Last week I was so busy with workshop preparation and working on an upcoming class project that I didn’t get the opportunity to participate in Kristina’s colour inspiration #8.  Having watched the festivities for a while, then finally participating in one, it gets kind of addictive (just ask Sam who is now rustling up THREE cards per challenge - each completely different than the others, but all equally gorgeous!)

Well I was determined to participate this week, and then I saw the colours:

So many bright colours, and so VERY different than what I would normally do, but a challenge is just that - a challenge, so I grabbed it by the horns and jumped right in!

…and here is my offering.  I thought that the little boat from Nursery Necessities would cope ok with the bright colours, so I started with that and my markers, trying out different combinations of the colours until I was happy (although I always used red for the flag!)

Then I decided that I would stamp it again and cut the pieces out to mount up on dimensionals, so I did.  I mounted the stamped piece onto Tempting Turquoise, but then I thought it looked a bit plain, so I hand drew a line using the thin end of my Tempting Turquoise marker around the edge of the white.  This is probably better done before you have gone to the trouble of colouring and stamping and cutting and mounting, but thankfully my line didn’t go too wonky!

For the So Saffron element, I decided to make use of the fabulous Palette ‘o Prints sampler pad that is on promotion this month, so I chose a nice bold spotty piece from among the patterned offerings.  This is mounted onto a slightly larger piece of So Saffron.

I layered a strip of Tempting Turquoise grosgrain onto a strip of the wider Old Olive version just to bring those two colours into it a bit more.  The sentiment is a combination of the WELCOME stamp from my newly (and individually!) mounted So Many Sayings set, and the ‘baby’ from the ‘welcome baby’ stamp out of Short and Sweet.

To bring in a bit more red and to balance the red that the sentiment is stamped in, I added three Real Red brads above the ribbon and I was done!

I am quite happy with the result given that I would never have come up with this combination on my own, so thanks again Kristina for your inspiration!

Here it is again from some different angles…

  

   

One of my favourite hostess sets in this year’s catalogue is the So Many Sayings Level 1 set on page 19 of the Idea Book & Catalogue.  Quite literally, there are SO many sayings in this set, making it a very versatile addition to any stamp collection!  Only trouble is that the 34 different sayings or images are mounted in large groups onto only 3 blocks making it a requirement that you mask off the unwanted sayings every time you used the set.   

Inspired by these blocks but not optimistic that it would be a practical thing to have them shipped from Canada, Tracey put out the call to the group to see if any of the girls knew a handyman with the tools and know how required to make our own…  This is where it becomes extremely handy that the husband of one of our team members is a carpenter!  Enter Todd, husband of Jo who was happy to oblige and knocked up these:

34 sayings and tiny rows of images all individually mounted - woo hoo!  I cut and mounted them a couple of nights ago and have had several practices with them since.  They are FABULOUS!  Of course once they are all mounted, they take up quite a bit more space than the original box they came in.  Happily, my set of Big Pieces has been rattling around in a box that is waaaay too big for the number of stamps in the set.  I had always wondered why this was the case, but it worked out perfectly as I just swapped over the boxes and now each set fits perfectly!  Here is the So Many Saying set all mounted and boxed up:

How cool is that?  Even cooler, is that Todd (bless him!) has indicated that he would be happy to knock up a few more sets for anybody interested in separating out their So Many Sayings stamps.  Interested?  They are available for the bargain price of $6.50 (plus postage if you’re not local to Perth).  Not a bad price for a set of 34 word stamps!  If you’d like to get your hands on a set of Todd’s blocks, just let me know and I will put you in touch with Jo!

  

Another of my team members is another year older - HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALI!   Ali should, by rights, get two rounds of breakfast in bed tomorrow as it is her birthday and Mother’s Day

Here is the card that I sent to her.  I am very much enjoying my Pick a Petal set at the moment (in case that fact had escaped you!)  This one uses just the scribbly petal outline stamp from the set and some of the delicious Berry Bliss DP.  Pairing your line art stamps with patterned paper is a great way to add interest to your projects and is really quick and effective.

This card uses pretty much the same layout as Tracey’s card, I just changed the orientation, did something a bit different with the stamps and added some ribbon!

Hope you get double the hugs and squeezes tomorrow Ali!!

Happy Birthday Ali card:

Stamps: Pick a Petal, Occasional Greetings

Paper: Kraft, Purely Pomegranate, Very Vanilla, Berry Bliss DP

Accessories: Purely Pomegranate double stitched ribbon, Neutrals button, Linen Thread, Stampin’ Dimensionals

   

I hate to say that I have actually been tagged before, but never did anything about passing it on….  This time, the lovely Sam has tagged me, so I thought I’d play along for a bit of fun!

