February Craftmad Card Swap - create a background

Time to catch up on some cards I have made for the Craftmad Swaps.  I really enjoyed getting messy for these cards.  This card evolved from the Bee image which I had coloured about a year ago.  To create the background I started with gloss card then added drips of the two Copic ink refills that I have until they covered the gloss card stock.  I then dug out some bubble wrap and inked it up and stamped it on to the yellow background, finished with a spritz of gold ink which you can't really see in the photo.  Found a strip on yellow vellum to put behind the image so that I didn't lose sight of all the background.

This card I used three stampin up coloured ink pads and inked up the end of a pen then proceeded to stamp dots on the card stock.  I machine stitched around the edge and die cut a flower and leaf from matching coloured card stock.

A closer view of my inked up pen.

Thanks for passing on by.

Royal Caribbean Cruise - Radiance of the Seas - New Zealand Pt1

We have just returned from a fantastic cruise of New Zealand.  Both my husband and I have been to New Zealand a number of times and love the place although it has been a long time in between visits when we sat a worked it all out.  Approx 20 years for both of us. :-0  We splurged a lot and booked a suite which was very comfortable although I think a balcony cabin will suffice in future.  This is our view of Sydney Harbour from our room.  We booked this cruise mid 2016 and so the weekend before the cruise and Cyclone Debbie pops up we were constantly watching the weather.  Thankfully for us we managed to stay one step in front of her.  Debbie didn't hit Cairns but she cause lots of damage in the Whitsundays with her winds and then continued down the coast with flooding, she then travelled all the way to New Zealand and caused flooding in places we had just seen the day before.  As it was the plane flight to Sydney to catch the cruise we had to fly out west to fly around her.

This was the weather and view for two sea days.

Spoilt with flash chocolates.

View of the Atrium from our floor level.

Looking back up from floor of Atrium

First stop was Bay of Islands we pulled into Waitangi and tendered to Piahia.  We then caught a ferry over to Russell which was New Zealand's first capital.  This is the bay in Russell……I think I could happily retire here.

This is a little coffee shop that is attached to the oldest printery of New Zealand.  We did a tour of the printery but the photos are still on my husbands camera.  All photos I am sharing I took on our tablet…..so lucky you don't have to sit through the other hundreds of photos. :-)

How lucky was I, my husband did't agree.  First port of call and find a craft market.  Lovely works inside.

Our view for lunch…..again, I could retire here.

Just love this sign with the succulents and rusted iron.

How amazing is this, all the cushions were crossed stitch with a different picture on each.  All pews in the church had them.

Christ Church the oldest church in New Zealand.

Thanks for visiting.  I have decided to break down the photos into a couple of posts as I wanted to share lots. :-)  So more to come tomorrow.

Happy Easter and a quick trip to Karumba

Happy Easter everyone, I hope the day goes as you plan.  A nice quiet day at home for myself and husband as we returned earlier this week from a two week cruise of New Zealand.  I will share photos soon.  Yesterday, I returned from a two day trip to Karumba in the of Gulf Carpentaria.  My little brother drove all the way and we spread Dad's ashes at a lovely little weir just north of Normanton.  Dad was a sales rep at one stage and used to travel out there frequently, we also visited on a few family camping trips too.  My brother now does trips up this way often so he can give Dad a wave as he passes on by.

I just love this scenery as to me this is what Australia is although I have never lived in such an area.

This is an 8 hour trip Gordonvale to Karumba and these days it bitumen all the way.  There is about 100km left of this single lane strip. 

There were lilies everywhere as well as bird life which was too hard to capture in a photo while driving. We saw loads of wildlife while driving to and from and of course when I got the camera out it all disappeared.  Snakes, hawks, wedge tail eagle, pee wees, brolgas, spoon bill herons, willy wagtails, galahs, corella's, jabirus, ground parrots, wallabies and to top it off a turtle crossing the road. :-)

Dads final resting place.

Karumba Sunset

Norman River at Karumba

Sympathy Card

Sadly, I had to make this sympathy card for a friend who lost her husband after his long fight with cancer. He will be missed by a lot of people serving many years as a firefighter then training fellow firefighters.  We met through the Craftmad's annual get together, he was chief photo taker, Kaye's right hand man for organising and helped in anyway he could.  He put up with a bunch of Craft Mad ladies for a week at his house once a year and always had a cheeky glint in his eye.

Goodbye Ron.

This is a lovely mosaic that Kaye made with over 20,000 mosaic beads click here for more info.

Adele, Brisbane, Townsville - that's where I have been

Our lives have been full of travel and events lately, it was really nice to spend last weekend at home and enjoy the quietness and catch up on housework.  Yes, I know it's sad but I do like to be organised and my highlight last weekend was reaching the end of the ironing pile.  :-) Two weekends ago we were lucky enough to have tickets to see Adele sing in Brisbane.  A brilliant concert, Adele has an amazing voice but the best bit is she is just as real as everyone in the crowd.  I really did enjoy the way that she chatted with the crowd even if she said it was to settle her nerves.

This is Adele on zoom…..yep we were up in the bleachers.

No zoom.  Row SS not many rows behind us but we had cover when it rained and felt the slight breeze when it came through.

