Where are you Mr Mojo?

It has been quite a busy month what with two sons travelling overseas, a birthday, Easter, ANZAC Day and a weekend away with my bible study group to the majestic Blue Mountains.  To top it off, old Mr Mojo decided to go AWOL !!!   I've been following everyones blogs, getting ideas and inspiration from Pinterest as well, but when I come to do something myself - NOTHING!!!  Just total BLANK!!!

So, for something a little bit different, as you may have guessed by now, my birthday was a couple of weeks ago and last weekend my brother dropped in with a present for me.  Inside the package were these two stamp sets which he had picked up when he was travelling in Taiwan on holiday.

I think this is the first time he has given me any stamps, but he sure picked cute ones.

I can't decide which set I prefer, as I really like both kitties and teddies!

I haven't used them as yet but I think I may start off small with tags or gift cards as they are only small stamps.  

My dear English penfriend also sent me a set of stamps which are "Handmade by ......" collection from Phill Martin of Honeypot Crafts which she bought from the craft show at the Alexandra Palace.    I haven't come across this company before so I will have to have a look on the web and blog to see what they are all about.  

Thanks for visiting my blog and I promise I'll be back with more to show you.

(Now where's Mr Mojo hiding ?  Ooh, I think I can see him .......  )

Helen

 

Guess what today is???

WOOHOO

Today is my

BIRTHDAY!!!

Ok, now that the frivolity is over, I just want to say I've had quite an enjoyable day.  I started by teaching the "White with One" card class at Alice in Paperland, and since someone let the cat out of the bag, the ladies all sang Happy Birthday to me!  Then my DH and I went to a cafe for lunch followed by a little bit of shopping and browsing.  I now have some new sheepskin slippers to keep my tootsies cosy this winter!  Tonight my DH, DS#3 and I are going out to dinner somewhere nice.

DS#3 joined my BFF's family for a day at the Royal Easter Show but before he left, he handed me a gift bag with a box of very yummy chocolates inside ..... mmmmm  (do I really have to share?).  Sons # 1 & 2 are both on their USA adventure but both sent Birthday wishes - Ah, love my family!!!

Have a crafty fun day!!!

Helen

Koi Pond

A few months back, I bought my first stamps from Designs by Ryn, and was quite excited when they arrived.  I had a bit of a play with 'water droplets' but the others have sat on my table (oh dear! Am I bad or what?)  So the other day I decided it was time to have a play and create something.

I've come to enjoy making tags (although I'm not sure what to do with them all) and thought the Koi fish would fit very well.

I started off by blending Distress Ink 'peeled paint' and 'peacock feathers' into a lovely shade of green.  I then overstamped it with 'Fiddlehead' and 'Sea Bubbles' using 'peacock feathers' and 'tea dye' inks and was quite happy with the result.

Next I stamped the 'Koi Fish' onto white cardstock and coloured them using watercolour pencils.  I then clear embossed them before cutting around them.

A month of so ago I was at a craft show and happened to come across some stencils by Artistcellar that I hadn't seen before.  I was quite intrigued by the water collection and ended up buying 'ripples', and so as I looked at this tag, I decided I'd add 'ripples' using more 'peeled paint' so it creates a sort of shadow effect.  I glued the top koi directly to the tag and the bottom one is popped up on dimensionals.

To finish I coloured a piece of cream seam binding ribbon with watercolour pencils, spritzed it with water and scrunched it up to blend the colours before tying it onto the tag.

I'm entering this tag in this weeks Oriental challenge at Tagalong

Happy crafting!

Spread your Wings

Last weekend I headed off to do a class with Rachel Greig from Darkroom Door.  I had done a class with her last year at the Penrith Papercraft Show which I had really enjoyed, and this class was something I'd not tried before - a canvas.

We started off by covering the top (not the middle because that would be covered up) and sides of an 8" x 8" canvas with 'steel' Ferro, which is a metallic texture paste.  While it was still wet we pressed different background stamps into the Ferro for even more texture and then put it aside to dry.

We stamped our butterfly in Archival 'black' and then coloured the image with Distress Inks before fussy cutting it out.  A background stamp was added to white board and blended to give an aged look before attaching to a larger board with brads, sandwiching a piece of muslin between the layers.

Once the Ferro was dry, we added Viva 'precious metal colour' to highlight the texture.  The butterfly board was adhered with foam tape.

This class was lots of fun and I will definitely be making some more along similar lines.  Thanks, Rachel!!!

Happy crafting!
 

Time Warp

Now that I know my ATC arrived safely to its destination, I thought I'd better blog about it.  The theme for March was "Time Warp", so I decided I'd try to imitate the black and red colours on the cover of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" album.

