My Grandparents LO

My final entry for the April round of Challenge Heaven. I had to make sure I got four entries to be elligible to win prizes. This one is for the colour challenge, it had to contain autum colours and rounded corners.

I found these images of my grandparents on a CD my dad sent me and just had to scrap them. It's a pity none of the images are dated. Papers are from Kaisercraft Empire collection, it's beautiful. Cardstock is actually white but I had to take the photo at night so the lighting was bad. I hand-made both the fabric/ribbon flowers.

March PAT ATCs

Back to ATC's again. My March Pick-A-Theme (PAT) cards are due soon, so that's what I created this weekend. It was hard to do actually, as I had my wisdom teeth removed on Saturday morning and I'd start to feel ill if I kept my head down for too long. Rather a mix of styles for this one, which I don't normally like to do but they just didn't all suit the same medium.

Card 97/365: Realistic Turtle

Card 98/365: Colourful Cat

Card 99/365: Happy Clown

Card 100/365: Giraffe

Laughing with Family LO

Yeap, it's another scrapbooking LO. I wanted to complete another one of the cybercrop challenges before the deadline. After the last few LO's I've uploaded showed me mucking around with my brother and sister I thought it only fair to explain where we learnt this behaviour. :)

For challenge #1 of the April Cyber Crop over at Challenge Heaven. The lady on the left is my mum, the others are her siblings. Trying to match the aqua in mum's shirt was a nightmare. Any blue paper made the shirt look green and any green paper made the shirt look blue.

Hen ATCs

Yes, I spent today creating ATCs rather than scrapbooking LO's! It was good to get back into the swing of painting and I'm REALLY happy with how these hens turned out.

Card 93/365: Hen 1

Card 94/365: Hen 2

Card 95/365: Hen 3

Oh, and I also created another ATC while playing around with all the scrapbooking. This one is similar to the Mermaid Portraits I did earlier. Twinkling H2O's, rubber stamps and gel pens again.

Card 96/365: Mother Nature

Celebrate LO

Okay, all you ATC watchers can breath a sign of relief, I think my mad craze of scrapbooking may be starting to wear thin. I'll probably do one more page to make sure I get 4 entries into the April Challenges at Challenge Heaven and qualify for the prizes but other than that I might be running out of inspiration.

Challenge Heaven is running a cybercrop this weekend with a number of games and challenges. Challenge number two required you to choose a layout in the Challenge Heaven gallery and scraplift it. I chose a stunning LO by Liz Ashman. I just love these photos of my brother and I. :)

Relax in the Pool LO

Yet another scrapbooking LO from me! Yeap, I tend to get fixated on a single hobby for a while. I'll be back to ATCs again soon I'm sure, mostly because I have some swap due dates coming up. For now, this LO is another one for Challenge Heaven. Word challenge this time: had to use 'relax' in the title and have paint effects.

Dino-Roar

Yeap, I've been scrapbooking again! I've been wanting to use these photos for so long but just couldn't find the right paper. As soon as I saw this Basic Grey range I knew they were perfect. My partner and I had recently moved to the Gold Coast and we took a day trip up to Brisbane. Their museum has a small outdoor area with three statues of dinosaurs in it. Sketch is from Inspired Blueprints and is for Challenge Heaven.

Pencil Eye ATC's

The winner of my blog giveaway requested an eye themed ATC as part of their prize. The card below is the one I created.

Card 91/ 365: Pencil Eye I

I also needed to create a card for the 100 post giveaway over at Project 365 and decided to go with the eye theme again. Tried it on a different paper this time, I think the shading is a bit smoother the second time round.

Card 92/365: Pencil Eye II

Go check out this link if you want a chance to win the above card and 20 other great ATCs!

More ATC's

Here is my King Charles II card to finish out the 8 cards needed for the February PAT swap. It's a good thing this host lives in Australia or I'd never make the deadline!

Card 88/365: King Charles II

I also made up two quickies just for an excuse to play with my Twinkling H2O's.

