It's a boy!!!!

We have a very special post today over at Unstampabelles as one of our very own Team Members - Sarah - is now the proud Mum of baby Elijah.  The remaining team members all created an Easel Card to fit in with our current challenge to help her and her husband to celebrate this wonderful occasion.  This is mine.  The base of my card is Metallic Corrugated Blue card stock, I then added two layers of the lovely pale blue Linen Textured card stock which I ran through my Victoria embossing folder.  Next I put together this cute owl die cut paper tole from Blue Edge Crafts.  Finished the inside by using one of my Spellbinder Edgeabilities and some bling.

A side view to try and show the layering.

So please come on over to Unstampabelles and see what clever Easel Cards the remainder of the Design Team came up with to send to Sarah.  Also last day to enter our Easel Card Challenge....you can do it.  Wishing you a great weekend everyone.  Plans for me.....our final fundraiser for our Relay for Life team - a sausage sizzle.  A farewell tea for a long time friend moving to Czech for not sure how long.  Then rest on Sunday.  :-)

Craftmad May Card Swap - Lace and Pearls

I have two cards to share with you today.  I made these on the weekend for my Craftmad swap partner.  (See all the beautiful creations by other Craftmad members here) Our theme for May was Lace and Pearls and of course I went immediately to girly and pink. :-)  I am having a love hate relationship with both of these cards.  

The top card I copied a layout from Alice of Alice's (little) Wonderland.....I so love her style and her colouring is amazing.  The sentiment is from Stampin Up, the cute little tutu is JenniB, the lace and paper from my stash.

Now this card started with the lace and pearl border that I had in my collection and then I spied the 'Cute Girly' diecut on my desk and thought she would be perfect.  She was white and I have coloured her with my Copic pens maybe I should have made her a different colour.  The paper is from Blue Edge Crafts, Combo Scrapbook Collection 

Hope you all have a lovely week.  Not sure what is in store for me yet.  Part of it is getting bits and pieces for our last sausage sizzle fundraiser for our Relay for Life team.  A little bit of help at the Museum one day and hopefully some more gardening as the weather is much cooler and enjoyable to be outside. 

I would like to share these cards in the following challenges:

Crafting When We Can - #45 Punches or Diecuts......entering Card Two

That Craft Place - Dies and Punches.....entering Card Two

Make It Monday - #142 Always Anything Goes ......Card One

Thank You Daffodil Easel Card

Hi everyone, yes, I am still around.  Someone hit that fast forward button last Friday morning and I am thinking I will find the normal speed about Sunday. :-)

Today I have a card that I created for two reasons.  First as a thank you to the wonderful team at Gordonvale St John's Young Lifestyle who provided their hall and kitchen facilities for our very successful cardmaking night which was a fundraiser for our Relay for Life team.  As Relay is all about raising money for a Cure for Cancer I have used yellows and purples on this card.

Second reason for the card.  I created this as a reminder of the wonderful challenge happening over at Unstampabelles this month......Easel Cards.  I have done up a tutorial and it is now ready to view over at Unstampabelles...hoping to inspire people to join in our challenge.  So please visit Unstampabelles for more details.  I hope to catch up in blogland on the weekend. Thanks for visiting and take care everyone. :-)

Happy Birthday Ruth

I made this card for my friend Ruth whose birthday was last week.  With another friend we had a lovely lunch to help her celebrate.  As Ruth is a Stampin Up demonstrator I thought that should be my starting point for the card.  So all papers and card stock are Stampin Up.  The image however is a free digi from Free Vintage Digital Stamps which I coloured with my Copic pens.  I then dug out my new favourite Spellbinder die - Marvelous Squares and cut some frames for the image. Finished with a white sentiment sticker and a touch of bling. 

Poppa is 99 today.

How amazing and terrific is this.....my husband's Grandfather better known as 'Poppa' is celebrating his 99th birthday today.

I grabbed out my Stampin Up papers and card stock to create this card.  This is a photo of Poppa taken in March this year.  He celebrated his third year wedding anniversary in April with wife number three this year.  Sadly, he has outlived two of his wives.  I thought I would add some information about the year he was born.  This was a little hard as he was born 1914....the outbreak of war and everything I could find was war related.  The happiest thing I did discover was that the Hawthorne team joined the AFL (Australian Football League) that year.  Also it was the year of the lowest rainfall across the wheatbelt of Australia until 1980's. From Wikipedia (However, in the southern wheat belt May 1914 began a trend of powerful anticyclones and dry, easterly winds that was at the time quite unprecedented and not rivalled until 1982.)  I also found a list of prominent people that were born in Australia during that year.  I decided not to add any of these details as out of the list of approx 15 there was only one that was still with us.   So the more I looked into this year of Poppa's birth year the more impressed I was that he is he celebrating his 99th birthday.  It was only in the last ten years that he gave up his drivers licence.  He and his wife live in a Retirement Village in Sydeny together with nursing facilities available but they look after each other.

