Crimson Rosella ATC

I think I'm on a roll doing bird ATC's. I stumbled across a Regional Animal themed PIF (Play It Forward) game over at my ATC trading site. Basically pick one of the three options posted by the person before you then offer three options of your own. I will be getting a desert tortoise native to America. I offered a numbat, crimson rosella or winner's choice. User HHC chose the crimson rosella and the card I painted for her is below. I think this is one of my best works to date. Probably helps that this is my all-time favourite bird species.

Secret Santa Photo Frame

That's right, I finally have something OTHER than an ATC to show off. My new work ran a Secret Santa with a gift limit of $10. It always confuses me why workplaces run these: you either get someone you barely know and spend $10 on something meaningless and impersonal like chocolates or get a friend and feel constructed by the small budget. Anyway, having only been at my work for 2 months I didn't really know anyone that well. I had to get a gift for a gentleman that had recently been married so decided to make a photo frame for him.

Here is the papermachie frame I bought from Spotlight:

I had just happened to pick up a wedding themed 12x12 sheet of paper the other day, originally planning on doing a LO of my aunts wedding. Decided to use that on the frame, it has golden print and a lovely shimmer to it. Stuffed up the border the first time which is why it ended up with a scallopped edge. Added some rub-ons and a chip board heart and here is the new frame:

Popped it in a gift back along with some soccer ball baubles (he plays indoor soccer), some candy canes and some chocolates. Hope he liked it.

Goldfinches

I had a friend request a Goldfinch ATC for a trade. I found two beautiful reference pictures to work from and decided to paint them both. She chose the one with some red. I'm pretty happy with how both of these turned out.

October PAT ATC's

I finally got my act together and completed these cards ahead of the deadline. The themes for this one were a lady in a corset; alice in wonderland; whimsical Marie Antoinette; and stained glass window. I'm pretty happy with how the set turned out.

House Mouse ATC

This little stamp is adorable and every time I use it on an ATC if receives rave reviews. I had a lady request I make up a design for her using the stamp and this is what I came up with.

Some random ATC's

I was in a creating mood and came up with a few extra random ATCs for trade. I'm having fun playing around with mixed media work again, though I never seem to get enough layers.

September PAT and a Vampire ATCs

I managed to get quite a few cards finished this weekend! It was good to sit down and create some art again. Now all I need to do is get my craft room organised so I can do it again. :)

Mid August PAT ATCs

So I haven't been doing too much craft recently at all. I only just got these cards done in time for their due date. Themes requested were clowns, vampires, the poem "Winkin, Blinkin and Nod" and Santa Claus.

August PAT ATCs - Second Set

Here are the cards for the second group I was part of for the August PAT over at ATCsforAll.com. Themes were pink poodles, character from Hey Diddle Diddle, flying blue crowned conrue parrot and fairy with a mushroom.

August PAT ATCs

So these are my cards for Group 2 of the August PAT over at ATCsforAll.com. The themes requested were anything African, chickens/roosters, dogs and racoons. I think my favourite out of this set is the African child. Chickens are very hard to paint. I still have another set of 4 to paint before the due date of the 22nd.

Garden Wall Postcard

My final painting for Jean Fine Art Flowerpot 4" x 6" swap. I really enjoyed stretching myself with this swap both by trying out a larger size and by having to create a more complete picture than I usually do. I'm looking forward to the returns for this swap as some amazing art has been entered.

Hyacinth Macaw ATC

I had a few hours spare so pulled out my book on parrots to use as a reference for this card.

Frangipani Pot 4x6

Here is my second card for the Flowerpot 4" x 6" swap. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, though the water effects are hard to do. Acrylic paints again, I think this one took about 3-4 hours.

Tulip Vase 4x6

As you probably know, I've been enjoying trying my hand at acrylic paints recently. I figured that only working on the small ATC scale could be a bit limiting though, so signed up for a 4" x 6" flowerpots themed swap. I hadn't really counted on how much longer this larger size would take me! This is the first card I have created:

More Lighthouses

Here are two more ATCs I painted of Byron Bay lighthouse. They will go in the post tomorrow.

