Saturday 29 November 2008

ATC's and Inchies

Well Miss Krystal has now officially finished school for the year! She had her last exam on Thursday afternoon and now she's done until next year :) It's been a LOT of hard work but she's really pleased with her efforts... and so is her Mum!

I've been participating in lots of swaps over the past couple of months with Scrapbook Dreams so I thought I'd share some of my creativity with you.
One of the ATC swaps we did was using the theme 'Celebrities'... and since I'm a huge fan of Tim Holtz I decided to do my ATC using his techniques (and his photo of course LOL).

I emailed my ATC to Tim (who is very quick to send replies!) and here's what he sent back:

these are great shell – thanks for sharing them with me….
excellent work!

-tim

Yep, I was a pretty happy scrapper with that response!

Next up is my Christmas ATC... I found a great image on the net and went for a vintagy theme. There's lots of layering in this ATC, a bit of embossing, loads of inking and a few embellishments. We have also been doing some 'inchie' swaps! We've been doing 3 x 3 inch tiles with 9 participants so that when we're finished we can put them on a 12 x 12 canvas for display. Here's my Christmas one:

I really like this one because the photo is just so gorgeous! I used lots of ink, some stamping, and a few little embellishments. The photo is mounted on foam tape to give it a bit more of a 3D look too.

We also did a rainbow inchie swap. We each chose a colour and did our inchies and now I've got 9 fantastic colour inchies to display on a canvas... and as soon as I've actually put it on a canvas I'll share them with you! But in the meantime, here's my colour tile... TEAL!

I did a bit of embossing with the cuttlebug, stamped some butterflies and cut them out, added some gorgeous sparkly powder and them embossed clear over them, a flower, some rhinestones and peelcraft stars and it was done!

Well that's my show and tell for today... I've got to go into school and try and get my reports finished (school is super busy right now!) and then I'm heading into the garden tomorrow to try and get a couple of projects finished.

Hope you all have a great weekend! Shell xx

Tuesday 18 November 2008

I'm a really proud Mum :)

Well, Krystal has done it again!!! She had her final day of learning at school last Thursday and then on Friday it was prizegiving. She had been told that she was receiving an award and my boss was awesome and gave me some time off to go up to the high school to watch.

The list of names being called out was quite a bit shorter than last year... I guess as the kids get older that happens and once again I sat in the hall with lots of other parents waiting to hear Krystal's name get called out.

While I was waiting I heard the name of her rival get announced for two awards. Krystal and this boy have been neck and neck in business studies all year. They are extremely competitive with each other and this was my first chance to see what he looked like. Despite Krystal's descriptions he is very normal looking!! LOL He absolutely doesn't have two heads and I certainly couldn't see 'his ego walking along beside him'. You can see what I mean about rivalry!

Then they announced the recipients of three awards and Miss Krystal's name got called out! She received: Excellence in Science, Excellence in English & Excellence in Accounting :) And here's a photo of my lovely girl with her awards:

Miss Mikayla also got in on the act this year and was asked to be an Usher for the ceremony. She brought home the 'dress uniform' which I hadn't seen before and I really liked it :) Here's she is all dressed up with an important job to do:And when Mum saw the next photo she really thought Mikayla might enjoy working in the army one day... and now Mikayla's done a whole heap of research and decided that it's the career for her!It was definitely a proud Mum day for me :) Watching both my girls do their thing and look lovely doing it was quite huge. It also reminded me that their time at home is rapidly coming to an end so I only hope I've given them the skills they need to venture out into the world on their own.

In other news... Scrapfest is moving ahead nicely! If you haven't heard about it yet then the blog link is HERE. We've all been busy ordering in new stock to arrive in time for this event and there's going to be quite a lot happening during this weekend.

If you haven't got your tickets yet then make sure you check out the blog for all the details because it's going to be a lot of fun!

There are also a couple of challenges happening on Scrapbook Dreams at the moment: the November challenge is to create something Off The Page (ie NOT a layout) that could be given as a Christmas gift, or a decoration etc and the currently weekly challenge is to create a Christmas card. Click HERE to check out all the details!

Hope you're all having a great week :)

Sunday 9 November 2008

Meet my Dad... oops nope that's Mum again LOL

Mum is really starting to get into this whole 'dress up' thing... instead of clothes though, this time she is dressing up her FACE! Here's Mum (second from the right) with her work mates making a stand for 'Movember' :)
Some of her male colleagues actually do have mousaches that they're going to shave off at the end of the month so to support them the 'girls' thought they'd wear moustaches every Monday! Somehow Mum got the grey one and someone at her work made the comment that she looks like a train conductor LOL Even Mum thought that the oven doors behind them look a bit like a train :)

Now for some scrapping stuff... There is a sketch challenge on at Scrapbook Dreams at the moment and I got busy last weekend and did a layout. It's all about Miss Krystal and how she's growing up very quickly at the moment. She's already sat 3 of her Cambridge exams, and her last one is tomorrow! Then she finishes school on Friday to have study leave and NCEA exams!The journaling reads: When did you grow up? When did you stop being my little girl? I have so many wonderful memories of you being young and now you've almost completed NCEA. Where have the years gone? I wish for you so many things... but most of all I wish you happiness! I love being your Mum xx

It was really nice to step outside my usual style a bit and create this layout... and I totally love those papers (Kaiser- Dancing Jewel). If you would like to enter the competition the details are HERE and then you can upload your layout into the gallery HERE.

It's been a busy week with Scrapfest too! The classes have all been uploaded now so if you want to check them out visit the Scrapfest Blog. There's some really neat classes and the crop night is going to be a lot of fun! The tickets are all available now and you can purchase them HERE... but you'll need to get in fairly quickly because numbers are strictly limited!!

Hope you're all having a wonderful weekend... there's plenty of sunshine here so we've been catching up on all the washing and the lawns! I even remembered to go and vote LOL

Saturday 1 November 2008

How exciting is this???

Hi everyone :)

I've been SUPER busy in the last two weeks working with a couple of other ladies on a BIG project... and today I can finally reveal what that project is:


It's going to be super exciting!!! We really thought that a project of this kind deserved to have it's very own blog... there's going to be HEAPS of info coming in the next few weeks so make sure you bookmark it because you seriously don't want to miss out!! Click HERE to check it out!