Last Minute

Last night I was lying in bed all of a sudden realised that I'd forgotten to make an anniversary card for my friend Beth. I guess I got too caught up in making the Thank You cards. So, after taking the kids to school this morning, first thing on my list was make an anniversary card. For a last minute creation I'm quite pleased with it.



Materials used: PP KI Memories and Sassafraslass, Doodlebug paperfrills, bling KaiseKraft, heart brad Queen&Co., 'love' rub-on OneHeartOneMind, Circle rub-ons Creative Imaginations, staples and ribbon.

Thank You Cards

Yesterday our water was cut off for a little while, so instead of doing the washing and ironing I decided to be crafty. During the Paperific Expo last October I purchased a bare elements Cathy Caddy from Creative Imaginations. As I felt the need to get my tools organised, it was time to decorate it. I used my favourite papers from Amy Butler.



Here's what it looks like now. I'm going to leave the caddy on my scrap desk, which means I don't have to keep getting up to get another tool out of my cupboard behind me. I did put a few embellishments on there, but not too many as I wanted to keep it practical.


Materials used: K&Company Amy Butler PPs, Doodlebug Paperfrills, Heidi Swapp large flower, Prima Flowers, Maya Road Chipboard Scroll and bird, Ribbon various, Making Memories paint and Royal Coat Dimensional Magic, Bazill Brad.



And with a few leftover scraps I've created some thank you cards today that I need to write for the birthday presents Renee received last week.
Materials used: K&Company Amy Butler PPs, Fancy Pants Stamps & Pin, VersaColor Ink, Black Staz'On Ink, Ribbon, Circle Punch, Quickutz Scallop Nesting Die, Autumn Leaves Buttons.

Male Card

Next week is David's brother's birthday and I was very tempted to go and buy a card, as I totally lacked inspiration to design one. But all of a sudden last night I had an idea and created the card in 15 minutes. I know guys like joke cards, but hopefully he'll appreciate this one too.



Materials used:
Cardstock unknown
PPs Chatterbox
Circle stamp 7Gypsies
Ribbon unknown
Monogram BasicGrey
Buttons SEI & Autumn Leaves
Journaling stamp Autumn Leaves
Black ik Staz'On
Acrylic Paint Making Memories

The RAK winner of the Maya Road clear stamp set is Joke. Joke, please email your address I and I will send it off to you. Thanks for playing guys.

Celebrate Four

My last 'paper' LO I created more than a month ago. Since then I've only made cards and digi LOs. When I start a LO I always have an idea in my head, but nothing concrete. Firstly I look for papers that go well with my picture and than build from there. During the whole process of what to use, before I get the glue out, I ask myself all these questions. Does it need more or less? Shall I paint the chipboard or leave it bare? Do I put the picture straight or at an angle? The one thing I keep reminding myself of is to have negative space. But when's enough, enough. Most papers I used come fromt the October's Scarlet Lime kit. I subscribed to their kit for 3 months, but have decided not to extend it. I received my last kit for November last week.



Materials used:
Cardstock Bazzill Basics (not from kit)
Patterned Papers Making Memories (not from kit), American Crafts, Jenni Bowlin & Urban Lily.
Clear Stamp and chipboard scroll Fancy Pants (not from kit)
Alphabet stickers American Crafts (not from kit)
Fabric Brads Amy Butler (not from kit)
Journaling chipboard Autumn Leaves (not from kit)
White tag and ribbon from local newsagent
'celebrate' stamp Stampin'Up (not from kit)
Date stamp Heidi Swapp (not from kit)
White Making Memories paint (not from kit)
White Tulip puffy paint (not from kit)

4x4 (and mini RAK)

Today our little girl is 4 years old. Just one more year of having you home, before you go off to school too. Right now you are already quite Miss Smarty Pants as you are counting, writing your own name and telling the time. Just because you are so busy with numbers at the moment I've repeated 4 elements on the card 4 times.



Can you spot the 4 elements? Leave your guess in a comment. On Friday, I will ask Renee to pick a winner out of those who guessed right. That person will receive a mini Maya Road Postcard clear stamp set (sorry I haven't got a picture). Of course everyone is welcome to play, even if I don't know who you are or if you never left a comment or perhaps you are visiting my blog for the first time.

Have a fantastic Tuesday.

You

Today is the last day of our digital scrapbooking course with Jessica Sprague, and I must say that I'm pleased that I signed up for it. She's got an incredible amount of knowledge and with 300 others on the forum a lot of information gets shared about what's around. During the course we also received several discount vouchers to use at different digital scrapbooking sites. I did get a few kits and brushes and felt that in honour of the end of the course I should put them to practice.



Enjoy your Sunday.

Via Cologne and Paris

Via Cologne and Paris (via Keulen en Parijs) is a Dutch expression when something arrives at its destination taking the long way round. For those who'd know, I'd love to know whether there's and English equivalent for this (I could ask my DH, but he probably wouldn't know, and on top of that he's in the US at the moment). Anyway, I decided to resend my mum's gift and it got there in 6 days this time. In case you didn't see it yet in the 2Ps gallery, I'll show it to you now:











Did you recognise Ingrid's girls? I included all five grandchildren in the calendar and it worked out perfectly as they all appear on the month of their birthday and then once more on their own and one of the siblings together.

