Gonna be organised for Mother's Day this year!

I made a card for mum this week. I had this brainwave and thought I'd try and get my skates on and finish it before Mother's Day this year.....cool idea eh? If I get it in the mail some time this week, Oz Post might even manage to camel it to Sydney in that time too. Happy days! Next thing you know they'll be using coaches...then look out world, here we come!!

It is a peaceful, sunny afternoon here in the Territory. Currently 30 degrees C and just a few puffy white clouds in the sky. The kids head back to school on Monday, after just one week of school hols. We only get a week now and in October, because we have four weeks in July. But I digress. Hope you are enjoying a peaceful Saturday too, wherever you are.

Thanks for visiting...

Project Recipe (all by Stampin' Up! unless otherwise noted):

Cardstock: Midnight Muse, Very Vanilla, Confetti Cream, Pool Party (textured) and Kraft;
Paper: Comfort Cafe DSP;
Ink: Basic Black and Crumb Cake Classic Ink;
Stamps: Occasional Greetings;
Accessories: Natural Linen Thread, Circle Brads, Lacy Brocade Embossing Folder, Essentials Paper Piercing Pack, Apothecary Accents Framelits, Ribbon Seam Binding - Pool Party, Glue Dots, SNAIL and Dimensionals.

Baby Happy Whales...

I got some beautiful happy mail this week...some new Stampin' Up! samples from my lovely friend Di. I tidied up my desk and spent several fun-filled hours crafting and getting inky. Thanks so much Di. You really helped kick my mojo back into gear :-).

I needed a new arrival congrats card (what a happy thing to be needing eh?)...and the Happy Whale Clearlits Die and oh-so-pretty Sunshine & Sprinkles DSP seemed like the perfect decorations for just that purpose. What do you think?

For the new arrival I coupled the pink 'girl' card above with a lovely gift from a great local store...Novita Gifts. The gift comprised a beautifully soft and colourful baby blankie, and fun painted name letters for her bedroom door.

Thanks again Di...I loved my package!

Project Recipe:

Cardstock: Melon Mambo, Pacific Point and Whisper White (Stampin' Up!),
Patterned Paper: Sunshine & Sprinkles DSP (Stampin' Up!),
Ink: Basic Black (Stampin' Up!),
Stamps: Curly Cute (Stampin' Up),
Punches: 1 1/4" Square Punch - for banner ends (Stampin' Up!), Owl Builder - for whale eyes (Stampin' Up!) and large Corner Rounder punch (misc),
Dies: Happy Whale Clearlits Die (Stampin' Up!),
Accessories: Paper Piercer, White Gel Pen, Melon Mambo 3/8" Striped Organdy Ribbon (Stampin' Up!), Dimensionals and SNAIL adhesive.

Blogged to: MasterChef - the Professionals.

Bits 'n Pieces...

Not feeling all that much craftin' love right now...but I've pulled out all stops to come up with a little something quirky to pop up here, just so you know I haven't abandoned my blog.

I have been thinking about lady beetles a lot lately. This is mainly because we seem to get quite a few of them up here, and I do like their polka-dotty cuteness.  So Dotty the lady beetle it is...

I have included the second shot, because I think you can see the pearlex that I have used for Dotty's cheeks and dot highlights. I just applied it dry with a sponge dauber....so it'll wipe off pretty easy (and messy), but I do like how it shines.

Now for a few other random pics...

Beautiful Standley Chasm

The wall behind me is COVERED in flannel flowers....just beautiful!

...and last but not least, Miss 8 - ready for her very first time trick or treating. Halloween is big up here!

Watch out Forks...there is a scary new vampire in town, and she's messy!

Wine Glass Taggies...

I have no idea what the technical term is....wine glass tags, wine glass markers? The doovers you put around your wine glass stem at a party so you don't lose your drink. You get the gist, no? Well, on one of our recent 41+ degree days I was sitting and fiddling with my wine glass stem (as you do) and I decided I'd make some for myself (taggies, not wine glass stems). I have a stash of cheap, multi-coloured foam sheets here, and it works very well in the Cuttlebug. So I got to playing, and hey presto! My very own stash of wine glass taggies...

Don't get excited. The drink is just Bickford's Lemon, Lime and Bitters Cordial, with mineral water and ice. I shouldn't say just....it is delicious on a hot day, and regardless of what is actually in the glass....you don't want to lose it!

I know the colours do not look significantly different, but in real life I think your guests will work it out, well....as long as they haven't indulged in too many apéritifs ;-).

I used one of the Annabelle Stamps Cuts by Design - Shapes 1 dies to cut out my taggies, followed by one of the small circles from a set of Spellbinders Nestabilities Circles. I align the small nestie circle in the centre of the tag (using my Mach-1 eyeball) and stick it down using Washi tape, which you just peel off after it has been through the Cuttlebug. I hand snipped the straight-line cut in the side of the taggie.

