Water Gardens

I know I said see you on Monday but I wanted to share some photos of the Gardens we went to today.  They are about 20 km from home and feature water lillies.  The gardens are built in an old disused quarry.  We took a picnic lunch and spent the afternoon there.  It was actually closed but they have an honesty box to leave your entry fee and you can roam the gardens at your leisure. We were the only ones there for the most part.  The lillies are so beautiful and in about another 2 weeks will have finished flowering.  The photos show the lillies and a view from above the gardens taken beside the waterfall. 

Sorry Blog.....

Well what do you call a post after you have been absent for a little bit. 4 months to be exact.  Sometimes life gets very busy and one of the things that slips to the back of your mind is ones poor neglected blog.  Well just so it feels special I have given it a little bit of a revamp.  It is amazing how blogging has changed in this time I can no longer upload photos directly from my memory card.   Hmmmmm!!!

As it is supposedly summer down in this hemisphere we are on summer holidays.  The weather has been accomodating at times to beach going but more specifically to crafting.  It has been good to sit at my desk and play.

I have caught up on cards that were well overdue and also made a little pile of extras ready to go at a moments notice, not something I would usually do.  I had to rethink the whole card thing.  Postage is getting quite ridiculous and as I like to embellish my cards, I always go over the 10mm thickness required and end up having to post at parcel rates.  Soooooo clean  simple and flat was the brief.  Here is a little sample of what I came up with.

This one is simply made from scraps using squares and hearts.

Again using squares and butterflies this time, the background paper
 is from a My Minds Eye 6 x 6 paper pad .



This one is a little stack of parcels using squares and rectangles and the
 gorgeous paper from Prima Tea Thyme collection. 
Add some crochet cotton bows and.....

Now I am off to take a look at my friends blogs to see what creations they have been......well....creating.
I have promised myself I will blog once a week so on that note I shall see you next Monday.  Till Then xo

Consider yourself.......

Tonight was a great night.  Nick won himself three certificates and 2 trophies at the badminton prizegiving this evening.  Runnerup U13 Boy, Runnerup Interclub Team, and Runnerup in the mixed Doubles.  Fair chuffed he was and rightly so. He has had a great badminton year and has really improved this past 6 months. Very very proud of him.

Next installment of the dance scrapbook, I am on such a roll. This was taken at the 2011 Showcase. Abbeys Tap group danced to Consder Yourself from the musical Oliver. Never seen such a pretty bunch of urchins. The inspiration comes from Once Upon A Sketch.  This was the colour pallet you had to use which is perfect for this photos. I just happened to have this Authentique paper sitting around waiting to be used.  I made the rosette thingys from a page from an old music book.

A good friend has given me some great advice about photographing my layouts so I am very hopeful the next lot of photos will be much better and cropped. 




I journalled aroound the rosettes so it becomes part of the embellishments.

 

This is the sketch information and the rules you needed to follow, great way to run a challenge.  Pretty sure I ticked all the boxes.

Hands Up -Howdy Pardner

Well here I am continuing on my scrapbooking binge,  I have to say I am enjoying doing layouts again.  This one is for the Scrappin Patch September sketch challenge.  It always amazes me how people interpret a sketch.  It seems the rules can indeed be sketchy and when I look at some I wonder exactly which sketch it was they used.  Of course this is not a bad thing as there has to be some, or lots of,  creative licence envolved othewise they would all look exactly the same......and how boring would that be. Anyway this is the sketch.

And this is my interpretation.  Yes I am working on Abbeys dance album.  The troupe these are taken from was called Hands Up and they won every competition they enterered for the 2011 season.

The journalling is hidden in the pocket at the top right.

I have used a selection of October Afternoon papers, some from the Sasparilla collection some form Woodland Park and some from Farmhouse.  Embellished with a Websters flower and some burlap bows.

Christmas in the Park

Well as you know down here in the Southern Hemisphere we celebrate Christmas in the summer.  One of the big things locally is Christmas in the Park, it is a charity concert held in the Domain in Auckland City.  In 2011 my daughter was fortunate enough to be part of the entertainment.  It was a wonderful experience not only for her but the rest of the family.  The concert is also televised around NZ so it is quite a big thing.  As I am on a scrapbooking binge at the moment I pulled out the photos and made a couple of layouts. I am enjoying getting back into scrapbooking as I haven't done any in a while, so whilst looking for some inspiration I found a blog called Once upon a Sketch.  So this page is inspired by their August sketch.  I must say there are some really nice layouts on their blog......well worth a looksee.

My daughter is the taller of the two, the other beauty is her best dancing buddy.

The paper I used is from Websters Pages and the embellishments are a selection of Websters, Prima and Wild Orchid Crafts.  The journalling is computer generated as I am still not happy with my hand writing style, It seems to take over the page and I want my jouranlling to be a little more subtle.

Go Nicky boy Go

I have been trying to complete a scrapbooked album of a trip to Australia in 2009.  Every now and again I complete a page and I really only have a few photos left to go but find the inspiration has run a little dry.  Whilst I was cruising down the google highway the other day I came across a new challenge at the Scrappin Patch.  They are inticing you to use your stash to create a layout, every week for a month.  Well hey I thought that would probably almost finish the album. There is a sketch to follow and the only rule is you must use products purchased before 2012.........don't have any of those...... yeah right?  So here is a boy racer in the making.

I have now discovered that taking a photo of a full layout is actually not that easy and yet I see them on other blogs and they look great.  May have to investigate just how they do that, if anyone has any advice please feel free to share....

I used some "old" Websters Pages paper and made the rosette from scraps.  The Winner banner is also cut from Websters paper as are the little tickets.  I added some twine and there you have it.  Can't wait for next weeks sketch and another page completed.

Do you Believe in Fairies?

Well do you?  I always did as a child and I always believed my toys had parties at night.  A child with a vivid imagination indeed so vivid thats where my best friend was. It concerned my parents greatly I can tell you......  Anyway I had to cover a little box for a project some time ago and of course you can't just buy one little paiper mache box but had to buy 4.  So these have been sitting and winking at me for a while (theres that imagination again).  I decided to have a look at LOTV to see what new stamps were about and discovered they have a "anything but a card" challenge happening.  So enter a little box and a Fairy.

This is the top of the little box the flowers continue down the front as you see from the next photo although, darn it this photo is a little blurred.  Will have to fix it and reload later but you get the idea.

This next photo is the inside of the lid as I covered the inside.  we have Angel Week coming up at work and thought this would be nice filled with some special chocolates as one of the gifts. You get to spoil a person everyday for a week with little treats and you remain anonymous.  Its a lovely make you feel special week.

I am going to also enter this into the LOTV challenge.