The Story of the Peacock

I grew up surrounded by animals. Living on a dairy farm means obviously there are cows, but at one time or another there were also horses, pigs, goats, dogs, cats, a variety of different birds both 'decorative' and practical such as chickens..... and there was also a family of peacocks.

The peacock himself was a creature of mystery. He simply flew into the farm one day (fully grown) and decided to stay. Feeling sorry for the lonely bird we purchased a female companion and together they raised many litters (? pretty sure that's not the right word!) of baby peafowl.

Peacocks aren't the first animal that comes to mind when you think about farms, and it was always a dichotomy of values to come across one of the beautiful discarded feathers in amongst the cow pats! Ever since that time the peacock has remained an enigma in my mind. Surely they're amongst the world's most beautiful creatures. They remind me of the intricacy and depth of the splendour of Creation.

So when I heard my sister (from Jasper Lane Designs) was doing a celebratory Facebook Showcase for her 30th birthday that features 30 of her favourite things and that one of the themes up for grabs was "birds" I knew just what I was going to do. I hand-painted and stenciled this peacock design with India Ink and then filled it in with watercolours and Glimmermist. I added detail to the body with Liquid Pearls and shimmer to the feathers with Martha Stewart glitter.

The photos don't really do it justice, and it's quite a textural piece in real life. Now I'll be sorry to see this go because it's making a lovely display on my bookcase right now, but it is up for sale in the "30 Favourite Things" Showcase tonight. It begins at 8pm (Victorian time) and I would love for you to come over and check it out. The other 29 items are pretty spectacular too!

You Tube, Me Tube

My girls are constantly drawing pictures - that's just the type of girls they are. And as much as I want to keep all these, there's no way I can file away the hundreds of drawings they come up with.

And I guess they get that from me, 'cos I too am coming up with hundreds (?) of layouts. So that's when I came up with the idea of including them INTO my layouts as much as possible. It's like killing two birds with one stone! And I get to capture the essence of this time in our lives even better.

I've had to put my mind to thinking up different ways to incorporate the two forms so they blend seamlessly together. 'Cos I don't really want all my pages looking the same either. The method I used here was to try and re-create Munchy's drawing on my own background by painting a continuation of her rainbow.

So that's my introduction for my very first VIDEO!! Eeeeekkkkk! I was so nervous doing this (and you can totally tell!) but I think it gets better as it goes along. And ultimately I had a lot of fun putting this together.

I used this as my monthly tutorial at Scrap Friends. Which means I'll be doing another one next month! I would love to hear what you think. Things you liked? Suggestions on what I could do better? Would you be interested in seeing more videos, or do you prefer to stick to photo-based tutorials?

I used some of my most favourite supplies on this page. Check them out!

Supplies:

ICC My Diary	Websters Pages Alpha Stickers Ladies & Gents	Crate Paper Paper Heart Border Stickers	Crate Paper Paper Heart Phrase Stickers
Greatest View Chevron Bag	Greatest View Sunburst Badges	Amy Tangerine Sketchbook Doodle Stickers	Teresa Collins Everyday Moments diecut sheet 3
Imaginarium Designs Clouds	Gesso	Woodware Fluffy Stuff	Glimmermist Starfish
Glimmermist Sun Sisters	Glimmermist Chalkboard Seven Seas	Mister Hueys Heirloom Blue	Studio Calico MIster Huey Lunch Tray

InLinkz.com

Every Child is Amazing....... especially mine!!

If you've been around here long enough you know that one of my driving passions this year has been to include more memoribillia, and specifically my children's artwork, into my scrap pages.

My eldest is quite crafty herself and loves to sit down and draw. I love that she might just have inherited that from me ;-) But it does mean that we have piles and piles of old drawings hanging around the place... and really.... you can only keep so many right? Usually I'm sneaking the excess ones into the recycling bin at night while she sleeps!

But of course there's still so MANY that I keep and I'm working on different ways of incorporating them into my layouts so that it's like a collaborative project. I feel like I'm even better at capturing this moment in time if I do that.

This drawing in particular was a landmark so it deserved it's own layout. Do you remember me saying last year how Munchy had been asked to draw a picture to include on some friends' wedding invitation? Well this is the end result! Can you see how the two little figures are passing a ring between them? And the woman is holding her bouquet of flowers? Quite cute I think!

On this layout you can see how I obviously used her drawing more as a background, and I took my colour inspiration for the rest of the layout straight from it. That's just one method of course, another method I've used is to blend the drawing seamlessly into the layout by painting my own extension of it.... that's the method I've demonstrated in my very first scrappy video I'm sharing at Scrap Friends right now. Eeeeeekkkkk! I'm so nervous - you can totally tell! Go and check it out and let me know what you think!

Supplies:

Fancy Pants Its The Little Things Feathered	Fancy Pants Its The LIttle Things Spring Fever	Crate Paper Random Pattern	Crate Paper Random Accent Cuts
Crate Paper Random Alphabet Stickers	October Afternoon Boarding Pass alphas	Pink Paislee Wood Shop Alphabet Woodchip	Chipboard Thickers Typo Mustard
Cosmo Cricket Social Club chipboard	Gesso	Glimmermist Chalkboard Seven Seas	Glimmermist Starfish
Glimmermist Key Lime Pie	Glimmermist Sun Sisters

InLinkz.com

Fascinated...

I certainly wasn't surprised when I saw Moxie Fab World was doing a "Fascination with Feathers" challenge as I can see this is a real trend right now. I for one definitely love it, and instantly wanted to play along.

I know I only just recently shared a feathery card I made, and only wished I could have used it for this challenge as it's one of my recent favourites. But I took that same concept and used it to inspire some new cards instead.

Yes, I made these feathers from scratch! Just hand-drew a design I liked and glued some floral wire between two layers of them. It's simple enough that Munchy made her own along with me - it was some wonderful bonding mother and daughter scrapping time :-)

I then Glimmermisted to my hearts content (yes I think Glimmermisted should be a verb!) and smothered them in fine crystal glitter. The chipboard hearts are a cute touch, and it's mainly because I've got two more weddings coming up that I thought I could use these for so I had to add something a little more 'romantic' than feathers.

I only just realised I used my last feathery card for a wedding too. I wonder what it is about feathers that make me think they're appropriate wedding embellishments? Hhhhmmmmm....

And just to remind myself later of what Glimmermist colours I used, I took this photo too :-)
Key Lime Pie, Sapphire and Pink Taffy in case you're wondering!