2010 Santa Hunt LO

I saw a great sketch over at Get Picky and have been waiting for the right photos to use. Since the competition closes tonight I only just scrapped my entry in but I'm actually really happy with the end result. The Santa Hunt really is my favourite part of Christmas and I'm so happy I finally got a chance to scrap about it. The Santa chipboard on this LO is adorable and his fur actually is puffy.

Anyway, if you like doing multiple photo LO's then check out Get Picky.

This is the sketch the LO was based on.

Christmas and Whimsical Bird ATCs

It's been a while but here are a few new ATC's I created in the past few days. Since it's so close to Christmas I was feeling festive, hence the Christmas Pixie and Christmas Fairy. The birds were just because I was in the mood for something easy. While I'm happy with the sketches for the birds, I'm not happy with the colouring because they were both done on weird backgrounds. I might try them again once I get home and have my own supplies at hand.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy Christmas!

Christmas with Grandma T LO

It's been a while but this LO is actually a 'just because' LO, it wasn't created for any challenge or competition. We had a family photoshoot at the Christmas dinner with Ben's gradma and I decided I wanted to scrap it. Since I'm staying with fmaily in Melbourne at the moment this could have been a bit of a problem, but I have already purchased a huge new stash and also raided some of my mum's supplies. Pretty happy with the end result and I enjoyed getting to use Mum's Cuttlebug for the photo mat.

I hope you all have a great Christmas and if you get to spend it with family enjoy it for the blessing it is.

Christmas Advent Calendar

I decided I wanted to make our Advent calendar this year using the Kaisercraft kit rather than buy a cheap one from the supermarket. It took me a whole three-day weekend but I now have it completed and filled with lollies ready to start on the 1st!

The traditional papers aren't my typical colour-theme but I got the whole collection for half-price at Spotlight. Going with the natural colours let me leave the chipboard raw so I saved time by not having to paint it all. I've used a variety of embellishments on the boxes including chipboard, pearls and rhinestones, ribbons, rubons and some vintage postage stamps.

Bird-A-Thon ATC's

I normally trade my ATCs over at ATCsforAll.com and even though I haven't been making too many of them recently I still pop in every now and then. I found out they were having a Bird-A-Thon this week, which involved everyone getting together and making as much bird themed art as they could and then we all go crazy with trades. Given birds are one of my favourite themes to collect I just couldn't pass this up.

Here are the four I've come up with so far:

Family Fun LO

For the sketch challenge at Challenge Heaven. Couple of old photos from my childhood on this one. I'm not sure of the exact years these were taken. I think the one on the left might have been Dad's work Christmas party at the Melbourne Zoo. I think the best thing about looking back at these old photos is laughing at the fashions! :)

This month the sketch was by Inspired Blueprints. As per normal, I stuck to the sketch pretty closely.

Autumn PAT ATCs

This Pick-a-Theme (PAT) Swap wis different from a regular PAT Swap in that it is organized by Season (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter), then Media (Hand-drawn/hand-Painted OR Collage/Mixed Media), then finally by specific theme within the season you have chosen. I couldn't resist such a specific challenge, even if my current ATC's are few and far between.

Themes for my group: Group 5 ~ Autumn:Hand-drawn/Hand-painted *FULL*

1) BamaKathy ~ Trees, birds, flowers or vegetables in a basket
2) Luvloz ~ Foliage (not Halloween/Thanksgiving related)
3) Shawncaitlin ~ Acorns or Scarecrows
4) ceejay ~ Harvest
5) bernie712 ~ Scary Witches

Melbourne LO

I really liked the sketch challenge for Challenge Heaven this month and knew right away which photos I wanted to use. As often happens however I had trouble finding enough time to complete the LO, so here it is finally finished on the last day of the month. :) I'm always happy when I get to use papers which have been in my stash for ages and I got to use TWO old ones on this LO! I don't normally do mixed alpha titles, however I had spelled out all of 'Melbourne' except for the M before realising I'd already used the M on another LO. Pretty happy with the end result.

