First canvas

I had my first go at working on a canvas last week, and am pretty happy with the result for a first time out.

Dianne held a class, and we worked on creating the background with alcohol inks, stamping, creating textures, and embossing metal. It was a great hands on, fingers dirty session, and I loved every minute. The great thing was that everyone had such a different result!

Here is my version with some photographs I took myself a few years back now, but they seemed to fit the theme, after I grunged them up a bit.

Here is a link to Dianne's blog: http://artofcraft.co.nz/blog/

March Madness Scrap Retreat

I recently attended the March Madness Scrap Retreat in Rotorua, and I must confess had a really wonderful time. The event was filled with fun and excitement, with 3 wonderful lessons on the Saturday. I was really pleased the with the Challenge pack we received, beautiful papers. The weekend was made all the more wonderful by Shell's fiance playing the guitar and providing the ladies with some sing-a-longs in the evenings.
The first layout we did was a cuttlebug one, and great fun was had choosing textures. The amazing thing was how different everyones looked in the end. Here is my version, a photo of my granddaughter, taken as she was getting ready for a dance recital.

Then we moved on to work with one of my favourite papers of all time, Graphic 45, Once upon a Springtime. We were shown some texturing techniques and had great fun cutting out all the little images. I had recently taken some photos of my daughter and decided to use one of her for this paper. It was a beautiful shot, even if I say so myself, lol. I am still deciding on a title and the journalling.

And then lastly in the day, we worked with some Colour Wash sprays and had a great messy time. I managed to get in 2 layouts during this class, which was the greatest fun. Anyone who knows me will know that I love getting messy when working with ink and paints. :) I used a photo of my eldest daughters themed birthday party, on the Pink Paislee paper, and then "spotted" some colour wash on plain white paper for the second layout of my grandson, with his beautiful smile, munching on his much loved Chocolate cake!

And of course I managed to find time to work on the challenge pack, with absolutely gorgeous Little Yellow Bicycle papers. Just loved working with it.

My baby granddaughter in the park not wanting to do what I wanted and standing her ground! She is just the cutest!

In between times I worked on a tag. We had been given Tim Holtz tree die cuts by one of the ladies as a pin swap and I decided to make mine into a tag.

All in all it was a wonderful retreat, learned lots, achieved heaps.

Can't wait for the next one.

http://scrapbookdreamsblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/scrapbook-dreams-retreat.html



Some more tags that I made at Dianne's recently, forgot to upload these some weeks ago, but I just love the techniques.

 Thanks Dianne.

Travellogue 2C (2)

I received and have finished working on Michelle's travelogue journal. Her theme "The Divine Feminine" caused me to do some deep soul searching and on the whole it was a cathartic experience for me.
I absolutely love the idea of these circle journals, as they cause one to reflect and think outside the normal safety zones of our lives.

Her journal is absolutely lovely and I am only honoured to be able to share a little of myself with her and the other woman around the world, to whom this journal will be travelling.



Thank you to the ladies in the Your Paper Pantry Travelogue 2C group.

Playdate with Dianne

I had a playdate with Dianne and Jill today and we worked on a variety of tags, inspired by Tim Holtz new dies and goodies. We played with a number of techniques and my, did the time fly. First we made some stamp pads, and as I do not have any TH Xmas stamps yet, I made a colourful pad for a Arty stamp.
I was completely fascinated by the fun Dianne was having with the haunted house and rickety fence dies, and so I just had to have a go at working with that.

My little summer house by the beach/lake.

I then went on to playing with one of TH's paper ribbon flowers and built on something around that using a few of his products. Great fun!

My colourful stamp pad behind the new sticky tape flower, and using the film strip ribbon, and a muse token. I also used a sticker for his salvage sticker booklet.

Then last but not least, I got down to a  Christmas tag, which I absolutely adore. I used the TH faceted fragments, the Pine tree die, playing with putting the snow on the tree and some of his new velvet pleated ribbon. Yummy stuff.

Halloween in Wonderland - an Inspiration

I attended Carol's retreat in Tauranga over the weekend and my friend brought along a mini that she had made for me. We had made a pact at the previous retreat that we would swap minis made for each other, not for photographs or journalling, but purely inspirational. Well, I was the very lucky recipient of my mini over the weekend. It is absolutely gorgous, Thanks Shell.

Shell: http://scrapbookdreamsblog.blogspot.com/
My Time
Scrapbook Dreams Forum

PS: Sorry for the wobbly video, I was in a hurry, lol.



Thanks Shell, this is just so aewsome! My grandkids will love looking at it.
:)

Tag and flowers

I attended a tag techniques class over the weekend, and was most impressed with what I learned. We played with tim holtz inks, stamps, alcohol inks, and metal work. It was a wonderful experience.

I also made some flowers for the Crafting Passionz Halloween flower swap. The colours needed to be black, white, gold, green, orange or purple. It was quite a challenge, as I am not into Halloween that much. The first flower is purple and not blue. :)

All in all a productive weekend. Thanks Shell for making it so exciting. :)