Birthdays are Always Sweet

I thought I'd run out of time to officially play with this weeks Taylored Expressions Sketch Challenge - but I've just made it!

For tonight's card Ihave kept it VERY simple and have not embellished, as this is for a friend who loves DSP, but doesn't really like fancy and fussy designs (you may recall me making a couple of cards for her last yeat before I was happy!). So, I focussed in the Sweet Always DSP and used a rather sweet stamp from Time to Party with some paper piecing.

Another July birthday taken care of!

On a completely separate note, we went to the Show today and Luana had a great time - patting cows, checking out the other animals, slipping over in the mud (ok, not such a great time then....), playing on a HUGE bouncy 'castle', collecting stamps and goodies for the Yellow Brick Road Showbag (and whatever else she could score) and riding on the same ride (a train convoy thing) she has chosen for her ride every year since she has been able to make a choice!!

Here she is playing a fishing game at the Emergency Services display....

She was strapped into a hoist and there was at least half a metre between her feet and the ground!! She 'caught' a frog and was so proud of herself - Mummy and Daddy were very proud too at how brave she was!! We weren't sure how she'd go with it.

Hope you're having a great weekend too! Thanks for visiting.

Stamps: Time to Party

Card: Regal Rose, Pumpkin Pie, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White, Sweet Always DSP

Ink: Chocolate Chip, Pumpkin Pie

Punches: 1 3/8" Circle, Scallop Circle, Scallop Edge, Corner Rounder

Vintage Eggplant

When I think Vintage, I think browns and sepias, soft images and edges and distressing. Not generally my forte! However, I think this scrapbook page may qualify as vintage (it does use the Very Vintage Jumbo Wheel after all) even though the only brown tone is a little bit of Sahara Sand... As you can see, there's lots of distressing, and even though the photo doesn't show it, the edge of the sentiment was sponged in Old Olive to 'take the edge off'.

Even if Vintage isn't your thing, hop on over to Just Add Ink and check out the entries for this week's Vintage challenge - they are awesome.

Thanks for visiting.

Stamps: Very Vintage Jumbo Wheel, Whimsical Words (retired)

Card: Elegant Eggplant, Old Olive, Sahara Sand, Whisper White

Ink: Elegant Eggplant, Old Olive, Sahata Sand

Other: Old Olive Wide Grosgrain Ribbon, Styled Silver Hodgepodge Hardware

Touching Base

My apologies for being MIA this month. As you have probably guessed, we have now made THE move and we're slowly getting organised. I'm yet to set up my stamping space... but have taken over the dining room table (much to Paul's horror - it's started again!!) to make a few bits and pieces, which haven't yet been finished. It's a bit of a shock to the system heading back to full time work. I am enjoying it, and the challenges of clinical, but find I'm SO tired by the end of the week.

Here are a few photos of our big trip and life in the Red Centre so far....

Leaving Katherine. Paul had headed out about 4 hours earlier than us. Luana was asleep before we had even travelled 10 minutes down the road!

Rest stop at Devil's Marbles. Luana had a great time exploring.

Our first full weekend here we went to Desert Park. Luana loved the birds and the nocturnal house. She's checking out the mala in this photo.

Hopefully over the next couple weeks I will have a bit more to share with you. I have had every intention of playing in a few challenges in the last week or so, but my bed has had a stronger calling!! I have seen the new Summer Mini (launching 1st December) and I LOVE IT!!! Seriously, I think this is the best Mini yet! So when I place my order, I am SO looking forward to playing.

For those of you here in Alice, I'm going to have a Christmas Stamp-a-Stack in the next few weeks. If you would like to join me, drop me a line here.

Until next time (no promises when....), have fun!!

Luana's Birthday Creations

I have been meaning to post this for ages, and as it is, I still haven't got around to making the Thank you's to coordinate with the invite and card for Luana's birthday.


I wasn't quite sure what theme to go with this year for her invites and ended up using Keesh's favourite colour combo (Regal Rose, Pumpkin Pie, Chocolate Chip) and Crazy for Cupcakes as inspiration. I posted a card in August that didn't quite make the cut for Miss Luana's card...