Cards 89 & 90/365: Moroccan Abstracts

I've fallen 10 cards behind now in Project 365! They're having a giveaway today to celebrate the 100th day of the Project. Head on over the check out the details.

Scrapbooking - Challenge Heaven LO: Ebony and Ivory

I have been feeling guilty lately over the fact I'm yet to finish my friend's engagement album. She returned from her honeymoon a few months ago, just to give you some idea of how far behind I'm running! Anyway, I managed to sit down yesterday and get another four pages done. I think the thing that's leaving me a bit unmotivated is I'm trying to use the same black and white colour scheme all the way though. I know the end result will be a more cohesive album that way but it gets a bit boring. So to reward myself I decided to attempt one of the challenges at a new website I found recently: Challenge Heaven.

Challenge Heaven lists 7 different challenges each month and you have to enter a minimum of 4 to be entered into the draw to win prizes. I'm not sure if I'll get to 4 in a month but I seem to be more productive when working to a challenge. I was originally planning on doing the Word challenge, which this month needs to contain the word relax and use paint effects. I couldn't find the photos I wanted though, so ended up doing the Ebony and Ivory challenge. Criteria for this one involved picking Black OR White with Lime Green and it had to have circles.

Lime green is not a colour I work with often! I know it's a faily simple design, but I wanted the focus to be on the photos. Plus, I just didn't have that many embellishments I could use in a lime colour scheme. Anyway, I'm thinking of maybe taking a break from Project 365 and concentrating on doing some other crafting things instead for a while so there may be more LO's in the future again.

While we're on the topic of scrapbooking, I just wanted to mention Bridge has a great giveaway running at the moment for some beautiful hand-made flowers. If you're into scrapping it's well worth checking out her blog as her designs are beautiful.

More Feb PAT ATCs

I was meant to do four more cards today to finish off the two groups I signed up for in the February Pick-A-Theme swap over at ATCsforAll.com. I only managed to get three done. The deadline is around the 14th and the host in in Australia, so as long as I finish the last card tomorrow I shouldn't have any trouble. I've left the hardest theme until last though: King Charles II.

Card 85/365: Gnome

Card 86/365: Realistic Bird (Cockatoo)

Card 87/ 365: Lyle (bearded lizard)

Pelican and Clouded Snow Leopard ATCs

A couple more ATC's for the February Pick-a-theme swap. I have to make eight cards in total by the end of the weekend. Luckily, a lot of theme are animal themes which I enjoy doing.

Card 83/ 365: Pelican

Card 84/365: Clouded Leopard

Naked Blue Man and an Elephant

I am SO behind in the Project 365 but they decided that April's Fools Day was going to have a theme of naked blue men. How could you pass up a theme like that? :)

Card 81/365: Naked Blue Man

I've managed to do another card for the most recent PAT swap I'm taking part in. That's 2 down, six to go with a rapidly approaching deadline. Good thing it's a long weekend!

Card 82/365: Elephant

Brisbane Craft Expo

I took the day off work last Friday and headed up to Brisbane for the Craft Expo. Started the day with two classes. The first tought me how to make a ruched flower, you can see the one I created in the photo below. It's was quite fun and I liked the fact the hand-stitching doesn't have to be too neat or even. I'm hoping to do some more of these to add to scrapbooking layouts. The second class was a charm bracelet class, as I love charm bracelets. The class was only $10 and this included the kit so I couldn't pass it up. Made myself a lovely purple bracelet and went back later to buy a light blue kit and a red kit as well. Haven't had a chance to make those up yet.

I also found a fantastic new chipboard company which has some fantastic designs. To be honest I wasn't really impressed with the scrapbooking stores at the expo, it was all a bit samey and overpriced. A lot of the other stores were interesting though, I always like looking at the beautiful lace varieties. They also have a quilt exhibition where each entry was given a length of the same fabric which they had to turn into an artwork. Some people have such vision and can really create something quite different to what the base fabric starts out as.