A couple of swaps.

I have made these items for a swap on paperarts
The "Ravens" was about Edgar Allen Poe, the background painted black and then put Jo Sonjas crackle then painted cream and it didnt work boohoo..........

So next was cover the lot with credit card technique and black and silver paint and spritz with a little water and then wipe some off...... Ok, then onto adding images etc........ I hope the recipients will like it........

Also for the same group was a microscope slide pendant. I had done some soldering at Evas a few months ago and we did microscope slides. So I did similar this time and made two. Now which one will I send eh Barb

anyway I enjoyed making them and had also shown HRH very quickly how do do it too.

I am also starting a swap for an NZ group ATC Taranaki, we are doing half masks.
I will take photos as I go, bit hard to scan masks. This first one is Shades of the Peacock or Cirque Reinvente. So stay tuned for further developments

Sunday night

Well less than a week has passed and here is a new post. My my.........Yesterday Eliza came for a visit and we played all day. Well she showed me how to do a journal in fabric etc and I did the work sort of........ While she played with my blog backgrounds. I fell in love soempics I found so we put this new background and the header on my blog. I love it, but might get a bit sick of the brightness of it. Who knows, so check back and see occasionally.
So........we started off by masking some watercolor paper with gel medium and then leaving it to dry. Then came some fun. Sewing which I have not done since leaving NZ. I will do a series of uploads of pics to show you the stages of the journal.

these are the covers for the book. I think that the signature covers may hang out a bit much but I will see when I put it together. I need to go find some upholstery type scraps somehwere and some other bits. I have heaps in NZ but Eliza shared hers with me for this journal.
Here is some of the signatures and the covers.............













We started the day about 10ish. At lunch time, Geoff called us to come and get a cuppa and he had made us yummy bacon and cheese scones for lunch. He's a good man.
Well off he went to do the job he had to for work and we continued to play, no scones for afternoon tea, just a drink and on we went playing and sewing and talking. Geoff came home and he watched TV we thought, but just as I started to show Eliza how to solder microscope slides he called us to come for dinner, hey Eliza was going home LOL, but he had cooked a stew of beef and veges for us. What a man......... and hes all mine .....So, now....... I need to continue the process of finishing the journal by making the signature pages and then putting it all together with a book-binding technique. I did a course for two years in NZ with Yoka Van Dyke in Wanganui. She is a very capable and accomplished Bookbinding expert and taught at the Wanganui Arts College.
Hey Yoka, thanks for the patient teaching. Wish I could do more with you. One day!!

So as I do more to it I will load the pics for all to view.

I went and bought a Scrapbook Creations magazine today. Ahhhhhhhhhh you all say, but nope inside was a lovely canvas done by none other than the lovely Kelsey , a canvas about her grandparents wedding. Well done Kelsey, its fantastic and love the texture paste use..... Was it black LOL.............. I am going to do a bit of scrapbooking this year as I have loads of photos that my poor kids would have no idea who, what where etc if I should conk out of this world LOL...........

See you all in a few days.

2 Months have gone by

since I last posted here. What did happen to my new years resolution to blog at least weekly and to do some challenges. Well the year has bought some bad health issues for me, but not life threatening. I'm OK, just extrmely tired and combine that with working full time and I dont seem to find a lot of time for any art work or blogging.

In March I attended CSR and had a ball. I was so tired (part of my not being well) that weekend I dont know how I managed to do anything. Hey HRH next year will be a different story, you won't be up by yourself at 3am LOL, you can keep your bottle to yourself though, I stick to my EB tea............. I did have a fantastic time and attended Bernie Berlins class Saturday, DJ Pettit on Sunday and did face painting which I found very daunting but DJ is an awesome tutor.
Here is my face I did.

Then Monday I did Stephanie Lee's Elements Handbook, made with plaster gauze and the cover was soldered over rose brass. ohhhhhhhhh that was scary and it took me forever along with a few wonderful helpful ladies to get my "pro-torch" working. It just did not want to work, so I got way behind and didnt finsih it totally, and its still not done. I will put a picture in here when I have finished it. Now thats a promise.
The day after the retreat weekend our daughter Tanya returned home to NZ, she had been with us since the day after Victoria's Black Saturday.
Then Easter arrived and Geoff's sister and a friend came for a few days. Loved having them all, then it was count down to our visit home for family and to do a conference for work.

We went over on 9th May and returned here on 23rd. We enjoyed catching up with family, grandchildren who are so adorable and friends etc. Time was too short.

Anyway............I will be back in the ncest day or so to add more retreat pics and also some art work etc.
Cheers

My First Blog Award

I was awarded a few days ago by my lovely Wagga friend Barb a Friendship award.
Apparently I have to pass it on and am supposed to award this onto 5 other deserving people,so I shall do my best to do so, but note that all I have certainly classed as friends someone beat me to it, not that the following are second best I might add :-)

For those of you that receive the award,these are the guidelines that came with the badge:

"These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these kind writers."

The following ladies are friends, mostly new from from the retreat, all talented artists..all ladies that I count myself lucky to have come across on my road of life....

I present this award to you lovely people.

Margaret Weiss
Liz Mackie
Dawn Thomas
Keron Lee
Kirsty Campion

It was lovely to meet you all at the retreat and hope we meet again at 2010's

Altered Jigsaw piece

My goodness me..........
A whole month has passed since I posted anything.
I had an awesome time at the retreat. I will post pics etc soon. Been busy workwise etc too since then. hence the no posts for a while.
But, tonight I made an Altered Jigsaw piece challenged from 2cre8art, a challenge from Bevlea. Gosh its a bit dark, bad scanning on my part but I will scan it again, just need to get it loaded by tonight LOL, so look back some time for the impoved version.

