Last week in May and Last Week for Challenge#79 at Unstampabelles

Hello Peeps!

Less than a week to go in May - Wow! Nope, not even going to think about that.......

Unstampabelles has only five days to run on it's latest challenge

Challenge#79: 1, 2 and 3 items 

Twist - journal about it

Now, your 1, 2 and 3 can be 3 different items you made or perhaps you added 1, 2 and 3 different items to your craft piece or you used the numbers 1, 2 and 3 somewhere in your work or......

The TWIST is to journal about your journey whilst making the item in your blog 

- tell us all about it!

I made a card this time.

You can see it better here:

I used a piece of w/c paper and some Brusho's to create the background some time ago. It was well and truly dried. 

I used a card from a pack called "Reasons to be Joyful" by affimations

I cut it down to size and added a mount

Tucking a doily behind it - a new one from SU - it's pearly

I squeezed three spots of red Pearls onto the card and of course one splattered but the sentiment covered that - I have looked beyond it!

The close up gives greater details

One doily

Two birds 

Three drops of red pearls

Happy Crafting 

I am going to enter this one too at Southern Girls: Sparkle and Shine

My photo is of Coles Bay on the East Coast - now we have access to drones and helicopter imags we get to see a new perspective

The beautiful townships of Swanwick and Coles Bay, in the Freycinet National.Park, with the spectacular Hazards mountain ranges in the background.

www.instagram.com/ashwoehlerr

The Colour Purple

Isn't there a film by that name? Anyway, Hilde at Crafting with Dragonflies want us to get our purple on this fortnight for the new challenge so I had a go. I had been scouting through magazines looking at inspiration and saw a card called Galaxy made by Cristina Martinez Diez using blending ink on watercolour and flicking paint onto it to create a galaxy background.

I have just been watching the three night series here in Australia on the ABC called Star Gazing, showcasing the talents of Brian Cox and others and our beautiful night skies so I got inspired to create my own night sky!

In a Galaxy far, far away........

I used Tim Holtz inks on watercolour paper, and added a spray of water prior to smooching the ink, and again during the process. I dried it off and spayed it with TH White paint. 

I got a lovely depth that way - my nebula looks amazing

I used a piece of vellum and embossed using white EP onto it.

The sentiment comes from a new SU set called Petal Palette - it is a 2 box set and one is completely sentiments - so useful.

Cristina's card left it at the ink and sentiment but I have added three small star puffy stickers and it looks OK!

I will leave you with a photo of our night sky one day last week.....

An astonishing photo of the Lady Aurora and Milky Way arching perfectly over Cradle Mountain and Dove Lake thanks to Ben Maze.

www.instagram.com/benmazephoto
https://www.benmazefineart.com/

Hop on over to Crafting with Dragonflies and see what else is there to inspire!

I am going to enter this in the challenge over at Southern Girls : Sparkle and Shine

One, Two, Three - Challenge #79 at Unstampabelles

Hello Peeps - another Unstampabelles challenge is running for May and is now halfway through. You need to be in it to win it! I have some ideas for you but before then, look at this beautiful sunset!

A spectacular sunset over the Bay of Fires thanks to ‘The Nomad Logs’ who says:

One of the most spectacular sunsets we've seen. We spent hours there walking in the Bay of Fires and were treated to a hot firey sky to complement the red rocks.

www.instagram.com/thenomadlogs
https://thenomadlogs.com/

If that doesn't get creative juices flowing.......

What is the current challenge, I hear you ask?

1, 2 and 3 items 

Twist - journal about it

Now, your 1, 2 and 3 can be 3 different items you made or perhaps you added 1, 2 and 3 different items to your craft piece or you used the numbers 1, 2 and 3 somewhere in your work or......

The TWIST is to journal about your journey whilst making the item 

- tell us all about it!

Yes, there is a prize for this in a random number draw of entries that meet our criteria

This week I made some tags.......

You know I have a kitten called Weasley?