You could use pretty much any shape die you wanted. I'm thinking I'll make some floral ones too. I think a set of these would make a cute little budget Christmas gift. What do you reckon?

This handmade Christmas gift box is decorated using the Annabelle Stamps Cuts by Design - Borders 1 die. The tag is cut using one of the Annabelle Stamps Cuts by Design - Decorated Christmas dies and stamped using the matching Decorated Christmas stamp set. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Have a good one :-).

Blogged to: All My Children - The Vampire Diaries (Season Three).

Christmas Bauble

I worked on a Christmas card over the weekend. I had a few comments here at home which confirmed my belief that it wasn't one of my finer achievements, but you get that! I took note, made an adjustment or two, and voila...

I love the colour combo, and enjoyed quietly tinkering with some of my new toys!

While I'm here, I thought I'd also point out that I have again used the gorgeous Annabelle Stamps: Cuts By Design - Borders 1 die to emboss rather than using it to create a die cut. I really love the intricate embossed pattern that it creates, but will endeavour to use it as a die next time I get it out :-)!

Project Recipe:

Cardstock: Elegant Eggplant, Cherry Cobbler and Brushed Gold (SU);
Ink: Elegant Eggplant and Cherry Cobbler Classic Inks (SU);
Stamps: Decorated Christmas (Annabelle Stamps) and BBD - 6 (Annabelle Stamps);
Dies: Cuts By Design - Decorated Christmas (Annabelle Stamps) and Cuts By Design - Borders 1 (Annabelle Stamps);
Accessories: Purple Hemp Twine (Annabelle Stamps), Gold Leaf Pen (misc), Washi Tapes - various (Washimatta), Gold Cord (SU) and Gold Wire (SU).

Blogged to: Around the World - Daft Punk, Beautiful Day - U2, In The Night - Pet Shop Boys and Walk This Way - Aerosmith and Run-DMC.

JAI #103 Just Add Red and White

I managed to grab a few quiet minutes earlier this morning to make a card for the latest Just Add Ink challenge, JAI #103 - Just Add Red and White...

Let me tell you, it was no easy thing using just red and white. I have several false-start focal 'bits' scattered across my desk, and I almost binned the whole lot in frustration at one point, but after fiddling for so long, I wasn't going to let it beat me.

You may have noticed that I have not been putting up recipes for my projects of late. I have got to the stage where I don't remember what most of the SU products are called anymore, and can't be bothered looking them all up, especially when it is not apparent to me that anyone actually read that stuff! If anyone ever does want to know what I've used, please feel free to leave a comment or send an email and as long as I have some way of contacting you back (and can work out what it was that I used etc)...I'll reply asap.

I also have another of Thumper's birthday photos that I was playing with recently. I have run a whole bunch of Pioneerwoman actions over this shot, and I liked the end result.

See ya!

Leaving the leaves until last...

In yesterday's post I mentioned at the end that I thought leaves on the tree might be appropriate. Well, I took a few minutes to have a fiddle this morning, and I think leaves are just what it needed! Being that it is a tree, this should not have been as big a light-bulb moment for me as it was (derrrrrrrrrrrrr)!

Those leaves were tricksy little blighters to stick on, I can tell you! I have managed to get little mangled bits of dimensionals underneath them. Who knows how long they'll stay there though. Note to self: Don't leave card outside in a breeze ;-).

So what do you think? Better?

Have a great weekend,

JAI #101 - Sketch Challenge

Thank goodness for sites like Just Add Ink, and their droves of inspirational design team members to get the poor old mojo-less hordes craftin' and creatin'.

This week's JAI challenge #101 is a Sketch Challenge, and being a nice layered and symmetrical one, it suited me perfectly. Thanks JAI!

I had plenty of sticky fingered help with this creation, but you prolly can't tell that from here (lucky you). Suffice to say, if you cut out a few extra die cuts while you're at it, your busy little almost-one year old helper will have a jolly ol' time eating those while you quickly adhere the rest of your battered creation back together again ;-). Lucky I was using SU's specialty, cover-weight, designer series cardstock...it must have some nutritional value right??

I have added crystal effects all over the tree trunk, but I have great difficulty proving that to you here. The rub-on is one of SU's 'melts-like-butter-onto-the page' rub-ons...from the chit chat set I think.

The little silver butterflies would not have been my first choice embellishments. What I'd really have liked to have used was some of Papertrey Ink's Little Bitty Bird die-cuts. However, I don't have that die, and I am having something of a Papertrey Ink tantrum right now. I am still waiting for the anniversary set that I earned in 2010/11. I have been communicating with them since last October about this, and now they just completely ignore me. My last three (very polite) communications have gone unanswered (after having received their email auto-reply...so I know they received my message), and still no anniversary set. Maybe their customer service team are still on Christmas holidays, who knows? My credit card says I should be thanking them for ignoring me...it is feeling all light and unburdened right now...but I'm still feeling pretty miffed at their lack of courtesy (a simple explanation as to why they felt I shouldn't have the set that I earned following their guidelines would suffice). I hope to get over it sooner or later. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest though.

