Swell Sculpture Festival and Sprinbrook National Park

I've been a bit quiet recently and thought I'd share the reasons why. Every year Coolangatta hosts the Swell Sculpture Festival and I've wanted to go since we moved to the Gold Coast 6 years ago. This year I finally went! Ben and I enjoyed a lovely picnic by the sea and then checked out all these fantastic sculptures. I really liked the 'love cats' and the sea aneomies. I took a whole heap of photos but have compiled them into a photo collage for you here to save space and loading time.

 

I also had my parents come up to visit last weekend. We decided to head down to Springbrook National Park and surrounding areas, which was another thing I had meant to do since moving up but never found the time. The Natural Arch/Natural Bridge walk was beautiful and very easy. There is meant to be a whole colony of glow worms in the cave so I might need to go back at night. The Purling Brook falls looked lovely but we couldn't do the walk due to a landslide so we've put it on the list of things to do next time. Again, another photo collage to save time and space:

 

 

I know have five days off work (this counts as me taking leave!) so I'm hoping to get some new projects completed to share with you. I'm having some friends around for a crop on Sunday but that could just result in a whole lot of talking rather than crafting!

U2

Once again I was trying out a differing style. I think this one has a bit of a Louise Nelson feel too it, with the smaller picture, the paint splatters and the short title. I found the little photo sitting on my desk and I must have printed it out intending to use it for something else. Anyway, I knew I wanted to create an orange monochrome LO for The Lollipop Ladies so dad's shirt made this the perfect photo. Photo is my mum and dad on the last vacation we took as a family backin 2006.

 

 

Here is a close-up of the stunning Scrapmatts chipboard frame. I've used a technique I learnt from Linda Eggleton's blog in which she mixes sand with the paint to get a textured effect. You can also see the ribbon woven in, the Brown Sugar ribbons slide, a Chip Chop Shop doily and a very cute Lil' Red Rocket robot button that I had to buy even though I never thought I'd get to use it.

 

 

So as I was saying, this LO was created for The Lollipop Ladies. Their inspiration for this fortnight was gobstoppers with an additional challenge of monochromatic. I've gone with orange because it's my favourite colour. I tried to use a lot of circular elements to reflect that shape of the gobstoppers and went with the white title with black outline.

 

 

 

This LO also fits the criteria for the Southern Girls challenge which this month is 'blingy'. I have a heap of rhinestones scattered over the LO in amounst all the buttons and paint splatters.

Play the hand you've been dealt

 

 

This one is a bit of a self-reflective LO because sometimes it's important to capture how YOU are feeling right now. I've used about five different Kaisercraft paper ranges on this LO because I wanted to use up some scraps. Here's a detail shot of the pretty flowers:

 

 

This was created for the Scrapz.biz Do or Die competition, round 2. This was again a very challenging round for me. Rules: You are to design a layout using the cover of Live & Let Die as your inspiration. Your layout must feature something that you dream of and really want. You must include a playing card/s of some sort. Your layout must feature the word 'Big'.

 

It was the fact that I couldn't think of something I really wanted that led me down the self-reflective route. I've been inspired by the cover in that I have my title up the top and in quotation marks; I have a silhouette photo with misting/an explossion behind it; the playing cards are fanned to the sides; the border around the main LO and there is a lot of text at the bottom. The word 'big' is in my journalling.

 

I also thought this month's challenge at The Scrapbook Store (formerly Handmade by Suzanne) was close to the cover LO so I've also used it for inspiration.

 

 

 



Lollipop Ladies Sneak Peak and some more giveaways

The latest Lollipop Ladies challenge has just gone live and the theme is Gobstoppers. It was one year ago that I made my first entry for The Lollipop Ladies and the theme back then was Gobstoppers as well. This LO actually won me a place on their Design Team!

 

The extra challenge for this fortnight is to create a monochrome LO. Since orange is my favourite colour I couldn't go past creating an orange LO. Here is the sneak peak, you'll have to wait another week until it's my turn for the full reveal.

 

 

I would really love to see some more scrapbooking entries but they also accept cards or BTP submissions. Guest DT spots are able to be won each fortnight and our sponsor this fortnight is Mad for Markers. You could win a choice of 3 of her digi stamps

I also wanted to share a couple more fantastic giveaways that are being held at the moment.

 

ScrapFriends is hosting a massive giveaway with three fantastic packs up for grabs to celebrate their first birthday. This is my favourite one, probably because of all the orange. :)

 

 

One of my scrappy idols, Linda Eggleton, is also having a big giveaway with two prize packs to celebrate getting 150 followers. Personally I think you should go check out her blog just because she does fantastic work.

