Like Chocolate

Sorry for the brief blogging hiatus. I realised I actually blogged more regularly when I was away on holidays that I have since I returned to work. But I guess that's exactly why hey? I've been flat-out working for the last 5 days that I haven't had a chance to stop.

But now that I have I wanted to share the last page I made as a Guest Designer for Scrapz.biz. I was working with their June Ticklez kit and I cannot stop raving about how packed this was with wonderful goodies!

For a start, there are 13 wonderful papers from which I picked a couple of the brighter Crate Papers ones to use on this happy and carefree layout. It's just a fun page about Munchy and The Man enjoying some sweet dessert treats in the city last Christmas.

And the Kaisercraft chipboard cutlery set was just perfect for this theme :-) I left them untouched because I didn't need them to compete with the bright retro patterns down the side.

But not only was this kit filled with wonderful papers and a huge collection of embellishments, including an ENTIRE Pink Persimmon stamp set!! From it I could piece together this layered cake image, but it also has some tea-cups and cake stand and little flowers and flourishes too. It's so cute!

From it you can stamp all these ideas and more. I think this kit is definitely worth checking out - it is such good value :-)

I'm going to be right back ASAP and post another giveaway to make up for lost time hey?!

Giveaway Winners

 We're back from our seaside adventure, back to windy chilly Melbourne weather.

Missing our friends and the sunny happiness that is Queensland.

But I suspect you're here to find out about the winners for my recent giveaway hey?

So the lucky two are..........
Lisa Amiet who has won the Paper prize
and Anne who has won the Embellishments

Can you girls please email me your shipping address and I'll post out your prize as soon as I can.

A giggle and a hoot

I love that Munchy has a best friend that I know is a good influence on her, someone I know is raised with similar values and beliefs and who won't lead her astray (yes, I'm already thinking that way, and she's only 4 years old!!)

But life circumstances mean they probably won't see each other for at least another year, and given that's a quarter of her life it seems like forever. So I did a little layout celebrating their love for one another using the Jubilee collection by The Girl's Paperie that I'm working with this month for Handmade by Suzanne.

By picking out all the pinks in the different papers, adding some blue highlights and mounting it on grey cardstock I've got a very soft and dreamy page which is starkly in contrast with the last page I shared, although it's made with the same collection.

I loved coming up with this little bird embellishment. A thick scraping of gesso through a small part of the Cherry Blossom stencil and then layering on the crystal glitter. I call it 'dimensional stenciling'!! I love this :-)

I'm back at home today after a lovely time away on holidays. That means I'm going to be drawing the winner of my giveaway tomorrow, so rush off and get those last minute entries in while you can!

Roundabout

My GIVEAWAY is still open. Find all the details here.

And speaking of wonderful prizes, do you know the prize for the Handmade by Suzanne sketch challenge increased to $30 plus free postage a couple of months ago? That's one sweet deal if you're lucky (and it's by random choice so anyone can be the winner!)

This is the page I made for the challenge, it's based on this fabulous sketch by Michelle Fowler:

I love this sketch that challenges me to use three photos, a patterned background and bunting!! Of course all those elements are a guide only, you don't really have to include any of them, but I chose to stick reasonably closely to the sketch this month because it was just too fabulous not to :-)

However, one thing I always seem to struggle with in my layouts is the idea of circles. I can't really make them work for me. So in the end I misted and masked mine in rather than making a huge design feature of it. You can see how I used my Crafter's Workshop stencils for various techniques in this tutorial I shared on the HBS blog.

I've received lots of positive comments about this cute heart fence when I posted this layout in the gallery. And it's easy to see why hey? What a fabulous twist on the common picket fence! I could use about a million more of these Imaginarium Designs chipboard pieces :-)

As for the other supplies I've used on this page they are:
Papers: Jubilee collection by The Girl's Paperie
Banner: Paper Crush banner stickers by Sassafras
Flowers: Love Note, Celebrate by Prima
Journaling Labels: Vintage Date Squares by Shabby Chic Crafts
Brads: 8mm Pearl Brads by Handmade by Suzanne

I'm linking you up because Suzanne is still having a huge sale on pretty much everything including most of these products. With $5 flat rate postage on top of these ridiculous prices, this is one sale you don't want to miss out on.

