traveled down to see him three times in the six months (he lived 12 hour's drive from us) and we are so glad we did that. I hope it encouraged hm and his family too to see us sometimes.

I wish you all well and will be back visiting your blogs again soon.

Peeling Paint!

I found out about a new way to make backgrounds over at the Artist Trading Club and was inspired to try it out. Here are the ATCs I made as a result. I really liked the technique which you can learn about at PaperCraftCentral.com

Chriss, four of these will be making their way over to you to be part of the May swap! I hope you like them :)

Where the Blog Are You?

Chriss from the Artist Trading Club, who lives in England, told me about "Where the Blog Are You?", and this is what they say. They are "a blog which connects Aussie bloggers to one another. By joining in you can meet new bloggers & be added to the blog indexes and have your blog featured! It's loads of fun!! Every 2 weeks we will feature a new blogger and get to know him/her. Hopefully we'll make new friends and add new blogs to our blogroll!"

So I joined!

Maybe you will want to join too.

Thank you for leading me to this site, Chriss. It looks like fun!

Michelle Jamieson's Class

Chelle ran a class for us the other night on WizIQ and it was a lot of fun :) I really enjoyed thinking about my layout in a different way to my usual style. I even used paint on this layout but I made sure my picture was matted so it was not touching the paint. I still don't trust paint on photos long term!!

I used Stampin' Up! Old Olive 12" x 12" cardstock, and Barely Banana, then I used up some Stampin' Up! designer paper scraps I had on my desk. I also used some Stampin' Up! Twill tape, some Very Vanilla cardstock, my white gel pen, my black journaling pen. some crystals and of course, all sorts of left over letters. I also got to use some beautiful hand made alpha negatives I've had in my stash for awhile, courtesy of Sandy and Kylie. Thank you, my friends.

Thank you for the inspiration too, Chelle!

Do You Need Ribbons to Match your Projects?

Have you ever wanted a piece of ribbon that exactly matched your project? If you haven't found out the secret to ribbon colouring, despair no more! Lol! Here's the secret for you :)

Making your own backgrounds

I played with making my own backgrounds for this series of ATCs. I used alcohol inks, watercolour crayons and words written by hand. I didn't want to over whelm the backgrounds so kept the subjects small. Many of them are stamped images though the little boy is from some advertising material I found and the duck is from some designer paper I was using for making a gift card :)

I'm entering these in Hel's competition fro blog candy. She is after 100 comments so go on over and add to her joy today!

Tissue Paper Craft

Do you have a sweet tooth? Do you dislike throwing out perfectly good durable plastic boxes like this Ferrero Roche box? On PaperCraftCentral I show you how to alter boxes like this with tissue paper and a few other items.

C'mon over!

Garden Fairies with chalks

At Chris' blog The Artist Trading Club the March challenge was to make some Garden Fairy ATCs to swap. This is my interpretation of the challenge. I dressed them all in Stampin' Up! pastel chalk dresses and gave them 3d Dragonfly wings from the Stampin' Up! Organic Grace stamp set. Torn and inked edges gave them a little ethereal quality, I thought.

You can see more of my ATCs at PaperCraftCentral.

Dotto!

I just found out how to make a background with Dotto. I plan to make one in the next day or so and will put it up here for you to see. In the meantime, find out how to make one yourself!

Looking after your paper craft tools

Have your scissors got adhesive on them and you're not sure how to remove it? Are your punches dull? How about your papaer guillotine?

Lots of people ask about these things so I put together a few tips and ideas for taking care of your paper crafting tools.

If you have any more ideas for how to maintain your tools in top condition, I'd love to hear about them and will incorporate them to share with other visitors to PaperCraftCentral.com ;)

Sticky Strip

Do you like to know about various adhesives and how they work in paper crafting? If you would like to know more about the virtues of Sticky Strip, it just so happens I wrote a bit about that last night so thought I would share it with you :) You may find this product can provide solutions for you that ordinary double-sided tape may not.

Happy Paper Crafting!