Best go make the most of the rest of Thumper's afternoon rest time. Might manage to squeeze in another row of crochet...or maybe clean the kitchen sink (Hhhhhhmmmmmm...decisions, decisions... which would you do?).

ETA 1: I think I might go and add a few leaves to this tree tomorrow. It looks like it needs a little something more!

ETA 2: Check out the result here....

Sailing into the sunset...

Actually, it looks more like we'll be sailing into a headwind. Not very good news!

Last night I stayed up WAY past my boat bedtime (which has been in the vicinity of 7pm - can you spell P.A.R.T.Y. A.N.I.M.A.L??) and made a little thank you card to give to the marina staff here (with some yummy Haighs chocolate frogs). We have had Lucey Blue at the d'Albora Marina at The Spit for about a year and a half, and have got to know the staff quite well in that time. They are very friendly, super professional and always there to help. It has a been a real pleasure to have stayed here, and we hope to come back to The Spit when we return in early 2012.

I have had this card in my head for about two weeks, but like I said before, the thinking and doing are such vastly different things! As we now hope to start heading north either late tomorrow or early on Saturday, it became a matter of some urgency, so I finally pulled my finger out and got it done.

I am afraid that a full recipe for this card is pretty much beyond me at the mo. The colours (as near as I can guess in dim light) are, Tangerine Tango, Whisper White, Brilliant Blue, Pacific Point (I think I am all out of this now...very sad), Soft Sky and Yoyo Yellow. The sun die is a Die-namics one from MFT (I think), and I ran the whole lot through my Cuttlebug in that scrummy SU texture folder (whose name I can't remember). I might add that I nearly broke my Cuttlebug doing that because the wad of cardstock was so thick that it almost would not go through even though I was only using two B plates. Oh, almost forgot...I also used my recently acquired Corner Muncher (or whatever name it goes by). It munches corners like a hot knife through butter...love that puppy!!

Well, that's all from me for today. I still have to wrap up this fortnight's Distance Education pack, and then tidy up the bomb zone that is our saloon. As our living space is now several orders of magnitude smaller than when we lived on dry land, the mess seems to get completely out of hand in a much smaller amount of time (even though the volume of possessions that we have with us is also several orders of magnitude smaller too). Maybe I am just being overly sensitive to mess, as the number of places that you can go to escape it is very small...non-existent even! Hhhhmmmmmm....I think I need to sit down and take a breather....that last paragraph barely makes sense.

It was one of those 'my pants are falling down' days...

Not today....this was last week, but I'm only just catching up on a few things

Early last week, in the middle of the night, while BFing Thumper in a stuporous state, I remembered that it was the last week my kids would spend in school with their current teachers this year, so I needed to get my act together and make five thank you cards (two class teachers each, and one for the piano teacher), and find some gifts! SUPER….my sleep after that was really restful..NOT!

So the next morning after school drop off for Miss 7, I hightailed it to Pepe's Paperie to search out some papery gifts for them (I'd done a quick online search in the middle of the night….and thought they'd have something appropriate).

I walked around the shop in a total state of confusion….

Issue 1: I did not have enough change to put in the parking meter, and it didn't seem to register the 5 cent coins I was feeding in, so I only had 12 minutes to shop…FINE.

Issue 2: I had Thumper in our old Baby Bjorn (which hurts my back at the best of times), and he was desperately trying to go to sleep and crying outrageously while doing it…GREAT, I can do this!

Issue 3: Master 5 was asking me a ZILLION questions about why this, why that, how this, how that, where this, where that…SUPER, this is hard but surely not impossible?!

Issue 4: MY PANTS WERE FALLING DOWN!!!!!!!!!!! I've lost about 10 kgs since pre-pregnancy and I'd forgotten that those particular pants were now dangerously loose (while I was charging around trying to get ready to get out of the house on time that morning)…AWESOME…this is seriously distracting me.

Issue 5: I was tired, I am tired, It feels like I will always be tired….WHAT WAS I SAYING?

Anyhoo, I finally managed to find some gifts (approximately 10 minutes after entering the shop), then tried to pay and the credit card machine came back with a FATAL ERROR!!!!! WT? WHY ME? WHY WAS THIS HAPPENING TO ME? After some technical do-hickey-business behind the counter they had it all sorted and I was on my way. I caught a small break that day, because I did not get a parking fine!

I got in the car….unwound my head through 360 degrees, and drove off. Mission complete...

