WOOOHOOO!!!

If you're here for the Get Picky Blog Hop...

Please scroll down to the next post :)

 

I am a tad excited...hehehe...

A little while ago, I shared some sneak peaks that I'd been working on for the magazine,

Australian Scrapbook Ideas...

Well... one of my projects made the front cover of the Christmas Craft Ideas
magazine special...YAY!!!

It's my very first ever- cover.  I'm a tad excited about that really :)

Here it is...

This is the project up close...

 I used a shadow box to create a Christmas pressie for my Mum. I loved the idea of creating something with non-traditional colours and these papers from Authentique were just perfect.  It's very soft and I think .. pretty... I love how it all came together.

I also made lots of little paper flowers and added little embellishments here and there.  My favourite sort of creating :)

This is the actual issue the Craft mag comes with...

and inside this one, I also have an article with some Christmas gift ideas for men.  It's always a hard thing to try and make a masculine inspired gift.... Stef did laugh (as he is a farmer) at how practical this gift would be for him, but if you have a husband or Dad that works in an office or has a desk area, then these gifts would be great.  I made a calendar using a small canvas and easel and also some photo cubes.

 And this is my first time to appear in the Australian Papercraft Essential Magazine.  I've created  a set of cards using some Paper Tole like flowers from a company called La Pashe.

 Here's what they look like...

and some close ups...

I used Little Yellow Bicycle's Elizabeth Park papers to make the cards and they matched beautifully with the flowers, which were super easy to make.  The come already in pieces on the sheet and you just have to cut them out, shape them and stick them back together.
They are really easy to make!

I know this has been a whole "magazine" post thing, but I'm really excited :)  These days I don't get to scrap nearly as much as I would like to and am largely just scrapping my magazine commissions, so it's nice to be able to share these finally and also to see them in print.

Hope your coming weekend will be filled with happy scrappy moments
or just an all round wonderful time.
Take care and thanks for stopping by.
xxx

Happy Birthday Get Picky!!!!!

Welcome, Welcome, Welcome!

I am so excited to be able to share our very first birthday celebration with everyone.  When Tanya and I talked about our vision for a multi-photo challenge site, we only hoped that people might think  the idea was worthwhile and occasionally be happy to come and play along with some of our challenges.  Now with a design team of 12 truly awesome and ridiculously talented  ladies, a fantastic array of sponsors who have supported us and some 652 followers later....

we are still going  and having a blast bringing our challenges each month and sharing some

 truly beautiful work each month.

So, thank you all for your amazing support!  I hope you enjoy the blog hop and the awesome talent ahead.

xxx

 Welcome to the Get Picky 1^st Birthday Blog Hop! 

 

We are celebrating our first year with a very exciting reveal as we unveil our 13^th Sketch with you today and share the beautiful creations of both present and past designers from our first year!  Some of the team members will be offering prizes so you will want to visit all of the blogs to increase your chances of winning a prize.  We are also offering a major prize along with the chance at a Guest Designer spot for the month of November if you visit and leave a comment at all of the blogs in our blog hop and participate in Sketch Challenge #13.  The Blog Hop starts today and will remain open until midnight (Australian Eastern Standard Time) on October 28^th so this will give you all plenty of time to visit everyone’s blogs and create a layout for the sketch challenge.

Here is Sketch #13

And here is my layout

 

 

As we mentioned, there are lots of great birthday pressies up for grabs along our hop today.  Some of our designers will be offering a RAK of their own and I have a very special little parcel of goodies to giveaway myself.  All you have to do to be in the running for my RAK is to become a follower if you're not already and leave a comment at the end of the post!

Of course there is also the chance to become our Guest Designer for November....but what's a celebration without that very special gift.

We are so very excited to also announce that Imaginisce have been kind enough to sponsor us with an awesome prize for our very special birthday celebration.

(Included in the prize..... the two latest collections with embellishments and stamps from both Geek is Chic and Bon Voyage plus an i-bond cordless glue gun with glitter glue sticks, a d-stress tool and a box of fabric flowers. )

Get Picky is the first stop of our birthday journey where you will find the complete list of all blogs in case there is a glitch along the way.  If you would like to play, just follow along the blog path in order so you don’t miss anyone.

Remember, if you want to be considered for the Guest Designer spot in November, once you have visited all the blogs and uploaded your entry for Sketch Challenge #13, please make sure that you go back to the Get Picky Blog and leave a comment on the challenge post.

The blog hop begins here: Get Picky Blog

Your next stop is here: Tanya Tahir

Thank you so much for joining us for this very special birthday celebration and for your continued support!

published work....

It's always ridiculously exciting...well for me anyway.... to see my pages in print, and ever more so, when you're too busy to keep track of the issue numbers and get a massive surprise to see your own layout in the magazine...lol

Here it is in this month's issue of Scrapbooking Memories...

and they even made a sketch of my layout...hehe..I was excited about that part too!

Here is the layout and some close ups....

If you're looking for something scrappy wise to do this weekend...be sure to pop back on Saturday for a special little surprise....

I can't wait.

xxx

sneaky peaks....

Just a quick update and some sneaky peaks to share....

I've actually created three layouts in the last week, which is no mean feat...lol.. some of my latest creations for a couple of articles coming up soon in Australian Scrapbook Ideas...