Zoom Zoom-a-Zoom

I love these photos that capture The Man taking the two girls on an airplane (the first time for Moodles) over to Tasmania for his Aunty's 100th birthday. A memorable time for lots of reasons, not least of all the occasion celebrated. We were a bit concerned on how the girls would handle the travel.... but they loved it!! Turbulance was a fun game for them!

I made this page for the June 15th challenge which has just gone live at Once Upon a Sketch. To participate yourself then you should follow this sketch and make sure you include the journaling criteria.

Journalling Criteria: The theme 'A Moment In Time'. You can interpret this any way you like, but you must journal at least 4 sentences on why your pictures are memorable. 

Us Design Team girls have been super-lucky to be sponsored by Imaginarium Designs who make the most exquisitely detailed and beautiful chipboard pieces like this butterfly I have used (the alphas are also theirs).

And even better than that - they sponsor one of the prizes for this challenge too, so you can also get your hands on a whole pack of goodies. The other prizes are from EK Success and Webster's Pages so plenty of reasons why you would want to give this challenge a go!

 On my page I have used all my recent Studio Calico retail papers and thier pretty pink buttons :-) With all the free-motion stitching I used I couldn't help but add this shot of me holding the page up to the light so you can see the sun glittering through! Happy days :-)

So pop on over to Once Upon a Sketch and get a load of eye-candy and inspire yourself to play along.
In other news you can also enter my own giveaway here. Another few days to go!

My Little Einstein

Little Moodles takes after her father a bunch more than Munchy does. In fact, people have commented on more than one occasion that Moodles is a little Michael, whereas Munchy is a little me (perhaps a mini-me?!)

I made this layout dedicated to their similarities. It's made with the deliciously soft colours of the June Ticklez kit from Scrapz.biz.

And because of the theme of my page, I used my embellishments in pairs. I've got two Jenni Bowlin buttons, two stamped tea-cups on the tag below the buttons and two Maya Road pins.

There are just so many goodies packed into this kit. All the ribbon, the red twine, the rubons and those gorgeous teal alphas are all included of course. And the beautiful vintage tags behind my photo are Melissa Francis (all these on one layout and I've still got half the pack left!)

PS. Don't forget about my GIVEAWAY here!!

Squish

Oh wow, how much do I love the Jubilee collection from The Girls Paperie that I've been working with this month for Handmade by Suzanne?! The colours are just perfect for me and I adore the vintage inspired design.

I was able to crank out 4 layouts in a matter of two days using this line (trust me, that's a lot for me!)
This is my first one. I've used a photo of my Little Moodles with my nephew too. We don't get to see each other all that often so this was the first time we realised how similar the two look together. Same piercing blue eyes and fat little hands!!

I've also been loving my Crafter's Workshop stencils and was able to incorporate lots of different stenciling techniques into these layouts too. You can see the close-up above how I used a multi-coloured ink approach on this one. If you're interested you can see all my techniques in a tutorial here.

And since we're on the topic of new products I am loving then I would be remiss not to point out the Ranger Liquid Pearls I've used to add little details to the flower cut-outs above. Easy to use and fast drying, with great results I think!

All these different types of alphas come in the Sticker Market book. It also has these border stickers, labels and words too. Great value if you think about it - all your alpha and embellishment needs in one book!

I hope to be posting my other three layouts real soon too. It's just a matter of internet access whilst I'm on holidays. I'm not organised to have them all pre-written and scheduled!

But in the meantime don't forget to check out my current giveaway. Papers and Embellishments galore!!

Thanks.....with a GIVEAWAY!

