Keeping my fingers busy & Christmas stuff

While I am convalescing with my knee, its a bit hard to do a lot of paperarts/mixed media as I can't sit in my studio easily and I can't carry much out to the lounge by my chair.
So............. I have decided to do a bit of 'finishING" some UFOs.
Over 10 years ago I was right into making reproduction etc bears (handmade). I have several that were cut out and in various stages of being completed, when life changed a bit and then I got into scrapbooking etc, which led to the Scrapbook Shoppe etc and here I am today into mixed media in a huge way.  BUT!!!
Here are two that I have decided to try and get finished.

 The tan guy is one I bought at a market in Johannesburg in South Africa. The other is a bear being made from Hembold String Mohair.  So come back and visit and see the completed bears soon.

Hope everyone had a fantastic day today and didn't overindulge too much with all the scrumptious food etc that Christmas day always brings. We had a very quiet day, although the kids were quite hyper most of the day. Victoria woke really early so we kept her out in the lounge so Paul could get a little bit longer shuteye.
They had a good day and were thrilled with all their gifts. Lunch was very modest as I am not eating much at all at the moment (fingers crossed it leads to some lost weight)

Among a lot of gifts, Toria got a Barbie Laptop and is in love with it. She has not stopped playing it all day long, its in her bed with her at the moment too :-)

Paul got a swing bat set and had a ball playing outside with Daddy  (Papa) learning to hit the ball. He also got a few Transformers which he absolutely loves and showed everyone on Skype when we talked with family in NZ. 

So again from our house to yours. Hope you had a fabulous day and I wish you all the best for 2013.

See you back soon to check out some finished Bears, might even be able to finish a few mixed media things that are not too big and requiring of paint etc.

Only 5 more sleeps

from our house to yours.

Lots of Love

Glenda, Geoff, Paul and Toria (and Aroha in NZ)

Hospital makes you sleep

Toria taken when they came to visit me in Royal Melbourne Hospital. This was on the Wednesday after my op for my steampunk replaced knee.

Just too much for my little princess. She was missing her Mummy and had to have a cuddle and immediately fell asleep.
I am getting over it, pain is still very high, but it will be worth it in the long run as I can already feel the relief in my knee joint. The staples will be removed tomorrow so that will be interesting and maybe I will be able to bend it a bit easier to get the knee back properly.
The surgeon had referred me to two hospitals, The Maroondah has finally sent me an appointment for the first clinic appointment in June 2013. Thank your RMH for being so much on the ball with doing your operations.

Susan Tuttle

has a giveaway on her blog.
Go here to leave a comment and see if you can be the winner, but I am praying harder LOL.

Paperarts Dead of Night Swap

This is my reversed canvas for the Paperarts Dead of Night swap.

I hope whoever gets it likes it.............
I have finally finished my study for work. I haven't had the results yet, but am sure I have passed ok with a Diploma in Business Management (yep at my age LOL, fat lot of good it will do me now.) But now I will have a bit more time to play instead of stressing about having assignments to do..

Just spoke with my daughter a little while ago and they had quite a big jolt of an earthquake in Wanganui overnight, but not as large as what  British Columbia had earlier today, it was 7.7 magnitude and then followed by a 5.8 aftershock. So hope any of our blogland friends are all ok....Scary stuff...............

Anyway. More art to do so better get onto it. Cheers G.

Back From New Zealand

It seems a long time ago since I looked at my blog, but its not really. Such a lot went on in the 2 1/2 weeks we were away. Apart from not having internet the trip was actually quite stressful.
Most know we went over to a court case to gain custody of Aroha our 3rd grandchild.

This is Aroha, now 12 months old. She is gorgeous, had darker skin and hair than the other two had at that age. She is very active and it was so hard to get her to look ahead for any photos. We spent a day with her after the court case in which the judge in his mighty wisdom decided not to make any decision at that court case, hullo we had just gone over for that very reason, 3 solicitors, ourselves and our son and partner and the lady that has Aroha, all sitting there waiting for a decision. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr To cut a long story short, we get her only if the other lady is convicted and goes to prison early next year for the drugs case she is up on.

We did spend some time at a lake house in Rotorua which was very nice. This is Lake Tarawera which we only had to walk across the road to the jetty etc. Very quiet and peaceful. I went into Rotorua on the Friday night to spend the evening with Anne from NZ Stampers to have a play time. On the way back on the dark windy road I saw a Kiwi on the side of the road. They are not often seen anywhere, but as it was bushy and dark I guess it was out foraging for food. That was nice surprise.

