Project 365 - More Catch Up Cards

I got so close to catching up with this project, posting card number 74 on day 75 of the project. Then I just lost all motivation. I managed to hussle up some extra cards in case I could find anyone interested in trading at the craft expo I went to yesterday so these will be catch-up cards.

Cards 75- 80 / 365.

Blog giveaway winners announced!

I had 28 different people enter the blog giveaway with a few getting bonus entries for providing links or following blogs. After getting all the entries sorted out I went to http://www.random.org/ to get the winners.

Grand prize winner is: adifferentstory!

Runner up: NancyJB.

Thanks everyone for leaving comments. I hope those of you who became watchers will continue to stop by and leave comments. To the ladies who won - please make contact with me so I can organise your prizes.

ATC Progression: from 2005 to now

One of the ladies on ATCsforAll.com compiled an image showing her progression since 2004 and requested other people share their progress. I thought I'd make one up to since it's a slow morning this Saturday. I only started in October 2005 and the under the sea card is my first ATC ever created, I still have it. I lost a lot of my files from 2005 and 2006 six didn't have as much variety to chose from there.

Don't forget my blog giveaway is being drawn on Monday. Details can be found by clicking the image at the top right of my blog.

Areas of Local Interest Photo ATC's

I've always had a love of photography and thankfully digital cameras mean I'm not wasting as much film as I used to either. It also means that I often jump on the chance to take part in a photography ATC swap. There is one running at my online trading site right now with the theme of Areas of Local Interest. Given that most of the towns in the state I live in count as tourist destinations, espeically the Gold Coast where I live I figured I had to give this one a go.

Card 71/365: Elephant at Australia Zoo

Card 72/365: View of Surfers Paradise coastline from Q1 viewing deck.

Card 73/365: Peace Temple at Southbank, Brisbane

Card 74/365: Surfers Paradise Coastline

I'm now only one card behind for Project 365! I was really hoping to be back on track by 75 but I mis-counted somewhere along the way. :(

Remarkable Redhead ATCs

I am taking part in a 'Remarkable Redhead' swap, as I think I mentioned in my previous post. After the disappointing result using watercolours I tried again with the same lineart using Prismacolour pencils. I'm much happier with the result this time so these will be sent in for the swap.

Card 68-70/ 365: Remarkable Redheads

*Don't forget my BLOG CONTEST is still running*
Just click the picture at the top right of my blog to get all the details.

Numbat ATC

My online ATC trading site has a great game set-up called Pay-It-Forward (PIF for short). Basically you claim an offer of a card from the most recent person to post and then offer your own card for the next person to claim. Some of the threads have specific themes, such as one only accepts watercolour painted cards. One that I'm really enjoying taking part in is the Regional Animal PIF, since I love getting to paint Australian animals. Below is my numbat card. The numbat's habitat is a very small area of Western Australia so I've never seen a real one before but it's still my favourite animal.

Card 67/ 365: Numbat

Watercolour Portrait ATCs

I did up the lineart for these ladies expecting to use them for the Redhead swap I've signed up for. Painted the skin tones first though and didn't really water down the paint enough so they all looked a bit too tanned to be red-heads. Decided to finish them up anyway so now I have 3 lovely brunettes available to trade. I copied the lineart prior to painting so will give them another try and red-heads, just ahven't decided whether I'll go acylics or pencils.

Cards 64-66 / 365: Watercolour Portraits

Don't forget about my BLOG GIVEAWAY either. It's still running until March 22, just click on the picture at the top right of my blog to get to the post. Thanks to all my new followers!

N & J - A Scrapbook LO

It has been a LONG time, but I finally completed another scrapbook LO. I think part of the problem is that I'm feeling guilty about not working on my friend's engagement album (she's married now I've had it that long!). Anyway, I'd wanted to do a layout of my aunt's wedding since she was married in October. I was looking at Elise's wonderful blog and noticed she's posted the weekly challenge over at The Boxx. Straight away I got an idea of what I wanted to create. The LO below is almost nothing like the original idea, given that I ended up using different PP and different photos but I'm still pretty happy with it.

The challenge details: I want you to make a LO with the following things on it and you must list them when you load it up here. Something old - from your stash that you've had for a long time or something vintage. Something new - bought in the last month. Something borrowed - an item from a swap or a friend. Something blue - Anything!

My supplies: Old: blue paper matt and blue flowers. New: PP, white and cream flowers, ribbon. Borrowed: brown/gold flowers - received as a RAK. Blue: flowers, chipboard letters.