You should have seen the excitement on this girl's face when the postman dropped off a package that looked like this.... and it was addressed to her!!

Her little fingers couldn't open it fast enough!

JAM-PACKED with goodies!!!

Some favourite bits...

and she ended up looking like this :-)

Thanks a bunch Louise (from both of us!)

And to share the love around some more, how about a giveaway of my own? We're moving again in a couple of months so I'm trying to purge some scrappy supplies. Anyone care to help me out?

Prize 1: The Papers
At least 28 papers by some of your favourite brands including Webster's Pages, Fancy Pants, My Mind's Eye, Basic Grey, American Craft's, SEI, Glitz Designs and more. It also includes the entire Lily Bee Designs Audrey collection (2 copies in fact of most of the papers) plus the rub-on sheet (some used), die-cut sheet (not pictured) and a couple of embellishments (I'll probably throw in some more!)

Prize 2: The Embellishments
An assortment of embellishments (some sets not complete) including Felt Vines by Prima, rub-ons by Pink Paislee, Basic Grey and Melissa Francis, Jenni Bowlin vintage buttons, KI Memories 3x3" pockets, chipboard by ?American Crafts?, Tattered Angels glimmerchips, ribbon, tape, flowers and a whole bunch of other stuff I couldn't fit into the photo!!

How to Win
Leave a comment here telling me just about anything! I'm about to go on holidays and might not be around to update the blog much, but sure would appreciate hearing your stories or jokes or interesting fact etc.
Let me know if you're a follower of my blog and you'll get another entry.
Let me know if you blog about this giveaway and you'll get another one!

Please note: due to postage costs I'll have to limit the Paper Prize to an Australian winner, however, anyone is free to win the Embellishments.

I'll draw a winner when I get back from holidays :-)

Blog Me Baby

I'm sharing my blogging love around a bit these days.
I've got tutorials up here and here this week.

At Kreatorville Kraft I'll show you how I made this camellia flower using some origami techniques:

And at Handmade by Suzanne I'll show you 4 different techniques when using your Crafter's Workshop stencils:

But stay tuned to my blog because I'm really hoping to have a giveaway up later today!

Powerful

Have you ever been in the middle of a layout, ready to add embellishments when you know you're going to need a tool to add that extra oomph? And I'm not talking tools in the scrap sense (like my sewing machine that hardly ever sees fabric but sure gets a daily workout on paper), I'm talking like I knew I needed to raid my husband's toolbox.

Can you spot it straight up? Can you guess what I used and why?
Whilst you're guessing just check out this latest layout I've got up in the Scrapz.biz gallery using the June Ticklez kit.

I picked out all the blue and pink and red papers (all by Crate Paper) in the kit and mixed in my favourite vanilla cardstock and this layout was born.

I'm loving this idea of the tone on tone sewn bunting. Is it wrong to say that about my own layout?! Either way, it's a reminder to myself to explore this idea further.

And if you guessed it was a hammer I needed then you would be right. I wanted the bling of the red rhinestones that came in the kit as my 'cherries' in this cherry blossom tree I stenciled, but they were much too large. So I smashed them up! (Mind you, I had to be extra careful with my littlies around, not just because I was using a hammer but mainly because then they looked like boiled lollies and I quickly had to retrieve one from Moodles mouth!)

Are you using anything different on your layouts these days?

Once Upon A........

Sketch June Challenge is up!

Well actually it went up on the 1st of the month as planned, it's only me who's a little late to the game to remind you all :-)

Have you checked out this new challenge site yet? I tell you what - it's proving to be hugely popular, last month we had over 80 entries for each of the two challenges. And there's many reasons for that including great sketches and journaling challenges, awesome DT and Guest DT inspiration and fabulous prizes up for grabs.

This month we're being sponsored by Webster's Pages who are donating a couple of prizes from their latest releases. And some of their Design Team have designed with the sketch too! 

Maybe I'll see you over there?!