Card Swap Kit for Kim's INKredibles Forum

Today I heard that some of the people taking part in the INKredible's card swap received their cards, and I promised to publish the card I sent when that started happening. So here it is. All Stampin' Up! materials were used in this card. That's Whisper White, More Mustard, Certainly Celery and Brocade Blue cardstock,

the Time Well Spent stamp set coloured with Stampin' Pastels, there's gold embossing powder and a gold brad on the flower in the top right hand corner and black embossing powder used on the green background paper, the paper piercing tool was used on the Brocade Blue and faux stitching added with the Stampin' Up! white pen, and black fine tipped felt pen on the Whisper White, and I also hand drew the flourishes with black fine-tipped felt pen.

Thanks again to Nicola at My Paper World for the card sketch in the first place!

Scrapchat's last Cybercrop for March

At Scrapchat we had some challenges that caused blasts from the past this weekend. I did two of the three challenges in time - that is, before midnight tonight!

Here's the first one:

"You will need a photo of yourself from 50% or less of your age ago. So if you are 30, it has to be a pic of you at the age of fifteen or younger; if you are 50 it has to be a photo of you at the age of 25 or younger. The title MUST be ‘A piece of me in history’ Use broken blocks for your journaling, which has to be in YOUR OWN HANDWRITING. You HAVE to only use things in your stash…NO CHEATING!!!! No ducking to the scrap shop".

I used all Creative Memories materials for this page. I made the gum blossom flowers out of photo safe paper and used photo safe pens on them to make them look more 'real' and found the 1981 World History facts online.

I used to work at that desk - gahhh! No Computer!! It was the year the first PC was produced, in fact, so we all used electric of manual typewriters - Ka CHING! I certainly didn't have one of those on my desk though. Somehow, life was simpler and I did know how to write with my own hands back then!!

The second challenge was a 'bonus' challenge and you might like to try this one too one day. I loved the effect. Here are the instructions we were given:

"My challenge is to create a layout with a bit of a retro feel to it. You will need to use a 60's photo of yourself or of a family member. Here is the thing - your layout has to be created only using Black and White Cardstock and Pattern Paper and the only way you can add colour to your layout is by adding it with your embellishments. All embellishments must be bright with a retro funky feel to them".

Now I may not have stuck to the 'retro' feel fro the embellishments, but I think wattle was pretty much a common emblem to use back then, so I used that idea. Again, I used all Creative Memories materials. I was so hapy to have gone to this old album (I worked out it is over 40 years old) as I had not checked on these photos in years and the acid from the pages and especially from the old photo corners was eating into the pictures. I took all of the pictures out of that album and scanned the ones I liked best, then put the originals in a Creative Memories safe photo storage box for later.

Links fixed

I just tested the links I put in yesterday's post and they needed tweaking. They should be fixed now. Sorry 'bout that :-)

Bush Babies

Lee asked me if my possum was a Bush Baby and I thought I'd let you know what they are in Australia (as opposed to Africa where they have a real live animal called a Bush Baby that looks surprisingly possum-like!)

To me, Bush Babies in Australia are fictional creatures. They are forever tied to the wonderful creations from May Gibbs who created the Gumnut Babies (I got this picture in my blog from May Gibbs' website [linked above] today) the Big Bad Banksia Men, and so on.

The possum that boards in my bottlebrush tree is actually a Brushtail Possum and there are heaps of cute images of them here.

Lee, I'm glad you asked! I would never have searched for these cute pictures otherwise!

Backyard wildlife

....................................................................I caught my backyard boarder out today. S/he had just arrived in his/her favourite tree for 'the daily nap' and of course my little dog let me know about it. I grabbed my camera and circled the tree, with possum eyeing me warily and dog leaping about in excitement. It wasn't enough to stop possum settling down to sleep right before my eyes, but that shot wasn't too interesting so I didn't include it here :-)

My Paper World Sketch Challenge #7

Nicola has a new sketch challenge for this fortnight. I was going to also submit it for Fiona's Alphabet challenge but that site has unfortunately been taken down (please note this, Lee). I needed a birthday card for a girlfriend also, so this card really has a number of uses!

I used Stampin' Up! cardstock - Old Olive and Whisper White. I used black Stazon ink, Always Artichoke and Versamark and embossed the flowers with gold. The flowers are coloured with Stampin' Pastels. That's a prima flower and a gold brad from my stash. The flowered paper is from the Be Yourself Collection by Urban Lily. I hand wrote the sentiment and doodled around the flowered background.

Love Challenge

Chris is having a competition about the theme of 'Love'. I thought this page in my mini album said a lot about that topic. It's a pic of my MIL at her 80th birthday party. She is so full of life and zest, even though she is in a wheel chair here after breaking a hip (playing bowls!!!! We had the party at the bowl's club and a cake with a fallen bowler on top!!!) so I am using this page as my entry. Today was the last day to enter for Chris' blog candy.