I should be back later today with some ATC's as well. :)

All Dressed Up LO

So Bridgette's blog whispers is finally complete and I can upload my LO. I've just seen what the original LO looked like over at Bridge's site and OMG it changed by the time it go to me. Anyway, if you want to see the original and the list of who participated, check out Scrappin' Bridge. If you're following on a blog-hop and want to go to the next website, check out Leanne's blog.

While I wasn't expecting the whole process to take so long it was certainly a lot of fun and I ended up with a LO I really like. I created those two bushy purple flowers myself using a scalloped punch and purple glimmer mist. Photos are from my friend's wedding where I was a bridesmaid.

Blog Whispers Sneak Peak

I'm taking part in Bridge's blog whisper game, which is like chinese whispers except with scrapbooking LO's. I was sent Belinda's version of the LO and have created mine which I will be sending on to Leanne. Once everyone has completed a LO Bridge will post them on her website and we can see how it changed as it was passed along. I have to say, I really like the end result of this LO so I can't wait to show it to you.

Happy Birthday LO - Mike's 20th

Continuing my trend of completing birthday LO's WAY after they actually occured (my brother actually just turned 21 last month), this LO shows Michael's 20th birthday and is a Challenge Heaven entry. This is for the themed challenge, theme was birthday and it had to have a photo with the cake. I went with hidden journalling on this one as it's already looking crowded enough. The cake photo actually opens up and the writing is on the blue paper.

I'm aware the photos themselves look silly. I missed capturing all the 'moments' so my siblings kindly agreed to re-stage them for however their acting ability is questionable. :P

Quiet Time LO

It's a new month so there are a whole heap of new challenges out. I normally look at a few different sites but only end up doing the Challenge Heaven ones. This month though the sketch over a Stuck?! got into my head and I had to create it. The LO I ended up with is nothing like what I was originally going to do (I wanted to do my trip to the Zoo with my dad!), but I'm fairly happy with the result. Bit concerned it's too simple though so let me know if you have suggestions for improvements.

Photos by Daniel Sheehan, who will be our wedding photographer.

And here is the sketch:

Fairy Tale Characters

I have finally created a few new ATC's. One of the swaps at ATCsforAll.com was for fairy tale characters and I have a slight obsession with this theme so I couldn't resist signing up. I think you can really tell I'm out of practice though. :(

I've been feeling the urge to be a but more creative lately, so I think I might get a few scrapbooking LO's done soon. New challenges come out tomorrow, lets hope they inspire me. :)

My mum's a TV star!

My mum featured in a clip shown on The Circle (Australian version of The View) today. It was designed to promote the Look Good, Feel Better project which supports women undergoing chemo treatment. If you want to support this initiative (and live in Australia) $1 from every lipstick sold by Myer or David Jones this week will be donated to the program.

Some ATC's, finally!

I'm spending time at home with my mum at the moment and she is into making ATC's. We went to Paperific last Sunday and made some cards to trade however were sadly disappointed no one else was there to trade with. Anyway, it meant I made 9 cards for the first time in months. The theme was 'Sense of Time'.

I also owed mum a RAK, so drew up this card yesterday.

We 'R' Still Family

4th challenge for the month! This is for the song title challenge, it had to have the title "We are family" and a scalloped edge. I changed the title slightly because I ran out of 'e's. :) How cool are the crochet dolies on this one? I purchased a whole bunch from Pretties Etc at a very reasonable price.

My family would get yearly family portraits for a couple of years but then we just seemed to stop bothering. The recent one on the LO was taken just before mum commence her chemo treatments. Pretty safe to say we all look a lot different now compared to the first photo!

Aussie Christmas LO

The colour challenge at Challenge Heaven this month was Red, Black, Green and Orange. I had such a hard time figuring out how to get those to all work together and was about to go in a totally different direction with orange as my base colour when I came accross this patterned paper while looking for red paper for the previous LO. I think the end result if pretty cool, and I'm happy I got to use another older photo of my and my siblings.

Fun Creating With Dad LO

What's this, a LO with a little person in the photo?! It's actually an old photo of me, creating something with my dad way back around 1990. This one is for the Challenge Heaven Ebony and Ivory Challenge. Colours this month were black or white and red and you had you use paint. This was nothing like what I'd originally intended to create but I think it worked out rather nicely nonetheless.