This is how it works…

1. Link your tagger and list these rules on your blog.

2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.

3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog .

Ok, so here goes… (I think this is the hardest part - thinking of 7 things that people reading might find even remotely interesting!!)

1. I used to speak fairly fluent Japanese and Indonesian and have spent time living in both countries.  Nowadays I don’t get to use my languages so they have kind of fallen away unfortunately, but I can still understand quite a bit, especially Indonesian, which is easier.  One of the coolest things I did in Japan (15 years ago now!) was meet my mum’s penpal from when she was a teenager.  I wrote to the address I had for him from all those years ago and the letter got to him via his sister who was still in the same house.  I met him and his wife and two kids and stayed with them for a few days - awesome!

2. I have climbed two mountains in my time (so far!).  Mt Fuji in Japan and Mt. Merbabu in central Java.  Both amazing experiences and ones I will remember for a very long time.

3. And on the subject of climbing, I met my husband in an indoor climbing gym!  One of those places with all the different coloured little knobs all over the walls and ropes everywhere, for the uninitiated :)  We used to climb at least once a week, both indoor and outdoor at the gorgeous quarries east of Perth.

4. I got married almost 7 years ago on Rottnest Island, a gorgeous place almost 20km off the coast of Western Australia.  We had a Sunday morning ceremony in the little church on top of the hill, followed by a brunch reception.  Most of our friends and family stayed the weekend and it was the most amazing day of my life - mostly because of the bloke I married

5.  I have small babies!  Both my girls stopped growing towards the end of my pregnancies and had to be born by c-section - Hannah came at 34.5 weeks (4lb 9oz) and Sophie at 36 weeks (5lb 1oz).  Both spent a couple of weeks in the special care nursery being fed by naso-gastric tube but you wouldn’t know now that either of them had a bit of a shaky start to life!

6. I have been this tall (176cm or 5′ 91/2″) since I was 13 years old.  I was in the centre of the last row in my Year 8 school photo and made my way down the rows in subsequent years as the boys overshot me!

7. This is exciting (for me anyway) as it’s only just happened two days ago!!  We have two new cars!  They are not new new, but they are now to us We traded in my old Mazda that I’ve had for 12 years and our Rav4 that was getting a bit small and now have a lovely Hyundai Santa Fe and a zippy little Barina as the second car for whoever doesn’t have the kids!  Sweet!  Wanna see??

    

So here ends the 7 scintillating and totally amazing facts about me!  I’m not sure that I can think of 7 people to nominate that haven’t been tagged a gazillion times before!  I’m just gonna put some names down and see how we go…

Tracey

Naomi

Karen

Nikki

Yvonne

Gail

Madonna

There you go girls, play along if you feel like it.  I’m supposed to go and leave messages on their blogs to let them know they’ve been tagged, but it’s taken me SO long to write this post that it’s WAY past my bedtime!  I’ll have to get to that in the morning…

  

Today is the birthday of one of my very first team members - HAPPY BIRTHDAY TRACE!!  Incidentally, Tracey has also started a blog recently which you should go check out…

Here is the card that I took around to her this afternoon.

The cardstock colours and layers I borrowed pretty  much directly from this delightful offering by pinefeather, but changed the actual stamped bit to make it my own.  I love the simplicity of pinefeather’s cards and projects.  I also love the way she combines colours.  Go check her out

I have been having a lot of fun with Pick a Petal recently, and I enjoyed making this card with the set this morning.  I stamped the spotted petals in Whisper White craft ink then sponged Rose Red pastel over the top.  Then I inked up the scribbly petal with Rose Red ink and stamped it right over the top.  That’s all there is to it really - the addition of the ‘delight’ sentiment from Life Definitions and it was done!

Hope you had a great day Trace!!

delight card:

Stamps: Pick a Petal, Life Definitions

Paper: River Rock, Kraft, Very Vanilla

Ink: White craft ink, Rose Red, Sahara Sand (sponged on edges of Kraft), Basic Black

Accessories: Stampin’ Pastels, Very Vanilla button, Linen Thread, Stampin’ Dimensionals

   

No surprises here really - I just LOVE the dry embossing feature of the Crop-a-dile!  One of these days I may just get around to setting an eyelet with it, which I’m sure is its main purpose for being, but for now I’m just having fun!!