 

 

 



One Fine Day

 

This is such an odds-and-ends layout. The papers are old ones, the die cut is an old one, the chipboard is old, I've got an old clothing tag and old buttons on there too. Even the photo has been sitting on my desk for a few years. It's amazing what you can find when you go through your stash sometimes. :)

 

 

So this LO was created for the latest Scrapz.biz competition, Do or Die. Challenge #1 was to make a LO inspired by the below movie poster. Your layout must have some kind of contrast clearly visible (contrast between the B&W half and colourful side). You must include a key or lock or both (blue key in my embellishment cluster). Your layout must feature the word 'day' somewhere on your layout (in my title). The poster inspired me like this: I went with the idea of splitting the page into two halves, my photo has a man's face in profile, I have my title in the bottom left and it's three words.

 

 

Once I decided the spit my LO into two halves I quickly thought of the current sketch over at ScrapFriends so I worked from that sketch too. I mirrored the design to better suit the poster layout. I originally went with paint splatters where all the black dots in the sketch is, but then when I was trying to find a button to go inside the chipboard circle I out all the leftovers on top of my layout and decided they looked good like that so kept them. :)

 

 

Finally, ScrapFIT's current warm up challenge is to not use cardstock for a background. I've used two different kinds of patterned paper here.

Blog Giveaway Winner!

I've just realised I didn't announce the winner of my blog giveaway yet! :( I received 27 entries with quite a few people getting bonus entries for promoting the giveway on their own blogs or becoming a follower. Thank you to everyone who commented, joined as a follower and/or promoted my blog. I sincerly hope you all stick around now the giveaway is over.

 

Without further ado, the winner of my blog giveaway is...

#1. Kerry from Kezza's Craft!

 

Kerry, please email me your address at loz_ritchie @ hotmail.com so I can get the prize pack out to you.

 

If anyone is interested in trying to win some more stuff, here are a couple of other blog giveaways currently running:

 

 

A Window to My Scrapping World by Rachel is celebrating two years of blogging.

 

Marcea's Crafting Corner has SIXTEEN different prize candies up for grabs to celebrate reaching 1000 followers.

Congratulations - Baby Card

The challenge for this fortnight over at The Lollipop Ladies is inspired by Sherbies. I love these lollies, you can't lose with sherbert centres surrounded by orange flavoured chewiness. I have had another friend give birth to a little baby boy so I created a card for her inspired by the wrapper colours. The additional criteria was embossing. I went with dry embossing to create the stripes which I then highlighted by running an ink pad over the cardstock.

 

 

We'd love to see what the Sherbies inspire you to create! Please come and join us.

 

 

Guest DT spots are able to be won each fortnight and our sponsor this fortnight is: Annabelle Stamps

 

$10 Voucher (thanks to Andrea).

Embossed Card - Love You

The challenge this month over at UnstampaBelles is embossing. I was going to ask whether that would be dry or wet embossing but then I realised it would be pretty hard to do wet embossing without using stamps! :) Good thing I picked up a BigShot a few months ago.

 

 

This is a pretty simple card but I like the effect. Two different embossing folders on a ceral box then I swiped ink over the raised areas. Each kraft piece is mounted on brown cardstock and then the who thing is mounted on cream cardstock. Flowers are from Thailand and the doily was die-cut from my scraps.

 

Prize this month is from Stickerstore.com.au. Hope to see you join us.

 

 

Gold Coast Show 2012

 

Today was the last day of the Gold Coast Show so Benny and I headed off to see the sights and enjoy the day. Suprisingly, there wasn't that big of a turn-out even though the weather was beautiful. We stopped in at the homecrafts pavilion first off and found out I had placed five seconds, two thirds and two highly commended entries this year. Only one entry didn't receive an award so I'm pretty pleased with that result. The competition was higher this year despite not getting as many entries and the lady who one overall entered some lovely layouts.

 

 

There was quite an odd display outside showcasing fibreglass models you could buy for your garden. They included dinosaurs, crocodiles, big cats, monkeys. You can see Ben yelling at one above. LOL

 

We love seeing the animal displays at the show so we headed to the nursery next. How cute is the little runt piggie? Ben and I couldn't decide if the little animals or little people were cuter as they went around chasing each other in the nursery.

 

Above is Charlie, a very placid cow who happily munched away on his grass for ages.

 

I couldn't got past the clowns without snapping a quick photo.

 

Winner of my blog giveaway will be announced in the next couple of days.

Cute

I'm just sneaking this one is by the skin of my teeth! I think my sister will kill me if she ever finds this LO but I couldn't resist using these photos. :)

 

 Created for Kaisercraft Saturday Sketches using sketch #2 for August. I used so many different ranges of paper for this one (Blae & Ivy, Hunt & Gather, Pet's Paradise, Dancing Jewel). Large blooms are Kaisercraft petals which I sprayed with GlimmerMist. Stickers, bling and chipboard are Kaisercraft too.

 

 

Colour choices were inspired by this great Yummy Scrap from Scrap Friends. If you're looking for a new challenge blog check this one out for sure. Attached to a great store, they run colour challenges once a month and also monthly sketch challenges.