Christmas Down Under

Hello!

Are you starting to feel festive yet?  I put my Christmas tree and decorations up yesterday so I hope it does the trick with me!  I'm hoping to get my cards finished off this week and get my last couple of presents so I can get them wrapped next weekend and then I can enjoy the holidays!  I wonder how well that plan will pan out!  I really feel like Christmas has snuck up on me this year!

But anyway, it's that time of the week again when there's a new challenge at Eclectic Ellapu and I'm so excited cos it's my turn to host!  So that means it's a Pink week!

The theme I have chosen (which will hopefully inspire some of you for those last minute Christmas makes) is...

Jolly & Bright!

Easy peasy!

I wanted to send a Christmas card all the way to the other side of the world to the lovely people who let us stay with them and made us feel so welcome when we were over earlier this year, so when I saw these images I knew they'd be perfect!
Here's my card:

 It's an Oz Claus (or Santa ClOz!)!  The images are "Aussie Santa" and "Aussie Chrissie Tree" by Make It Crafty (also printed onto Make It Crafty card!) and I coloured him with the following copics: Skin: E21,13,00,0000,R20. Vest/tinsel etc;R29,27,24. Shorts etc;YG17,13,11. Beard;C2,1. Hat/Tree;E49,39,37,35,33. Tinnies;BG49,45,18. Sand;Y19,15,11. Sky;B01,00,0000.

The papers are from the Christmas Carnival Collection by Kaiser Craft and the paper just behind the image was, erm, put on upside-down on purpose, erm, cos they are in Oz! lol! (Hopefully they'll not notice!)
The sentiment is by Circa design stamped with memento ink and gone over with Sakura clear stardust pen.  I thought the image looked like a holiday pic so I tried to make it like a polaroid picture.  I also used a Sakura clear glaze pen on Santa's sunglasses and the holly berries and the stardust pen on the tinsel.
The loopy trim is from the Ribbon Girl.

The inside has another Make It Crafty image on it.  I thought it would be a good idea to cut around some of the kangaroo but I'm not too fussed on it - I hadn't time to change it as it was being made on the last posting day for Oz!  The same papers are used as are on the front of the card and I added some faux stitching around the message panel.

I used the following copics to colour "Red Nose Roo": E39,37,35,33,R29,27,24,YG17,13,11.  Some clear stardust pen was used on their noses for a bit of extra sparkle.

So that's my card, I hope you find it both jolly and bright!  You'll find lot's more fantastic inspiration from the rest of the DT over on the Eclectic Ellapu blog - I'm looking forward to seeing what you create to join us for this week!

I'd like to enter my card in the following challenges:

Bearly Mine Challenges; Santa is on his way
CRAFT Challenge; Christmas
Dream Valley Challenges; Christmas
Fab n Funky Challenge; Not a traditional Christmas card
Fussy & Fancy; I love Christmas
Jacksons Digital Expressions; Inks & such
Joanna Sheen Challenge Blog; With love at Christmas
Love To Create Challenge Blog; Holiday cheer
One Stop Craft Challenge; Christmas friends
Paperplay Challenges; Christmas is coming
The Ribbon Girl Challenge; Hohoho
The Squirrel & The Fox; Summer or Winter (I think I've covered both!)
Top Tip Tuesday; Christmas
Whimsy Stamps Inspirations Challenges; Anything goes as long as it's festive

Thanks for looking!
 

It's All About The Journey

Good afternoon all!

What a miserable day it is!  I've had to put my winter coat on today and it's June!!  What happened to our summer?

Anyway, apologies for being such a bad blogger over the past few weeks - life just gets in the way sometimes, no other reason than that I'm afraid.  But hopefully I'll soon be back into the swing of things.

It's Friday again and this one is an Alphabet Challenge Blog Friday!  We didn't have a huge number of entries for our Ice Cream challenge, but I suppose with the change in the weather no-one felt like making ice-cream cards!
So we're up to J and my lovely teamie Caz chose the theme....

J for Journey!