Here is my next effort using this technique!  I actually made this one BEFORE the colour challenge ones in the previous post, but with those I was working to a deadline, so had to post them first!

This one uses a variety of different ideas and when I finally got around to putting it together, it came about quite quickly, which is a bit of a rarity for me!

It all started though, with the dry embossing….  I did that on a square of Kraft cardstock, then punched it out with my Scallop Circle Punch.  Then that sat on my desk for a few days so I could admire this fun new technique!  Then  I thought a Cameo Coral butterfly from the Priceless set might be a nice addition, so I stamped one, cut it out and bent its wings up a bit to make it more 3-D.

I was reminded by a recent post of my blogging friend Linda, that the Round Tab punch can also be used to make large circles, and was very excited to discover that the circle that results is perfectly sized to fit the scallop circle inside! 

The rest of the card kind of just rolled along on its own after that!  I happily was able to use some of the Spring Flowers DSP, which was inadvertently left out of the new catalogue but is still available, so I used two different designs of that - the pale stripe in the background and the bolder stripe layered on top.

For the greeting, I was busting to get some ink on my new Life Definitions set - the hard part was deciding which one to choose!  I went with ‘happy’ as I thought that went well with the colours of the card

   

Here are some additional pictures from different angles so you can see a bit more detail - just click on the thumbnails to see them in full size!

‘happy’ card:

Stamps: Priceless, Life Definitions

Paper: Chocolate Chip, Very Vanilla, Kraft, Spring Flowers DSP

Ink: Cameo Coral, Chocolate Chip

Accessories: Crop-a-dile, Scallop Circle Punch, Round Tab Punch, Wide Chocolate Chip Grosgrain

  

The apology is for those of you who may have tried to visit my blog from the 28th to the 30th of April and not been able to….  I had a large spike in the number of visitors to my blog in April it would seem, and the traffic to my blog used up more than my allocated allowance on the server

Anyway, happily, it is now May, which means I am back and I have things to share!!

If you have read my blog for a while you may be familiar with the name Kristina Werner - I am often inspired by her work and basically stalk her blog!

Recently she has started running colour inspiration challenges on her blog and this week I decided to play along - twice in fact!

Here is the picture that Kristina posted for colour inspiration challenge number 7 (I know, I’m a bit slow on the uptake - not sure why I never got in on 1-6, but nevermind!!).

And here is my first effort based on the colour combination of Very Vanilla, Soft Sky, Close to Cocoa and Chocolate Chip! 

For some reason the colours look a bit weird and washed out in this photo - I couldn’t get a picture that I LOVED, but I think you can get the idea…

I have used the Priceless set, along with the Basic Phrases set (I can just tell that this one is going to get a good work out!!) and the number-one-on-my-new-catalogue-priority-list Scallop Circle Punch.  Gonna get waaaaaay more than my money’s worth out of that baby too!!

The striped paper is from the Prints Designer Series in Close to Cocoa,and I have used a Pewter coloured brad from my Hodgepodge Hardware in the centre of the circle element.

The rest is fairly self explanatory - a bit of ribbon here and some dimensionals there!  I’ll post the complete recipe at the end…

My next offering (well I couldn’t play on my blog, so I thought I’d give the challenge another go!) is this one.

The same combination (obviously!) but in different proportions.

This time I used some of the Au Chocolat paper (unfortunately retired, but perfect for this card!) and brayered Soft Sky ink over a piece of choc chip spotted paper.  This is a tip that I got from Marelle, who got it from Teneale - two of my absolute favourites and two amazingly talented stampers

The small star image is from Nursery Necessities and I have used Basic Phrases again too!

The really fun part is the big star embellishment on the right….  It combines the two different themes I have going on here - stars and spots.  Want a better look…?

Actually having said that, I’m not sure that this IS a better look!  Closer, but you can probably see the detail better in the first photo!

The detail that I’m talking about is the little raised (embossed) dots on the star.  I have always loved the dry embossed look and one of the huge attractions of the Crop-a-dile for me was that you can use it to make these little dots!  As an added bonus you can also set eyelets in a second without waking up your children!  But back to the embossing….  I knew that this marvellous tool could be used in this way, but I just couldn’t seem to get it to work for me :(  Well after seeing this gorgeous card on fellow Aussie demo Nikki’s blog, complete with two rows of perfectly spaced and delightfully raised dots, I begged her to tell me the secret!  Thankfully she obliged (incidentally the crop-a-dile setting you need is A-2 and used in conjunction with the piercing mat you ensure evenly spaced dots…) and away I went!  Here I embossed a square piece of card with the dots, then punched it out with my new large star punch and sponged the edges of the star.

