Challenge Heaven CC Blind Crop LO

Last night I took part in the Challenge Heaven June cyber-crop event which will be continuing all week. They started with a game of bingo and then provided instructions for a Blind Crop. I normally wait until all the instructions are up, sketch out the general design of the LO and then pick papers and embelishments to suit. Last night I decided to just go with the flow though and am actually pretty happy with the resulting LO.

It was fun to get my stamps out again. Those leaves have turned out to be so versatile. The two-colour title was due to the fact I had run out of green 'e's. :)

Teaching Suggestions and Advice Request

I have finally had a couple of friends express interest in joining me in my scrapbooking hobby, which has me tremendously excited as I think about being able to share projects, techniques, materials and tools with people. However, they have approached me to 'teach' them how to scrap and I have no idea how to proceed. As they are both very new to the hobby themselves they can't even give me any idea as to whether I should come up with a mini-class or simply display my LO's for inspiration or if I should just provide my materials and give advice as requested. Does anyone have any tips for making sure we have a good afternoon together?

Also, if you find you have some spare time this weekend feel free to stop by Challenge Heaven who are having a Day/Night themed cyber crop. Blind crop and bingo tonight, 4 challenges to come over the course of the weekend.

Kaisercraft Saturday Sketch - June #2

Do you ever have a LO that you work really hard on and you're loving the way it's turning out but then you stuff it up with the finishing touches? This was one of those LO's for me. I had spent a few nights working on it, carefully cutting out those roses and piecing it all together then finally went to do the journalling and totally ruined it! Hence the paint where I had to cover up the original writing and do it again. In the end I'm pretty happy with how the LO turned out.

This is my entry for Kaisercraft's Saturday Sketch June #2. The wonderful sketch we had to work from for this week can be seen below if you want to give it a try yourself. I mixed up the English Rose and Dancing Jewel collections for the papers. I also used some Kaisercraft bling, rub-on and chipboard.

She is Beautiful LO

So this is my first LO using the profession wedding photographer's work. It's for Once Upon A... Sketch,which always has a beautiful sketch and an extra journalling criteria attached. This time you had to write about a female and I chose to focus on my mum.

Papers are by Kaisercraft, I just love this Lilac Avenue collection of papers and the last time I used them was for a LO about my friend's wedding. I've used my favourite Pretty Paper Petals flowers as well as some of the stunning Scrapmatts chipboard.

Here is the sketch I had to work from. As you can see, I'm one of those boring people who doesn't really change the design too much. If you want to see what the really creative people can do check out the blog, they have an amazing design team and very talented followers.

What a Memory! LO

This is a 'just because' LO, meaning I made it just because I could rather than for any particular challenge. It's the first time in a LONG time I've done that, but I just loved this photo so much and remembered I had the tiger paper and chipboard already sitting in my stash. The netting I picked up yesterday at Reverse Garbage along with some wonderful fabric samples which I'm hoping will come in handy in other projects.

I've also started working on creating a mini-album of our honeymoon, so I'm not sure how many LO's I'll have to share in the coming weeks until that is done.

Some of my favourite wedding photos

We have received the DVD with the professional wedding photos and I just wanted to share of few of my favourite with you.

I am married!

I've been pretty quiet on the crafting front for the last few weeks because I got married on 1 May 2011. I married my darling partner of almost 10 years, Ben, at Chateau Wyuna in Lilydale, Victoria in front of 70 friends and family. It was an amazing day. Everything went very smoothly on the day and I was very impressed with the service provided by everyone over the day.

Hair and make-up was by Rachel Rayner. She gave me exactly the natural look I was after. I thought she made my sister and bridesmaid look beautiful. She's very willing to take on advise and requests for last minute changes. A lovely person to work with and ensure you are stress-free in the preparations.