 On our way back to Wanganui we called into Huka Falls to show the kids,This pic is taken on bridge as you go over the top of the river and walk round to the actual Falls. As you can see a lot of water rushes down there. I will upload from my phone camera when I can the actual falls as my camera battery decided to die at this point.

I took this pic from the plane on our way north to Auckland for our flight home to Melbourne. It is of Mt Ruapehu which is  2,797 m (9,177 ft). high. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and the mountains looked magnificent. We had driven past it on our way to and from Rotorua but both days were too overcast and cold to go in and have a play in the snow with the kids

Anyway its now back to work and all that goes with running a household etc. Finding some time to play a bit and de-stress :-)  Talk soon..............

Paperarts WTA

Each month Paperarts group has a Winner Take All challenge. Each month the lovely Kelsey from Perth sends the"loser" or the person that random.org puts last a lovely consolation prize. This month it was me.

here is the lovely ATC from Kelsey....

Hey, its not even Sunday and here I am again..............And nobody has  left me a comment, see I told you no one notices. Now I feel totally rejected "boo hoo"
Never mind. I am enjoying the blog anyway.

See you again soon.

More than a week

has gone by and I haven't posted like I said I would.. Oh well nobody notices anyway LOL...
A lot has happened since last post. That horrid flu going around Melbourne hit us here too. Tori and I were a bit unwell for a few days, but otherwise we are all great.
Had the "My Body Is A Cage"  ATC's arrive from Germany Marion's International swap..

I Love them all.

Left is from Libe?
Centre is from Sabine Busch
Right is from Birgit Macht
Mine is a post or two below here,

And another week goes by.............
I have been in some swaps for Papertraders a new group I have joined..
Here is the pic of a 1-4-1 swap and my partner is Beckie

It has a printed transparency in the centre and an image added.... I hope she likes it.

Also on Art Is an international swap we did 6 -4-5  to be sent to a co-ordinator for swapping
I am looking forward to the returns.  The theme was Wild, Weird and Wonderful. I hope it meets the brief.

In that time we celebrated Victoria's 4th birthday as well.

She had a ball and loved her "Pink Party"  Sorry its not very clear, but she is hard to photograph she wont stay still LOL, but she is a very happy little girl. This was the night of her birthday. The card was from our friend Eva and her grand-daughter Lilly. It is a gorgeous card. She loves it.
Oh well, see you next week we hope. Have a good one.

I was cruising the blogs

from  Collage Obsession  and saw again Itkupillis work for it. Look here.  I totally love it. Especially as Giraffes are my favourite animal.... I have lots of pictures of Giraffes from when I was in the Kruger National Park in South Africa. They are such graceful animals and it was such a sad sight to see one down on the ground with a pride of lion having their fill.

Kruger National Park near Shingwedzi (sp)

That's me in the mirror.. Just wish I had a better camera so i could have zoomed it closer.
I have decided to try and post something every week at least, on my blog even if its not really art related. So this is the first one.....

I went to a fundraising evening for the Empart Missions where they are raising funds for woman in India to be ale to do a sewing course and also have a machine that enables them to earn a living for their family.
We made a photo frame, fairly cute for me but was worth the cause. I like the paper though.

The scanner wouldn't pick it up properly for some reason.
Till next time...

MORE VINTAGE FAT BOOK PAGES

done by me so far. I am really loving this swap and I know we are all going to end up with fabulous Fat Books.................

This one is Gypsies of Romany for May. 

This one is Grandmas Attic for June.                              

Most of the images are from Deviant Scrap  for this page.

This one for July  is Journeys. Thanks to Eva for the tag :-)  

It says "Pioneer Pioneer the Journey Continues"

And Charlie is for Men for August 

And last for now is for September "Mechanical Steampunk". 

 I am not good at Steampunk LOL give me Zetti any day. But this is for the Vintage Fat Book pages and I am not allowed to do Zetti eh Lucy.....

If you made it to here PLEASE leave me a comment . I love getting comments positive or "constructive"   :-)

Marion Bockelmanns 2012 ATC project.

I have joined Marions 2012 ATC project again this year. This one is titled "My Body Is A Cage". I have visited a few sites of ladies who are in the swap who have sent theirs to Marion and the work is fantastic. I will look forward to my returns.

Here is mine............. Credits to. Tumble Fish Studio for Victorian cage, can't remember whose the head is, but sure it was one  I have purchased from Deviant Muse.