Well, he isn't spoiled at all.......

Life is obviously hard.....

commandeering Dad's chair to recover from playing too hard....even the toy is wrecked!!!

I have purchased a few toys at different times for him (although the pink teddy is a favorite)  and they came attached to big cardboard tags ready made!

Apart from the holes they were perfect to be repurposed....

So, my 1 is a CAT

My 2 are the two colours - blue and green  - used as background on the tags

My 3 - 3 tags of course!

Firstly - I painted several coats of heavy white gesso on all three tags and dried them - they got left with a textured look as the paint went on over a glossy surface. You could see the brushstrokes and in some cases the paint bubbled as I dried it.

I then used Dylusions paint on the top and bottom of each tag and dried them again

I stencilled some yellow paint and black ink onto them also to make them more interesting.

Then using Pinterest to get me going I began to create some scenes...

This tag was made using a piece of left over card like wood made with a texture paste and then inked. It was a thin strip left over and I trimmed it again and used the cut off bit to make a limb. I used various dies - rabbit, flowers and bird to build up a scene and a gold dragonfly to finish off!

The dies were cut into scrap card and the ribbon comes from my Mother's Day gift!

I hand wrote the sentiments on all three tags.

I also added added some black card to the back of each tag to cover up the commercial writing and give some space to write a message on the tag.

This one is my favorite I think

I used two left over sunflowers from Hilde's Birthday Bash here

I drew the leaves and stems and used my SU markers to colour them in

The sentiment was written out and then cut up and put onto the tag.

The bottom of the tag either has patterns stencilled onto it or tangled onto it.

The ribbon is some lace from SU

The centres of the sunflowers has been covered with sparkle....

The roundish tag was not as successful - it is supposed to be two flowers in a vase.....

again I used scrap papers to make the petals and the centre and the centre has been flooded with Crystal Effects - but it is a bit cold today and it didn't dry off as well before I added them.

Again the ribbon is the one on my Mother's Day present 

You can see near the ribbon where the paint bubbled

Well, there you have it - three tags!

I had fun making these and wish also to thank the people on Pinterest for their inspiration - you will know who you are....

A Second Week of Birthday Celebrations for Crafting with Dragonflies!

We just had to have another week to celebrate the milestone of 5 years for the Challenge Blog - Crafting with Dragonflies, run by our intrepid leader Hilde!

We have four fabulous sponsors for this bash!

That means Hilde is giving away some prizes this fortnight as well!

I have used two of the sponsors to create for this week's inspiration

One from DSD4Joy

.....isn't that image to die for.......

Just a touch of SU alcohol pens after I had printed off the image onto SU Whisper White

I used as a background another one of the papers from WeR3 (remember my printer was playing up and they are not the original colours. I set it working and then wandered off and didn't know it wasn't working properly until I returned - waste not, want not I say!)

My second card used a background dragonfly sheet from this 'error' - WeR3

It still looked good!

I used nearly all the dragonfly charms I have so will need to get some more soon!

Let's see what you can do for the challenge!

You can go 

HERE

to enter.

Happy 5th  Birthday to Crafting with Dragonflies!!!!!

Here is my usual photo of beautiful Tasmania as well

Magical autumn reflections from Port Huon, in southern Tassie, thanks to Tom Duncan.

www.instagram.com/tomduncan6294

Second Week Inspiration for Unstmpabelles

Hope you all had a great day!

I certainly did - even Weasley gave me a card and a bunch of roses!

Just a quick post to showcase the small box bag I made from scraps
for the current challenge over at Unstampabelles

Challenge#79: 1, 2 and 3 items 

Twist - journal about it

Now, your 1, 2 and 3 can be 3 different items you made or perhaps you added 1, 2 and 3 different items to your craft piece or you used the numbers 1, 2 and 3 somewhere in your work or......

The TWIST is to journal about your journey whilst making the item in your blog 

- tell us all about it!

