Happy Christmas

A very happy Christmas from my family to yours.  May you have a wonderful day with your family and safe travels for those of you who will be 'on the road'.

My first ATC

created for the "Roo and You ATC" swap group I have recently joined.

Altered Brushes

Hi all it's me again.  It is now Christmas Eve here in Hamilton New Zealand.  The sky is overcast but it is extremely sticky and has been raining off and on all day.  We have all the doors and windows open trying to catch any slight breeze that may pass through.  With no work today, Jan and I have started catching up on all the jobs we haven't had time to do since we got sick a few weeks ago.

We have had a busy time of late making all our Christmas presents, catching up with friends for coffee and we still haven't got through them all - just as well we have a couple of weeks off. 

We had a fantastic day in Auckland recently at the Scrapfest by the Sea Christmas party.  There were only a few of us but we had lots of fun and laughter and got lots of scrapbooking done.  It is going to be an exciting time and we are so looking forward to going to Nelson in August for this amazing event.

Jan and I have been inspired bythe Altered Brush Project being run by Donna Downey.  This is one seriously talented lady and you really should check out her stuff.  Anyhow, Jan and I thought we would have a go ourselves and trotted off to Bunnings for some 'el cheapo' brushes ($1.96 each).  This is what we made...

 

Oh what fun we have had.  I don't know about Jan but I am hooked and have already been out and bought more brushes. Thanks Donna,you are such an amazing artist and I am so inspired by you.

Well, that's it from me for now.  Hope you and yours have a truly relaxing Christmas and be safe.

 

Scrapbook Quotes Tag Album

Well, as promised, I took a couple of photos of the tag album today.  Each page has a quote about scrapbooking and the book ring means I can keep adding to it.

Geez, it's been a while

So where have you been ... and well you might ask.  I don't know where the last few weeks have gone.  I have been getting involved in trying different things with my scrapbooking so that accounts for some of the time.  Check this out - it started life as a can of chick peas.  The chick peas got roasted by the way ...

It had a tear tab top so it was really easy to keep the top edge neat and tidy and less likely to cut someone. After cleaning and drying the tin, the first thing I did was to cover the tin with a piece of paper and then add a strip of contrasting paper around the centre. 

The doilies were next followed by the butterfly ribbon along the top and bottom edges of the centrepiece.

The rosette was added next.  This was made from a strip of paper that was straight-cut down one edge and torn down the other so when it was folded it gave more of an elipse than a circle.  A circle cut from cardstock and covered in glitter was added to the centre of the rosette.

The butterfly was cut from matching paper and the wings curled around a pencil to make them stand up.  A piece of wire was bent to form the antenna and fixed under the body with three different sized pearl beads stuck on to form the body itself.

Last, but not least, small flowers and leaves were added along both sides of the rosette and ribbons inserted to add a bit more dimension.  These can all be placed to cover any little flaws in your base like covering edges and so on. 

To complete the tin I placed a small round of plastic foam in the base so that when pens or pencils are dropped into it there isn't a loud clatter.

This is the first time I have tried anything like this before and I wondered whether it was even going to be worth keeping as I was making it but now that it is complete it looks quite pretty.

I've made a couple of tag albums as well.  One is for my Mum for Christmas (no telling) so no pictures of that until after Christmas.  The other is a collection of sayings around scrapbooking that I found on the scrapbook.com website.  Photos of that once I have completed it - it's nearly there.

Jan & I have also been asked to join an ATC swap.  We didn't even know what one was until then but have decided to give it a go.  ATC stands for Artist Trading Cards.  They are small cards lovingly crafted and traded with other artists. Our first swap has a Christmas theme and there are twelve participants so we have been busy making twelve identical cards each.  They went in the post today and now we wait.  The swap closes on December 1st and then we will get a parcel back with one of our cards plus one each from the other eleven members of the group.  If it as exciting as the Scrapfest Tag Swap we did recently then it is going to be lots of fun.  We are already hooked and have been out and bought albums to store the cards in.  Photos of the cards later too.

Lots of other stuff going on in our lives at the moment but more about that in a later post.  Night everyone, stay safe and well.  See ya!

Tag Swap

Wow, what an exciting time waiting for our tags to come back so I could post mine here on my blog. But wait, I'm rushing ahead way too fast. The last three weeks have seemed to go past so slowly as we waited by the letterbox for our delivery. As part of the fun lead up to Scrapfest by the Sea (to be held in Nelson next August) a challenge was set to join in a tag swap. Never having done anything like this before - either a swap or making a tag - Jan and I decided we would add our names to the list of participants and give it a go. Once the names were in, we were divided into groups of roughly eight people. I was allocated to Group Three - we decided to set up a facebook group and called ourselves "Tag You're It" - thanks to Esther Salisbury for setting this up for us. Jan was allocated to Group Two. Much discussion ensued via Facebook over how groups would approach the task - would they have a theme, and if so, what would it be. Group Three settled on texture, stamping and the colour purple. I took the texture and the purple and set about making eight identical tags. This is what mine turned out like.

After cutting the tag I covered it with foil and then painted it, rubbing back the paint before it was totally dry. I made the flowers out of cardstock and tipped each petal with glitter. Flourishes cut using our new eClips machine, a feather, an embossed butterfly and a couple of leaves completed the main embellishing. The tag was finished with a couple of ribbons held in place by an industrial look brad. Then it was off to the post office to send them all to the lovely Trina McClune, coordinator extraordinare, and then a nervous yet exciting wait for the postie to return. At last the day arrived and in my box, eight lovely tags, one from each of the talented ladies in Group Three, plus some treats from Trina & Vicki Morris (big hugs girls). Awesome work ladies in Group Three, such beautiful work. Unfortunately some have not received their parcels yet so I will wait to post the group photo. I'm off to make another project now ... watch this space.

trying a link

Hi I want to try adding a link to another blog. Every time I try it doesn't work so now I have something else to try. So here goes - a link to Scrappin Patch, home of the amazing Labour Weekend Challenge.

Labour Weekend Challenge

Hi everyone Scrappin Patch in Rolleston set a scrapbook challenge for the long weekend whereby they gave out a recipe item on their Facebook page each hour on Saturday. The goal was to collect these 'ingredients' and put together a page using all of them. There were some freebies allowed such as ink, paint, dies, journalling etc but the feature was to be the specified recipe items. Here is my take using a piece of cardstock, 3 patterned papers, 3 buttons, 5 stars, ribbon, a bunting (banner), and a two word title.