Lots of directions to go with that one! (lol)

The direction I took was a little different from my normal one and I decided to alter a shoe box to turn it into a memory box of my trip to Australia.

Hard to photograph but here goes...

I used Powerpoint and picked out my favourite photo's from my trip and arranged them before printing them out and covering the box.

 I then picked out letters from my Tim Holtz grunge board letters (well, I couldn't have a "Journey" theme and not use some Tim Holtz stuff!!) and heat embossed them with gold embossing powder.  I was originally going to do them all different colours but then decided keeping them all gold would be nicer.  I attached them to the lid with some glue gel.

As the trip was sort of divided into four parts I used a side of the box for each part, so I have Perth part 1 on one side, Melbourne on another, Sydney on another and Perth part 2 on the last side.  The lid has a selection of photo's from the whole trip all together.  I then typed each location in a font and colour that I thought represented my feeling of being in each place (deep, I know!).

So now I have somewhere to put all my wee keepsakes and tickets and things.

I'm looking forward to seeing everyones take on this fortnight's challenge - so go and take a trip over to the Alphabet Challenge Blog and have a go!

Thanks for looking!
 

Tyred Out!

Evening all!

I just popped on to share a card I made before I went to Australia and forgot to show - today is an appropriate day to show it cos the Monaco Grand Prix was on today!

I was in Australia with my brother who celebrated his birthday while we were there and as we went to the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne I thought I'd make it to suit that.

Here's my card:

I tried to model it a current Formula One Pirelli tyre, so my large Go Kreate circle dies came in handy!

The image is from the Paper Shelter's Giraffe set and I coloured the car red as we are both Ferrari fans!  So the stripe on the tyre was made red to match (which incidently means that this would be a super-soft tyre! :P )
I coloured the image with the following Copics: R29,27,24, YR24,23,21, E39,37,35, 100, C9,7,5,3 And Prisma pencils: Crimson red, Dark brown, White and Black.

 (He's got some serious flat spots going on there!)

I hand drew and cut out the wording with a craft knife to follow the Pirelli logo - I was making this card when I should've been packing so if I had more time I might've got it a bit neater!
The "Colin" is die cut using the "Tina thinks you're cute" Sizzlets alphabet dies.  I finished off with some nail heads.

And as an added wee surprise, as we were Down Under, so as it would be the right way up at home, it did this!

I'd like to enter this in the following challenges:

Anything Goes Challenge Blog; Colour combo, black with one other
Beyond Grey Challenges; Shaped Birthday
Charisma Cardz Challenges; No flowers allowed
Crafty Catz Weekly Challenge; Cards for a man
Crafty Ribbons Challenge; Easel Card
Dream Valley Challenges; Humour
Little Claire's; Male Theme
One Stop Craft Challenge; For the boys
Oldie But a Goodie; Things with wings - the formula one car has 2 wings, I hope that still counts!  My old thing would be my Alphabet dies.
Totally Papercrafts; Animals

Thanks for looking!
 

That Was Bonza, Mate!

Evening all!

I thought I'd finish off my babbling about my trip to Australia with the card that I made as a thank-you to those who let us stay with them.  I made 3 cards similar to this altogether and one of them went to my mum and dad for helping us out a bit to get there.

Here's my card

I couldn't resist using this cute Magnolia stamp - "Koala Hug"!    I coloured it with my copics: Skin; E21,13,00,0000,R20.  Hair; E37,35,33.  Clothes; YG97,95,93,07,05,03.  Koala; W9,7,5,3,E43,41.  And a bit of black prima for the shading.

The paper is "Origins" paper pad from Basic Grey.  I used a Doo Hickey tag die and ribbon from my stash.  The sentiment is a Stampin' Up! stamp that I've had for ages!  I kept it simple cos time was against me! lol!

And the inside is even more simple, using another Doo Hickey die-cut.

