A Postcard from Floriade...

Earlier this week I took the kids to Floriade. It was a simply glorious day, and we had a lovely time. We smelt and admired the beautiful flowers, rode on the ferris wheel, browsed the market stalls and indulged in ice blocks. C'est la vie!

I also made you a little postcard, so you could check out some of the beautiful floral action for yourselves...I love poppies!

I have used a Storyboard Template and a Painted Border action, both by Rita of Coffeeshop Photography. The font is called 'Little Star', and is from scrapNfonts.

I also played around and made this little pic:

I have run Pioneer Woman's 'Colorized' action, followed by her 'Boost' action...and I liked the end result.

Gotta go now, Dan Brown is waiting for me. Yes I am supposed to be doing the washing, but you know what? It will still be there tomorrow...and by then there will be another two more loads to do too! Have a wonderful day :-).

Sam.

PS. My apologies for the lack of papercrafting going on around here...I just have not felt like stamping at all.

Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge #34

It is has been raining and dreary here all day. We've watched some DVDs, we've been to the hairdresser, the dentist, and the shops. We had lunch at the Hyperdome...because even I felt the need to be out and about!

In order to help lift the spirits a little, I also managed to sneak in a little creative time for Karen Giron's latest Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge:


...and this is the card that I made:


List of Ingredients (all from Stampin' Up! unless otherwise noted):

Cardstock: Chocolate Chip, Riding Hood Red and Very Vanilla
Ink: Chocolate Chip Classic Ink
Accessories: On Board Trimmings (retired), Close to Cocoa Patterns DSP (retired), Riding Hood Red 1 1/4" striped grosgrain ribbon, Chit Chat rub-ons (retired), Eyelet Border punch, versamark, heat and stick powder, heat tool, Fine Supernova Stampin' Glitter, SNAIL adhesive and dimensionals.

The final card measures 5 3/4" square. I have covered the chipboard in Chocolate Chip classic ink, then versamark, then heat and stick powder, then in oodles of brown Stampin' Glitter. Needless to say, I am covered in the stuff ;-).


I hope that you are having a sparkly afternoon, even if it is raining in your neck of the woods too.

Thanks for visiting my little corner of cyberspace :-).
Sam.

ETA: I just walked past my craft table and looked at this card and suddenly thought...who makes brown snow flakes? So I've been sitting here, watching the 'Farmer Wants a Wife' and mulling over brown snow flakes. I've decided that the dilemma of brown snow flakes is not really so dilemma-ful, as I do live in Australia...and our Christmas falls in the middle of a usually sweltering summer...so of COURSE our snow flakes would be brown...scorched in 40 degree heat! DUH!! ;-).

Beautiful orange flowers...

No papercrafting here today...just some shots of some lovely orange pigface, or Carpobrotus according to Wikipedia:




They were looking so stunningly bright and splendid down in the garden that I felt compelled to go and take some pics of them.

I can't help but feel sunny looking at these flowers. I hope that your day is a sunny one too!

Sam.

PS. I just wanted to add that these colours are the real deal...they have not been photoshopped, other than a little cropping and addition of watermarks.

Great Watermark Tutorial

Hello! I just wanted to point out to you an awesome tutorial on making your own watermark! You can find it on Rita's fabulous blog Coffee Shop.

I just had a quick play, and made this watermark:


The main font is called 'The Blue Cabin' and is a fantastic free font from Kevin and Amanda's Free Scrapbooking Fonts. The ant is from the DB Animal Occasion font from scrapNfonts.

Rita's tutorial goes on to show you how you can load your watermark up into Photoshop as a brush, so it is available to be used at any size, colour, and opacity on all your edited photos. Groovy.

In my watermark above, I decreased the opacity of the ant layer slightly before I merged the visible layers, so that he will appear lighter than the text when I place him onto my photos..e.g:


Have fun watermarking kiddos!
Sam.