So, my journalling of this is as follows:

1. I had some left over hearts on my desk so decided to use them
2. I found a quick and easy box/bag design in a magazine and used the instructions to create this little gift bag
3. I arranged my hearts on the front and used a sentiment from a freebie sheet in the same magazine - I die cut this using one of my SU dies with stitching on the edge - you can just see it in the photo
4. I added the sparkles to the embellishment and then tied it all up with string!

So, 1 gift bag

2 sparkles

3 hearts

How easy is that.

AND I used up scraps!

Let's see what you can do with 1 - 2 - 3!

Enter HERE

Happy 5th Birthday to Crafting with Dragonflies

#104 - 5th Birthday Bash - Week one

Happy 5th Birthday to Crafting with Dragonflies!!

We at Crafting with Dragonflies are celebrating our 5th Blog Anniversary. 

Before I begin to talk about the challenge, I was complaining about a lack of water in Autumn last week.....well, someone must have told the Rain Gods because we had a deluge over the last few days!

It was great to get the garden watered and to have our farmers get water on their pastures but it seems the greatest fury was reserved for the city of Hobart and its surrounds which was inundated with record water falls for May - the trouble was it all fell in a few hours!
Yes, we had floods!!!

This looks a peaceful scene - right?

It was quite peaceful on the evening of the 9th May

By midnight it was a mess - that gorgeous water was full of rubbish, dust and debris which had washed down off the street around the city and found the lowest spot at the bottom of the street there to the right - you can see car lights there reflected in the water.
The businesses around that area - and homes - were inundated with water and cars just floated down the street. Hotels were mopping out reception areas and dining rooms were flooded.

Not the one in the photo though - that was fine! Muirs is a little higher than the others.......and no-one was hurt. 

Greg Faull

May 9 at 5:20pm 

Tonight's beautiful sunset from the Hobart waterfront.

This is the morning of the 10th

The University campus at Sandy Bay got hit too - Science and Law the worst. The Law Library got several metres over the floor......

A student looking at books at the Uni washed from the Law Library

These last three photo's were on the blog Tasmania

We got a lot of water - about 180 mls - in about 2 hours here but apart from water coming down the chimney we were fine. The southerly winds accompanying the rain missed us as we have a big hill behind us that protects our bay from the southerlies.

Wesley was very interested in the goings on!!!

Now - back to the challenge!!

Obviously - it's our Birthday so the challenge is:

Make a Birthday Card!

Hilde arranged some sponsors  (4)  and some great prizes to give away

A big big thank you to all of them.

SAS4kids is one sponsor who have four of their team joining us this fortnight as well.

 

WeAre3 = $ 3.00 prize x 3

I used some  WeAre3 floral papers from here as my background but as my printer was playing up I got a very pink version of the paper. I decided to still use it in my card to show what you can do when things don't quite go right!

I started with a rose diecut and diecut it three times - once in dark pink, a light pink one  and once in green

I used the leaves from the green to fill in the green bits and filled in the smaller one with pink bits but I painted the inside of the biggest rose with a metallic paint - Starlight Pink Sunset. 

Some pearl drops and a sentiment - a mount in the same pink as the flowers and a commercial blank card completes the rest. It really does look very special irl although a bit washed out here. The background papers had blue and pale green as well as a pretty pink in them but the version I got still looks great - muted!

 

My second card for this challenge does not have any sponsor's bits - it contains a dragonfly and some sunflowers drawn by our own Hilde and used as a giveaway to Peeps back in the day when Crafting with Dragonflies was just starting its journey. I still have them so located my files and printed them off - that seemed to work OK - and then coloured them up using my Copic pens. I also added Wink of Stella to the dragonfly wings but its a bit hard to see that here. 

I used a scrap of DP floating in the scrap box and diecut some green leaves to go behind

The sentiment here (and the one before) comes from a new SU stamp set called Perennial Birthday. I can see this set will be very useful!!