Mini Album instructions

Thanks for your sweet comments about my album, Lee and Chriss! I wanted to try and post the instructions up here for you since Lee was interested in making one, but can't seem to save them to my computer.

If you go here, you can see the instructions in the last box on the page. You'll also get to see all the other amazing albums people made for this competition! We still don't know who won but I think it will be Lizzy.

I hope to see an album made by you one of these days!

Oh and Chriss, I was thinking of doing something for Chris' competition on 'Love'. Thanks for reminding me!

Have a wonderful day :-)

Completed mini album

How was your Easter? We spent ours visiting with friends and family when we weren't at the excellent and fascinating church conference. It was good to have time to catch up and now we're still eating the leftovers instead of having to cook = more time for craft!

I did finish the mini album and plan to give it to my mother in law. I used pictures of her surprise 80th birthday party. I wound up adding a few more pages to the album to fit more photos in, and the design of the album allowed that to happen comfortably. Here's some of the finished pages (there are too many to post them all!)

I'd make another one of these. This pattern turns out nicely. And it allows you to totally customise your project with colours, patterns, embellishments, and even how many pics you want to add. You can have from four double pages to about eight, unless you want to make the album cover thicker and add more. I used six double pages here.

Happy Easter

Have a lovely Easter Sunday, everyone. It looks like it's going to be a beautiful day here. I'll be in church most of tomorrow - I plan to play a few musical items with the youngsters there and we are all enjoying the conference!

Am still working on the mini album in my 'spare' time so will post up some pics of it when it is closer to being completed. It's a great little project :-)

March Cybercrop at Scrapchat - Week 3

How's everything? I have been out a lot this week and have also had some computer connectivity issues. In fact, out phone line is still a bit 'iffy' and as it is Easter, the phone company won't be out to check on it for days, so if I disappear offline for awhile, it will be due to technical difficulties :-)

I am enjoying the cybercrop over at Scrapchat this weekend and am learning quite a bit through the challenges. This weekend we need to make a little album out of cardstock. It has pages sewn into it and they are bound on both sides of the album so they are interleaved inside. I've posted a couple of pics of my 'work-in-progress' for you. I get to decorate the album and find pics for it over the weekend. We need to include a verse of some sort and a chipboard monogram as well.

Will try posting it when completed, though it's a bit of a challenge to photograph properly. A video would work better!! I could just flip through the pages for you. on camera. But even though I do have a webcam, I am not sure how to make a video for my blog.....don't you need special software for that?

Scrapbook Wednesday

Every Wednesday I get a couple of pages done in my albums. I thought I'd share what I did yesterday with you. One of the Stained Glass Window pages has been shown before but I made it into a double page payout and think it resembles a quilt in my album. The other double page layout is from 1992 when we went to Alma Park Zoo again. It's pretty subtle - hope you can see the cut-out flowers and lacy matte I did for one of the photos.

I'm so enjoying picking out the best shots from years ago to do something special with - reliving my past. Lol!

Barbara's card

I made a card to give to a friend who is going through a tough time today. I followed Nicola's sketch for the fortnight and also tried out the faux silk technique. The materials are all from Stampin' Up! and are Bashful Blue, Pixie Pink, and Whisper White. The designer paper is from Basic Gray - Cherry Blossom. I used the stamps from God's Blessings and Happy Harmony. The ribbon, flowers and brad are from sources unknown :-)

Edited to add: I forgot to say I used my Crop-a-dile to dry emboss the pink cs! You can just see it if you click on the image to enlarge it. It's a lot less subtle in real life.

Sunday Powerscrap

At Scrapchat we have a chance to do a 'Powerscrap' layout in any 2 hour block we can manage to find on a Sunday. I am in church most of Sunday, but in the evening I do get a two hour block of time when I can think about this, so today I did the challenge. Anyone in the world can join Scrapchat and take part in the challenges, by the way! So feel free to investigate!

This week we were challenged like this:

"Your theme is your dream house! ..if you do a Google image search on mansions or something like that you'll get HEAPS of inspiration. You might even be able to print off a photo from the net to use OR you could always cut a photo from a magazine if that's where you've seen your dream home. It's up to you BUT...The following list has the requirements...at least ONE photo on your LO of your dream home - you HAVE to display some handwritten journaling but it can't be hidden!! and you have to use BLUE somewhere too...."