So here ends my contribution to Kristina’s Colour Inspiration challenge number 7.  I think I might challenge myself to have a go at a few more - it’s fun!!

Birthday Wishes card:

Stamps: Priceless, Basic Phrases

Paper: Soft Sky, Very Vanilla, Chocolate Chip, Close to Cocoa Prints DSP

Ink: Soft Sky, Chocolate Chip

Accessories: Chocolate Chip wide grosgrain, Hodgepodge Hardware (pewter brad), Scallop Circle Punch, 1-3/8″ Circle Punch, 1-1/4″ Circle Punch, Stampin’ Dimensionals

  

To My Friend card:

Stamps: Nursery Necessities, Basic Phrases

Paper: Close to Cocoa, Chocolate Chip, Very Vanilla, Au Chocolat DSP

Ink: Chocolate Chip, Soft Sky

Accessories: Very Vanilla wide grosgrain, Large Star Punch, Crop-a-dile, Brayer, Stampin’ Sponges, Stampin’ Dimensionals

   

In a few days time my precious niece and god-daughter Ruby will turn 3 and this afternoon is her party.  I am guessing (and hoping!) that my sister-in-law Janny will be far too busy with party preparations to be looking at my blog so I’m taking a chance at posting Ruby’s card here

I busted out my newly mounted Big Bold Birthday set - one of 19 brand spankin’ sets that I own from the new catalogue - and made this chocolate and strawberry creation!

Chocolate because I’ve used Choc Chip and Close to Cocoa, and strawberry because that’s the flavour of the cupcake - scratch ‘n’ sniff baby!!  I’ve also broken into my lovely fresh pack of Berry Bliss DP - oh so yummy - and thrown some glitter on to make the candles sparkle!

Ingredients:

Stamps: Big Bold Birthday

Paper: Kraft, Close to Cocoa, Pretty in Pink, Whisper White, Berry Bliss DP

Ink: Chocloate Chip, Pixie Pink, Yoyo Yellow, Versamark

Accessories: Two Way Glue Pen, Dazzling Diamonds Glitter, Choc Chip Wide Grosgrain Stampin Dimensionals, Clear Embossing Powder (mixed with strawberry sugar-free jelly crystals)

  

Well, I couldn’t actually tell you who the winner of the Relay itself was.  In terms of the running it would’ve been the young blokes in the green singlets who were going for gold!  Or it could’ve been the fellow in the purple sash which indicated that he was running the whole thing solo - all 24 hours of it!  He’s a winner in anybody’s book I reckon!  Overall it would’ve been the Cancer Foundation and those who will benefit from the money raised

My mate Jules was a winner too!  Here she is with her handsome fella following her completion of the Survivor’s Walk:

As for the winner of the Simply Sent kit….?  Well that would be Pauline whose number was randomly drawn after I received all the sponsorship payments!  Woo hoo!!  I will be in touch shortly Pauline to hand you your winnings

Thanks to all of you who generously supported this most worthy of causes.  I’m thinking next year we get a stampin’ team together for the relay…  Who’s in?!

  

I am SO excited to share some of the highlights of the Brisbane convention that took place just this past weekend.  It came and went FAR too quickly, but I have LOADS of photos to remember all the fun and excitement and am going to have a little show and tell session right here!  So buckle up folks, this is going to be a long one…..!

First I just HAVE to show you this cute shot of my girls at the airport before we left.

The lady that checked us in gave the girls these stickers just to amuse them for 5 minutes, but I’m not sure she realised how apt they were!  They amused us and other passers by for a bit longer as they wandered around the airport with them stuck to their shirts!

This next one is of mum and I while we waited for our flight to be called.  Hope you don’t mind me putting your picture up on the net Nanny :)  (Thursday!!!)

The flight itself was as good as could be expected with a 19 month old in tow.  There was a total in-flight chuppa chup ban as a result of the funny (although I’m sure it wasn’t at the time!) story that my stampin’ friend Gail told me.  Other than the grumpy bugger in front of us that complained when Hannah was just getting her tray table out for dinner, it was mostly uneventful!