Materials used: Bazzill Cardstock, Basic Grey PPs, Heidi Swapp stamps and bling, Maya Road tin and chipboard swirl, Fontwerks stamp, Making Memories paint, brads, EK Success flower punch & corner rounder, Catslife Press stamp, Staz'On black ink, word for calendar days, Doodlebug paper frills.

As you can tell from the calendar it's Renee's birthday this month. My little girl will be turning 4 already. I made her birthday card this morning, but I'm not going to show you anything yet, since her birthday is on Tuesday which is only 5 sleeps away.

Have a great Friday and thanks for stopping by.

Inspiration

This morning I went into Camberwell to run some errands. In every country we've lived I always have a favourite store that you need to go into just to have a look. My favourite store in the US is Potterybarn (followed closely by Crate a & Barrel and Gap), my favourite store in the UK is Monsoon and my favourite store here in Australia is MiniMax. They've got gorgeous things. Today I found this very inspirational Christmas wrapping by Caroline Gardner:



In one of my next LOs I'm going to use the colour combination of this paper. I don't know if you can tell, but the paper has glitter on it too. I might even use the paper after I've decided what I'm going to wrap in it. I kindly asked some ribbon to go with it, that they use to wrap their presents in the store. They also had the most adorable decorations, glass baubles with felt dots and swirls in red and white and wooden reindeer ornaments. My favourite Christmas colours are red and white, but as we won't be home for Christmas, there's no need to buy and decorations this year.

This afternoon I created a card for Nancy's new challenge. I'm not thrilled with the result, but it's okay.



Materials used: Bazzil Cardstock, Basic Grey PPs, Fiskars star punch, white Tulip Puffy paint, Heidi Swapp bling centers, Fancy Pants pin, DMC wire thread, VersaMark Pinecone Ink, machine stitching, Sizzix 'noel' diecut.

Sneaks Revealed

Today is Ingrid's birthday. For those who didn't realise yet, Ingrid is my SIL. Happy, happy birthday girl! I hope you'll have a great day. I've already showed you a sneak peek of the card I made for her, but now I can show the rest.



Besides her card I also made a surprise LO for Ingrid, of which I showed you sneaks too. My brother was so kind to send me a picture, which hopefully meant that Ingrid had no idea I was making it. I know she's already received it in the post, but left it closed until today. 'Ingrid, in case you haven't opened it yet, don't look.'



The journaling is in Dutch which reads:
'Psst Fleur, Auntie Lisette is making a LO for mummy's birhtday, but don't tell her.'

Don't you think that this is just the perfect picture for it? By the way this gorgeous picture was taken by Florence Bavinck.

With the end of my digi course in sight I thought I should try and create a LO without just copying Jessica's steps. This is obviously fantastic, as I believe this is the best way to really master Photoshop. Today I made my own...



What do you think? I'm not too dissatisfied with it.

Have a great Wednesday everyone!

Play All Day

Well, we've already reached the last lesson of our digi course, but this lesson seriously rocked. Because of all the brushes I thought I might get into digi scrapping more, but somehow I don't think so. I will have a go at more hybrid scrapping. This is by far my favourite LO (even though all the design credits go to Jessica Sprague).



Tomorrow I will be revealing some of my sneaks from quite a while ago, so be sure to check back later.

By the way, it goes without saying I appreciate everyone that reads my blog and enjoy reading your comments. It's always nice to have an audience. Until tomorrow!

Actions

During the Now We're Rockin' digital course the topic currently is actions. A recorded series of steps to alter your image, being it more vivid colours or converting it to black & white. The options are countless. During the month of October I did a portrait photography class. Of course the main thing is the get the picture right in the first place, but actions can help out a lot. I took a picture Rebecca during our trip in Gippsland of that was slightly underexposed. The light in her eyes was amazing though. With my newly acquired 'portrait' knowledge and an action I changed it from this:

Original image:


to this:



The actions I used are from Indie Actions, but you can also find actions at Itty Bitty, EZ Actions, Kubota and Boutwell Studios. I did correct the exposure before I ran the actions. Besides cropping the picture the only other thing I did was sharpening, but you've even got actions for that too.

Little Artist

Yesterday we returned from a long weekend trip in Gippsland, where the only use of a computer was typing my blog entry ready for upload when I got back. There was no signal, so even our mobile phones didn't work. The weather was rather wet, but we still had a good time. Now it's back to normality and trying to catch up with my digi course. Lesson 3 was a two page LO. This is a first for me in digital terms, but I must say it was quite fun. I used pictures that were taken in May, which I've been wanting to scrap.



The font we used on the twill tape, called VT Portable Remington was downloaded from dafont.com, where you can find many free fonts.

Oh... and that little gift I made for my mum that I posted to her now four weeks ago surfaced, not in Holland, but back here in Australia. For whatever reason (no reason was given on the package) it was returned. At least it didn't get lost. I'm very hesitant to send it again, but I also don't want to publish it on my blog yet as she will be reading it (well, technically speakinig 'looking' as she doesn't speak English). So, for those of you that would like to know what it is (totally expecting her not to understand this and not bother to follow this link... I might be underestimating her abilities here), look here.