Thank You for the Design Team!

Over at Unstampabelles this month, we have been asking who are our Hero's and for me certainly the DT are all Hero's for agreeing to work with me and be on my team and put up with my idiosyncratic sense of humour and strange themes/twists for the monthly challenge.

Each month they rise to the challenge and produce work that is astounding and amazing and just so different to anything I have imagined when I put together the year of challenges in December last year. They let me play around and experiment and do things I always wanted to try and use the blog as an excuse for more shopping (who needs an excuse anyway, eh?) and to build up my immense collection of dies and growing collection of stencils......

So, to each and every one of you lovely ladies - thank you!

The theme for June has been to use mixed-media to create a project around who YOUR HERO may be in to write about it in your blog. 

This is the prize

I created a card

I started with a panel of SU Whisper White and a stencil and some new texture paste from Faber Castell called Glass Bead Glitter Gel. Yummy stuff!

I put the stencil from Memory Box of vine leaves on the card and smooched an amount of Gel over it, and then removed the stencil and dried it with the heat gun. 

So far, so good - I had seen somewhere a technique where the crafter had then replaced the stencil when dry, and stamped onto the stencil and paste, before removing the stencil again. I thought I would try a variation, and as it said I could use my Gelato's on the gel, I grabbed a red and green crayon and began to scribble through a flower stencil - it sort of looked OK but then I added some water - and the red went everywhere! I know, I said to myself (yes, talk to the expert) I will add some more crayon to disguise this! Then I had the idea of adding a flower - by this time the gelato's had created a messy mess - not me, you note! Oh No, I was only trying to improve things!

Eventually we ended up with green vines via a paint brush and gelato's; red gelatoed flowers; and some extra smallish white flowers to cover up most of the mess! The beads sparkled beautifully and the whole looked OK so in the end I stopped tying to make it better and just photographed it (for the second time). 

The sentiment is die cut from sparkly gold card. 

To my wonderful DT at Unstampabelles

You are all of you much better crafters than me and the sentiment is whole- heartedly felt!

Midway through June .......whoda thunk it!

For the challenge #47 going on over at Unstampabelles, it is midway! The theme is Who is Your Here and the idea is to create a multi-media item and blog about the hero worship behind it. We all have hero's - and it's important that we share the love. So why not go over and have a look at the challenge and some of the work the Design Team have put into it, and then have a go yourself. It can be an item of any kind, as long as it fits the definition of multi-media and has no stamps involved in it.

Photo of mountain ducks landing by Dan Fellow

We are in the middle of Dark Mofo here in Hobart, and you are likely to see many strange and wonderous things around after dark. The night ship has sounded its fog horn and shone its lights over the last few nights - I am waiting to hear it again tonight!

My DT piece for Unstampabelles is a journal page - my very first one - in visual art. I have a beautiful book to work in but its pristine pages have sat blank for a few months now. I read in a magazine that one way of getting over the fear of starting your journal was to work on pages and stick them in later - so I grabbed a bit of card and stated to play....

My Hero(s) are all the nurses out there.

Collage, ink, texture paste, stencils and writing/journalling plus embossing stars through stencils.

So - if I can do it you can too!

Of you go - to 

Unstampabelles

Challenge#47 at Unstampabelles - Final Week

Go Australia at the Eurovison contest!

By the time you read this of course it will all be over...........

Hope you voted for us!

Well, Unstampabelles are in the final week of their May Challenge. 

If you haven't see it yet this is what it is about.....

Family History - who is in your family tree? 

Make a scrap page or create a card or photo page/inside a frame about a family member who is in the past.We all have many blossoms in our family tree but we all have lots of nuts too! I am sure we can include our past fur babies too

The twist is to Make it Vintage!

The prize

I have continued to scrap and made another page for my MIL

They were married in 1943 - he was 7 years older and his second marriage and her first....he was knocked back by the army etc 'cause he had had tuberculosis pre-war and was in the manufacturing of clothes. Arthur was a Fire Warden then at night for Melbourne during the war - against enemy action.

Papers used are Co'ordinations Whitewash Collection base sheet, sanded and distressed; Kaiser - the Lake House papers; FWAB pearl flourish, SU ribbon (pink); bits from my stash.........

OK,the doily was my MIL's; the net and ribbons are to represent the veil and the colours of her outfit and bouquet (pink hyacinths); and his moustache of course.........; pearls around her neck; pink feathers on her hat; white and gold ribbons on her bouquet....... 

Arthur was a widower of just over 12 months and was still grieving when he married Marj - basically to get a housekeeper and step-mother for the three young children. He liked her and she loved him.....it took another 20 years together before he told her he loved her too..........

Some more information is tucked under the papers - it can just be pulled out to read.

I sponged on some ink to create splashes using a mask..........

So, over to Unstampabelles and look at their inspirational work, and then off quick and make something!

See you there!!!

Mid May Challenge #47 for Unstampabelles

I am still scrapping - it gets a bit compulsive after a while! 