Here is a pic of the gifts I picked up:

They got a small notebook and a magnetic organiser thingumy (for their fridge) each. The individual sections of the organiser thingumy are perforated so they can be removed when required. These useful gifts were received with much enthusiasm...so I was very happy!

I could barely organise my way out of my paperbag last week...let alone design and make five teacher thank you cards...so I resorted to a CASE. The card I chose was in my Google Reader as part of the Papertrey Ink April Release Countdown and is this beauty by Melissa Bickford. Thanks for the help Melissa!

Here are my cards (almost identical to Melissa's...but not quite):

List of Ingredients:

Cardstock: Pumpkin Pie and Whisper White (SU)
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black (Tsukineko)
Stamps: Flower Fusion #1 (PTI) and Think Big Favorites 2 (PTI)
Accessories: Flower Fusion #1 and #2 Dies, Beautiful Blooms II # 3 Die Collection (PTI), Scallop Edge Punch (SU),  Summer Sunrise Topnotch Twill Ribbon, 2008 & 2009 Bitty Dot Basics Paper (PTI), Basic Pearl Jewels (SU), Dimensionals (SU), Sticky Strip (SU) and Scrapbook Adhesive MyStik (Scrapbook Boutique).

This is the first time I have ever used my sewing machine on any of my cards...and I am WAY pleased with how it turned out. It was so easy to do too! A very pleasant surprise....I thought it'd be really tricksy and messy.

On another note...yesterday I went shopping for a new baby carrier, and came home with the AWESOME Baby Bjorn Comfort Carrier. It has an adjustable ergonomic waist belt and shoulder straps for 'optimal weight distribution and pressure point relief'. I walked down to our local shops and back (a 2 km round trip) with Thumper in the carrier yesterday…and it didn't hurt a bit (and he was so comfy he went to sleep - after getting all his burps out by himself, just by virtue of being upright)…talk about pressure point relief! Yeah for Baby Bjorn!! It wasn't cheap, but David Jones was having a special, so it was a bit cheaper than normal, and worth every penny in my opinion.

Seeeeeee ya later alligatas :o)

(Blogged to: Evil Woman - Electric Light Orchestra, We Are Golden - MIKA and When Doves Cry - Prince & The Revolution).

My muddy mutant-mouthed Suffolk sheep-pig...

I recently saw a very cute card on Kez's blog, which inspired me to make my own woolly creation. Thank ewe very much for the inspiration Kez! I have been feeling a bit mojo-less and baaaaaaaa-dly needed some help ;-).

I decided that I would make my sheep using felt and dies. Having been to the Canberra Show only last weekend I was aware that Suffolk Sheep have black faces, ears and legs...however, I do not have any black felt (yet)...so chocolate brown it was...and so we have a muddy Suffolk sheep!

When I finished designing my sheep I decided her face looked oddly feature-less (with only the goggling eyes), so I spent an age placing various bits and pieces on her face trying to rectify the situation, and finally settled on an Orange Zest button (as you do). Looking back on her now, I can't decide whether it is supposed to be a mouth, a dummy, a gas mask mouth-piece (something I saw on an episode of Stargate Atlantis recently) or none of the above. More than anything I think it just makes her look like her ancestors were crossed with a mutant pig at some point....and so we get a muddy mutant-mouthed Suffolk sheep-pig (clear as mud eh?...YES the sleep deprivation is really messing with my head ;-).

If you are still reading, you are obviously made of stern stuff, and I'll show you the card now before you order me a straight-jacket...

List of Ingredients:

Cardstock: Baja Breeze (textured and plain) and Whisper White (SU)
Ink: Tuxedo Black Memento (Tsukineko)
Stamps: Pun Fun (SU)
Accessories: Kiwi Kiss Patterns DSP (SU), Styled Silver Hodge Podge Hardware (SU), Limitless Layers: 1 3/4" Circle Collection (PTI), Beautiful Blooms II #3 Die Collection (PTI), Cupcake Collection (PTI), Sunshine Impression Plate (PTI), Orange Zest Vintage Button (PTI), Dark Chocolate Wool Felt (PTI), Vintage Cream Wool Felt (PTI), Small Oval Punch (SU), Tangerine Twisted Paper Cord (Annabelle Stamps), Goggling Eyes (misc), Sticky Strip (SU), Mini Glue Dots (SU) and Tombow Mono Adhesive (Penwa).

I cut enough pieces of felt for seven of these sheep...so I am going to have to revisit the whole mutant-mouth thing before I assemble the rest of the cards. I really don't need seven muddy mutant-mouthed Suffolk sheep-pig cards now...do I?

Anyhooooo...enough crazed rambling from me. Thanks for visiting :-)

(Blogged to: Danger Zone - Kenny Loggins, My Delirium - Ladyhawke and Onion Skin - Boom Crash Opera).