This was the start of the night as the crowds filed in.

We spent the day before the concert with our daughter and her friend and found this little amphitheatre on Southbank with a couple singing.  A nice relaxed affair.

We visited GOMA (Gallery of Modern Arts) which I love visiting as there are so many clever minds and some of the displays are very craft orientated.  This is an actual display with a big sign saying 'Please don't jump on this display' and a security guard to ensure the sign is read.  I can tell you when I visited at the start of the year and it was school holidays that security guard was earning their pay.  How can kids not jump on these when they are allowed to sit on them? :-)

The weekend before our visit to Brisbane we visited Townsville and I did an early morning walk with our sons girlfriend.  This is the view from the top looking back out to sea.

We were there to help celebrate our sons 23rd birthday.  We were busy while he was at work and this was waiting for him on his return home.

I will be back again soon with a couple of cards and more travel photos.

Happy 80th Mum :-)

Hi everyone, thanks for passing by.  Mum celebrated her 80th birthday with family with a very casual meal of pizza and laughs.  Followed by a cheesecake birthday cake.  Mum's favourite colour is green so that is where this card started.  I have used Stampin Up Regal colours and added some gold foil to the mix with the die cut flowers. 

Inside I finally got to try out an 'Inside Four Step Card'.  This was fun, a little tricky cutting out the papers to go along the side of the steps but a bit of tracing paper helped me there.  The paper purple and pink paper I have had in my stash forever, one sheet from somewhere.  It's one of those pieces of papers that is just too pretty to cut up for any old card, so an eightieth card and for my Mum it was a perfect time to put it to use.  The letters and numbers are die cut from gold foil.

I found this photo of Mum at 9 1/2 dressed as a fairy and was going to use it on the party invitations but that didn't happen.  I think it is so cute I have to share.  This is Mum last night with her birthday cake.  This is taken under the house of where I grew up. :-)  The house is a Queenslander which is raised on those metal poles helps the house be cooler in the tropics.

I will try later today to put a post up of our other activities that have been keeping me away from blogland yet again.   Bye for now.

Happy Birthday to a very dear Friend

My first time making a pop up slider card.  Again, a surprisingly easy interactive card and worth a go.  I am sure I will do more of these over time.  I used Beate Johns's tutorial here.  I was lucky enough that another wonderful friend Ruth let me have a play with her new Stampin Up Succulents framelits, she even had all the right colour inks there for me.  So spent a night of inking up all the petals and I really like the effect.  

I found some Kaiser Craft paper in my stash that I think teamed well with the front of the card for the tag.

The only thing that bothered me with the succulents was finishing off the centre.  One succulent I have a glossy dot the other is a screwed up piece of matching card stock.

Thanks for passing on by. :-)

Craftmad Finish A Card Swap

Hi everyone, hope life is treating you all well.  'Tis good this end, as you may have noticed from my lack of posts and visiting I am back at work.  Busy but fun, interesting.  We finally have a wet season, missed out last year, so dealing with all the side effects from that.  Grass and weeds that grow overnight.  Worms that seek refuge on our verandah and get stuck there, I mean hundreds, it just makes me wonder how many are actually wiggling around in the ground.  Our dog snacks on them every time he is outside.

Now on to the card.  We have started a new swap over at Craftmad.  One of the ladies had a number of unfinished cards which she has sent out to us and we are finishing them off.  The card above is what I received. Pinterest album here for Craftmad Finish a Card Swap.

I added a Blue Edge die cut owl which is layered. Finished with my wonderful new label die Craft Concepts - Harry.  Sentiment computer generated. 

The worms and our dog showing how's yummy he finds them.

Did you know………Pinterest?

I discovered yesterday that when I have been pinning my cards to my Pinterest albums they just link to the entire blog.  So when a person clicks on the link in Pinterest they are sent to my blog and then have to scroll to find the card.  If the everyone is like me, I can't be bothered and will go back to Pinterest to find a similar card with a direct link to the card.

What I have been doing is the day the my card is posted I hover on the card until the Pinterest save button comes up and save it via that.  Purple arrow.

What I should be doing and will be doing from now on is actually clicking on the post title (pink arrow) so that post is all I see on my screen then click on the Pinterest save button as then it saves to that post only.

I am now going through my boards and seeing where the link takes me if it is just to my blog I find the post I want and right click on the post title (pink arrow) and copy link then go back to my Pinterest board and edit the website on the saved card with the copied link.  

With any changes I do to Pinterest I find that I have to log off the internet and then when I go back online and visit Pinterest the changes are done.

Hope this helps someone else. Have a good day.

Craftmad December 2016 Sketch Challenge

This is me catching up on the Craftmad sketch challenges for 2016.  I have decided to work backwards.  This sketch was for December.

My take on the sketch, I ended up turning the topper sideways as it was to large for the card the other way round.  I plan on giving this to a male friend for his birthday, so that is where the colour combo came from.  I found the die cut stars/flowers in my stash and went from there finding papers to add to it.  The panel behind the stars is a piece of copper coloured embossed foil.  The background paper is Graphic 45.  Finished with the lovely glossy gel dots.  Not sure if I will add a sentiment or not, I will wait till the day I mail it.

Take care and hope it is a terrific day for you.