These first two using some of the gorgeous Authentique papers.....love the texture of these papers and of course those gorgeous flowers were just begging to be cut out :)

These next two were created using Bella Boyz Papers.....I'm not usually one for brights, but these papers were really easy to work with.  The layout below of Noah is one of my favourites.

Be sure to keep your eyes out for the next issue!

Miss Dorothy.....

This year we had our first Bookweek parade for Belle at school :)

Due to the craziness of my life at the moment, leaving things to the last minute is becoming my mode of operation.  (As my friend Tanya says " you do some of my best work that way"...lol)

Well at 11:00pm last night I stuck the final red rhinestones to the ruby slippers and was all done!  I had suggested earlier to Belle that maybe she might like to go as Little Miss Sunshine ( I was thinking...yellow cardboard circle..some texta..) but she didn't even remotely like that suggestion, so then came the list of other possibilities...some of which included a Beanie kid, or a Zhu Zhu pet?????? What the....hehe!

Anyway....in the end we decided upon Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.....

Don't ask me what was going on with her smile during this photo....(we do refer to her as our little space cadet...lol).  I am pretty chuffed with how this all came together as I am seriously not a fantastic seamstress by any stretch.  And below are the ruby slippers.

She had some old shoes that she has pretty much grown out of, so I covered them with red fabric and stuck on lots on red rhinestones.  The pic below is of her doing her little walk in the parade.

As it so happen...she actually won......the best costume for the Infant area (Grades Prep/ 1 & 2) and she got a new book as a prize.....one about a Zhu Zhu pet co-incidentally..lol..

All in all a very happy little girl who had an awesome day. 

 One tired mumma, but hey, it was well worth it :)

Hope your day has been a happy one too.

xxx



Beautiful friend....

It's hard to believe that all those years ago when I signed up to be on the Kaisercraft design team, I would meet and make friends with some of the most beautiful women I know.  I am fortunate enough to still be in contact with many of them, but none as regularly as my stunning friend Tanya.

Earlier this year, we got to meet in person for the first time when she was in Melbourne  and we spent a gorgeous couple of hours together in a street side cafe.  Here is a little pic from our play date...

I love this pic of us even in spite of the fact that Tan is just as gorgeous on the outside as she is on the inside.  You know how sometimes you are just so fortunate to be given the gift of a meeting and knowing awesome people that you just click with.  Well , she is definitely one of those friends for me.

We generally speak every other week and email in between and when we're not chatting about Get Picky stuff, there is always other stuff to occupy a conversation.

Well, a little while ago was Tan's birthday, so I thought I'd make her a little something, which I can now share.  Here it is....

I just made a little altered canvas with one of my favourite friendship quotes.

  and used some of my beautiful flowers from Tessa over at Precocious Paper .

I am really blessed in my life to know and love some of the most spectacular women and equally fortunate to be able to call them my friends.  Hope your lives are filled with such beauty too!



Australian Scrapbook Ideas

The latest issue of Australian Scrapbook ideas (Issue 9) is currently out and I have an article and some layouts in it about great ways to use Jumbo stamps.

You can read the article in depth is the issue below...

The layout made use of one of Stanpendous' Jumbo stamps.  This is the first time I've stamped with such a large image, and while I was initially a little daunted, these stamps are fantastic for creating your own background paper.

This layout below is my favourite in the feature.

 I use the resist method with a paint wash and some mist....love the colours and these photo of Noah when he was tiny seriously make me smile.  He wasn't quite walking yet, but sooo loved being outside in the garden. Pretty cute huh?

and here are the other two layouts and some close up pics....

So if you're looking for something to read over the weekend..go grab a copy!



Do you ever get the feeling....

Do you ever get the feeling that someone is stealing hours from your day?  That's very much how things have been here at the moment.  There never seems to be enough time. Here is a little taste of what I've been up to...

* I've written a 2,500 word essay (the last time I wrote an academic paper was over 20 years ) that seriously had me questioning my intellect

* I am on on placement working with students who have Autism once a week.

* Have been down to Uni days in Melbourne for study

* I am working three days a week teaching

and not to mention the most important of all those jobs, juggling a home, husband and cherubs, while also finding time to catch up with family and friends.

No wonder time is disappearing..hehe.

 

All in all though, as busy as life is, I am absolutely loving every minute of it :)

I have even found some little snippets of time to scrap.  Nowhere near as much as I used to, but here are some things I can share and some sneak peaks of some projects I can't ....

 

 

 I used some of my Little Yellow Bicycle left overs to create this set of cards.  I'm "trying" to use up all of my scraps in an effort to cut down on the amount of paper I hoard.  I'll let you know how I go with that one..lol.  And while I am certainly not the most skilled at Copic colouring, I really do enjoy it.

 

Here are some sneak peaks of some magazine projects I've been working on ...

 

 

In the past little bit, I've complete 2 sets of cards, 3 layouts, 2 articles and 3 off the page projects.

The commissions have been fantastic as they give me a reason to scrap, which I think I otherwise probably wouldn't do.

Well, I hope wherever you are your life is traveling along beautifully because at the moment, in spite of the hectic pace, things here could not be any better.

Take care xx