Imagine the changes that Poppa has had to adapt through in all those years.  

Happy Birthday Poppa.

A is for Asian - April Craftmad Card Swap

These are the Copic colours I used to colour my image for my second card in the Craftmad April Swap (check out the gallery for other member swaps).  We had to create two 'A' themed cards.  I chose Asian for my second card.  You can see my first card - Automobile here. 

This image is from my Digi collection.  Sorry not sure where I found this and if anyone knows who the artist is could they please let me know.  I also added a touch of metallic pen to her sash which doesn't show in the photo.

Thanks to Jocelyn of 'Instead of Ironing blogspot (beautiful cards) for all this info on this pretty little image.

The image is by Elizabeth Pujalka of Softpencil Studios and is called Japanese Girl. Previously, you could buy from her on Etsy but now Elizabeth has her own website: http://www.softpencilstudios.com/

I made a Joy Fold card using papers I bought when we were in Tokyo, Japan 18 months ago.   The Eastern stickers are from the Sticker Store.  Hmmm, don't you hate when you look at the photo of your card and see a mistake.  My paper on the right hand side is upside down.....can't believe I missed that.    Hopefully my partner is  like me and hasn't spied that. :-)

Wishing you a wonderful Wednesday.  

Sewn Fabric Box - Craftmad Swap and Mother's Day

For our Craftmad Sewing Swap in April we had to make a Fabric Box.  I found a great tutorial on Allison Gryski's blog.  I was surprised at how quickly and easily everything came together.  I really loved the fabrics and topped it off with this beautiful flower I am sure I received at Christmas time from the lovely Beth.  You can see the other Fabric Boxes in Craftmad's Gallery here.

I had planned on buying my Mum something for Mother's Day but I couldn't find what I wanted.  So I got to thinking that it is a very long time since I have actually made my Mum anything.  Mum is a crafter too......so I thought this Fabric Box will get put to good use.  Mum loves greens and I had this fabric sitting in my stash.  This time I created my own flower with by Scalloped Edge Spellbinder dies and felt.  To package up the Fabric Box I decided to decorate a brown paper bag I had acquired.  I knew I had a very similar patterned paper in my collection.  So with that, light blue paper and green bazzill card stock I decorated the brown paper bag.  I used my Spellbinder Edgeabilities on the papers.  Then I decided to create a matching flower this time from papers.

Wishing you all a terrific week.

Checking out my Followers List - Happy Mother's Day

I thought today I would check out my followers blogs.  I am amazed at how many have stopped blogging.  Also brought back some great memories of people I got to know through blogs and even though I have never met them I do miss seeing what they are up to.

I visited Mel at Renovating 519 and she had this handy link to another blog about being a 'No Reply Blogger'.  Apparently somewhere along the way with Blogger changes some peoples email address do not show in their profile.  They may be wondering why people don't reply to them when they leave a comment or question on other blogs.  It's because you are uncontactable.  The link above talks you through what you need to do to change this.

Another thing I noticed that a lot of my followers don't have a link back to their own blog in their profile so I can't check out what wonderful creations they have.   I know there are a few that only have a blogger account so they can leave comments and don't actually blog.  But I am sure there are a few people missing out on sharing their blogs.  So......

If you go to your 'Dashboard', find your blogger profile up to the top right and click on the little 'arrow' next to your name, then click on 'blogger profile' in the box that opens up, then click 'Edit Profile', the third choice down says 'Show my Blogs' next to that is a link that says 'Select Blogs to Display' click on that and check the blogs if you have more than one to show up in your profile.

(When you do the above you can unselect any old blogs you no longer use or those blogs you belong to as a Design Team member that no one else can visit anyways.  Declutter your blog list and we go direct to your blog.)

Let me know if you add your blog to your profile as I would love to come and have a sticky beak.

Take care and wishing all the Mum's out there a Happy Mothers Day.

Dancing Ballerina

I had the most wonderful Wednesday this week.  It was rainy and overcast and the day before I had shovelled 2m of mulch on to our gardens.  So I decided that Wednesday was cardmaking day.  Best thing I actually felt a little creative.  I packed the daughter off to school.  Lit a scented candle put Foxtel (pay TV) on to music.....Easy listening and had Elvis crooning and other songs of that era playing.  Yes, I was singing too and no one could complain. :-)  Then I dug out some things I have wanted to put on to cards for a while now and made 6 cards over the day.  This is one of them.  Then to top the day off hubby came home and said let's go to the pub for tea.  Brilliant.

I really enjoyed making this card all items from Blue Edge Crafts.  Started with Pink Linen Textured card stock, white cardstock then a layer of the Past Spodia Combo paper.  I stitched around the edges of the two layers.  Then added this lovely Dancing Ballerina die cut shapes and finished with a 'something to celebrate' white sticker and a bit of bling.

Thats me for this week.  Wishing you all a good weekend and see you Monday.

No major plans here as the rain seems to be hanging around.  So more inside work.

