"Gooseneck"

At the Penrith Papercraft Show that was on a couple of weekends back, I booked into Rachel Greig's Tag class for a couple of reasons : 1. I was really curious about how the new Distress Paints worked; and 2. I've watched Rachel demo at other shows and was quite excited to do one of her classes.

Playing with the paint was lots of fun.  We blobbed different coloured paints onto a non-stick craft sheet, spritzed it with water, then squished our already spritzed tags into it, and watched the colours run and blend together.  When we were happy with the result we heat set it before stamping over the colours.

On Tim Holtz' 12 Tags of 2013, the idea is to use the paints, along with the new metallic paints, to create a unique tag.  Unfortunately I don't have the metallic paints as they are very new to Australia and a little hard to find at the moment, but I still wanted to play along so substituted some glimmery Heidi  Swap spray instead.

I spritzed the stars (Dylusions 'Starry Starry Night' stencil) with the glimmer spray, outlining them with a white Sharpie pen to highlight them. 

'Gooseneck' was coloured using Dylusion Inks and Distress Markers before cutting out and popping up on dimensionals.

CASology have the word 'word' as their theme this week and the Stampotique Designers Challenge theme is 'birthday', so with these elements in mind, this tag was created.

To finish off, I cut a length of seam binding ribbon, put blobs of different coloured paints on it, spritzed it with water, scrunching it into a little ball, and then heat dried it.  The paint makes it go a little stiff, but works really well.

 This was such a fun tag to make and I can see the paints being used in lots of different ways.

I would like to enter this tag in the following challenges:
     Tim Holtz 12 Tags of 2013
     Stampotique Designers Challenge

Happy crafting!

Graduation Card & Gift

A friend of DS#1 recently asked if I could make a graduation card for her sister.  I needed to think about this as it is something I've never made before.  Occasionally I've seen graduation cards on other blogs but they don't seem to be around very much.

I looked through my word stamps and found "Happy Graduation" in SU's 'Teeny Tiny Sentiments' set, so at least I had an appropriate stamp.  Then yesterday quite by chance, I happened to look at Qbee's Quest blog and there was the perfect graduation gift.  Many thanks to Brenda for sharing her creation.

The instructions were for the mortar board only, and the card was based on this as well.  If you are wondering, "Happy Graduation" was stamped in versamark and embossed in fine gold and is on the corner of the mortar board.  On the card, "Congratulations" is stamped in black but not embossed, and the stamp is from Tim Holtz 'Simple Sayings'. 

The mortar board even has a surprise underneath - Hershey Kisses (mmmm, yummm), and as luck would have it, I'd been given some Kisses for my birthday.

The Kisses fit very snugly and won't fall out when turned up the right way.

I just need to make sure Muffin doesn't try eating them, hee hee!  I'm not sure that chocolate is good for teddys.

DS#1 seemed happy with the result and hopefully so does his friend.  I wasn't too sure about the colour I'd used as I know graduation robes have different coloured shawls, so if it's not right, I'd be happy to make another one in a different colour.

Have a crafty day!

Note:   She liked it and so did her family!

Mystery Destination - Melbourne

Our mystery destination was "Melbourne" , cabin luggage only - so having packed a backpack each, we caught the train to the airport, checked in, and with plenty of time to spare, had a bite to eat for lunch.  The flight was uneventful, caught the skybus into Spencer St station, and picked up courtesy bus to our hotel, Crown Metropol.  Our room was on the 20th floor with terrific views across the city.

The rooms all had floor to ceiling windows, a king size bed and quite an interesting sort of open plan bathroom which you could close off with partitions.

On Monday evening we went for a walk along the Yarra river, until we arrived at the restaurant that my DH had previously booked, a very nice french restaurant called 'Guillaume'.  The food was just 'mmmmmm' !!!  Afterwards we walked through the Crown complex back to our hotel.  I hadn't realised just how big the Crown complex is, with a casino, shops, 3 hotels and lots of restaurants and all are accessible without even going out onto the street!  No expense spared in this complex - very opulent!