I wanted to keep the invited relatively straightforward, and the new Introducing stamp set from the Spring Mini was just begging to be used. I paper pieced the balloon from Crazy for Cupcakes with Sweet Always DSP, and despite my wanting this to be straightforward, I stamped one little cupcake from the cupcake tower in the same set three times on Pink Pirouette (icing), Pumpkin Pie (base) and Regal Rose (cherry) before fussy cutting it and putting it together. Stamping and using blender pens to colour just didn't work for me...

The next challenge was the card...

Luana had chosen a Bluh-fly (Butterfly) birthday cake, so I just had to pull out Bold Butterfly for her card. I used the Flitting By wheel on her first birthday invitations. I stamped off the solid base of the butterflies and flowers and stamped the outline detail in first generation, adding some sparkle to the butterflies (3 of course!). Clear rhinestone brads finished off the 3 flowers. I used second generation Pink Pirouette with the flower outline to add a bit of interest to the Whisper White circle the chipboard 3 was mounted on. The 3 was covered with Bella Rose DSP, the edges were sanded and inked with Chocolate Chip before mounting. After trying a few different cards, I was quite happy with this one!

Here's our family pic from the big day - I kept with the pink and orange theme for the cake too!! Luana loved it - what more can you ask for?!

As I mentioned a few posts ago, the reason for my lack of inspiration and blogging lately will become apparent soon... and the time is now. A few weeks ago, we found out VERY unexpectedly that Paul had been offered a short-term contract position in Alice Springs (for those of you not in Australia - 1200km south of Katherine, around about the middle of Australia). This had not ever been even an outside thought in our life plan so this offer threw our lives into turmoil - what to do?! In the end, it worked out I could transfer to a locum position down there, so we decided (VERY quickly) to take the plunge and move down the track to keep our little family together. Who knows where we will be early next year?! Anyone with a crystal ball is more than welcome to throw any hints our way! Consequently, life has since been mad with packing, contract negotiations, trying to find a place to live and trying to find child care for Miss Luana, as well as everything else that goes with moving.... It is slowly taking shape, but I think I will be relieved when we're finally all down there.

Please bear with me over the next few months with blogging, and for those of you waiting - I will post my swaps soon - I promise!!

Invitation

Stamps: Crazy for Cupcakes, Introducing (Spring Mini)

Card: Regal Rose, Whisper White, Pink Pirouette, Pumkpin Pie

DSP: Sweet Always

Ink: Chocolate Chip, Regal Rose, Pumkin Pie

Card

Stamps: Bold Butterfly (retired)

Card: Regal Rose, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White, Pumpkin Pie

DSP: Sweet Always, Bella Rose

Ink: Pink Pirouette, Regal Rose, Pumpkin Pie, Chocolate Chip

Punches: 1 1/4" circle, 1 3/8" circle

Other: Dazzling Diamonds, Clear rhinestone brads, On Board Lots of Letters Chipboard

Cocoa Daisies

We have had a busy weekend (to finish a heavy week), and the next few won't be any more relaxing than this one I'm sure! We did one of the walks at Edith Falls yesterday that we've been meaning to do for AGES. Paul has done it with the School Holiday program before, but I hadn't ventured in that direction yet - and the last time I did a walk at Edith Falls I was 8 1/2 months pregnant with Luana!!
We had a lovely day paddling (me slipping on wet rocks into the water!), laughing and picnicking, only to find out just as we were walking back we'd only made it to Long Hole Pool, not Sweetwater Pool like we had intended... that was still a further 2km on. Oh well, it was a lovely spot to pass a few hours and we'll head back to Sweetwater when Luana is a bit older and won't have to be on Paul's shoulders quite so much!

After such an energetic day yesterday, we just caught up with a few things around the house and had coffee with a friend today. I was able to sit down tonight to make a card after Luana had gone to bed. It feels like ages since I've sat down and felt somewhat inspired.

Tonight I put together a card using the latest Scrapmaster's Paradise Colour Challenge and Taylored Expressions Sketch Challenge:

I substituted Close to Cocoa for Soft Suede, although I do think this combo would work better with the Soft Suede. I shadow stamped the daisies from Upsy Daisy by using first and second generation stamping in Close to Cocoa, moving the stamped to the right a bit in between. This was mounted on a thin border of Close to Cocoa card. I also inked up the greeting from Great Friend in the Spring Mini with Close to Cocoa and used a blender pen to take the ink off 'friend' before using my Green Galore Stampin' Write marker to add colour. This was punched with the 1 3/8" circle punch and mounted just off a Close to Cocoa punched circle the same size. The strip of DSP comes from Candy Lane, and it's a bit hard to see but the edges of the Green Galore are sponged and swiped to soften the effect a little.