I must just get in a quick plug for the delightful La Toretta bed and breakfast in South Brisbane where we stayed for the five days we were there.  Dorothy and Charles have set up a gorgeous little spot and we completely settled in and made ourselves at home.  Highly recommended if you find yourself in need of accommodation with easy access to Brisbane city

My absolute FAVOURITE thing about convention was catching up with people that I first met in Sydney last year, meeting up with girls that I had previously only ‘known’ via email or blogging, and having the opportunity to meet some of my stamping idols.  (WARNING, SERIOUS NAME DROPPING AHEAD!!)  Here’s a bit of an overview of some of the gorgeous folk I got to hang out with on the weekend…

Last year’s winner of Demonstrator of the Year and all ’round cool chick Viiiiicki Deeeeeean!

 

Gorgeous Sam who I met last year in Sydney and LOVED catching up with again!  This girl is a CRACK-UP and always makes me smile

 

The awesomely talented and occasionally potty-mouthed Teresa who NEEDS TO SET UP A BLOG so that we can all see her amazing work!

 

Lovely Trish who I FINALLY got to meet in real life after emailing back and forth throughout the year.

 

Another blog-buddy Di who always has lovely things to say in the comments section of my blog :)  Go check out the gorgeous stuff she makes!

 

Lovely Linda the very humble and VERY deserving winner of 6th place in Demonstrator of the Year ‘08!

 

Fabulous Madonna, who frightened the life out of me when she came barelling up to me at the Leadership session on Friday night before I realised who she was!!

 

Here I am with Naomi, who along with Gail, adopted me to their teams over the weekend!  The little green pins are for the Palm Cove Incentive Trip that we both earned and are going to with 23 other demonstrators in August this year!

 

Gorgeous Marelle, my pin twin (we got exactly the same awards in Brisbane!) with whom my Stampin’ Up! journey has been amazingly similar

 

This is Aaron our Australian Stampin’ Up! Manager - really nice bloke

 

This handsome fella was my hot date for the awards dinner!  Scrubs up pretty good huh?!

Speaking of the dinner, look who else was there….

SHELLI!!!  This woman is amazing and is the reason that I have a job that I love and get to hang out with 300 or so like minded crazy stampers every year :)  I got to hug her 4 times on stage for the different award categories and I even stepped on her foot - oops!  She promised me it didn’t hurt….

 

Wendy from Inverell, AKA the Lady in Red - sweet, bubbly and just plain fun!

 

Here’s Marelle again, all gorgeous and bling-ed up!!

 

Oh and then I got to hang out with Alisa for a while - every bit as sweet (and cute!) as she is talented, which is a LOT!!  I did warn you there would be name dropping….

 

And here is Karen, another of my blog buddies that I was so excited to meet!  I started seeking her out as soon as I arrived as I wanted to make sure I got one of her amazing swaps!!!

Speaking of swaps, here is the selection that I made to swap - many of which were completed at 2am on the Thursday night immediately prior to convention!  Thanks to mum sticking and tying and bagging with me, it wasn’t a 5am finish!!  I actually think I may have damaged a nerve in my right middle finger from cutting out 48 flowers in one sitting - I still have limited feeling in the fingertip!

But enough about my stamping related injuries, here are my swaps (click on the thumbnails to see the full cards):

   

   

   

I ended up with somewhere between 60 and 70 cards to swap, and here’s what I scored in return…

Instant array of fabulous ideas!!  Gotta love a card swap

As for the stuff we actually made while we were at convention, here you go.  Gorgeous watercoloured cards, a funky scrapbook page, another fun card using the fabulous Happiness background stamp and a sweet little box:

 

 

 

 

Finally, I am delighted to share with you my excitement in being named the 9th placed demonstrator in Australia.  This also makes me 2nd top in Western Australia, which pretty much blows my mind!  HUGE congratulations to Ngaire Anderson - another person who needs to set up a blog! - for being number one in WA and also top in the whole of Australia!  As mentioned earlier, I am also one of 25 lucky stampers heading to Palm Cove in August for a 5 day luxury holiday, all expenses paid by Stampin’ Up!  All in all an amazing year and one that I could never have predicted when this whole stampin’ caper started almost two years ago.

Actually, that wasn’t the final thing I wanted to say.  The most important thing is a HUGE thanks to my biggest supporters in my handsome man Tim and my wonderful mum.  Thanks also to Aunty Mary who made sure to have a congratulations card (hand made of course!) in my mail box for me upon our arrival home :)  My amazing team of stampers who are such great fun to hang out and stamp with.  My wonderful hostesses and customers who have become my friends along the way.   And those of you who come and visit me here (and actually READ what I write - hi Pat!!!) and make this whole blogging thing a big bunch of fun.