Lighthouse ATC

A lighthouse themed swap was started over at ATCsforAll.com just a few days after Ben proposed to me at the Byron Bay lighthouse, so of course I had to sign up. :) It's taken me a while, but here is my first card. I still need to rush through two more and get them sent out ASAP. Reference photo was one of mine.


In other news, I just got a call to offer me a temporary job! Only three months to begin with, but it will at least give me some experience and money. YAY! :)

Attack of the Undead... and Ladybug ATCs

I have had some time to finish off a few cards I started before heading to Melbourne last week. Firstly, we have a set of three for a Zombies, Vampires and Other Undead swap. I chose to do Frankenstein's Monster, a zombie and a mummy. All done in watercolour pencils.

I also found another ladybug swap, so I had to sign up for that given my love of the little bugs. It's actually a pretty mixed-media card and each ladybug has dimensional magic on their shell to give it a hard gloss coating.

Edit: I was looking at the ladybugs again before I sent them off and decided that they weren't quite finished. A quick extra few stamps of some leaves and some white gel pen accents have given them that bit of pop they were missing before, I think.

My engagement party!

Just a quick warning that this post if photo intensive. I wanted to show off some of the best shots from my engagement party on Saturday night. It was such a fantastic night and great to catch up with so many friends that we haven't had a chance to see in a while.

We'll start off with some family shots:



Photos of my lovely fiancee and I:

Photos with friends:

Showing off all the lovely cards we received:

Engagement Venue

Ben and I checked out the engagement venue with Charles today to finalise numbers and decorations. The place seems very nice. It should be the right size for the number of people we're having. I've included below some photos of the outside of the building we took while there. We decided to carry out the purple and gold theme with the decorations inside, just some balloons and table runners. Bit upset that the dress I've bought is blue, since it wont match. The dress itself is nice though and I'm happy to finally have something to wear. We also booked the cake today, we're going with a chocolate sponge with butter cream and raspberry jam inside, covered in pure chocolate icing. It wont match the theme, but I'm thinking of buying some decorations to go on top maybe.

Gold Coast Show Results

I went to the Show on Sunday and got to pick up my scrapbooking entries. I was VERY amazed to win THREE firsts and a third place. You can see the winning entries below. The bottom LO also won Best Exhibit for the scrapbooking section which just blew my mind. I'm so happy I finally got my act together and entered.

Monthly Live Trade ATCs: Medieval and Winter

Today was the last Thursday of the month so it was time for my monthly live trade swap. This was the first month it has been held outside of the Addicted To Scrap store, since it closed down at the start of this month. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make it to the swap today but I made sure my cards were completed anyway as I figured otherwise I would forget and then be stuck having to make 36 cards for next months.

The monthly theme was Medieval. I was excited about this as it's normally a theme I can really get into since I like castles, princess, knights and medieval costumes. I think if it was a hand-drawn swap where I only has to do a few cards I would have been fine, but I just couldn't come up with anything that I was happy with. Finally I was inspired by the illuminated lettering they used to do on manuscripts and went with that.

We had the quarterly seasonal theme due, this one was winter. I struggled as I really wanted to do a card without reference to snow since it rarely snows in Australia and especially not on the Gold Coast. We've actually been having a heat wave at the moment of 30C or more weather for the past few days - I spent time by the pool reading in my bikini on Tuesday and it's still technically winter! I ended up going with a somewhat similar design to my Autumn card but that was well received so I hope this one will be too.

Benn has decided we will head to the Show on Sunday so I will have to wait until then to find out how my scrapbooking entries went. I'm excited enough just to be going, I love to check out all the handicrafts and baby animals!

Gold Coast Show Entries

I have admired all the handicraft works entered into the Melbourne show since I started going when I was little. Since moving to the Gold Coast we have checked out the Show here both years and to be honest I like the smaller scale, makes it feel more like a proper country show. The Gold Coast also has a scapbooking section for its handicrafts and this year I decided to take the plunge and enter! You can see my 9 entries below, displayed just before I dropped them off earlier today.

Ben says that the important thing isn't winner or losing but that I actually went ahead and entered after wanting to for so many years. I think he's right, because I do feel a sense of accomplishment especially since I created 4 of these LO's especially for the show in the past 2 months. To be honest though, I would really like to come home with something to show for my efforts, even if it's just an honourable mention certificate. :) I'm not sure when judging is but the show opens on Friday so I think it's before then. Wish me luck!