So I made another page for my MIL for the Challenge #47 Vintage Family Tree at Unstampabelles. I got access to these photo's after her funeral, when we were able to get electonic copies of the old photo's from my SIL. They are in b & w but I made them sepia when I had these two printed out.

I stuck with the colour theme and used another page from the SU DSP, and of course it is distressed because of the Vintage TWIST.

Wasn't she a cute 2 year old! Photo taken about 1915....

I used ephemera and die cut out a clock face from some Prima recycled packaging.....

I did quite of lot of journalling here on little post cards, added some rubons and a wooden piece, and ribbon (this was wrapped around my Mother's Day present!) I had a lot more stuff out but decided less was more.....now I think maybe a flower would have been OK......but it is as it is at the moment!

The DT have come up with some amazing stuff for the mid post; why not go and see and then go and do and then go and enter HERE

May Challenge #47 for Unstampabelles - Second Week

Hello Peeps - did you have a great Mother's Day? I hope so! 

I want to share a photo I found on my FB this week (no, not the one above) - taken by Wild Ocean Tasmania - of a pod of dolphins off the coast!

Stunning what!

I have personally seen pods like this so know this is not that unusual but it always moves me.

On to the challenge over at Unstampabelles for May

The theme is Family History - who is in your family tree? 

Make a scrap page or create a card or photo page/inside a frame about a family member 

who is in the past. 

The TWIST is to make it VINTAGE

This is the prize being offered:

Last week I shared a scrap page about my Mother and this week it is a scrap page about my Mother-in-Law, another wonderful woman who we all loved dearly.

She died in May a few months short of her 100 years, in 2013

Hard to think she was born in Melbourne in 1913

I was informed by her son I had misspelled her name! It has been corrected to Marjorie......isn't that lace so pretty!

The paper is from Stampin' Up

You are now inspired to go off and create your own!

Yes, you are!!

You can enter it HERE at Unstampabelles!

I will enter this in the following competitions:

Avenue613: Anything Goes with a twist on celebration - Mother's Day!

One Stitch at a Time: Anything Goes with a special Lady

The Outlaw Challenge: Mother's Day

Inkspirational: Distressing, flowers and pearls (recipe)

May and Unstampabelles Challenge #47

 Hello Peeps! May has come upon us and we are enjoying a lovely autumnal few days before winter unleashes - it did rain last night, but today was a corker! I love autumnal days and we have had several stunners last week! Here is a shot early morning of a cray boat returning home on the river Derwent.

Photo by Greg Faull

Well, on to the main event - Unstampabelles next challenge #47 is all about 

Family - from the past

Who is in your family tree? Make a scrap page or create a card or photo page/inside a frame about a family member who is in the past.

and the TWIST is to make it vintage!

The prize being offered is this!

I have not scrapped for such a long time and was determined to do so for this project. Cards just seem to takeover don't they! Anyway, I have a photo of my Mother in my craft room, taken when she was in her mid 20's I think, before she and Dad met, and I see it every day. I often talk to it as well and I know I smile at it when passing! Yesterday I took it down and at first tried to get the back off the frame but it looked like it was going to be difficult so I just photographed the photo with my camera! I went and had printed another photo of the photo - does that make sense? - after I cropped out the frame! As the original was in sepia, it worked well for the vintage idea. Mum would have had a birthday on the 2nd May - she would have been 99....................

I used wood, paint and ink, hesian and ribbon and lace, and buttons and words and stickers  and journalled until my fingers were brown and sticky!

I had grabbed a sheet of Co-ordinations which had been embossed, and began to smooch around some TH Picket Fence ink, and then some Tea Dye and Antique Linen, and  then employed a sanding block to make it look a bit old and tired.....

I added bits and pieces where I thought they would look balanced - the chair is because she always had a favourite chair to sit on and we were not allowed to sit there even if she was not there - "that's Mum's chair! Get out!"

I used a sheet of Meg's Garden The Romantic Garden paper, and grunged it up a bit

It it hard to imagine she has been gone nearly 27 years now - seems like yesterday......

I tucked a journalling card under the photo - if you want to know what is on it you have to pull it out to read, There is a strip of music there too - she used to sing to us when we were little.

I wanted it to b a little quiet and yet to celebrate her - at this stage of her life she was single, working as the Manageress of a shop in the city in Melbourne, and living with her parents.  Both her younger sisters were married before her, and her brother too.  She met Dad at Easter when she was 34 and they were engaged within 4 days of meeting! They separated then - she going home to Melbourne and Dad staying here in Tasmania to look after his three children, and for work. They corresponded by letter and he flew to Melbourne after Christmas and they were married on the 29th December, 1948, returning to Tasmania within days to live. They lived with his mother to start with, and the children, and then moved to a farm after a couple of years. That's when I was born!

So, enough on my family - what about yours?

If you go to Unstampabelles, you can see what the other DT members have come up with and check out their blogs. Then lets see what you can create for this challenge - you have until the end of May to enter.

I will enter the following challenges:
Scrapper's Delights: Anything Goes
Inkspirational: Space
DLART: Mother's Day