Mothers' Day #1

Less is More has given us a sketch this week, Simon Says have a Mother's Day theme, and Creative Card Crew (closing in 45 minutes - talk about cutting things fine!!) want no stamps. Here's a rub-on, ribbon, flower and brad for one of our mums for Mothering Sunday this weekend - I haven't decided which mum yet. DH really likes these simple cards, and so do I. So pretty.

Now I'd better post it quickly before the contest closes....

Scrap Whispers Challenge #95 - soul sister

Hi folks, and thanks for joining us again for Scrap Whispers Challenge #95. There's a special reason why it would be a really good idea to play along with this one - and all will be revealed on the Scrap Whispers blog....

We want you to scrap about a special female in your life: girl-friend, mother, daughter, niece, sister - you get the idea. My only problem with this was choosing someone, because I have so many wonderful women in my life, and I didn't want anyone to feel left out, hehee. Guess who I picked?

This photo was taken last summer when I went back to the UK and managed to catch up with Georgina for a yummy Italian meal and loads of chat. I had climbed off the plane that morning after a 25-hour journey, and Georgina was on her way home from a hard day at work, but somehow the tiredness evaporated and our tongues wagged and the evening flew past. My Mum took this photo of us in her sitting room. It's blurred and wonky, I had to crop out the flash in the window, I've got no lip-gloss left on, and I look short and podgy next to G ;-) but it still makes me smile.

I used some more of the Echo Park "Life is Good" collection pack (very appropriate) for this, as well as a Petaloo flower and some left-over swirls.

Who are you going to pick for your soul sister? Link us up to your blog post HERE for your last chance to win the Crate Paper pack "Emma's Shop". Make sure you link back to the Scrap Whispers blog in your post, so your friends and followers can see where you got your inspiration from. Enjoy the challenge!

Spring colours

I just love this card so much that I might not be able to give it away! I spent the afternoon making it while I was Skyping my Mum - can't get a better reward for cleaning the house than that, can you?

The paper and card-stock is all DCWV from the Citrus range. The stamp is House Mouse, coloured with Copics of course, with Prima flowers, punches from EK Success and McGill, and of course, Stickles in yellow and lime green. Inside is another little House Mouse stamped with Staz-On straight onto the yellow card and not coloured in. It's even prettier in real life, honest.

The challenges are:
Colour Create: "pastels"
Creatalicious: "two-tone"
Friday Sketchers
House Mouse: "spring"
Truly Scrumptious: "tags"

Less is More

I was following links the other day when I found this new card challenge blog: Less is More which is all about the "white space" and simplicity. I find clean and simple much more "me" than the fussy stuff, although each has its place. And I'm obviously not the only one who feels that way, as the blog has only been going for 7 weeks and it has over 600 Followers already! So that's another one for my list.

And that led me off on another midnight inspiration flight after DH had gone to bed. Before I knew it, I'd made these and I still wasn't even tired.

It's hard to see because photographing tone-on-tone is not something my little camera is very good at, but it's just grey card embossed with a white sparkly butterfly added to each, and mounted on A5 navy card. Couldn't be more simple.

Then I checked out the week's challenge: off-the-page. No problem. Out came the Inkadinkado Utopiary stamps that I fell in love with late last year, and the heat gun and embossing powder, and got this card (and the same tone-on-tone photography problems, sigh).

It works, doesn't it? I think next time I'd put the tree on the right side of the card, but it's not bad for a post-midnight, rubbish-lighting, adrenaline-fuelled kinda card. Pleased with myself, I went to bed.

When I went to photograph it and post it, a concert, a 2-day headache and a trip to the osteopath later, of course the challenge had changed. Grr. It was now "masculine". Hmm {head-tilt}. Yeah I think I'd still send that to a guy. I wonder whether I could enter it into both weeks' challenges.....? ;-)

Scrap Whispers Challenge #94 - Buttons

Hi - thank you for joining us for this week's Scrap Whispers Buttons challenge!

Apologies for being late. I have no excuse really, just my life being packed with stuff, much of it unscheduled, last-minute "can-you-justs". It wasn't helped by the landlord deciding after a year to get the ceiling painted which meant undercoat one day then top coat the next, right above my scrap desk. Sigh. I could only chip away at my LO in odd moments (putting it back together again several times after the dust sheet had mucked it all up!) until it was done, which wasn't very satisfying, but it's finished now and I like it.

The LO is about our recent trip with the in-laws to Margaret River. We were told by the cottage owner that there was an old, half-blind, half-deaf kangaroo who liked to wander into the cottages if he found the doors left open. He was wild, but very accustomed to people, and they nicknamed him Old Man Grey. We looked in vain for him until the very last morning, then about an hour before we checked out, there he was, resting in the shade of a tree.

Mother-in-law and I went outside with cameras and approached him very slowly. He got up and ambled towards us, and MIL stopped and hid behind me, hehee. But he was keeping low, not threatened at all so I wasn't concerned. He sniffed us both and got very interested in the body lotion I'd just put on - he was trying to lick my arms. Then father-in-law came out too, and Old Man Grey checked him out too. I managed to snap this wonderful picture of the two of them apparently checking out each other's... um... assets. Once he'd decided he'd seen enough, he ambled off and started breakfasting on the owner's prize roses. What a character.

I really wanted to use my Blog Hop flowers on this LO, along with some other papers from the same Echo Park "Life is Good" collection pack. I topped it off with red ink and Stickles in Coffee Ice and Diamond.

The rest of the DT has produced a whole bag full of different ideas - pretty impressive! How will you use your 20 buttons?