On Tuesday morning we headed off to the free city tram.  They run both ways and come along every 10 minutes.  Unfortunately we picked the wrong direction as the tram was stopped by a 'police operation' in Docklands and could go no further.  So we walked and walked and walked and finally got to our destination,  Queen Victoria Markets.   Lots to look at here, stalls selling all sorts of things, and then further along fruit and vegs, and a meat/fish/deli section along with take-away food stands.

Off we went again back to the tram stop (by which time the trams were running properly again) and so we went round the whole loop before getting off at Federation Square.

Lots of people here, as it is on the banks of the Yarra and opposite Flinder's Street station.  From here we crossed the Yarra and walked along Southbank, stopping for a gelato - delicious!

We slowly made our way back to the hotel to put our feet up for a while before heading out again around 5.30pm to another mystery spot.  Down the road to the tram stop where we hopped onto the St Kilda Beach tram.  I was totally mystified as to where we were going, but DH seemed to know.  Unbeknown to me, he had managed to win tickets to be in the audience of "rocKwiz", a program on SBS tv, and they were filming the second last of this season.  And although it was standing room only, it was such a fun night.  The new season goes to air later in May, so tune in to see what happened ?????

Wednesday morning after a leisurely breakfast, we checked out of our hotel, caught the free tram again and got off at Old Melbourne Gaol.  Included in the ticket, is a 1/2 hour tour of the Police Watch House.  This was an interesting experience, with the Seargent barking orders, women segregated from the men, and then let into the exercise yard.  All very primitive but used up until 1994 (I think) .  We then headed back into the gaol to continue looking around.  Each cell was so small with a tiny window high up.  The gaol is on 3 levels and in quite a number of the cells, there are interesting facts about various prisoners including the imfamous Ned Kelly, why they were there, and unfortunately a number of them were hanged - sometimes wrongly accused.

Leaving the gaol, we hopped back on the tram, alighting at Spencer Street with a short walk back to the skybus interchange and back to the airport for our flight home. 

We had such a lovely break away albeit too short.  Thanks so much for my birthday surprise !!!

Hi there .......

Hi there bloggers, yes I'm finally back after a hiccup with our internet (i.e. there wasn't any) but now we're up and running again and I've been looking at everyone's blogs catching up on what's been happening.

The last couple of weeks have been really busy as well - last weekend Alice in Paperland had a stall at the Papercrafts Festival in Penrith and there was lots of packing to do in preparation.  This show is usually only held in November but for the first time, an autumn show was added.  Sooo nice not to have to wait all year for this show.  It ran from Friday til Sunday, lots of people and classes to play in as well. There are of course, other craft shows on during the year but they include fabrics, quilts, embroidery as well as papercrafts. 

On Saturday I got to play in Rachel Greig's "Tag Book" class using Distress Paints and stamps from Darkroom Door.  Lots of fun and I was lucky enough to win the Lucky Door Prize - a mix of some Darkroom Door products (no stamps though :-( ).  I was back again on Sunday demo-ing NeverEnding Cards on the Alice in Paperland stand - they look so intriguing and difficult but are so easy to construct and definately have the "wow" factor.

I was having a play with a new collection of papers from KaiserCraft called "Remember Me".  These are a lovely collection and have obviously been released to coincide with ANZAC Day as poppies are predominately featured. 

These cards were made as samples for display at Alice in Paperland and are made using 'Estella  #P115'  and 'Alma #P1111' papers with various pieces from 'collectables #C1751' to finish them off.

I like to be able to co-ordinate the inside of my cards too, as I think it really makes them seem just a bit more special.

My apologies for the blurry photos, they looked fine on the camera, oh well!!!

Hopefully I'll be back again soon to show off some more bits'n'pieces I've been working on, but in the meantime my DH and I are off for a few days to a mystery destination.  It was my birthday yesterday and this is his present to me.  Can't wait to see where we're going !!!

Happy crafting!