How I watercolour...

I have had a few emails recently asking how I watercolour images... luckily for you, I have a tutorial! Click here to have a read.

Buttons Galore!

Introducing... JUGGLES! It's challenge time at the High Hopes Challenge Blog and this week it is Niki's turn and she would like us to go button crazy! I don't usually use buttons because I usually can't think of anything to do with them but this week I am really happy with how things turned out! So, if you want to join in, make sure you leave a comment on the HH Blog with a link to your card because each week a random person takes home some HH rubber from Tina... hop on over to see what is up for grabs this week!

No Pattern Paper

This is my card for this week's High Hopes Challenge... yeah... there is only one day left but I still made it... technically! I started this one last night and it was partly Matt's idea. He wanted me to do a card with a hole in the front with the picture inside. I got the porthole idea in my head really quickly and knew straight away I wanted to make it look like a pirate had nailed his map to the side of the ship. I couldn't possibly be more happy with how it turned out. I thought not using pattern paper would be hard seeing how much I rely on it now but instead it just came together easily. I cut rough strips of paper and inked the sides for the ship walls and used brads as nails on the map and some boards.

This is the inside of the card... oh... how cute is Burnaby Beluga! I didn't even know what a Beluga was until only a few days ago... I was playing Zoo Tycoon and adopted a couple of them. I gathered from the game that they are white though... that was a bit hard to do on paper so he is a little grey here!

I put the brads through the map and then bent the backs near the ends so they didn't sit flush with the paper. Matt picked up the card and thought I hadn't finished it properly until I told him the pirate couldn't nail it all the way though the wood or he would get leaks! Hey, I was going for the push pin look!

Look What I Found!

It is typical me to stop reading the magazine after I see my own cards in it. I get so excited and run off to take a picture before looking at the rest of the magazine. In this case, as usual, it's exactly what I did but for some reason I took a lot longer to come back and read the rest... my laziness resulted in a pleasant and exciting surpise... my sealife card was the preview photo for next month's magazine! I was flipping away looking at the pictures while I was talking to Matt and didn't expect in a million years that I would see my card in the back of the magazine too!

Spot's Bots!

They are published! YAY... I have kept this one a secret for ages... I have been dying to post my piccies of my little robots. I made these months and months ago for Cardmaking, Stamping & Papercraft... man was I excited too. This was my first commission project and it is for the Stampers Challenge that they feature every month. They pick some stampers, send a stamp set that we got to keep and we had to make two projects... I almost fell over when I got the email asking me to take part... it was such a privilege!

Here is Robot and Dog:



And here is Robot and Cat:

Sneak Peek

My blogging has gotten really slow latey hey! Well, I thought I would let you in on a little bit of what I have been doing. I haven't really been crafting too much but when I have, I have been working on a couple of cards for Cardmaking, Stamping & Papercraft magazine. They asked me to make a couple cards in certain themes and I finally finished them tonight!

Here are a couple sneak peeks. It's all I can show you and I am not sure which issue they will be assigned to but I'd say it would at least be a few months. I really hope they like them! This is the second time I have made cards for them and I find it slightly harder doing commission work because it is different to making cards for the sake of making them and then submitting them and being accepted/rejected. I am much harder on myself! I had such a great time and this time was certainly easier than the first lot! I really hope I get to make more!!

Wonderful Adventures

It's challenge time again and I am hosting it! I'm a bit late in posting it hey! Well, this week we are sponging. I went crazy sponging this week. I used my nestabilities to cut a big circle from a post-it note, stuck it on as the moon and then brayered the sky. I did a lighter blue around the moon itself and darker to the edges. Then I removed the post-it and replaced it with the negative so that it masked the blue sky and sponged the moon. After that I sponged the clouds using Michelle's tutorial. I have been meaning to try it for AGES because she is just the queen of clouds and they always look great. My biggest issue was drawing a cloud shape that I like!

Here is the inside with a daytime sky and some more clouds:

Remember, if you join in the challenge, leave a link on the High Hopes Blog and a random winner will receive a prize of First Ride and the Wonderful Adventures sentiment! Woohoo!

High Hopes New Release

WOOHOO! It seems like it has been a long time coming... for me anyway! The new release from High Hopes Rubber Stamps is out and they are online and ready for you to go crazy! There are so many to choose from so good luck choosing!