House-warming card

Here's a quick card I made for a friend who has just moved house and is having a bit of a stressful time of it. I made it big (A5) and took it along to the choir which we both sing in, and they all signed it. We took up a collection and I'm going to get her a gift card for the local DIY store so that she can get something nice for her new over-grown garden.

It fits nicely into the challenges for Basic Grey "wings" (the olive green paper is BG but I can't remember which collection), Colour Create "olive, brown, cream and black", Creative Card Crew "green" and this week's Spoonful of Sugar sketch.

Thanks to Glenda for the lovely butterfly! Glenda got the alcohol ink bug and made hundreds of butterflies all in different colours - too many to use so she gave most of them away, bless her, and I got a little surprise envelope in the post one day. Their only trouble is that they are too beautiful to use! All Sticklesed up and teamed with the right colours, this one looks just gorgeous.

Scrap Whispers March Blog Hop

Hello and welcome back to the Scrap Whispers Blog Hop.

Thank you all so much for taking part in our tutorial!

Would you like to be in with a chance of winning this prize? It's "Emma's Shop" 12"x12" collection pack from Crate Paper. Isn't it pretty?

If you would, here is what you will be making this month: 3 different paper flowers.

I made them from the Echo Park Collection Pack which was the prize for my super-enthusiastic August 2010 Team One winning the Scrap Whispers game - yes, even the DT get a chance to win here! The colours are so vibrant.

The inspiration for this tutorial comes from my current wonderful Team One, who I asked what they would like to learn about. Their answers were altered projects, paper techniques and flowers, so I chose paper flowers this time around. They are so quick and easy to make - your little ones might like to have a try too, then you'd have a pile of ready-made embellishments to last you a while.

AND there is also a beautiful shiny new Digital article WITH FREEBIE from the lovely Kimberly, our new Digi DT member.

So all you have to do is to follow the tutorial and make your own gorgeous versions, post them on your blog, post a link to your blog HERE on Scrap Whispers and leave some love on each of the DT's blogs as well as the main SW blog:
Georgina
Nilsa
Kelly
Rosey (here!)
Helen
Kimberly
Sherri
Scrap Whispers

Finally, Georgina has asked each of the DT members a question: "What is your favourite scrapping style?"

That's going to be tricky to answer, because my favourite style to look at is one that I can't actually do myself! I just love the many-layered, 3D, eclectic, vintage look which has been so popular in Asia for the last few years. When I try, my photos get swallowed up in a big mess of stuff, but somehow when THEY do it, it looks amazing and the photos still stand out. Here is a link to Laine's Papeterie, my old LSS's site in Singapore, so you can see what I'm talking about. I need to keep practising!

You've probably noticed a new look at the Scrap Whisper Blog site? Yes? That cute new logo, and the  green background (in honour of St Patrick's Day)? Well this is the sign of new things to come! Starting in April there will be some changes around here, so keep checking back. Now I can't wait to see your flowers, so get crafting/posting/linking and winning!

Q: When is a vacation not a vacation?

A: When the family come and visit you!

Apologies for my absence. We had DH's parents staying with us for the last few weeks, and we've been taking them here, there and everywhere in an unseasonal heat-wave. We went to places we haven't been to before: places my DH had to drive for a full day to get to. And we've still only covered the minutest teeniest little corner of Western Australia. The folks having e-mailed us in a bit of a panic last month to check whether we were affected by the floods, and having been told that the floods were as far away from us as they in the UK are from Canada, it's only now that they are coming closer to understanding the vastness of Australia.

We took them to Swan River to see the vineyards, a chocolate factory, a nougat factory and a river bed which was white-water rapids last time DH and I visited in the winter. They cuddled koalas, hand-fed kangaroos and stared into the astonishing eyes of a barking owl at Caversham Park. 166 miles south at Margaret River we marvelled at the most beautiful caves we had ever seen, visited a working light-house where the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean meet, and dipped our toes into each. FIL and the biggest wild old-man-grey kangaroo I've ever seen looked deep into each other's eyes from the same height, while MIL watched from behind me.

DH drove us another 160 miles each way down to the Valley of the Giants to walk through the tree-tops of the giant tingles, which was decidedly the furthest we'd ever travelled for a walk in the woods - but SO worth it. We took them to Fremantle prison and bought them the legendary fish and chips from Kailis's. On what had to be the hottest day of the year, we toured around Rottnest Island on a coach and met some of its wild quokkas, before watching a violent storm blasting east Perth from across the sea. They saw Kings Park Botanic Gardens, the Swan Bells, London Court and Perth Mint. We cooked for them and gave them a few proper Aussie barbecues, as well as introducing them to some of our favourites amongst the local restaurants.

I am amazed they were still upright, laughing and talking after the amount they saw and did. Personally I was exhausted! DH and I didn't even get a chance to sleep in the next morning after we put them on the plane home in the middle of the night - the Jehovah's Witnessess woke us up, DH's work had a panic on, the landlord called to arrange a visit that afternoon from a painter who then didn't turn up, and finally a massive lorry appeared on the front drive trying to deliver a washing machine to us! I think the bat signal went up that the Squirrels were now free to be bothered by as many people as possible. Sigh.

But as soon as they had left, the heat-wave seemed to ease a little from 39*C and high humidity with a night-time low of 31*C, to a more manageably dry day-time 31*C and 24*C at night which apparently is more normal autumn weather. March 1st is the official first day of autumn, but someone forgot to tell the weather that.

After DH goes back to work tomorrow (today is Labour Day in WA and a bank holiday) I will get the house cleaned up and get back on track again. I've SO missed my little craft room. Photos to follow.