Relay for Life - Thank You Card

We have had a couple of generous donations to our Relay for Life team so I got to and made a couple of Thank You cards.  This card does look a little flasher in real life as I have used SU Shimmery White and yes, as the names suggest there is a slight shimmer if you hold it in the right light.

I went with the theme of yellow and purple as they are the colours of Relay.  So started with a purple base card.  The Daffodil image is from Passion for Stamps, I coloured it with my Copic pens.  Used my  Circle die to cut a circle from the SU Shimmery White and placed the image behind this.  The yellow on the bottom layer is from the Bazzill Two Scoops range.  It is pre-embossed.  I added the lovely lace from my stash and a Thank You sentiment using Just Rite stamps.

This card went to a lovely lady who donated $20.00 to our team.  

If you would like to donate please visit our team page - Crew Cure.

Design Team Card for Unstampabelles Challenge #23 - Easel Cards

Today I am sharing my Design Team card for the new Unstampabelles Challenge #23 - Easel Cards.

You should pop over and see all the wonderful cards that the Design Team has come with.  Two members have never made a Easel Card before.  So it was good to get them out of their comfort zone and each of them enjoyed creating their cards.

Remember our first and foremost rule is papercraft without the use of Stamps (rubber or digital).

I was looking for a Mother's Day card and saw this tutorial at Cardmaking Paradise and thought it was perfect. It was the little biscuit that holds the easel part of the card up that sold it for me.  The tutorial uses white foam as the cream for the biscuit.  I don't own any of that so just glued together about six layers of card stock.  All the card stock is from Stampin Up (Wild Wasabi, Pale Plub, Creamy Caramel).

One of our Design Team members - Beth, who is a Stampin Up Demonstrator has kindly sponsored this months challenge and this is the prize that is on offer.  So wish I could enter.  :-)

So hope to see you soon over at Unstampabelles with your Easel Card entry.

I would like to share this at:

Make it Monday - #139 Always Anything Goes

Dream Valley Challenges - #56 No Squares Allowed

Totally Paper Crafts - #165 Don't be Square - Use a Shaped Card

A is for Automobile - Craftmad Swap

These are all the Copic Pens and one metallic pen that I used to colour ......

This image from Limited Runs.  Isn't it such a fun image.

The card is one of the two I sent on to my partner at Craftmad for our April swap....the theme was 'A'.  So I went with an Automobile Easel Card.  I started the card with Linen Textured card stock, then a layer of the spotted paper from a paper pack. The glitter paper from Blue Edge Crafts.  I cut out the image using my new Marvelous Squares Spellbinder dies.  I think these will be my new favourites. I finished the card with a 'Happy Birthday' sticker which I coloured with my copics to match the colour of the image.

If you would like to see more of the 'A' cards please visit the Craftmad Gallery here.

There is - Asian, Antique, Apple, 'A', Angles, Automobile.

If you would like to join in our May Card Swap the theme is Lace and Pearls.  Just visit Craftmad and join on up....it's all free and very friendly.

On the inside of the card I used my Spellbinder Edgeabilities (Classic Edges Two) on each of the different papers from the front of the card.  Oh, I substituted a lighter blue glitter paper.

Well that is another week done and dusted.  Wishing you all a fantastic weekend.  I get to spend a little time with my daughter..one on one away from the boyfriend.  :-)  Then catch up with my closest friends and I am sure hubby and I will have some time too.  Not sure if I will accomplish anything but will enjoy all the same.

Thala Beach Lodge, Rex Range - lots of photos

Warning, lots of photos in this post.  If you would like a closer look just click on the photo.

The view from our cabin amongst the trees at Thala Beach Lodge.

This is the cabin which was next door they are not on top of each other and nicely set back so that everyone has their privacy.

Inside the cabin.

The view from the lookout a couple of metres from our front door.

Me, chillin and relaxing at the lookout.

The main pool.....the building in the background is the Reception and Restaurant area.

A visitor to the pool area on our second day.  This is a goanna and we have had the pleasure of a couple of these guys at our own home on a couple of occasions over the years.  This guy is about 1 metre long just catching some rays.  More info on the goanna here.

A second and smaller rock pool.

More relaxing by me in the hammocks supplied by the resort.  Shame I didn't find these until the end of the day....I so would love a hammock at home.

We discovered a Nature Walk that started near the hammocks.  So off we went on 1.5k trek. Thala Beach Lodge is very Eco-friendly as you can see by the little steps created for us to go over this fallen tree on the trek.  Yes, it's still growing...just sideways.

This is a nest for the Orange Foot Scrub Fowl (photo below).  The birds are only at the most 40cm tall and this pile of leaves was taller than me.  Impressive.  You find more info here.

A spider on the track.

Some pretty fungus.

Me, leading the way.

Which way??????

The view from the lookout on the Rex Range travelling from Port Douglas to Julatten.

A bit of traffic on the winding roads....a really lovely drive.

This brings us to the end of our quick weekend away.  Hope you enjoyed the photos...I shall return soon. :-)