The sketch is borrowed from Scrapmaps. I used a lot of rough paper as I would if I was making a note to myself about what sort of house I was planning to build. I used the picture and plan of a house we are actually considering building, but in my searches I found another house I also liked, and am now thinking maybe we could incorprate the bits of that house into the the first house! The background paper is Core'dinations Harborside, I downloaded the plans and pictures from both the Orbit Homes site and the GJ Gardner Homes sites, I used old buttons from my stash and put paper 'x's' on some of them printed by the computer, used an ordinary felt pen to do the journalling, and also took paper clips and a bulldog clip from my office supplies. The old pin is to remind me of the style I like - old fashioned and classic - and I thought it went well on the page.

Scrapchat's March Cybercrop - Challenge #2

At Scrapchat we were challenged to make a hybrid page this weekend. Manda said:

"I'd like you do complete a traditional layout on ANY topic you like and use your computer as a tool in some way to make it! That's all hybrid is really!"

One particular picture was 'haunting' me so I went ahead and reprinted it for the challenge. In the 80's I was in a Bush Band called Mouldy Warp (he was a little hedgehog character in England who used to carry all sorts of musical instruments around with him). I enhanced the photo by lightening it a little, then cropping and printing a title on the page in colour. I also printed the words on vellum to add at the bottom of the layout. The background paper is Blush Blooms from Creative Memories (CM), I created the silver and tan paisley shapes with a CM punch, the arrows and flourishes are mostly hand drawn/cut/enhanced with metallic pens from CM, and the little brown arrow and 'play' word are CM stickers.

Stampin' Up! Alphabet Challenge

Over at Fiona's blog, she is running a challenge to work through the alphabet with cards made form Stampin' Up! We're up to 'C' now. Please feel free to join in - there haven't been too many players so far and it would be nice to encourage Fiona :-) If you have 'Carte Postal', for example, you could make a card with that set.

I'm working on a card with my only 'C' set - Canvas. That leaves me pretty free to do anything else, doesn't it, since Canvas is a background stamp. Woo hoo!

Wish I had Carte Postal though....lol!

My Paper World card 3 for Sketch #6

This time I decided to try Lee's faux cloissone technique to make my forst shabby chic card. I hope it strikes you that I did both those things!

I stamped my Reasons to Smile butterfly on a glossy magazine then embossed it with gold and cut it out. I used the paper they gave us in the Better Homes Magazine this month for the background behind the butterfly - it has been torn and sponged with Close to Cocoa ink. I added the gold brad, then mounted the background to the Close to Cocoa card and the butterfly to the background. Then I took some Pretty in Pink cardstock and stamped on it with a sentiment from Happy Harmony, sponged with Close to Cocoa and paper pierced it. I used my hot glue gun to add the gauze ribbon and gold cord, then hand drew the flourishes with black pen and enhanced with gold gel pen. A fun card to make!

Next time I make a faux cloissone image I would use a stamp with more open work on it though. I think it would show the effect better.

Another My Paper World card for Sketch #6

I have been using Nicola's Sketch #6 this week to make some cards, and this is what I made today. I may have another one in totally different colours etc to upload later. Am working on it now :-)

This one has Basic Grey Cherry Plossom dp, Stampin' Up!'s Daisy Field wheel stamp and Reason to Smile sentiment, Certainly Celery cardstock and ink, Close to Cocoa ink, copper and gold gel pens, Stampin' Up! grosgrain ribbon, and I sponge daubed it in various places in both shades of ink. I drew the flourishes with copper gel pen and water colour pencils.

My Paper World Sketch Challenge #6

Nicola set a challenge for this fortnight to make cards from the sketch pictured. I need to make quite a few cards this month so am starting off with the one shown here. I used Stampin' Up! Certainly Celery, Pale Plum and Whisper White cardstock, and a stamped background provided in a RAK (thank you!) I chose the sentiment from Stampin' Up!'s 'Blooming with Happiness' set, stamping in black Stazon and sponging around it with Lavender Lace ink. The little jewels are from Heidi Swapp and the grosgrain ribbon from Stampin' Up! I paper pierced the edges of the green cardstock too.

If you are a cardmaker and look at Nicola's cards, then also follow the links she has in her posts to the other people's blogs who have made gorgeous cards using her sketch, I promise you will be inspired.

I plan to make a few more cards with this sketch this week, maybe even becoming a BIT more adventurous with how I do it.

Guestbook & Thanks

Chriss, thank you for signing my Guestbook (see bottom of page)! I appreciate comments people have made there :-) And I fixed the last post so you can see which other page fits with the new one. I must remember to photograph my album pages before I put the sleeve protectors on. The protector causes haze/glare. Sorry about that.

I want to thank everybody for making comments on my blog too. It's such a delight to open up
my blog and find someone has taken the time to comment! You're all a big reason why I continue to blog and I hope I encourage you all by commenting on your blogs :-)

Will have a new card to post soon. Meanwhile, I'm off to see your blogs!