Christmas cheer

So Book week! Was soo much fun! I was sick in bed for the days before but I was not going to miss out. I spent too much time in making it! lol

I will completely say I was VERY warm that day!

So that is why I have been MIA with sickness!

It's been soooo cold I needed some warm thoughts! Well, for Aussie peeps Christmas is warm.   Work school, Mum's taxi is off and running again.

 I had a chance to play with an older My Favourite Things set. Called Santa's Elves.
Check it out here. It is very cute. I've been wanting, I think it is called, Bad Elves and there is another called Good Elves/Elf. But I could never find it here in Australia last year.

As usually Copics were my colouring choice. I'm nothing but dependable! ha ha

I started colouring this for The 30 Day colouring challenge, of course I didn't get around to finishing it! Story of my life! Too many U.F.O's ha ha.

I had a play with the texture on the tree.

 Copics Used:

Skin: E04, E11, E00, E000

Reds: R39, R29, R35

Browns: E30, E33, E35, E37

Background tint: BG000

White shadow: C1, C3, C5

Gold: YR23, Y17, Y13

Tree: YG67, YG63, YG25

Other tree: G07, G05, G03

Teal: BG09, BG07, BG05, BG01

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I do hope you have enjoyed my card. Thank you for stopping by.

Natalie

BLOG HOP

I am super super excited to be involved in my first ever blog hop... Well Encouragement Hop.

Three awesome ladies and come together to organize a hop with a difference. You could be involved through YouTube or a blog post or even sending a card into Courtney. Find Courtney can be found here.
Mary can be found here. Third awesome person is Jen from Scrapping Of Creations.

The idea was to help people be involved in a Hop that may not usually be able to be involved in and most importantly encourage each other too by visiting and seeing each others wonderful creations.



For my Card I used an Australian company called Uniquely Creative. The name of the set is 'Dreams r 4 chasing'.

 

I love this set. It is soo cute and I will be doing more with it!

 

I stamped out the dog and grass. I masked the dog so I could do the background using the MFT cloud stencil and Stormy Sky Distress Oxide Ink, When I did the sky, I didn't want patches of white. It was abit too strong of a contrast, so I went over the whole sky again with the Stormy Sky. I masked off the ground in the process to do the grass. I didn't think about the ink clouding up the black ink of my stamped grass. Brain fart moment! lol So to fix that I went over it with a pen. 

It can be difficult to get a masked outline close so any little white patches were colored using a Copic marker that matched the stormy sky. I did the same for the ground, which was sponged with Peeled Paint and Mowed Lawn. For the sky's 'oop's' I used B93 or 91 and the ground was a mix of YG45, 17, 06 and G14.

Copics I used were:

E37, 35, 33, 31

R17

C9,07, 05, 03

When I did the tongue and inside of the mouth I used C3 (I think) to go over the tongue to dull it down. So you can use your grays to tone things down! I wanted to leave small strokes to give texture to the fur. You have to make sure they are only small otherwise it just doesn't work. I have found.

Thank you for stopping by. Please subscribe to my newsletter and head on over to Jamie from Not to Shabby to to see her awesome design. I love her work. Can't wait to see what she has done!

Crazy People Do Crazy Things

Crazy People Do Crazy Things. Ask me how I know this!

One of my jobs ( I have 3! Other... crazy... thing!) is at a school working with a child using Auslan to help him learn. It is awesome! But as a part of that they decide to do activities to promote, I suppose moral and engagement with the students.

Book week is coming up.... Do I need to say anything more??

The staff book is 'Harry Potter', pretty cool really. Previous years there was 'Where's Wally?' and  last year was 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory'. For that one all the aides that were working that day came as Golden Tickets!

Harry Potter..... we are owls!

So today I have a non papercraft thing to show you. I made myself into a owl.

I had some material and some felt in my stash.

I made myself a little template to cut out the ‘feathers’

This was just the beginning! I got about 4 out of each piece of felt. I soon realised... I needed more felt!

 

I roughly cut a square of material and folded it diagonally and cut a hole for the head. Which... I cut too big!! That worked out well in the end as during the time trying to fix it I made myself some detail for my owl's chest. It worked out well really.

Using my sewing machine I pinned then sowed the feathers on in a row. Towards the end I had to hand sew the feathers as I made 'sleeves' so I didn't want to sow these closed!

I cut abit off the bottom at the front and sowed it on like a hood. This I will pin onto the hood of my jumper on the day.

After the event I will post a photo of the finished look. Hopefully with the rest of the dress ups!

Thanks for stopping by. Take Care

Angelic Thank you

So, How is the school holidays going for those of you lucky enough to have them. I think most of Australian states are now on holidays and of course lots of others are on Summer holidays across the world.

Here, in Melbourne it is mighty cold. Where I am we don't get snow but we have just had an Arctic blast come thru with rain and cold cold temperatures. One year I want a white Christmas. Once, would probably be enough... I'm a warm weather girl.

Today's card was me thinking of warmer spring weather. She is an old image from a now gone company in the USA, I believe.

Don't to crook at me if I'm wrong.