Blends of Jazz Festival

Ben and I have made it an annual thing to check out the Blues in Broadbeach festival since moving to the Gold Coast. Last year the Broadbeach commerce organisation also arrange a Blends of Jazz festive but we didn't manage to attend. It was held last weekend this year and Benny and I caught two acts on Saturday night. I very much enjoyed Renae Suttie & The Swing Collective while Ben liked The Rat Pack - Supported by Oz Horns. The main street of Broadbeach is closed off for the festival with a stage set up at one end. It's a great way of getting people to come down and see all the restaurants and cafes on the main strip. I liked the way the palm trees were lit up for the night so I took a photo on my phone.

Byron Bay Layout

I finally finished the scrapbook LO of my recent holiday in Byron Bay. It was a bit of an effort to get the painting and digital photos to come together cohesively, but I think I finally pulled it off. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and there are things I learned from it too. I'm tossing up whether to add some hidden journalling behind the photos or not. Probably just an itinery on the left side and a description of the photos on the right. What do you think?

Byron Bay Landscape

This is my latest piece, a landscape in acrylic paints. Size is roughly 30cm x 60cm because I'm thinking of using it as a background to a scrapbooking layout (hence the ugly bit in the middle where I got lazy and couldn't be bothered painting in the sun rays). Now that I've got this far with it though I think its too good to be used as a background but not good enough to be used as an actual picture. :(

Edit: I received some helpful comments from the wonderful ladies over at ATCsforAll.com and spent some more time today working on this piece. It's still a lot more blue than the reference picture I worked from, but I think I like it more now. Definately more happy with the grass/plants.

Pet LO and Engagement Party Invite

I have had this LO partially done for about a week now and only just got around to finishing it. It's of my family cat, Artemis. We bought her a few years ago from the Greensborough Cat Shelter and I talked the rest of the family into choosing her because she sneezed when we were looking at them all. I thought it was so cute, especially since I was sneezing too by that stage being surrounded by so much cat hair. I thought she was going to be a fierce little kitty, so I called her Artemis after the goddess of the hunt. She's actually the scardiest cat EVER and runs away from everything and everyone. The patterned paper for this LO came from a kit I bought for $2 from Spotlight. It will be another entry into the Gold Coast Show.

In other crafty news I spent a few days last week making up invites to my engagement party with Ben to be held in September. They took a fair while, with the ribbon being the most frustrating part as it kept wanting to curl up into the roll shape it had been stores in. I'm happy with the finished design though. You can see a sample below, with certain details blurred out.

Alice in Wonderland PAT

I was very excited to see a Pick-A-Theme swap for Alice in Wonderland characters over at ATCsforAll.com a while ago. I'm not a massive Alice fan but the book has such a range of fantastic characters that I was looking forward to getting to draw. Unfortunately, what I ended up with was a bit dissapointing in terms of the lack of variety. I'm looking forward to seeing people's interpretations of my two requests: the mock turtle and the dodo.

Group One: 2 caterpillars, cheshire cat and artist's choice (mad hatter)

Group Two: gothic Alice, gothic Queen of Hearts, cheshire cat, caterpillar.

Scrapbooking Layouts

It's been a while since I've created some layouts to show (I've done a few pages in my friends engagement album, but I'm keeping them secret until the whole thing is done). Anyway, the Gold Coast Show is coming up at the end of the month and I thought I might enter some LO's. Most will probably be old ones I've created during the past year, but I didn't have anything that suited the Heritage or Children categories.

Endless Summer is my entry for the children/babies/christening category. This was hard for me since I don't actually have any kids/nieces/nephews of my own, so I went with my brother and our cousins. Really happy with the way this one ended up, even if it is a relatively simple LO.

Dad is the first heritage LO I've ever done. I think my favourite part is the journalling which is a transcript of dad's recollections of life when he was 8. I really like this one.

Next project is making my engagement party invites. All the pieces are cut out now, I just need to get the details confirmed so I can print them out and then assemble them. I'm hoping to get the in the post today or tomorrow.