Happy 21st

I made a quick card last night as I remembered it is my nephews 21st tomorrow.  :-0  Well I knew it was his birthday but forgot I had to make a card.  Guess the card won't arrive quite on time. Oops! I decided to try and incorporate Unstampabelles latest challenge of 'Dare to get Dirty' and attempted the added twist of photographing the journey.  So I started with a piece of Stamping Up Very Vanilla, my glitter tray, one bouncy ball and my two refill inks for my Copics.

I attached the card stock with a little double sided tape so it wouldn't move about then dotted the inks around the edge of the card.

Then the fun began.  I rolled the ball through the inks and over the card to create the background.

Next I used my gold spritz spray on the base card of SU Soft Suede…this is definitely messy.

Decided that I would spray the ball rolled background too.

I found some keys that I have had in my stash for many a year. Thought this worked well as you are meant to get a key when you turn 21.  The sentiment I printed on my computer and then pin pricked a line underneath.

This morning I decided to write in the words alongside each key - Key to Life, Key to Love, Key to Happiness

Then wrote this on the inside of the card.  After all Google is the answer to everything isn't it. 

I have added this card to the Make It Monday challenge also.

Hope you are all having a wonderful day, thanks for stopping on by. Before I go I will share some photos.

Last week we had an amazing time on the Gold Coast (QLD) catching up with our son and my MIL.  This was the view from our balcony.

Night time view.  That is the Q1 you can see….tallest building in Australia.

Our son either camera shy or fixing his mop of hair. :-)

We saw awesome sandcastles….13 in all I think.

Spent an afternoon at Palm Beach while our son completed filming a short film.

Took MIL on a river ferry to see the views…..it had to be the hottest day we were there.  Was just like being in Cairns. :-)

One of the different sights we saw while driving around….Mario Bros on scooters. 

Hope to catch up with you all again soon.

I am still here. :-)

Just popping in to say I am still alive and well. 

A few changes to my routine and I just have not quite figured out what I am doing when. :-)  I am still trying to fit everything into my life and blogging seems to be taking a back seat at the moment until I can find a slot for it.  Which I will defintely do as I can't miss out on all your stories and inspirations. :-)

I shall return.

50th Anniversary Cake

The anniversary cake made it across the river.  The bridge didn't go under until last night luckily.  Thanks to Helen for icing and decorating this cake which everyone enjoyed.

The cake is cut which my 4 year old nephew was very delighted about.  Thats all he wanted all night even before tea. "Is it cake time".

We had a lovely night as family, laughing, chatting, teasing, annoying.

Congratulations to my parents on their 50th Wedding Anniversary

Today 50 years ago my parents were married.  How fabulous is that they are still together and supporting and loving each other.  Had four wonderful kids…the oldest is the best  ;-)   of course.

I received this Concertina Card from Blue Edge Crafts to have a play with and I knew I had to make something for Mum and Dad with this.  So I went through all my gold stash…I wish that was real gold. :-)  Gold papers and embellishments.  Borrowed my parents wedding album and had photos of my siblings and their families emailed to me.  

I did all the base work on this great design of card with the paper layers, adding the photos and the frames.  Then I had to work during the week so asked our daughter who had a day off if she would embellish the card.  I am so happy with what she did, she used embellishments I had not thought to use which I have had in my collection waiting for the right project. :-)  I was thinking more along the lines of creating flowers but I love all the bling and bubble quotes.

Blank Concertina Card from Blue Edge Crafts

Front - Wedding cake.  The 50 is an image I found on the net made up of drawings of roses.

Open the front flap to reveal photos of the wedding.

The first inside page - 'The Kiss'.

Quote top right - "You are so beautiful to me"

Quote bottom - "It is the things in COMMON that makes relationships ENJOYABLE. But it's the little differences the make them INTERESTING"

Good old rice thrown by loving brother. :-)

The parents.

Quote - " Love is….. the MASTER KEY who opens the gates of happiness.

(A side note - my parents parents both celebrated 50th anniverseries as well) 

The bridal party…..the bridesmaids are in royal blue satin and men in Army uniform.