Canvas board done in DJ Pettit's Class

I have at long last finished the canvas board that I did in DJ Pettit's class at ART Queens retreat in April.
The class was fantastic and huge thank you to DJ, but also to Bevlea and Lucy for organising such a fantastic retreat again. (Can't link at the moment, my Internet not doing what it should tonight, so I will edit it in a few days)
Anyway........ I love owls and have done so since childhood.

Here is the result of my "Seeing Things Differently" painting.

DJ is such a patient lovely teacher, always willing to share her knowledge beyond what she needs to in a class. I know we all love her to bits and hope she comes back down-under again sometime. This was done in her Sunday class. I am not sure how I will frame this yet.

On Friday we did the "Be Squared" Book.
I am still working on that and hope to get it completed this Wednesday coming.  We made all the signatures and painted the covers and learnt some interesting techniques that are absolutely great and I will be using them time and time again.

Anne Squire from Rotorua NZ came over on the Thursday and stayed with me and we went to retreat expecting to have fun and friendship and we sure did.

Anne Squire and Glenda

The lovely DJ Pettit and Glenda

I will load more pics after I finish the book. See you then.

Long time since I have posted

and Wow I come here and blogger has changed everything around. I had to hunt around to find things. I'm too old for this much change LOL.
Anyway, last time I was here we had just got back from the Tocumwal weekend and Barb had that horrific accident. She is still in Melbourne in rehabilitation although is staying at her sisters place to be close to all that she needs. Talked to her a few days ago again and she sounds better than last week when I talked to her.

Anyway.. Artwise I have been making a little bit, not much. I am too tired at night to do much but fall asleep on the chair, but when I do have some time that I feel good I have done the 5x5 Vintage Fat Book pages up to June for Paperarts swap. I am really enjoying this swap as its only 3 pages, 2 to swap and one for myself. The rules are we have to use Sepia, Latte and one other color. Black & White are ok.
Here is the pics of the ones I have done so far.

For January: Title Doors and Windows...

By Lucy Leatham.

By Glenda

By Jane Wilding

Next for February is Women in Literature.

By Trizzy Crouch

By Alessandra

By Glenda

By Debbi Weiss

By Glenda

March is Music

By Bevlea

By Alessandra

 Oh well. that took me a week to get back to LOL. I will continue it in a few days time with the other ones I have done and a bit more. See you then.

Tocumwal

Last weekend I went with Bevlea and Lucy and met Barb T up at Tocumwal for a BFF weekend of arting, fun and friendship and also some photo opportunities for Bevlea. Check out the Rusty Ramblers for Bevleas run-down of our weekend.

We stayed at "Elizas on the Murray"
 Our room was the last one "number 9" 
We had a fabulous time,  We had dinner at the local "pub which we wont be recommending for any awards, the chicken snitzel was overcooked, chips weren't bad, the put off for me was the dogs roaming the eating area, one of them being quite a rabid looking thing that the pub people said was not theirs but was seen on a vehicle the next day with the other dogs they "did" own. Next night we ate in with Barb doing the honours.  Sunday night we had fush n chups which were ok, the Spring roll tho was the worst I have ever eaten, well didn't eat I threw it out. LOL food left a lot to be desired that was purchased external to what we took with us, and what we had at cafes in Tocumwal and Cobram for lunch .
We had a great time arting, eating, and giving each other heaps of jibes. Fitted in a 90mins massage in Cobram which was"nice".
I managed to cut out my birds for Paperarts swap get some catch up sleep and made 3 of the monthly Fat book pages. I also made my desk name plate that Lucy's wonderful husband cut out the houses and base for us and we bought our name letters ourselves. When Bevlea sends me some pics I will put the name plate here for you to see.

I AM SO EXCITED...

this time next week, The FFL or the Rusty Ramblers and two more will be well and truly relaxed on our weekend away on the NSW border with Vic...  Some laughs will have been had, some wine and food and a relaxing massage for some of us and some Arting on its way.. We are away from Friday am til Monday sometime
So watch this space for some updates on artwork. I know that Lucy's wonderful husband has made some more of the wooden houses for Barb and I to make ours too............ Yay!!! Check out Bevlea and Lucy's completed ones.

Sooooooooooo talk to you soon and hope to have lots of photos to put in here

Kelseys Book

Is available for purchase direct from her. You can email her to order yours. It's A4 sized with 40 techniques in it, colour pics on each technique page....all for $35. (Postage in a tuff bag within Australia is $4, 
I have bought one and its well worth it.