Tuesday 29 April 2008

Meet the new man in my life :)

No... Dave hasn't been replaced LOL This is ANOTHER man :) My gorgeous wee nephew! I've been trying to find the 'perfect' paper to do an introduction layout and I finally found it!!! I also saw a fantastic sketch on the Prima blog that was absolutely perfect for what I wanted. Here's the sketch:

And here's my layout of Mr 'R':I used some gorgeous papers from the My Minds Eye - Wild Aparagus line... a MME quote tag, MME pocket and journaling card, wooden flourishes, gorgeous flowers, a few stitches and pearls and a couple of buttons. The layout is now hanging up in my craft room and I absolutely love it... soft, yet still masculine!

I managed to get another layout done last night as well... this one is doing double duty... No 8 wired - NZ Dares latest challenge is to use 'numbers' - It's all about numbers! They are everywhere, we learn about them from a young age, some of us are loving the number we are + some not! Some people work with numbers + some numbers have special meanings to us. And the April challenge from SBO is to use photos that are older the 20 years!... This one just sneaks in there... Stop laughing Mum!!!

This is my first page of done for my 'Book of Me'. I've finally made the decision to go with A4 size for my BOM and I quite enjoyed working with the size. I've also decided to do the girls 'This is your life' albums that size as well... the idea being that it will be a story book of this lives and given to them when they turn 21. I actually started Krystal's book a couple of years ago in 12 x 12 format but after doing 6 pages decided it wasn't really what I wanted so now I can go back and change them to suit the new size.

On a final note... Krystal and I sent photos of my layout (about Krystal) and her canvases to the girls at Scrap the Teenz and they put our work on the blog! Krystal was so excited about it!!! Thanks Ann :)

Right... I'm off to work on a very special project :) Take care xx

Friday 25 April 2008

Busy, busy, busy :)

Well it's Friday night and time for the RAK draw... I asked Dave to pick two names out of the hat (actually it was an old tupperware container) and he pulled out three so I'm going to make another RAK parcel up and the lucky winners are (imagine a drum roll here LOL) :

So if you ladies would like to email me your address I'll get your parcels out to you :) And a BIG thank you to all of you who left me comments... was especially nice to hear from other 'Gothic Archers' out there :)

I've been busy doing LOTS of creating over the last couple of days (in amongst D.I.Y. stuff which I'll share shortly) but lots of things I can't share because they're for swaps. However I can share another new ATC folder cover. This folder is for my 2008 ATC swaps:

I've also been busy making a few cards:And now for some D.I.Y show and tell. If you've been following my blog for a while you'll know that we did a MAJOR D.I.Y. project at the beginning of the year and one of the things we needed to do when we were finished was to get a new retaining wall built... well we've done it!!! It's such a relief because every time it rained I thought it might come down! Unfortunately because it looked such a mess down there that more and more stuff kept getting dumped there until it ended up looking like this:So with the school holidays coming up (and me having a lot more time available) Dave got stuck in and cleaned it up a bit:And then he started digging some post holes:I'm glad it wasn't me digging because the holes had to be really DEEP!And of course we needed more pretty pink string and bright purple spray paint!!Then it was my turn to help so I got to mix lots and lots of concrete:I really do like making concrete... it's very satisfying!! But just like baking (honest Mum it really is like making a cake!) you have to do the 'dishes' when you're finished LOLBy the time we'd done that (on Wednesday) we knocked off... besides we had to let the concrete actually set!The next morning we checked our posts and they were all still lined up perfectly :)Then we got started on actually building the wall:We got 4 rows put on yesterday but there were a few tricky bits like banging in the nails with only a tiny gap between the dirt wall and the back of the wood... but we managed. The first couple of rows were the hardest because we had to make sure that everything was perfectly lined up! But it did make it much easier to carry on today:It was hard work getting the planks over the posts too... sometimes being short isn't such a good thing!!Dave checked EVERYTHING!!! Talk about fussy!!! But it really has made the wall look quite professional:We ended up with quite a good system going... first of all we'd put on a new row of planks and then we used the old soil to backfill each row as we went:Dave even did some of the back filling LOLWhen we'd backfilled enough I got the job of brushing down the wood so that there was no dirt on the top... the planks are like tongue-and-groove so little bits of dirt really do stop the planks from fitting together properly!After a few more hours of solid work we ended up with this:We've still got to add some top soil before we can plant, weed mat and bark it all but it's looking SOOO good!!And the final photo of the day just really appeals to me: HIS and HERS shovels LOLI'm so pleased this project is basically finished!!! We've got no more D.I.Y. planned for a while... I'm hoping to have lots of time for crafting over the winter... maybe I could move my table in front of the fire place... hmmm maybe not LOL

Wednesday 23 April 2008

Lots of creative time is a good thing :)

I know it's only been 2 days since my last post but there's lots of creativity happening around here :) Once again I have to say a HUGE THANK YOU to everyone for all your comments on Krystal's art work. It's amazing how supportive my blog friends are... I totally appreciate you all!!! So to say thank you I am putting together a couple of RAK packages... if you'd like one please leave a comment on this post and I'll draw out a couple of names on Friday :)

I'm going to start with something quite different today :) A few days ago while I was blog hopping (as you do LOL) I came across a challenge website on Gothic Arches. The work they showcased really appealed to me so I decided to give it a go myself.... and since I've recently ben doing vintage style it will come as no surprise that I've done my first arch using Vintage :) The theme this week was 'Me and My Doll' and I just happen to have a photo of me (age 2 1/2) with my walkie-talkie doll my great-grandmother gave me... and which I still have... so here is my arch:

I had a huge amount of fun making this and it really is simply 'art for arts sake' :)

Next up is the April ATC swap from the SBO forum. We only had three of us this month so we decided to make two different ATC's each using the theme 'birds'. I've really fallen for Cosmo Cricket paper lately so used it for both of my ATC's... and these are the ones I sent Tim Holtz!!!

The next two ATC's are Nie's... and 'owl be your friend' too Nie :)And here's Tilly's ones... love the 'kiwiness' of this first one!!After doing so many ATC swaps last year I ended up with quite a stack of them and they've been stored in pocket protectors in a bag until now:So out came the Cosmo Cricket paper again and I made me own ATC folder. The flowers are from Prima and the letters are Grungboard... really love that stuff!!!The only problem I found was that my folder is already full so I'm going to make another one!!And here's a photo of what the folder looks like when it's open:So that's all my sharing for now... Dave is calling out because I'm 'supposed' to be helping him make concrete for the posts on the new retaining wall... can't wait until it's done!!! And remember to leave a comment if you'd like to go into the RAK draw :)

Monday 21 April 2008

It's all about Krystal :)

Thank you all so much for your comments on the previous post! I've been really blown away :)
Meanwhile... Krystal has been very creative making canvases for her lovely new bedroom. She saw some 4 x 12 canvases that she really liked... came up with a design... found a quote (on the walls of the gym)... raided my supplies LOL and here's what she's created:

And when she puts them on the wall she's going to stagger them like this:I'm quite impressed actually! She certainly knows what she likes!

Over the weekend Scrapbook Essentials had a weekend challenge to create a layout using: 2 patterned papers, a 5x7 photo and a bird. I've had a photo of Miss Krystal that I've been wanting to use on a layout so here's what I came up with:

I asked Krystal to proof read my journaling for me and by the end she was bawling her eyes out... oops not quite the reaction I had expected! But it was very heartfelt (the journaling and the tears) so here's a close up:The papers are from Cosmo Cricket and Basic Grey and the wee bird is on an Autumn Leaves stamp.

Right I'm off to do some more creating... love it when the mojo flows :)