I'm not sure about the green, but I thinks it's a sweet card non-the-less.

I'm off to bed now for a well earned sleep! Pity I need to work tomorrow!

Stamps: Upsy Daisy, Great Friend (Spring Mini)

Card: Close to Cocoa, Green Galore, Whisper White

DSP: Candy Lane

Ink: Close to Cocoa, Green Galore

Punches: 1 3/8" circle

One for Birthday and One for a Best Friend

Luana's sleeping, Paul's been trying to figure out the Wii and is now watching footy, so that leaves me just to potter - don't you love lazy weekend days like this?! We have a long weekend here for this one; we had Show Day yesterday which was quite long (I'm glad it's only here once a year!) but a really good day. Luana's now at that age where she's really gets excited about things, but doesn't quite get the whole commercial aspect. I know that will come all too soon. Luana was lucky enough to have her face painted (twice! she rubbed the first one off):


This is the second one. The first was pink - of course! We also had the opportunity to go up in a helicopter for a quick ride. This was both Paul and Luana's first time in one and I'm not sure who was more excited! They even gave Luana little purple ear muffs to wear! We were lucky enough to see our house while we were up too:

It's in there! We live in a block of units.

Anyway, enough of our Show experience, onto a couple of the cards I have been making this week. I haven't had the time to play along with Karen's Sweet Sunday Sketch much lately, but made the time for this one - it's great! I thought it would be just the layout for a little girl's birthday coming up.

I've rotated the sketch, and moved the brads a bit...

The centre of the flower is from Time to Party - such a cool set! I used the retired 1/4" circle punch to punch out a 3 stamped and edged in Apricot Appeal and attached it with a bit of a dimensional to make it stand our a little bit more. The 1 3/8" circle punch fits the large circle just right! A little bit of Certainly Celery card punched with the scallop edge punch provided the grass (and linked in with the scallop circle flower!). The Almost Amethyst DSP is the retired Prints from last year. So Swirly was wheeled in the background, and the ice rhinestone brads finished the sketch - albeit down the bottom instead of the top.

As I adjusted the sketch a little bit, I thought I'd make another card that fit it better, this time using the latest Scrapmaster's Paradise Colour Combo.

What great colours, but we don't have Rich Razzleberry (am SO hoping it will be released to us in a Mini or something - I think it's GORGEOUS and will be really disappointed if we miss out!), so I substituted Perfect Plum as another reddish-purple.

Quite a straight forward card, but I think we often forget about the versatility of wheels. Scatter Sunshine was wheeled in Baja Breeze and mounted in Perfect Plum. The greeting comes from Garden Whimsy, and I stamped the spiky flower from Simply Said across the diagonal for a bit of a background. A little bit of Chocolate Chip taffeta ribbon and a couple of layered Baja Breeze felt flowers from Flower Fusion Too with pewter brads added the finishing touches.

Now, Luana's still sleeping, so I'm off to make some more cards!

Third Birthday Card

Stamps: Time to Party, So Swirly Jumbo Wheel

Card: Almost Amethyst, Certainly Celery, Whisper White

Paper: Apricot Appeal Patterns, Almost Amethyst Prints (retired)

Ink: Certainly Celery, Apricot Appeal, Almost Amethyst

Other: 1/4" circle punch (retired), 1 3/8" circle punch, scallop circle punch, scallop edge punch, Certainly Celery grosgrain ribbon, Ice Rhinestone brads

Best Friends Listen card

Stamps: Simply Said, Garden Whimsy, Scatter Sunshine Jumbo Wheel

Card: Kiwi Kiss, Perfect Plum, Whisper White

Ink: Baja Breeze, Perfect Plum

Other: Chocolate Chip taffeta ribbon, Flower Fusion Too, pewter brads

Easter Greetings

Happy Easter to you all!! I hope you are having a relaxing weekend! For the first time in a very long time we're spending Easter at home. It's been lovely so far relaxing, swimming at the Hot Springs and a local swimming spot (no tourists or rowdy teenagers risking breaking their necks!!) and sleeping, playing and spending time together as a family.