Originally I was trying to drip both red and black inks on white card, but that just looked awful, and then it occurred to me to use a red piece of card for the ATC and drip black Dylusions ink which looked much better, with a little bit of spattering added.   In browsing a scrapbooking store I came across a chipboard 'film strip and camera' which was the right size and would be in keeping with the Rocky Horror movie.  I carefully went around the film strip with a black Sharpie pen, sponged the camera with Archival 'watering can' ink, and the surrounding circle with a silver pen.  I adhered acetate behind the film strip.

I stamped "Gooseneck" onto white card with 'watering can' and cut to shape matching the film strip.  I added the words 'Time Warp' with Kaisercraft adhesive letters and finished with a black mat (which is actually the correct ATC size).

For a little extra something for my recipient, I made an easel card using the same colours.  I couldn't help but think that Gooseneck reminds me a little of Susan Sarandon as 'Janet', what do you think?

The background stamp on both the ATC and the card is a Tim Holtz stamp 'time' from his Components Collection.

Happy crafting!

Laneways of Melbourne

My apologies for being off the radar but computers are wonderful until they decide to roll over with their legs in the air, i.e. they die!  So I'm back again although I'm not too sure about the photos bit, hmmm ..... I'm sure I'll get it sorted.

So, the weekend before last, I flew to Melbourne with my Mother's Group, a fabulous group of girls that first met at the Early Childhood Centre when our first borns were only a few months old.  We've been having a weekend away for a number of years now, however as this year will be our 25th year together, we decided to splurge and headed to Melbourne for 3 days.  Melbourne is quite a different city from Sydney with it's myriad of laneways to explore, trams running up and down streets and lots to look at along the way.

Our flight was uneventful and after checking into our hotel, we headed to South Bank to explore and have some lunch, followed by more exploring.  For dinner on Friday night, we headed down Hardware Lane which is full of restaurants with spruikers!  Wow, talk about competition, all wanting to give you a better deal then the previous one.  We finally settled on one which gave us a two course dinner plus a bottle of wine for $30 per head.  It was quite yummy too and for an extra $4 we finished with coffee.

On Saturday morning we hopped on the City Tram, a freebie which takes around 45 minutes round trip, with a bit of a commentary as well.  You can hop on and off as often as you want along the way and is a great way of seeing a little bit of the city.  We were heading to Docklands, but two of us decided on the spur of the moment, to explore Fitzroy instead, a suburb on the edge of the city with lots of interesting shops and old buildings.   By the time we returned to the hotel it was around 3pm and our feet were tired from all the walking.

After putting my feet up and refreshed with a cup of tea, I headed out again by myself to explore a bit more. The other girls had gone on guided walking tours which started after lunch and much as I would have liked to have joined them, our Fitzroy walk had taken longer then I anticipated.  I had a lovely walk up and down lanes, past a couple of weddings and finally thought it time to head back to the hotel again.  So down another lane I headed, this time largely deserted, and much to my surprise there was a hotel half way down the lane which I thought was an odd place for a hotel.  I few steps further on, I found myself falling off the kerb into the lane!!!  A couple coming out of the hotel kindly helped pick me up and hoping I hadn't done too much damage I slowly walked two blocks back to the hotel.  All was well until I went to go up the steps into the foyer when my knee started complaining.  Feeling just a wee bit shaken, when I got back to my room, I sat down with another cup of tea until my room-mate came back from her walk.

By the time we went out to dinner, I was definitely feeling stiff and sore, but nothing like Sunday morning when I could hardly get my knee to move without shooting pain - OUCH!!!  My immediate thought was "how was I going to get through today with more walking when I could barely hobble across the room?"  Very slowly was the answer and as I got moving my knee started to feel a bit better and the shooting pain ceased, thankfully!!!  We caught a tram to St Kilda Beach where we had breakfast and then browsed the craft markets which were really nice and where I bought a new handbag.

So, almost two weeks on, the bruises have faded except for the one on my knee.  My knee is still sore and doesn't like steps but is getting better.  If it still isn't right by another week I guess I will probably need some physio.  All in all though, we had a fabulous weekend in Melbourne!!!

After getting home on Sunday evening, I went to check my emails, facebook etc but the computer wasn't at all interested in turning on, oh dear!  A friend came to have a look at the problem and it was decided fairly quickly that it had died.  So a new computer is up and running but not everything has been loaded, always a few wrinkles to iron out !

I must be off now though, as son #2 is off today on his USA adventure and we'll be heading to the airport shortly.  Son #1 will be following on Tuesday and they will meet up in LA to begin their tour.

I will be back soon with more crafty stuff, so thanks for listening to my ramblings about my weekend away with the girls.

Happy crafting!