Birdie ATCs

I painted up a couple more ATCs for the All-types-of-art-athon over at ATCsForAll. Australia birds are one of my favourite themes to paint and I think I've actually used the lineart for the crimson rosella previously but I had an extra copy lying around so decided to use it. It's been quite a while since I've painted anything but it wasquite fun so I might get back into it.

X-mas with Pa LO

I was looking over the inspiration LO's at Scrap Jacked recently and was again inspired by the work of Bec Miller. I'm not a very up to date scrapbooker, so there photos were from last year's Christmas but it's better late than never, right? :)

I've never done the pleated paper thing or made pattern paper flowers. The flower was a lot easier than I'd expected but the pleating was a LOT harder. Still, it's always great to try new techniques.

Below is Bec's LO that I jacked.

If you're looking for some last minute inspiration for your Christmas photos, please don't forget The Lollipop Ladies Pudding Challenge ends in 4 days! The prize this fortnight is The prize this fortnight is a $10 gift voucher to Annabelle Stamps.

1920's Lady ATC

I've been home for Christmas and mum is really into Artist Trading Cards after I introduced her to them a few years ago. The forum I used to spend a lot of time on is having an 'All-types-of-art-athon' which is basically an excuse to go craft crazy for the new few days as you can create ATCs or inchies or chunkies or anything else your heart desires. You then load them to the forum and see if anyone wants to trade with you. I'd been feeling like I wanted to get back into some hand drawn art for a while so I decided to whip up a card. The athon goes for quite a few days so I'm not sure if I'll continue with some more cards once I get home or if the scrapbooking bug will bite again when I'm back to my supplies.

Anyway, after all that rambling, here is my 1920's Lady card.

Happy Holidays

To all my readers, I wish you a safe and happy festive season. I hope you got to spend it doing exactly what you wanted to. Best wishes for the coming year!

My brother, sister and I on Boxing Day 2011.

Decorating the Christmas Trees!

2011 has definately been the year of decorating the Christmas tree for me. It started with my family Christmas tree the first weekend of Melbourne while I was down for a wedding. My sister specially went out to buy the tree so I could take part in the decorating this year. I think my brother felt left out though, he came through a couple of nights later around 4am and accidently stumbled and took out the tree. :)

We flew back to the Gold Coast and put up our own Christmas tree the following weekend. I chose a simple gold/silver theme this year, but our lights and the star are multicoloured so it still looks funky at night. Poor little tree only managed to get one present underneath it. I thought I'd picked a winner of a present in getting Ben a new wallet since his old one is getting a bit worn, but he came home and shock the present and somehow guessed right away what it was without me even letting on that was what I was thinking of getting him! :(

Finally, we're back home in Melbourne for Christmas and we got to decorate Ben's family's tree too! This is the wonderful face my husband pulled when I asked for a nice smile. :( It was a lot of fun to be a part of their family tradition this year.

Just to finish up this very photo-heavy post, I wanted to share this photo Ben and I had taken with Santa at one of the shopping centres we visited today. So many of the big ones try to make a mint from this and charge $30+ for photo packs. This centre took the photo for us on my camera for free. Now that's what I call the spirit of Christmas!

Gold Coast '98 LO

I'm spending the next week in Melbourne at my mum and dad's place and I felt like scrapbooking yesterday. This lead me to two challenges. The first is that the only photos I have done here are the ones I chose not to take with me when I moved out 5 years ago. The second is while my mum has a huge craft room, she's more into ATCs and card making so a lot of the supplies I consider staples were not available. I decided to view this as a challenge and a chance to use materials I wouldn't normally have access to.

This LO uses photos from a family holiday to the Gold Coast in 1998. Looking over the photos I was struck by two things: how badly I used to fram my photos (these weren't re-printed, they were cut from 4x6) and how little the theme parks have changed between 1998 and 2009! I have based this design on the Get Picky sketch challenge for this month.

Christmas Morning LO

Good morning readers. It is with a touch of sadness I write this entry, as it showcases my last Lollipop Ladies DT submission. My term has unfortunately come to an end and they will be looking for a new DT at the start of the year. It's a great one to try for if you're just starting out working on design teams.

The inspiration over at The Lollipop Ladies was a beautiful Christmas pudding with the added challenge of Christmas. I took inspiration from the colours and the holly cluster at the top. The photo is one of my favourites of my siblings and I, a selfie taken at breakfast last year.

I have combined this LO with the challenge over at Once Upon A... Sketch. (I've decided I love challenge blogs that let you combine challenges!) The challenge over there this month was journalling about your Christmas traditions. On this LO I've journalled about the Christmas morning routine we have. It's only been in effect since my siblings and I were old enough to have partner's Christmas functions to attend as well, but I do really enjoy getting the start the day with just the 5 of us. We have so many different Christmas traditions, like mum making her fruit salad (and always running late because of it and somehow blaming us), the relaxed BBQ dinner at Nana and Pa's house, spending Boxing Day over at Chris and Tracey's house with the annual bocce tournament and watching the cricket. It's funny how as a teen you hate these things but once I moved away and wasn't able to get home for a few Christmases you really start to miss them. Anyway, the challenge also had to be based on the sketch below. I've rotated it but otherways stayed true to the design.

Just in case I don't post anything else before then, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Wedding Card

I ran a bit short of time for my submission to The Lollipop Ladies this fortnight (I thought it was due next weekend!) so had to settle for a card rather than a LO. The inspiration was milk bottles with the added challenge of mostly white. Given I recently attended a friend's wedding I couldn't go past whipping up a wedding card.

Now I know it's hard to find time to make cards/LOs in the lead up to Christmas but I hope you are expired but the criteria this fortnight. The prize this fortnight is from Mad for Markers (thanks to Sammi).

Lil Red Rocket Giveaway

Lil Red Rocket is having a giveaway! I was lucky enough to get in quick and purchase some of their buttons during the last sale. They are good quality so I highly recommend their products. This draw ends Sunday 11/12/11. They will be having a boy themed give-away after that.

Weekly Weigh-in: Week 3

In terms of enjoyment, this has been a good week. In terms of dieting/exercise, this has not been a good week. Combining the work Christmas party wine tour last Saturday with a trip to Melbourne for a friend's wedding this weekend and associated catch ups with family has resulted ina massive jump in my weight. This probably wasn't helped by the fact I completed the weight session at the gym on Sunday but followed it up with a 5km run on Monday and couldn't walk for the next 3 days due to muscle pains. I think I need to ease my way back into it a bit more.

A friend at work has suggested we train to compete in the Gold Coast half-marathon mid next year. I've only ever taken part in school fun-runs but agreed anyway. There is a training plan provided so I'll start on that and hope having a set cardio routine helps with the weight loss. I might look at adding weights in the new year.

Week 3
Weigh-in: 75.2kg
Progress since last week: +1.7kg
Overall progress: +0.9kg
Fitness goal: 3 x 40 minute runs
Food goal: better effort at healthy snacking at home.

Also, please don't forget this week's Lollypop Ladies challenge: toffee apples and acetate. Entries close on Tuesday.

Christmas ATCs

Wow, how long has it been since I last did some Artist Trading Cards? Mum was hosting a 'Christmas' swap with the critera being NOT hand-drawn or painted cards. I decided to get back into the swing of it considering how many different scrapbooking paper ranges and embellishments I have with a Christmas theme. It was a challenge to ge thte design principles happening again.

Sorry for the bad scan, I had to do it in a rush before I flew to Melbourne to give them to mum.