This release has a few different themes, mainly gorgeous, cute, funny, Farmyard stuff along with a few gorgeous (and big) bunnies, a cute chef called Luigi that has stolen a pizza my heart and a special mention to the mooody cow, Bossie.

So, hop on over to the High Hopes website to pick yourself up some new rubber and see the entire range that is Hot Off The Press today!

I made this card today so you can see some of these cute stamps in action! I used Farm Background, Maribelle Cow (hey, we used to have a cow called Clarabelle!) and Here a Moo.

The image ended up quite big in the end, the stamps are a really good size, some are huge... none of this tiny image in the centre business you're gettin' ya' dollars worth! After hours of watercolouring I put it all together, rubbed a bit of Super Tack glue on some linen thread and then curled it on the corners to add a bit of interest.

A Hoppy Easter Challenge

Hoppy Easter! It's challenge time... gee there is a lot going on today! This week Nikki would like us to make Easter cards... I have never made one before but I had such a great time with this one, I might make some more. I even used my Cuttlebug embossing folder and metallic rub-ons! I never use my embossing folders so this was a real change for me.... I actually used it without sitting for an hour trying to work out how to incorporate it on my card! Breakthough!

High Hopes Hullabaloo

What's a hullabaloo? It's the craziness the Divas are creating to celebrate the fantastic new release of High Hopes rubber stamps.... 'WHEN? WHEN?' you ask?? THIS SUNDAY!

Here is a sneek peek of one of the stamps:


If you want to see more... and who doesn't, hop around to some of the other High Hopes Diva's blogs and you will have some more sneak peeks of what Tina, Bethany and fabulous Crissy have to offer us this time! The Diva links are on my sidebar!

See you tomorrow for the BIG RELEASE! WOOHOO!

Guest Designer Call

Do you want to be a guest designer for High Hopes Rubber Stamps?? If you called out 'yes!', hop on over to the High Hopes Challenge Blog for more information on how you could become a High Hopes Diva!

A letter from Frank White

I am flat out this week so posts might be far and few between but I thought I would stop by quickly to pass on this letter from Frank White, aka Grandpa Frank... Tina's grandpa. You might remember this post for a call out for birthday cards for Frank to make this birthday a truly memorable one, well it worked!

Here is a personal thank you letter from Frank:

Dear Friends,

I am most grateful to all the people who took the time, effort, and expense of sending greetings for my 88th birthday. My son Frank initiated the idea abetted by my granddaughter Tina, that caused an avalanche of cards totaling over one hundred and fifty. I received 46 cards on one day alone!

Many were from relatives, but a great number were from people I have never met. Quite a number of different states were represented as well as many Canadian Provinces. Many customers of Tina's stamp and card business in other countries were nice enough to send greetings. Represented were Australia, Austria, Canada, England, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Scotland, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and the Union of South Africa. All these were hand crated and showed effort and originality.

My heartfelt thanks to all who sent these many greatly appreciated greetings. They made this a birthday to be well remembered.

Sincerely,
Frank White

More bubbles than troubles...

I made this card a few weeks ago for our lovely Diva Devine, Kimmie. It was her birthday yesterday!

This is Burt's Bath... isn't he funny as?! He puts a whole new meaning to 'bird bath'. Inside the card I stamped the sentiment, 'May your day be filled it more bubbles than troubles'.

I stuck with my tried and tested SU inks and a blender pen for watercolouring and an aqua painter and Twinkling H2O's to highlight.

In the highest room....

I worked on this pop-up card ALL weekend and it is by far my most complex card EVER. I worked it out and it took me about 18 hours all up! My sister, Kelly came over to stay on Saturday night so I had some company for some of it.

In the begining my 'Shrek' card wasn't so full on but as I went I added bits here and had more ideas there it evolved... in the beginning it wasn't even a Shrek card... that idea came half way through so I had to redo the knight with a green face and a red and purple dragon instead of green. Then in the end I ended up drawing a book for the front and everything (gee, that took a couple hours in itself!) I got that idea when I started watching Shrek last night and at the beginning he is reading the story of Princess Fiona being guarded by a dragon in the highest room of the tallest tower. The idea of the pop-up card came from Moonlight Inker. Sophia's card is just fantastic so you should pop on over and take a look... its worth it!

When the card is open, there is so much to look at and I am so pleased with how it turned out! It ended up better than I was expecting when it was just an idea in my head!