Four achievements of Fifty Years.

A place for all of us to say a little something special tonight. 

Tonight we are helping our parents celebrate their 50 years together with an informal BBQ.  My brother has flown over from the US and sister up from Brisbane so that we can all be together.  Also attending will be a brother of Dad's and his family.  So a small and quiet affair just the way my parents would like.

Now the photos of the card I would have loved to have taken outside but it has been raining all week so this is the best I could do.  The rain has me a little concerned as my wonderful friend Helen took on the challenge of making the anniversary cake for my parents.  Helen tends to get flooded in where she lives when we have had rain like this which I did not think of till this morning.  So fingers crossed that we don't have to canoe the cake across. :-)

Have a good weekend everyone.

Dare to Get Dirty - Unstampabelles

This month I am trying a new angle at Unstampabelles….I am going to enter the latest challenge. :-)  The challenge is 'Dare to get Dirty'.  Not something I do a great deal when making cards but since Tracey's projects at the Craftmad get together last year I have enjoyed using a little more ink.  There is an added twist to this challenge which is to document your dirty adventure but I forgot to take photos so will have to do another project later in the month.

Again I have finally completed a kit that Kaye made for us at the Craftmad get together.  I loved putting all these pieces together.  The 'dirty' part….. I inked around all the edges of the tag, and the body form. I also inked the bobbin as that started as Kraft card, so I did get messy fingers with this one.  I then wrapped the thread around the bobbin and attached all the wonderful bits and bobs.

This is the card I made with the tag.  I found this very appropriate background paper that had squares asking for some cross stitches to be drawn on.

I would like to enter this into the following challenges:

Unstampabelles #32 - Dare to get Dirty

Make it Monday #177 - Always Anything Goes

Glitter n Sparkle #69 - Buttons

Window Card

Sometimes it takes me a little bit but I do get there.  This is a card I made from a card kit that Kaye made up for us at the Craftmad Get Together back in October 2013.  Yes, it only took four months but I did it.  :-)   I really enjoyed putting all the wonderful parts of this card together.  The window and window box are a wonderful die.

Have a great day.  Still raining here.

Buck-eye Beauty Quilt Block

We have started on our Quilt Block swaps over at Craftmad……and are always looking for more people to be part of these.  Our group is open and taking names for the February swap which is a Calico Puzzle Block….more details here.

Calico Puzzle

I really enjoyed getting behind the sewing machine again and the fact that I had enough fabrics in my collection to complete three Buck-eye Beauty Quilt Blocks.  This year we have decided to use Traditional Christmas Fabrics for all our blocks this year.

I have added a photo of each of the blocks as they vary slightly.  This block has the red square on the corner with christmas teddies.

In the centre of this block is a cream fabric with stars and green spotted fabric on the corner.

This one an extra bit of christmas tartan and green spotted fabric.

Thanks for dropping by.  It is wet, wet, wet here today.  We just got the mower back in the shed yesterday afternoon before it bucketed down and it has not stopped since.  At this moment in time it is very pleasant to hear the rain falling….by the end of the week I will probably be over it. :-)  Have a great day.

Adding Pinterest Button to Blog Photos

Hi I thought I would share this wonderful tutorial with everyone.  I found this easy to follow, well as easy as anything can be that deals with HTML. :-)

You will find the tutorial on the Digital K blog.

Rectangle Shaped Cards with Paper Tole Toppers

Suddenly it's Friday.  Where did the week go? Work, workmen, grocery shopping, washing, cleaning, and no crafts. Um something wrong there and shall rectify on the weekend. :-)

Last week I made a couple more cards using the fabulous embossed shaped cards and 3D Hearty Craft Toppers from Blue Edge Crafts.

On this card I added a topper from the Cats and Dogs pack, so cute.  I went through my stash of papers to find an appropriate paper to use as the background and finished with the birthday sticker and a little heart bling.

Showing the layers.

This guy came from the Teddy's Die Cut pack.  I added some stripes to continue the country feel of the image.