Well, that seems to be all for this week - 

Just remember: only one entry per person and we have prizes this challenge

See you next week with some more inspiration for our Birthday Bash!!

One- Two - Three....Challenge #79 Unstampabelles

There is a new challenge running at Unstampabelles for May, started now!

It is called 

Challenge#79: 1, 2 and 3 items 

Twist - journal about it

There is a prize on offer for random number draw of entries who take the challenge (photo coming soon) and attempt the twist - so remember to blog about your item

The main rule is 

NO STAMPS

I did a bit of scrapping - yesterday we helped our eldest Granddaughter Charlotte and her lovely partner Ryan move into her own brand new, purpose built house. We are all proud of them because they are only in their early 20's and have purchased a block of land and had a home built on it for themselves all by themselves. 

It got me remembering her when she was a little tyke and I looked through the loose photo's I have of her and found one which included a photo of me as well - My God I look a lot younger there than I do now! It was about 23 years ago of course!

I used a kit from D-lish Scraps (May) as my starting point and just played.

My three were the three pearl hearts

My two were the two white pearls

And my one is the white sparkly butterfly

There is some texture paste (leaked a bit through the new stencil but I was working pretty quickly)

I also broke the wooden adore sentiment whilst painting it.

Just thought I would tell you that. 

I am going to enter this in the D'lish challenge: Flights of Fancy

This photo inspiration today is beautiful Recherche Bay, down south

I spent part of my honeymoon on a tiny boat there. 

We were the only two there for most of the time.

This is where the French explorers landed and if they had been a bit earlier we would have been speaking French not English! They stayed long enough to plant out and grow a vegetable garden here. The remains have been located. 

A stunning photo of Recherche Bay thanks to East Coast Photography.

This spectacular 142 hectare coastal property extends from the dramatic wild landscape of the Southport Lagoon Conservation Area, home to the critically endangered species, the swamp eyebright. This delicate flowering plant has only a single population of 50 individuals remaining on the planet.

The property provides habitat for several threatened bird species. A pair of white-bellied sea eagles - vulnerable to extinction in Tasmania - return to nest on the property year after year. Grey goshawks and masked owls, both endangered in Tasmania due to their declining populations, use the area for nesting, roosting and feeding.

Stands of mature Tasmanian blue gums, a species first discovered on this very site by the French explorer Lalbilladiere in 1792, provide foraging habitat for flocks of swift parrots, which are endangered at a national level due to habitat destruction.

Mother's Day - for Australia!

Elaine at Eclectic Ellapu has asked us to create around the theme of Mother's Day for May.

I am a step-mother

I am the foster mother of a fur baby

I am a step-grandmother

My mother died more than 30 years ago now.....

So my need for a Mother's Day card is limited.

I was given a card for my birthday a few years ago with this image

It reminded me of Mum then and so I cut it out and kept it.....

The other day I purchased a magazine that has as a freebie a journal

I knew I would use it so I put it to one side until today....

I didn't know how to decorate the cover but I knew that part of the journey would be to do that, so I just played around and when something I grabbed sang, I went with it. 

The DP I used  for the cover was covered with a lace image and I thought it would suit the age of the image so I laid it down onto the cover of the journal.

I added some lace and to cover up the tape, a strip of vintage ribbon.

I kept it simple - she was not one for furbelows. 

I stencilled onto the cover with some Sweet Poppy Pearlesant White Paste and a Memory Box Stencil

I dried it with the heat gun and stencilled Dream onto it with some TH Black ink.

I added 'journal' the same way

Then added an old fashioned flower group before attaching the image on a pink mount. 

Mum's colours

I shall enjoy using this to create ideas

She always wore an apron in the kitchen - she spent a lot of time there too.....

She was such a good cook.

She had a naughty sense of humour and saw no difference in anyone based on colour, creed or religion: people were people.

Vale Mum - Happy Mother's Day

It is her birthday on the 2nd May too

She would be 104.

You can enter your work HERE and have a month to add your contribution