Robot ATCs

I thought I'd try my hand at some robots for a swap over at ATCsforAll.com. These guys weren't the style I had in mind originally but they kind of painted themselves last night. I think they're pretty cute.

Cards 60-63/365: Robots.

I'm stil 4 cards behind where I should be on Project 365, but at least I haven't fallen any further behind. :)

100th Post Blog Giveaway!

This is my 100th blog post! To celebrate I'm having a blog giveaway. The prizes are Artist Trading Card based given that of my 100 posts, 63 have been tagged in that theme.

First Prize Contents:

1 x Mini-Artist Easle and canvas

1 x PITT artist pen, Fine (brown)

1 x Zig Memory System permanent pen 0.1 (pure black)

1 x Uniball Signo (white)

2 x 1m of Punchinella (gold, silver)

3 x Napkins (designs as shown)

4 x 1m of lace (pink, light blue, dark blue, lilac)

2 x 1m of ribbon (purple, white)

1 x corner florish rubber stamp

4 x Kaisercraft rhinestone packs (pink, silver, blue, bronze)

20 x pre-cut ATC blanks 220gsm

20 x new ATC sleeves

PLUS

1 x custom ATC of your choice of theme 

Second Prize Contents:

1 x Mini-Artist Easle and canvas

2 x 1m of Punchinella (gold, silver)

3 x 1.5m of fibre/threads (green/brown, red/black, blues)
10 x pre-cut ATC blanks 220gsm

10 x new ATC sleeves

PLUS

1 x your choice of an ATC from my available gallery 

How to enter:

Entering is easy, just leave a comment on this post. Make sure that you give me some way to contact you if you win. The winner will be drawn 7pm, Monday 22nd March, Queensland (Australia) time. I will post internationally, so feel free to sign up no matter where you're from.

Bonus entries: get additional entries by becoming a follower of my blog and/or linking to this giveaway. Be sure to let me know if you link back to me.

Swapping out the Fairy Tale Fun swap

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here before or not but I hosted a swap over at ATCsforAll.com recently with the theme of Fairy Tale Fun. It's not the first time I've hosted, but it has been quite a while since the last one. Being a uni student and then unemployed tends to cut into your available postage funds. :( I spent this morning swapping out the returns and thought I'd share some photos of it.

I had 20 people sign up for the swap and ended up with 12 sending their cards in. A few told me they were withdrawing nice and early which I din't have a problem with, but a few just dropped away with no contact. That gets a bit frustrating as they're taking up spots that someone else might have signed up for. Anyway, the photo above shows everyone's cards and their return envelopes (addresses have been blurred out). Believe it or not, it actually took me 3o minutes to get to this stage, as you have to remove the sticky tape from each card and write my return address on each envelope.

Over at ATCsforAll.com there is a convention to send the swap host an extra card to thank theme for running the swap, meaning that while most swaps only require 3 cards some people will send in 4. When I used to host about 50% of people would send a extra. I was super lucky with this swap in that EVERYONE sent in a extra card, so I now have an extra 12 fairytale cards to add to my collection. :) The photo above shows everyone's cards after I picked my favourites. I was really happy with the variety of fairy tales people chose to depict.

The next stage is the most stressfull - actually swapping out all the cards. I try to swap on a like-for-like basis so people get returns which are similar to the standard of the cards they sent it. I generally don't worry to much about medium as I'd prefer to get a good card in a different medium to what I sent in than an average card in the same medium. I struggled a bit getting the balance right with this swap, but I hope everyone is happy with their returns. Once every card is swapped out you then need to double-check them all to make sure that no one is getting their own card back or getting two from the same artist. In this case I also made sure that everyone got three different fairytales back. Finally, pop them all into the envelopes, add stamps and they're ready to mail!

Mushroom ATCs

I've signed up for a mushroom swap over at ATCsforAll.com and thought I'd sit down to paint my cards last night. I learnt two things: 1- Mushrooms are hard to paint. 2 - If you try to paint 3 cards in one night your eyes and back really start to hurt.

Card 57/365: Mushroom 1

Card 58/365: Mushroom 2

Card 59/365: Mushroom 3

I also changed the background to the blog, what do you think about the new colours?

Ruby Mask ATC

A while ago I took part in a masquerade themed swap. I really liked the lineart for the cards so I took a photocopy. The original designs I did in Prismacolour pencils. Decided to give one of them a go in acrylic paints. I think the shading of this one is a look more realistic, and I fixed some things about the mask patterns that had been bothering me.

Card 56/365: Ruby Mask