I looked everywhere for instructions on how to put the acetate so it folds down and sits flat when you close the card but no luck. The front stays proped open a bit but it doesn't really matter if you just sit it up like a normal card. It sits perfectly then!

Hoot

This is my one and only Rachelle Anne Miller stamp. It took almost two months to arrive from a pre-order... I had actually forgotten I had ordered it! It was worth the wait. Aren't these little owls just the sweetest?! It isn't a very big stamp but it still took me two hours to watercolour. I made this card for my sister for her birthday and chose these little guys because they are a stamp she wouldn't have seen yet. I subscribed her to my blog (hey Kel! hehe) so she sees pretty much everything I make whether she likes it or not so I wanted this to be a surprise.

Here is a close up pic... it is a pretty good photo but in real life I think they were still quite a bit more vibrant in colour than this. All thanks to the Twinkling H2O's.

Flower Power

This was my Christmas break project. I got the instructions from the Kaisercraft website and I had a great time folding these little flowers! It took me ALL day and took (from memory) six pieces of double sided, 12 x 12 pattern paper. I used Kaisercraft - Tudor. The flower ball is made from 12 origami flowers with 5 petals each so all up, I had to fold 60 flower petals! It was fun for the first hour! I'll admit, I am so happy with it though I would do it again too. I held it all together with little paperclips and bulldog clips while it dried then stuck a piece of painted dowel into the middle. The pot is just a $3 toothpaste cup from Big W and a bit of pretty ribbon!

Calendar

I had plans for the long weekend and I wanted to make five cards... it didn't happen! I made two cards but then I decided that it would probably be better to finish some of the projects I already had on the go. This is a Kaisercraft calendar that I started over the Christmas break. I stopped after I covered it because I wasn't too sure what to do next. It took me a day to cut all of the letters out using my Hippy Chick alpha through my Cuttlebug and ages to glue them all on (I glued pattern paper to a thin piece of chipboard first so that are a little raised).

I finished it yesterday by putting the huge amount of flowers on and I put some nice rubons on acetate and cut them out to stick out of the flowers too. I don't usually use so many flowers in one go but it sort of worked on this one. I am taking the calendar to work so I didn't want to personalise it too much. Oh, yeah, there was some sort of explosion of pearls too! I almost used two packets!

So here it is! Finally, the finished project... at least it is still in January!!

HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY!

We have a full day planned today, sitting around home listening to the JJJ Hottest 100 songs of 2008! They are down to 95 already so there will be a few good solid hours of noise coming from our house! Have a great day Aussies!!

C'mon Baby Light my Fire

Challenge time! YAY! This week the High Hopes Challenge is being hosted by Janette and she would like us to use hearts! This is my my card for the week. I used Matchmakin' Maynard and C'mon Baby. Maynard is such a CUTIE! Pop on over to the High Hopes Blog for more information and if you put a link to your challenge card you go into the draw to win Maynard for your own stampin' stash!

Thanks a Tonne

I made this card for our vet and the nurses after our cat, Kitty was injured a while back. She got in a fight and was scratched in the eye and needed a special drop in it HOURLY! All day, all waking hours, for two and a half weeks!

Luckily for us, we didn't have to do it if we slept through but if we woke up during the night we had to go catch her. The nurses had such a tough job, anytime they went near Kitty, she would growl or attack them. She bit Matt so badly he had to go to the doctor to make sure it wouldn't get infected. She wasn't too bad after that initial vet visit after Matt had to shake her off is hand to get her to let go but that was only for us that she was nice. She HATED the vet nurses to the point where every day when we picked her up we had to go out the back and put her in her cage for them. I can't really blame her, imaging being bashed up and trying to rest a sore body and having someone come and wake you up every hour and put a freezing cold drop in your eye for two and a half weeks! Just a day of that would wear me thin!

Her eye is all better now, her sight was only compromised just a little and you can see a cloudy patch on it but at the beginning half of her cornea had collapsed and they were worried she would lose the eye.

She was sick the other day and we took her to a new vet because we were worried they would scream and run out of the surgery when they saw us coming (they know her as 'The Kitty' now). She had to stay overnight for tests and the next day they called me to say she could come home, she needed some medicine but they weren't going to give it to her until we arrived because "she has turned into a lion.... and we can't catch her"! Oh, the joy of being a vet!