Birthday Boy LO

The month is almost half way through and I have only created one LO so far! I don't think I'm going to have much luck getting to the 4 I need to be entered into the monthly draw at Challenge Heaven.

Photos are my parter and his mother celebrating his birthday. I loved the little monkey I've cut out of some patterned paper as my nickname for Ben is 'monkey'.

Anyway, this LO is based on the sketch provided by Shell.

A Time of Change LO

Here is my fifth LO for July at Challenge Heaven. Finished it a day late so it wont count but I had this idea of the LO sketch for a while and couldn't go past the chance to do any orange LO since it's my favourite colour. For the Ebony and Ivory challenge, had to pick black OR white and orange and use mini-alphas. If I had a chance to do this one again I'd get rid of some of the white space at the top to leave more room for the journalling at the bottom. I wasn't expecting to write that much.

 

This LO focuses on my mum's battle with breast cancer and the start of her chemo treatment. One of the biggest challenges for her is the loss of her hair so that is what I've focused on here.

New Friends LO

I made it to 4 Challenge Heaven LO's this month, so I'll be entered into the monthly prize draw! Here is my 4th LO for the month. It was created for the Theme challenge and had to be about holidays using no more than 3 patterned papers. I chose to scrap some photos of Ben taken on our 9 year anniversary holiday to Coffs Harbour, NSW. The trip was amazing and the highlight was visiting the Pet Porpoise Pool.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun LO

Yeap, another LO! This was for the Song challenge, so had to use the title 'Girls just wanna have fun' and a patterned paper background. I'm always a bit afraid of doing pattern paper backgrounds, because I like crisp simple designs. Ended up pretty happy with the result though. Benn thinks the photos are scary. :)

I've been creating again! Mucking Around Together and By The Lemon Tree

I really have been in a bit of a depressed state recently and just haven't felt like creating anything! Luckily, this appears to be lifting now and I've whipped up two new LO's for this month's Challenge Heaven challenges. The first one is for the word challenge: it had to use the word 'together' and be on a kraft background. It's a bit of a different style to my normal work but I'm really happy with the end result.

This LO was published in Scrapbooking Memories Vol 14 No 5.

My second LO is based on the sketch challenge. Again, when I initially looked at the sketch I wasn't inspired but this idea just came to me in the shower the other day. It's a bit busier than the work I've been creating lately and I'm happy about that. It was also a good chance to use one of the family portrait photos.

(Removed for publication)

Family Photo Shoot

So regular visitors to my blog may have noticed that I haven't been as creative as normal for about two months. The reason for this is that my Mum and Dad flew home from living in China at the end of April and Mum discovered she had breast cancer. It's sucked my creativity right away, I think the only ATCs I've created since then were the castles for the swap I hosted. Anyway, after having three lots of surgery Mum begins chemo treatment today. She's cut her hair short for the first time in about 25 years in preparation for it falling out and we decided to have a family photo shoot yesterday before that happens. Just thought I'd post some photos to share.

Yum LO and A Card

One of the challenges over at Challenge Heaven this month was to use the word 'Yum' in the title. I had the perfect photos to use and happened to be inspired a few nights ago by the multiple photo section of the latest Scrapbooking Memories. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong with my dimensional magic? It keeps cracking as it dries. :(

There was another card sketch as part of the challenges this month too, so I had to give it a go. The end design was NOTHING like I originally thought I'd go with, but pretty happy in the end. Plus, I got to use a new set of stamps that had previously just been sitting in my cupboard.

Playing with Seals and Dolphins

We had a long weekend this weekend, so Ben and I decided to head down to Coffs Harbour to celebrate our anniversary. Benny bought me a marine wildlife encounter so I got to swim with some seals! The Pet Porpoise Pool was so cool and interactive. Benny got to play catch with the dolphins before their show and we got free kisses. :)

We also spent some time at a great Butterfly House and Maze, The Clog Barn, the jetty and went past the Big Banana and the Big Prawn. It was fantastic to spend some time getting away from everything and re-connencting.