Friends had contacts years ago and we got our hands on them. Apparently, we weren't suppose to... oh well!

The 30day coloring challenge is still going for a few more days. I coloured this image for that a few days ago.

Copics Used:

BG01, 05, 07, 09

Skin E000, 00, 11, RV10

V17, 15, 12, 01

E39, 37, 35, 33

I found a sketch (I need to figure out how to add these pictures to my blog, one day hee hee) in a book I had.

 

It is full of good ideas, which of course are great when you are stuck for ideas. 

I decided to have her like she was siting on the edge of something. I had to trim a little bit off the sides as the image I had didn't quite go the length of the card base.

I used a piece of High Heather cardstock from Stampin Up and black embossed a Thank you. I used abit of Nuvo crystal drops in Morning Dew for some accents and popped my little girl up with form dots for dimension to a fairly plain and simple card!

That is all today. Thank you for stopping by to check out my little blog.

Feel free to leave a comment.

Brighten your day

Today's card is bright enough to brighten anyone's day and this cold Melbourne Winter.

I have been super busy colds have done the rounds (twice), a friend was in hospital so I have had her daughter (my niece- you know those children of old old school friends haha) and some of those times I had my other niece who is a similar age so they are happy to play together which leaves Aunty Nat to get things done!

It's a culture shock when you have near teenage/ teenagers then you have a 5 yr old and 7 yr old. Mostly the energy levels of the 5 yr old is the scary part! Love them both dearly and I wouldn't change a thing.  Yesterday I did have a big sleep in!! lol Sorry I'm off topic.... :)

I recently bought some alcohol inks from Riot Arts and Craft when it was half price! (They currently have another special at 50% until the 14th July 2019) The colours are beautiful.

I used Paper Mills Citrus and Mandarin to make the background. I waited 2 minutes and applied the foil over the background and gave it a good rub. 2 minutes seem to be the sweet zone for adding foil. Too soon you destroy the alcohol background and have to reapply and too late ... nothing happens. It can be abit hit and miss to start off with but keep trying, it proves some stunning results!

The photos really don't show off the gold foil. Because you have a narrow window to apply the foil, I did that first then using the new Paper rose Distressed Mesh stencil. I applied a small amount of blending solution thru the stencils to remove some of the alcohol ink.

The flowers are one of my childhood favorites! My Grandmother always had a Frangipani tree in her front yard. To me they are always white and yellow. One day I might go outside my box and colour one another colour but for the time being I can't bring myself to colour it another colour.

Unfortunately they are an old Stamp It stamp that I can't get rid of! Stamp It has been gone for a few years now. I originally coloured 5 of them so there will be another card as 5 just didn't fit.  

Copics I used were: 

Y15, 11, 08, 06

C2 

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Well, that is it for this week. I have more family arriving Tuesday so abit more fun is to come.

Thanks for stopping by.

Best Kind of Friend

Busy, busy, busy. Things are crazy town. School holidays have started which signals the start of sickies!

Today, my non niece, niece (you know a friend that you have known since childhood daughter, one of those) arrived for a visit while her mum isn’t well and she will stay for a couple of days! It’s been a while since I have had a 5yr old in the house! Oh my gosh, their energy is scary. You forget what they are like plus, I suppose you are older and don’t have the same level of energy either lol Tuesday another full niece arrives to save me and keep the other company. Second one is (I’m going to get in soo much trouble if I stuff this....) 7 nearly 8 but half of my own kids are off sooo... wish me luck! Lol

Recently while I was away I played with Alcohol inks and the pearls.

I think it was the last 30 day colouring challenge I coloured this little man and he has been sitting in my desk since. He was coloured with Prismacolor pencils. The background is some of the pearl alcohol inks with some foiling. I think I waited abit too long to add the foiling. There is a narrow window to apply it. Seems to be around the 2 minute mark if wait time before adding the foiling. 2 minutes seen to be the sweet zone!

You only get to see a little bit of foil in this one. There will be more later when you can see I found the zone! Lol

Well, short and sweet today as I coloured this before I started to wrote everything down, regarding colouring etc.

Next week I have another alcohol background using the Riot Art alcohol inks. In Australia, it can be hard to get alcohol inks as they get stopped in customs and businesses get charged like $45 a shipment as it is ‘alcohol’ on top of all other taxes.

 Riot Art is a business who was selling them for half price so I grabbed some and they are pretty. Lovely colours and a great price!

So look forward to that!

See you next week!

Ballarina Dancing

Hellooo again! 

I am soo exhausted after my Glamping. Soo much fun. This was suppose to go up a while ago but I clearly dropped the ball. i thought I had scheduled it up but.... fail!

 I'm back from both of my weekends away.  Next week I will have some pics of my adventures.

Today's card

Tim Holtz has come out with this awesome embossing folder. 3D folders are soo beautiful and you find them more and more. Quite a few companies are bring them out.

I sponged a little bit of brown ink, not that it needed help to bring out the image.

Using a sketch I found I made a clean and simple card.

Copics Used

Hair E33, 35, 37

Skin E53, 51, 50

Dress R00, 02, 05

Green Trim YG95, 67, G99