Today I would like to share with you a few projects I (and Luana in some cases) have been working on this week for this weekend.

This little cutie is the card I made to send out to our family members for Easter. I think I missed the post on a few of them though and they'll only arrive next week. I've used the chicken and greeting from A Good Egg, and paper pieced the egg shell. I've used the retired Spring Fling DSP as inspiration and pulled the colours Pretty in Pink, So Saffron and Wild Wasabi (retired) from the large spot paper. The ribbon is from the retired Flirty set and I used the scallop circle and 1 3/8" circle punches too. The layout for this card came from Sweet Sunday Sketches - I've been wanting to play with this one for so long.

I send a photo with each card too, and this is the one for this year - our Easter Fairy!! I figure if I send an Easter and Christmas photo, and of her birthday, then each family member gets at least 3 photos a year!

This is a bundle of Easter treats for my work colleagues. We also gave treats to Paul's colleagues and Luana's carers at child care. Apologies for the poor quality photo, but I did take it late at night under a dodgy light. Once again A Good Egg provided the stamps and I used Apricot Appeal and Almost Amethyst for the colours. The Amethyst topper was stamped with the flower background, and the zig-zag was coloured with blender pens and Almost Amethyst ink on the outer edges. I coloured in the little spots with Apricot Appeal Stampin' Write Marker, and finished off the eggs with a couple of Apricot Appeal brads before attaching them with dimensionals. Luana and I made chocolates that went into the bags last weekend....

She was a good help, although I'm certain she ate more of the chocolate drops than I was able to melt and put into the moulds!!

This next project is a gift for friends of ours who looked after our house while we were away.

I filled the jar with the chocolates we made and once again used retired Spring Fling DSP and A Good Egg. This time I decorated the eggs with flourishes and flowers from Priceless. The colour inspiration came from Leah's latest challenge:

Isn't this picture so cute?! I've used the inspiration colours of Pretty in Pink, Bashful Blue, Barely Banana and Whisper White. Thanks for another great inspiration Leah!!

Easter Bunny leaves a trail of eggs for Luana when he visits our house. Last year she was content to stop at the first one she found! So this year I thought I'd make a bag for her to put them in.

I've used one of Makeesha's Make it Monday tutorials, Carousel Notes Handbag, and just made the inside box part a bit bigger. I've used retired Groovy Guava Carousel Notes and card, retired Groovy Guava double stitched ribbon and retired Ginger Blossom DSP. The egg is once again from A Good Egg, stamped and sponged with retired Groove Guava ink. The 'L' is chipboard I had in my stash traced onto retired River Rock card. I can't wait to see her use it tomorrow morning!!

Last but not least I have the "Easter Bunny Basket" (as Luana calls it) that Luana decorated today to leave out for Easter Bunny tonight.

Once again I used retired Groovy Guava card to make the box - I just scored 2 3/4" all the way around and A4 piece and folded it up to make a box. Luana decorated it with some stickers I had left over from the very first Easter cards I made a couple of years ago. Not a bad effort at all for a 2 year old I think!!

Have a wonderful Easter. I'm looking forward to the next couple of days catching up with some friends from Darwin and taking the opportunity to stamp with one of my best gal pals!!

Happy Easter!!

Wedding Photos

As promised, here are some photos from my sister's wedding. It was a fantastic day - 28 degrees, no wind. The cows kept a respectable distance (the ceremony was held on our family farm), Cristy look fabulous, Brad and his brothers were all very handsome, Luana was an absolute gem and we had a great time!

Me and my gorgeous girl at the hairdresser.

All dressed. The sash on Luana's dress was made from what was cut off mine (there have to be some benefits to not being tall!)

Mum and Dad walked Cristy down the red carpet. She looked absolutely gorgeous! So did Mum.

Luana posing for Dad with the camera.

The bridal party.

Us 3 kids. The last photo of us together on the farm.

The happy couple cutting the fabulous cake. All those flowers were hand made!

Paul was behind the camera, hence the lack of photos of him, but the photographer did take a photo of us as a family so fingers crossed we are all looking at the camera!