Some more layers.

Thats it for me this week.  Wishing you all a terrific weekend.  I hope to get a bit of crafting done this weekend.   Especially a project completed for my parents up and coming 50th anniversary.  See you all next week.

Male, Party, Celebrate

I missed a week creating a card to send to our son down at Uni.  Not that it really matters as I hadn't heard that he had received any of my other cards so sent a prompting text on the weekend.  Now he has received his cards and appreciated them.  He also commented that is mailbox was full…..funny thing that. :-)  Apparently, the people that used to live with him used to collect the mail regularly but since they have moved out I think he was thinking the mail would still appear like magic. :-)

So this weekend I decided to use a card pack that was given to me a while ago.  Challenged myself to only using what was in the pack to create the one card.

This is what the pack included one envelope, one card blank, gingham ribbon, all the die cut shapes and origami shirt plus a sheet of rub-ons.

I soon discovered I have left it a little long to use this pack as things were a little old…the rub-ons came apart and some of the sticky things were no longer sticky.

This is what I came up with.  Our son is in his last trimester of a Filming course and it is pretty full on and they have their graduation films due.  However, instead of doing a grad film, as our son enjoys editing, he has permission to work on the other grad films on his course as his grad assignment.  So he has eight films to work on.  When I was making this card I was thinking of him at the end of his course wanting to go out and celebrate that it was all completed.  I distressed the edge of the card and die cuts, placed the word 'Party' over a tie cut out.  So this is my result only using what came in the pack.

Before I sent the card, I decided some doodling around the edges was needed and a spray of my Silver Smooch.

Have a lovely day….it looks like being a wet one here.  There is a monsoon trough brewing out in the Coral Seas so the winds are up and the rain is coming down.  Which means finally normal weather for this time of year and our seasonal creek is flowing.

Craftmad Swap - Tic Tac Toe - Boys Card

This is the second card I made for my swap partner over at Craftmad (gallery photos here).  We had a Tic Tac Toe board this month and for this card I decided on Glitter, Die-cut and Digi image.  I know that my partner has a grandson so I thought a boys card.  I have a stash of digi images waiting to be coloured so went through those and found this dinosaur, sorry not sure where he came from so no name.  I coloured him with my Copic pens and really happy with the end results, especially the touches of green.  My first time touching my pens for about two months. eek!  Next I found papers etc, that went with the colouring of the dinosaur.  The die cut frame I had in my stash and is from a previous Craftmad swap and perfect colour to frame the dinosaur.  My touch of glitter are the little squares I punched out and attached top and bottom of the card.  I used silver SU glitter paper and coloured it with the same colour copic pens that I coloured the dinosaur with.  Finished with a small 'Happy Birthday' sticker on the frame edge.

Well have a wonderful Friday and I hope all your plans work out for the weekend.  We have a long weekend as it is Australia day on Sunday which means a public holiday on the Monday.  No special plans for us. :-)

Family Share - Artwork, Short Film and Fireworks

Thought I would share today some things my family are doing.  Our son will shortly be editing two short films.  One of which is called 'Treasure' which is currently looking for funding to get it off the ground.  You can find more information about the storyline here at Pozible.

I was going to share a lovely photo of a dragonfly that my husband took recently but I can't seem to find it.  So have opted for the photos of the fireworks on the Cairns Esplanade at midnight New Years. The photo above is looking across to the Esplanade which was a buzz of markets, music and people.

A slightly closer view.

The fireworks…..such a great display.  We have never been to this event before we normally stay home and quietly celebrate the year in.  It was a wonderful atmosphere so if the weather is as good in future we shall be doing it again.

I noticed that my copic pens went missing off my desk the night before last and yes I found them in my daughters room alongside this piece of artwork.  I just had to share as I like all the wonderful details in the books and the peoples clothing.  Even the background which is simply made up of triangles.  Her close friend is off to Uni in Sydney next week and this is something special for her.  

Well thats it for me today…thanks for visiting.  Time to get this family moving.  :-)