I'd like to enter this in the following challenges:

CRAFT Challenge; Inspiration photo.  My inspiration came from the colours and that it was a holiday, I hope that counts!
Crafty Catz Challenge; Animals
Daring Cardmakers; Hat Boutique
Dream Valley Challenges; Earth Tones
Fairy Fun Fridays; Anything Goes
Joanna Sheen Challenge Blog; Someone Special
Paper Sundaes; Anything Goes
Pixie Dust Studio Challenge; Ribbon
Stamptacular Sunday Challenge; Freebie week
Whimsy Stamps Inspirations Challenge; Punches or die cuts

Thanks for looking!
 

Australia - Part 3

If you've stuck with me so far, well done and thanks!  If you want to start from the start, then go to Part 1.  This is the last of my photo's and in part 2 I left off that we were on our way back to Perth.

We had quite a long flight back to Perth first though, over 5 hours!

The night we arrived back in Perth we went for a meal - Here's Aishling, Leanne and me

And we celebrated Colin's birthday while we were there!

 We only had a couple of days in Perth before we were due to go home so we decided to go to the zoo and get some pictures of kangaroos, saying as we didn't get any of the one we saw in the wild in Melbourne.

And we saw lizardy things!

And snakey things - this one was trying to escape!

And more lizardy things!

And frogs

A rather large Crocodile

An Emu, it did try to attack us but I didn't see Rod Hull (lol, wee one for UK people there!)

And yay!  Some kangaroos!  They were a bit lazy though!

 

And would ye look at the pose of this boyo!  And there's a wee wallaby in the background.

This is a Tazmanian Devil.

And look at the cute Koala!  I loved them, they looked so cuddly and so stoned!  They were hard to get a good picture of though, away up in the trees, my camera kept focusing on the branches between us.  This is the best of a bad lot.

And here's another wee Wallaby

This fella put the cheeky in Cheeky Monkies!  He hung off the fence and drew a crowd and then pointed, em, himself towards said crowd and did a big pee!  Thankfully there was a fence for us to stand behind and he didn't quite reach us!

This lady had her wee baby orangutan with her but I couldn't get a decent picture of it.

And this chap has been wandering the earth for a very long time.

I love giraffes.  They're so elegant and pretty, I could look at them for hours!

These little chaps were very busy scurrying about the place.  And I didn't hear one Russian accent!

A happy Rhino is the best kind of Rhino!

As is a Sleepy Lion!  (Brave birdy!)

I thought he was scarey enough when he was asleep, then he opened his eyes!

This is a tree kangaroo.  Isn't it gorgeous!

And this is Perth from the zoo side of the water.  We got a boat back across.

And then we went to an interesting pub!

On our last night in Australia we went down to the beach to watch the sun set.  The view over the Indian Ocean was spectacular!

Here's the six of us all together on our last night.

So four of headed off home stopping off in Singapore.  We didn't get to feel the air in Singapore on our way over cos we never left the terminal but Colin spotted a roof-top bar, so we called in (or out) there on our way home.  It was night time but it was like walking into a sauna!  It was so hot and humid!  We had a couple of drinks and when we stood up, our clothes were sticking to us!
Don't let the jackets fool you, we had just left the air-conditioned terminal and the jackets soon came off!

Then we had a 12 hour flight to Frankfurt.  Which was bad enough.  But when we arrived in Frankfurt we were told that some flights were cancelled due to industrial action.  Yeah, almost all flights were cancelled, including ours!  So after a while trying to organise some way home we settled down at the bar for a 14 hour wait til our re-scheduled flight!

I'm glad it was the last flight that was affected like this and not one that we would've missed a connecting flight over, but we could've done without it.  46 hours after I left Leanne's house I went through my own front door.  I suppose that sort of explains the jet-lag!

So over 2 and a half weeks - 50 hours of which flying on 9 seperate flights (and not including time in the airports!) - train journeys, boats, buses and cars, I can say I had an absolutely fantastic time!  Even with the fact that everything was very expensive, the bars were so hard to get into (you had to bring your passport with you which was scanned and you were photographed and stamped after being scrutanised by security staff!) and the length of time getting there, I would go back in the morning!  The people were so friendly and you couldn't go into a shop without ending up chatting to the people in it!
And the weather wasn't bad either!

Thanks for sticking with me!