A Catch Up

Goodness it has been over a month since I last posted – I had been doing so well!  I promise that although I have been busy with life I did manage to squeeze in some crafty time as well.

In the past month, I:

• Spent a week on nearby Stradbroke Island with my family at a beach front unit.  Stradbroke Island is a 40min ferry ride across Moreton Bay so really accessible from Brisbane.

• Picked up our new puppy, a whippet we have named Zed.  He is now 15 weeks old and a ball of energy!

• Celebrated ANZAC Day and watched our son Josh march in the city ANZAC Day parade with his high school marching band, Drumline.

• Sent off the first part of an ATC background swap.  Two sets of backgrounds were made and swapped out. I got a collection of other people’s backgrounds back to decorate and return.  At the end I will get mine back with other peoples artwork overlaying my backgrounds.  I’ll share once they are returned.
• Received a wonderful prize from Helmar for participating in their Facebook competition.  Thanks Helmar!

• Received my Darkroom Door March ATC swap.  The theme was turquoise and here are the ATCs I created. 

• Finished a Smash Book swap which was hosted on Facebook.  The book was a touch larger than A5, bound with rings to enable the recipient to add more pages.  Here are a sampling of the pages -

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Celebrated 21 years of marriage to my wonderful husband, Brian.

Gee, it makes me tired just thinking of all the things that have happened in the last month !

Dion Dior & More ...: Twinkling Giveaway

Check out the Dion Dior & More blog for a chance to take an online class about Twinkling H2O's with Dion Dior.  You can find the details here.

Dion Dior & More ...: Twinkling Giveaway: Mastering Twinks , an online class that takes you into the shimmering, dancing world of Twinkling H2O's begins its second run in less tha...

An Etsy Treasury

I've been attending a few creative workshops run by BrisStyle the past few months, trying to learn more about Etsy and the mechanics of having an online shop.  I've put up a shop on Etsy here and one on MadeIt here.  Not much there yet but that will change in the coming weeks.

Today I was inspired to create a treasury on Etsy of some luscious pinky shopping finds.  All are made by Queenslanders:



It was so much fun - why don't you have a go?  Share your link with me if you do!

The Earth Laughs in Flowers

Yesterday I received the February Darkroom Door swap returns so I thought I would share my ATC’s.  I don’t like to do that until I receive mine back in the post – I would hate to spoil the surprise for anyone!  Don’t look if you don’t have yours back yet.

The theme was FLOWERS and I chose to use this gorgeous Star Flowers collage stamp.  To make the ATC I stamped the image onto some white tissue paper, coloured with Twinkling H2O’s and adhered it to some cardstock (that is the blue you see coming through the image). Once it was layered up, I printed one of my favourite quotes and popped that over the bottom of the image.

It is really hard to see but the image really glimmers, courtesy of the Twinkling H2O’s.

The theme for March is turquoise/aqua – one of my favourite colours so keep a look out next month to see what I do.

Cherish Today

I’ve been keeping a bit of an eye on the Passion for Paper blog of late because the wonderful Kate Palmer (SparkleTart) has been sharing lots of tips and techniques.  (I also applied for their design team so fingers crossed !)

With the coming of some new rubber, I wanted to come up with something that used some of my new stamps as well as Kate’s latest technique, check it out here.  I didn’t have the right cardstock so I thought I would try regular cardstock and it worked ok.

The watermark effect was done with Darkroom Door French Script, it is much more apparent in real life – just hard to photograph! The branch is one of my new favourites by LaBlanche and the butterfly & greeting is from the new Darkroom Door Wings set.  Images were coloured with Copics.

Celebrate

Recently I was inspired by a post on the Passion 4 Paper blog which gave a tutorial on a resist technique.  I created this card based on the technique blogged here.  If you follow my blog you know know that I love resist techniques – especially embossing resist.

I used the Darkroom Door Happy Birthday word block stamp and once stamped and embossed with clear powder I coated the card front with delphinium turquoise Starburst Stain. It is really hard to pick up from the photo but it gave a gorgeous shimmery effect.

The flourishes were die cut using a My Favorite Things die called Fancy Flourish and accented with adhesive pearls.

The flower was made using a stack of die cuts done with the Tim Holtz Tattered Florals die.  I had sponged each layer with some Distress Ink (Dusty Concord & Chipped Sapphire) and once layered with the pearl brad I spritzed it liberally with some Starburst spray in sweet violet purple teal colour.  Isn’t that just a divine name?

Once totally wet, the flower was scrunched up, layer by layer and allowed to dry.

You can hurry the drying a bit with a heat gun if you want to be quick.  Once dry, just flatten and shape and attach to the card front. The pearlized spray gives a lovely shimmery effect to the flower.

Art Journal Pages

It has been ages since I last played in my art journals so when the challenge on the X-Press It blog came up for February I thought of the perfect starter.  The challenge for February was to use masking tape on a project.  I didn’t have any of the X-Press It but had some Mask It film, so thought I would use that as well as some common painters tape.  I can’t draw so using masks to create a page base work well for me.

I started working on two sheets from an old dictionary and smooched on some paint using an old gift card.  On the second page I spread the paint a bit further with a a spray of water and used a baby wipe to spread the paint all over the page.

Using Cuttlebug dies, I die cut a flower shape mask and spritzed with some Radiant Rain and Glimmer Mist sprays.

Once dry I painted the flower with some gold ink, keeping in the lines left by the mask and added a bit of a stalk & grass.  The flower centre was drawn in with a white gel pen.

A quick outline of the stalk & petals and one of my favourite quotes and the page was done.

On the second page I sprinkled some silver Pearl Ex all over the wet centre of the misted  flower.  It dried onto the page and gave a beautiful sparkle.  I used the painters tape to mask off a flower stem and the white gel pen did a great job outlining the flower.

Some painted cardstock leaves and another quote and a second page was done.