The piece was a childs jigsaw cardboard, I have painted it with Lumieres Halo Blue Gold and Burgundy along with a little amount of Guatemalan Green and Autumn Skies Polished Pigments, allowed it to dry and then coated with Dimensional magic. I then put a metal corner on it, put some silver glass beads and then wrapped some wire and threaded it with beads and a nice black & silver button. Placed a Faith bar on it and added some more beads as a dangly. Wallah, al la Bevleas instructions a nice jigsaw pin........
Talk more soon

Ohh la la and wow wow wow...

I received this gorgeous piece of art work from the very talented Linda Baldock . Linda made it for me for a small favour I did for her. The artwork more than covers what I did :-)
Here is what she made for me. Lucky lucky me...
The wings are made from Fusible Fibre, I must give it a try, I have heaps of FF that Linda inspired me to buy and as usual its not had much use. LOL, but!!!! now I can see a great use for it.

We have our daughter Tanya here with us at the moment, that is really great, shes a bit concerned about the fires around us, but is coping ok. We went for a drive to look at a property in Healesville on Sunday with the people we work with and saw how close the fires came to the town of Healesville, scary stuff, the Real Estate agent was still carrying all her treasured possesions in the boot of her car.

Only 3 more weeks to go until the Creative Soul Retreat, Ive been making my little houses for the swap. . I have been starting to collect up all the things I need for the classes. Bevlea has got loads for me to pick up at the retreat, well not too much really.
I am so looking forward to the classes. I am doing on Saturday, Layers with Bernie Berlin, Sunday is Face Painting on Canvas with DJ Pettit and Monday is an Elements Fat Book with Stephane Lee. I cant wait to put faces to all the names on groups that are coming as well. See some of you at Tullamarine at 11.45am. Its going to be fun fun fun...............

2cre8art challenge

Well the end of the month is nearly here. I had planned to do the January challenge from Barb and Bevleas new technique tutorial blog earlier in the month, but as usual time went no where.

We got home from the coast ( Woodside Beach) tonight, Australia Day and I thought I better have a play. I found this image of Sophia Andersons via another blog The Color Guru last week and really liked it so searched for one that I could use. It will show up on the retreat houses too :-)

Anyway, thanks again to Bevlea and Barb for creating the blog for challenges. You girls rock.....

New ATC done

This is an ATC that I did for the January Paperarts Free title. I had done a "No Paper" one for a NZ group and so decided to do a very similar one for the Paperarts group, but used a paper image for this one.

The background is some nice fabric that is old french writing, then creditcard technique washed some "green" paint over it, then added some netting that I had sort of dyed with some paints along the side, I stamped a flourish with versamark and gold embossed it, it did get more gold on the bits of wet netting :-) but I think it looks OK. Then after I added the image I put some "faux eggshell" (a technique I got from one of the Cloth Paper Scissors Magazines) bits on her head and added a bird image to that.I added some scrummy Black Mica Flakes to the bottom too.

Now........... Last Monday I went to Bevleas again and we did some more of Kelly Rae Roberts book. I just need to finish the two pictures we worked on and I will then add some pics here.
Til then, have a fantastic Australia Day weekend won't you.

My latest ATC and some other stuff

that was done for Paperarts last swap, Weird Chairs. I do like that pic of Marilyn. Thought she might like to take a trip on a Ship and waited for it on the tower bridge. Oh well, it is the New Year and had a couple of swigs so forgive me won't you.

This year I like a couple of others have decided my resolution will be to do the Challenges I have set myself, refer an earlier post. But I am joining Bevlea, Lucy, Eliza and Barb (from afar)to do some techniques from some of the art books we all own.

I am looking forward to the retreat only 10 weeks to go. Will be a busy time for me, as I have to go to the Gold Coast the week after for work.

Anyway, this past year has been busy for us, Went back to NZ in February for a wedding, had our kids over in March for about 12 weeks, went to Lakeland Florida
in June to buy some Golden paints LOL, hey the $$ was good, nah, went to a Conference, Thats Vegud, Alley, Geoff, myself and an American lady that we gave a lift home too. cant remember her name, bad me.....


also my job came to and end. Then when we got back just over 5 weeks later our second grandchild was born so home I went for a visit, while I was there the guy I was doing volunteer work for rang Geoff and asked us to move to Melbourne to work full time with them.

So end of September saw us move from Shepparton to Chirnside Park, so here we are. Before the move I went to Wagga Wagga to spend a few days with Barb . The end of the year has been good, some art time spent with Eliza and then some instruction days etc at Eva's. way to go girl, thoroughly enjoyed the soldering day. Then joined Bevlea and Lucy's play day along with Eliza which has now become a regular play day. So thanks to you all for making me welcome to Melbourne, a bit different to Shepparton. From art starvation to a wonderful feast of playtimes. Hey who has time to go to work.

See you soon

Happy New Year

Well, the New Year is in and dusted. My girlfriend came over from NZ and we had a great time, well I did anyway. We went to New Brighton beach, My friend dont like her picture took LOL............
Chadstone shopping centre, well spent about 2hours there, not enough even to do one corner, but I can now say I have been there, we went to Belgrave and came home via the Dandenongs and Sassafras (sp) spent a good time wondering the shops there. Ohh theres one I would love to replicate back in NZ eh!!Sandy.... Sandy spent her holiday pocket money on some nice things for her kitchen, hope you had no trouble at baggage Sands.
We also went on the Puffing Billy, would have been more enjoyable if the weather hadnt been so darn cold. We took Sands bush too. Now that was fun, apart from the leeches that decide they liked my legs oh yukkk..... we dont know how well off we are in NZ with no nasties like that.
anyway........... She went home on the 3rd. Will miss her. See ya in May Sands.