A Rose is a rose is a rose...

Jean at Just Scraps has a challenge #20 running called 'Round and Red'. Creative Card Crew have a Challenge called "Bloomin' Marvellous".I have a set of stamps from WMS called Roses in Bloom which I loved but had not got to ink up yet.

Serendipitous, I thought! Roses are red, and are flowers, and I have those new Copic pens in red as well.........here 'tis!:

The sentiment is from Florishes - Kids at Play stamp set. I used some SU card that had been through a Cuttlebug embossing folder, and a doily. I also added some gold Smooch to the centre of the roses.  I also layered up the main rose, and masked to include some leaves and another smaller rose and a bud.  So, Jean - they are round (sort of) and red (definitely) and I enjoyed the experiment! I then fussy cut one side of the leaves/flower.  The image was stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black ink on Ex-Press card.

Back to School for some

Here in Tasmania, students (and teachers) are currently in the second week of a two week break before the run up to Christmas, end of the school year, exams and final reports. The idea of "Back to School" is greeting with groans from all!   However, in the northern hemisphere, where the seasons are round-about and winter is summer, School does not run on a February  to December timetable, but on a September to July one.  So "Back to School" is the theme for Jean at Just Scraps this month.

Here is my entry into her Challenge #19!

Happy 'return to school' to all those who are doing so - may your year be full of excellence and fun!

As I had no suitable stamps, these images are digital one's from Colouring Page Tuesdays (very cute they are too!) and I printed them out and coloured them in using my Copic pens. I then fussy cut them and popped them up on the background papers.  This is from a freebie that was given with a Australian Scrapbooking magazine several years ago, but I thought the message was excellent! I used my Martha Stewart edge punch for the stars and some white scrap which had been through the Polka Dot embossing folder in the Cuttlebug. As someone called Claire says "Hope it tickles"!

The kitchen is progressing even as I speak - there are carpenters and plasterers working quietly there upstairs as I craft away in my little space and my husband is working in his workshop (making me a container for my SU ink pads, bless his cotton socks!).

Kitchen Reno's

Well, we are knee deep in kitchen renovations - the starting point is packing up what we have! WOW - don't we have a lot of junk! And glasses - where do they all come from? Anyway, now just waiting for the workmen to arrive on Monday to pull it all apart.  I will take some pikki's as we go along so you can see what is happening!

Challenges:  Just Scraps:  Fussy Cutting!
Birthday's still happen so birthday cards still have to be made for granddaughter's who turn seven - but very quickly! Here it is:

There are no stamps used - some stickers, some flowers from Petaloo (Celebrations), and one rub-on.  Some blue lace and a sheer ribbon bow, a pearl swirl, and lots of fussy cut faeries from the papers Alison Ellis's Flights of Fancy series. Then it was just all put together as you can see - very quickly! The photo's were taken at night so it was hard to get them in the right light and you cannot see the shine on the faeries or see them standing off the page, using dimentionals.

Christmas Cards - oh no, not again!

I promised myself that I would not start too soon on the Christmas Cards but then I decided that I would and so dug out the Christmas box and fossicked through all the bits and came up with this for the Annabelle Stamps Sketch Challenge #026.

No sentiment - just papers, a stamp that I then covered up with bling, some inked edges with SU Old Olive, and two lables 4 from Spellbinders. All the card is SU - Kiwi Kiss, and Chocolate Chip, while the DP is from Basic Grey Blitzen Collection.  I'm just starting off slowly.

I also decided to enter Just Scraps Challenge #15 Love is in the Air.  It is a wedding card.

                                              

Two circles cut from card that had been oversprayed with Tsukinek Stains and Moon Shadow Mists.  The wings and legs and faces and beaks and heart and sentinement are all freehand - the wings and beaks were cut out and attached, and the others drawn in. The circles are on dimentionals to lift them off the card - a commercial white blank card.

                                                        

You should be able to see some shimmer effect here - it is really shimmery and shiney on the bird bodies, but this photo doesn't do it justice. BestI could do however, it gets dark pretty early here at the moment!

Recycling of Wine Bottle Labels

Have you ever noticed the lovely labels on wine bottles?  Some of them are real works of art.  Thursday night we had dinner with friends at the local yacht club and shared a bottle or two of wine. Those who drank red drank a Shiraz Grenache from the Barossa (not me unfortunately, I love red wine but it does not like me). One of the girls peeled the label of a bottle and handed it to me and I then tried to peel another one off but not quite as successfully.  However, I then had to start up the mojo and try and come up with a card created from the label.  Here it is - plus a tag to go with it.  I will enter the tag in Just Scraps challenge for this week.  I used my cuttlebug and a variety of embossing folders before I decided to use the metal baroque swirls and the red bubbles. I also use a clip art image, changed slightly, for the inside of the card.  Some ribbons and a quote from a site on www printed up by the computer and hey presto!

The card that goes with it!

Inside the card.