Flowers were by Suzanne's Bridal Flowers. Suzanne describes herself as providing a boutique flower service and I really think she delivered. She makes the stems of the bouquets as thin as a pen so your hand doesn't sore from holding it all day. She delivered the bridal flowers to my home at 11.30am then went to the venue at 2pm to pin on the boys button holes to make sure they were all done correctly. She stayed around during our pre-ceremony photos right until the ceremony started to make sure there were no problems with the flowers. She also provided some lovely yellow petals for our memorial display at the last minute for no extra cost.

Photography by Daniel Sheehan. The photography was one of the most important elements of our wedding day to me and Daniel was the second booking I made after securing the venue. Daniel did a wonderful pre-wedding photo shoot with us so we could ensure we would be happy with his style. We picked him for his preference for candid photography shots. He was very easy to work with during the day and took the millions of shots I asked of him. I've only seen the sneak peak shown above but I'm looking forward to seeing all the images in the coming weeks.

Transport was provided by Fleetwood Chauffeured Limousines. I can not speak highly enough of this company. They arrived 15 minutes prior to the booking time. They set up a red carpet walkway for the bride. Both cars and drivers stayed for the entire pre-ceremony photos, with the drivers coming around to all the photo sites with us and offering to help me with my dress and flowers while we walked around. The cars looks great and the ride was very smooth.

Music was provided by Ruby Strings. Unfortunately as the bride I missed most of their beautiful music but what I did get to hear was lovely. A very professional organisation they played a wonderful mix of classics and more modern songs.

Celebrant was Susan Green. When we started planning our ceremony we really didn't have much of an idea what we wanted to include. Susan helped focus our vision and was happy to give us the simple ceremony we wanted.

The ceremony and reception were held at Chateau Wyuna. The site was beautiful and just what we wanted. The staff dealt with the neverending emails promptly. Even having our co-ordinator call in sick on the day of the wedding wasn't a problem and everything went smoothly.

We went to Thailand for a 11 day honeymoon the day after the wedding. It was my first time overseas and an amazing experience. As you can see below, we patted tigers and rode elephants. We also did a 3 day trek across the mountains, white water rafting, cycling tour, windsurfing and so much more.

Happy Easter!

Just a quick selfie to wish everyone a very happy Easter. Ben's mum hid 40 eggs in the backyard just so Ben and I could have an Easter Egg hunt! I hope everyone is enjoying some time with family over this long weekend.

Bonbonairies

I've been doing fairly well creating one craft project a week for the past couple of weeks. Unfortunately, my upload for this weekend is wedding related. I had to create 72 bonbonairies which will double as place tags for my wedding, which is coming up in TWO WEEKS! After spending hours looking through all the different products we could order, we decided just to make our own. I couldn't bring myself to be spending $5, or more, on each person for something they generally forget to take or throw away anyway. We went with the bottles below filled with jelly beans to match our colour theme.

Another reason for my lack of craftiness this weekend is the fact I'm in Melbourne this weekend for my second Hen's Night. We did burlesque dancing and life drawing followed by dinner down the road. It was fantastic and very funny! You can see a group photos of us, including the lovely model, below. :) If anyone is interested in doing something similar I highly recommend Hen's Love Art in Fitzroy. Miss Tanleea is a wonderful hostess and is happy to accomodate most requests.

Hair & Make Up Trial LO

I have been watching the Show Us Your Stuff blog for a while now and really enjoy their challenges however I haven't found time to enter prior to now. This month was a pretty specific challenge: you had to use pink, blue and yellow along with their sketch and include a handmade item. I received a pack of new Pretty Paper Petals flowers as part of their monthly club and was so happy to see these adorable yellow/blue/white felt flowers included. I've added the pink buttons to tie them in to the overall colour scheme.

I mentioned a few posts ago that I noticed a lot of the published LO's contain a number of more layers and details than I normally add so I made an effort to add more to this LO.  I hope you can see the distressing and the stitching around the circle. I'm happier with the result.



Here is the sketch we had to work from. I had to change it a bit because of the size of my photos. I didn't intend to use so many flowers but the clusters both just built up as I went. :)