Christmas Joy

This was a productive weekend for me, I managed to get a second LO done. :) I was looking over some blogs and realised it had been a while since I took part in a Kaisercraft Saturday Sketch. The #2 sketch for February was perfect for these Christmas Carnival papers I had been saving. The colours were amazing, I really enjoyed doing a Christmas LO with non-traditional colours. As per the challenge requirements, almost everything is by Kaisercraft.

Again, I focused on adding multiple layers to this LO which I wanted to showcase in the detail show below. You can see the Christmas trees have been raised to two levels. There are pearls around the entire scalloped circle. Lots of little extras in the embellishment cluster too.

This is the sketch I worked from, Saturday Sketch #2 February:

Giveaways

Everyone loves a good giveaway so I wanted to share two fantastic ones I've recently found. The first is Sam i Am's Eye Candy Magic Giveaway. She hand-made all that fimo goodness and will be hosting a giveaway every month!

A Piece of Cake is a new kit store which is just launching. They are offering a full first release kit. I've never purchased on online kit but I'm starting to think I want to play around with one so I'm keen to win this. :)

Hand-Me Down

I found these photos while I was making the photo wall for my brother's 21st last year and just knew I had to scrap them! This was one of my favourite jumpers when I was a kid. The papers are mainly a Kaisercraft Christmas range called Merry Melodies but the colours were perfect for the photos. I'm trying to use more patterned papers and more embellishments in my LOs at the moment. Lots of yummy handmade embellishments on this one, none of which were made by me. :) Flowers are from Pretty Paper Petals, red doily by my mum, buttons by Lil Red Rocket.

This LO was inspired by the fantastic sketch below from Sketchabilities #65. I've only just found this site but I like the look of the sketches there. I've interpreted the sketch a lot more than I normally do but hopefully you can still see the elements I've kept.

Just Bloomed Card

I caught up with some old friends today and one of the couples had just let me know they were pregnant so I decided to whip up a quick card for them before leaving. Papers and sticker is from the Baby Mine range by Fancy Pants Designs because it's the only baby themed stuff I have. Given that I found out at this lunch that the other couple there today are also expecting I think I might need to buy a few more supplies. :) Chipboard is by Scrapmatts with UTEE, mini-blooms by Kaisercraft.

You & Me

This LO is mainly done with papers, stickers and transparencies from the Heidi Grace Sweetest Bug range. I've had all of these materials for so long because I thought they were adorable but struggled to actually scrap with them. The chipboard title is from Imaginarium Designs, as is the butterfly I used as a mask. I received my winners pack in the mail about a week ago and there is SO much chipboard included. I was expecting maybe three pieces but I've received 12!

This LO was created for three challenges. Punky Scraps released a recipe challenge on Friday, you had to use a minimum of three suggestions from: hexagons, white paint, make a grid, use small photos, no pink, use three circles, use three squares, and use something transparent. The white paint, small photos and something transparent should all be obvious. I used rectangles rather than squares for the photos and patterned paper and laid them out in a grid pattern. I've used more than three circles in the turquoise paint background. No hexagons though ad I did use pink, can't win them all I guess. :)

Bird is the Word's challenge word for Feb 12 is 'heart' which I've used in my journalling this time. Finally, ScrapFIT is another new challenge blog I've found. Workout #62 requires some 'xoxo's in your LO, so that's how I've signed off my journalling.

Don't forget I'm giving away some free rubber stamps, details in this post.

My first publication!

I have just received my copy of Australian Scrapbooking Memories magazine Vol 14 No 5 and it contains my first published LO's! I managed to get TWO layouts into this edition, the one below is contained in the Newbie gallery and I have the cover page of the Final Encore gallery. :)

A while ago I came up with a few goals in relation to my scrapbooking. These were to enter a LO into the Gold Coast Show, to win best exhibit and most successful exhibitor in the scrapbooking sections at the Gold Coast Show, to be on a DT and to be published. I completed the first two in 2009, the second two in 2011 and have now achieved the last in 2012. The interesting thing about this delay in having a LO accepted for publication made me realise that there are so many different ideals when it comes to scrapbooking and what is judged to be 'good' really depends on the audience. Some of the LO's I submitted for publication had previously won awards at the Show and they rejected; LO's which had won blog competitions didn't win at the Show and so forth. Even just looking at the different blog competitions I enter I'm reminded that different groups place different emphasis on how important the journalling is or the photos are or whether a LO with lots of fussy cutting and flowers is 'prettier' than a messy one with lots of paint and texture.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that while I'm excited to finally be published, I no longer consider it to be the event that defines whether my scrapbooking is 'good' or not. It also means I need to consider some new goals for the future of my scrapbooking. Here is what I've come up with:

1. Be in the top 5 at Once Upon a Sketch. I can't see this happening any time soon, because they choose stunning multi-layer designs with so much detail for their winners, but I want to work to developing more of that into my work. Plus, they have a really friendly DT who leave lovely comments when you enter their challenges. :)
2. Gain a spot on another design team. I enjoyed my time with The Lollipop Ladies however it was hard to be part of a fortnightly challenge blog while working full time since I normally only manage to create one LO a week. I'd love to join another team which did monthly challenges.
3. Promote my blog some more. At the moment, my most popular post is the one about a costume party I went to because people are searching for inspiration for a Pat Benatar costume. I would love to get more people commenting on my blog and more people visiting to actually see my art/craft. :)
4. Host some more crops with my friends. I get so little actual scrapping done but it is so much fun.

So what are your scrapbooking goals at the moment?

Elemental Dragon ATCs

After creating SO many more LO's than I normally do last month I felt like a bit of a change so decided to check out my old Artist Trading Card forum, ATCsforALL. They had a magnificent dragon themed swap and I figured I couldn't pass that by. The cards are Twinkling H2O backgrounds, Prismacolour pencil for the dragons and white acrylic paint borders. I tried to do elemental dragons, which one is your favourite?

GC Suns LO

I'm trying out another new scrapbooking challenge blog, Creative Scrappers. There are really SO many different challenge blogs out there I'm suprised they all manage to get enough entries to run. Creative Scrappers is a sketch site and they seem to put up weekly sketches with a monthly prize draw. As soon as I saw Sketch #194 I knew it was perfect for these photos from the football which I had just printed.

 

 

I've used a lot of memorabilia on this page, including my 3-match membership card, part of my membership lanyard and the red background paper is the packaging from the membership pack. The yellow paper I'd only picked up last weekend on a whim because it was on sale at Spotlight and I knew I didn't have much yellow paper. All the official merchandise stuff is copyrighted to Gold Coast Football Club. Below is the sketch I was working from, didn't really deviate too much this time.

I'm a winner!

Okay, so it's only a random drawing but I'm still a winner! I won a wonderful chipboard pack from Imaginarium Designs by entering the Jan 15th competition at Once Upon a Sketch. I love chipboard and had been thinking about purchasing some from this company so I'm so happy to have a chance to check them out free of charge! :)

Stamp Giveway

I actually completed the clean-up part of the Stamps mission of the 2012 Scrapz.biz challenge and found I have a LOT more stamps than I actually need. Because I don't like to throw things away though I've decided to offer these as a giveway. As you can see from the photo, most of these are actually unused.

Entry is open to Australian residents only. I'm sorry but I can't afford international postage. Sinply leave me a comment below with a way to contact you if you would like to enter. Bonus entries if you follow my blog or share details of the giveaway, just be sure to mention you've done this in your comment. Entries close 29.2.12.