Linda Baldocks Give Away

Linda is giving away a piece of art. Go check it out. And good luck to all who leave her a comment.
I know I would love to win it. Its fabulous.

Beginnings of an Art Journal

Last week Bevlea, Lucy and I "The Art Queens" got together to start a Journal each. We have wanted to do journalling for quite a while and  so we decided to make our pages first. We all just slapped around, torn paper, paint, stamps, moon glows, stencils etc etc... to form the backgrounds. Bevlea is using an old "boring as she calls it" book. Lucy and I are making ours on chipboard and will bind them later. Bevlea is bringing along some wisdom words that her daughter Fiona gave her some time ago and we choose one each time to use on our page. We will decoreat the page to show the quote and at the end will have a lovely Inspiration Book. 

This is a sample of some of the pages that I have prepared, with torn scrapbook papers and dictionary pages etc. they still have to be stencilled, glitzed, painted etc etc.
We had a lovely interesting natter about all sorts of things and loads of laughs while we were together.................

Back to OZ and more

Well time flies when you are having fun, or are so busy because 2 children and the mum came back here with us to live with us. So we are a pretty busy household with a 22mth old and a 3yr old here to care for and teach Mum to be a Mum and house keeper etc.

I am glad to be back........................ Even though its winter I love this SUNBURN'T country. I found NZ green trees to be very bland and couldnt wait to get back to the differnt colors of the gum trees etc. Yeah I know Sad eh!!! But true.

Marions Beatle Swap has landed at my house and I want to thank from Left to Right

Marion Rock, Charlotte Fern and Katrin Pieschel

for the fabulous ATC's received. Thank you again to Marion for inviting me to join in again this year.



Freindly Plastic
On Saturday I had Jessie from New Zealand call in and have a play here and she introduced me to the delights of Freindly Plastic, whcih I must order from Petra in Christchurch NZ as I have no idea where to get it in Aussie.

More tomorrow night I hope see you there............

Family

Just a quick update to the previous post about family.
The Family Group Conference is cancelled and the children and the mother are coming to Australia to live with us. They come here on the 9th May. We are leaving early am , like in about 4 hours time for the airport and the flight to NZ. Will be good to catch up with some very good friends before we head up north to pick up our family.

I am feeling a bit better about it all, but disappointed that it came down to our Kerikeri family trying to keep them. I talked with the mother's sister and she is keen for them to be with us as is our son and the rest of the family who have been involved all along.
Thought I would celebrate by putting a picture of pansies here, my favourite flowers...............

Marions Beatle Swap

Every year Marion Bockleman from Germany hosts an ATC swap. She tells you the title and you send her three ATC's in that theme. And you get three back.
This year she chose either Beatles or Rolling Stones songs. Both my era OK.............. So I chose "Babys in Black" by the Beatles. The chorus goes.
Baby's in black, and I'm feeling blue. Tell me oh what can I do. She thinks of him so she dresses in Black.
Mine is a black scrapbook paper torn in half and placed over some stamped words on white. Then I made a seat of black with the words Baby's in Black on it and seated the little girl that I have from Lisas. I changed the color in Photoshop of the dress and boots from brown to black. Down the side I have melted save-a-stitch with some sparkle embossing powder.
I so enjoyed her swap last year and the ATC's that were returned were fabulous
I need to put a link on Marions blog now, so go and visit her and follow some links to some fabulous blogs

Art

Iv'e done this week includes the page for Paperarts Morphed Ancestors. Mine is "Great Uncle Arthur is very one eyed  about life. We used Jen Crossleys packs of chipboard frames.  I painted the background, used bubble wrap as a mask and the cog is a new stencil I have that Lucy got for me from http://stencilgirlproducts.blogspot.com/ I used a thin layer of texture paste and then went over it with distress ink and then  added Distress Crackle Paint "Rock Candy"  I then added  bit of green to natch his eyeball and then  the words, actually I also put a line of black texture paste around the oval frame too and rubbed it with golds rub-ons too. The man is part of something I found a few years ago, I added the eyeball in photoshop.

Also for Paperarts we did the Seven Deadly sins.. Mine was to do "Sloth". I used some scrapbook paper as the background, cut out a found image of the lady, mounted the 7 as we had to use the number of our Sin on the ATC, added some black texture paste and rubbed with gold rubons. Then the words "I am Sloth. I have little desire for activity. I will avoid anything that requires exertion"

See you again shortly....