Back to School

Well, the kids have finished their first week (a very short week mind you!) back at school for the new year. My baby Liam is now a big school boy too, and I have to say it was a little hard to think of him as being big enough to go to school. He is my baby and always will be I guess regardless of how big he gets! This coming week will be the real test, five full days at school! I think there will be at least one very tired child by the end of the week. I have been busy playing again with my scrapbooking, particularly making more flowers. I found this design on the well known Tim Holtz's blog and they were pretty simple to put together and they look sensational! For my flowers I have used my Slice to cut out the basic flower shape (3" for the larger one and 2" for the smaller one), one flower was from the Wedding card and the other from Basics 2. The trick that I did learn is that you really need to start with a flower shape with 6 petals. My larger one had only 5 petals and the smaller 8. This obviously didn't ruin the flower but means I had to ad-lib a little to make it work! Both flowers have been sprayed with glimmer mist to liven them up. I haven't yet worked out where to use them, but I know they are sitting there waiting to be used on something! And I can create more if I need the "perfect" flower accent. I have also done a little scrapbooking too. Again using up older stash (although I did splurge on some 7 Gypsies papers the other day!) and playing with my Slice. The journal frame and title backing were both cut using the Slice, and I have used one of my favourite border punches for the scallop border. I really love this particular punch and I have seen that EK Success have a few more coming that were released at CHA Winter and I can't wait!! This was done for the KasierCraft blog Saturday sketch. I used the Slice to cut the patterned hearts and the little tag and the EK Success postage stamp border punch to create the pages edge. One thing I have done and is sitting waiting to be scrapped is started putting together some 6x8 photo proof type sheets summarising a month or two from last year. Then I can put together a little summary of the entire year in a handful of pages! Now to find the time to scrap (actually I think it has been the motivation lately, so hot and humid recently). I have just got my hands on some new Basic Grey (yes the just released from CHA Winter!!). More precisely I have some of my favourite release, Green at Heart, to play with! Can't wait to put that together. Talking about CHA I am now hanging out for the new hands free for the Slice to be available! This looks wonderful! Also dying for the new Pink Paisley releases, loved these a lot!! Ok I can see some spending happening soon, so I had better start saving (or earning lol!!). Well, that about sums things up for now. Thanks for stopping by, catch you soon!

January in Full Swing

Well, January is definitely in full swing and things are all underway for preparing the kids to return to school. New shoes, new lunch boxes and drink bottles, new haircuts and books being labelled and covered. No wonder the days are flying past (not to mention the money flying out of the wallet!). The girls got themselves proper style cuts for the first time and they are both so proud of themselves! I will take some photos of them soon to show you their new "do's". I have been playing a lot with my Slice the last week or so, partly because it is probably my favourite tool and partly because I am teaching a class on getting the most from your Slice at Scrapbook City in February. I have some sneak peeks of the class for you, if you are in Brisbane and are interested in the class head over to the Scrapbook City website and click on the classes link to find the details. I have also managed to do some scrapping for myself. Just one page for now, but more are in the works. This one has used the Slice, with the Big Kids card for the dinosaurs (which I think are just so cute in pink!), and the Vintage Findings card for the title. I have also just ordered myself a new lens, the 85mm f1.8 lens to be precise and I am really hanging out for this to arrive. I think it will become my most used portrait lens. I have been using the older Tamron 90mm which is really nice, but because it is an older lens it doesn't hold its focus to allow you to reframe the shot, and this really wasn't very helpful! So, a new lens it was, can't wait for that. I have a shoot in a couple of weeks and I am really hoping it will be here before then. Fingers crossed. Last week I took the kids (with G-Ma aka my Mum) in tow to see the new exhibits at GOMA (Gallery of Modern Art). It was all really interesting and the kids really enjoyed the exhibits too. I think I may need to go back with my big camera next time (only had the G10 with me) to really capture some of the fantastic exhibits. One of the most strange exhibits was an interactive one which involved pegboard on the ceiling with strings of different lengths hanging from each hole. The idea is you enter the space where the strings hang and walk through. Well, the kids loved it, me and mum on the other hand felt disoriented and a bit motion sick! A strange feeling indeed. Here are a couple of shots to try and give you an idea. Again, all I can say was this was strange! But I guess that is what art is all about! Until next time, thanks for stopping by!

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2010! I can't believe another year has rolled around, and I am sure this one will disappear just as quickly as the last one. Although I am secretly hoping that it will slow down just a little this time! Christmas was good for us, and lasted about 4 days! After that we were all well and truly over festive food! Liam's comment after having sausages and salad (normal food!) for dinner a couple of days ago - "Mmmm, that was so good". Funny, but summed up how we were all feeling I think! The kids got plenty of cool presents mainly around Lego, DS games and Ben 10! I scored a new Slice card (Under the Sea) and a great new lamp for my desk. So I am pretty happy too! I have even had some time for scrapping, which has been nice. The January challenge is now up over at Out of the Hat, so make sure you check it out. I have done my sample with the criteria, which are: 1. Use circles some where 2. Used striped paper 3. One word title And my result is this page about a Kindy creation made by Liam. I have been playing with flowers again on another couple of pages. I read a technique on the Creating Keepsake blog for these scrunched flowers and I must say they turned out quite well. I think I will use this idea again. Although one little tip, don't use paper that is too thick! After making the flowers I sprayed them with some glimmer mist for extra sparkle! This last layout (using some older photos again), I made layered flowers with paper and felt. I really like the simplicity of these kinds of flowers, and how you can so easily create embellishments to match your page from a few scraps! I also ran the chipboard title through the Cuttlebug with the Swiss Dots embossing folder, something I will be doing again! Well, I have some photos to edit now, so I will keep going. I will share some of these Christmas photos soon! Catch you soon.