Bushfire Appeals and For my Valentine

I'm sure you can understand I really haven't felt much like doing anything this week. It feels like every time I watch the news or read the paper I cry at the moment. However, in true Aussie style we have rallied together with people contributing what they can. I was in Darwin Friday (yes, we did our shopping at Coles) and was warmed to hear a bloke in his 20's tell the food attendant to put his change in the Bushfire Appeal jar - almost as much as what his milkshake cost! Also, one of our local eateries today put on an appeal with the fire-ies (I can never figure how to spell that), which was fantastic - thanks June and guys! I even went on a ride in the fire truck with Luana:

Stampin' Up! has also announced they will be donating 50% of the price of the following stamp sets to the Bushfire Appeal until March 31st:
Priceless
Seeing Spots
Baroque Motifs
Live Your Dream
Looks Like Spring*
The Snowflake Spot*
Bodacious Bouquet*
Polka Dots & Paisley*
G'day Mate*
Be Happy*
*These sets will appear on the upcoming list of retiring products, so they will only be available for the Bushfire Appeal while supplies last.

I will also continue to contribute 20% of all orders placed 15th Feb and 10% of all other orders placed in February.

Onto cards. Mel's challenge last week was to make a Valentine's card using Chocolate Chip, Whisper White, Ruby Red and More Mustard, so I thought I may as well make Paul's! Here 'tis. Very, very simple but he liked it:

I used the Priceless set (one of the sets in the Bushfire Appeal selection) and Short & Sweet, and Chocolate Chip 1" Double Stitched ribbon from the Summer Mini.

I hope you were all thoroughly spoiled today!

A Fun Blog Challenge

I really should be writing my assignment, but I am SO uninspired by this one... Anyways, Sharon has tagged me in a fun blog challenge, so I thought I'd play along while I (supposedly!!) have the time.

The challenge was to go into your My Pictures folder, select the 6th folder and then the 6th photo within that folder. You are then to post that photo on your blog and give the story behind it. Now, my 6th folder is my Luana folder and that has many subfolders, so I'm actually going to post 2 photos. This first one is the 6th folder or image in my Luana folder:

This photo was taken with Paul's phone when Luana was almost 8 months old sitting on our bed in an outfit her godmother gave her when she was born. I think he was just mucking around with the phone, and she's just TOO cute!!

And this photo is the 6th photo in the 1st subfolder in the 1st subfolder (yes, my folder system does go to up to 5 levels!!):

This photo of my darling was taken when she was exactly 2 weeks old (as close as possible to the minute), sleeping soundly in my arms. I actually think I took this photo myself reaching out (hence the slightly awkward position Luana is in). We have taken at least one photo of her every day since she was born, which is something that was important to me as we live so far away from family, little ones change and grow WAY too quickly and we have had too many loved ones pass away only to find no-one has a decent, recent photo of them.

So there you go, another glimpse into Natasha's world. I am supposed to pass this challenge onto 6 other people:

1. Kylie A
2. Nat (has already played, but check out her entry)
3. Leah
4. Spice (non-stamping)
5. Kristy
6. Zarna

I only know some of these talented ladies via their wonderful blogs, so thanks in advance!

Groovy Guava and Wild Wasabi Blitz

While I was down South, I managed to get a bit of stamping done while I was on the farm that I haven't posted for you all yet. I had limited supplies that I took with me, and Mum's stash, but I really wanted to use Groovy Guava card as much as possible because I'd just ordered a pack, then changed the colour scheme of my Christmas cards...

Both these cards use Groovy Guava, Wild Wasabi and Whisper White card with Groovy Guava, Soft Sky and Chocolate Chip ink. The greetings are from Cheery Chat and were masked while images from Scribble This were stamped over. Happy Birthday was finished with some paper piercing and a copper eyelet and Thank you with just a a strip of Chocolate Chip card. Quite simple but they hit the mark! Thanks Mum for letting me use your stamp sets!

I stayed with my Auntie (again) during my Uni week this time round, so this one was for her. Her favourite card that we made at Regionals was the skinny Thanks one, so I used that image as inspiration and this is what eventuated - the green stem really needed something, hence the Guava flowers. I also really wanted to try the dry-embossing with the Crop-o-Dile (I need a bit more practice!). This uses the gorgeous Live Your Dream set from the Summer Mini and once again, colour scheme is Wild Wasabi, Groovy Guava, Soft Sky, Chocolate Chip and Whisper White.

I just thought I'd also share a couple of photos of Luana on the farm. I really hope she is now old enough to have some sort of memory of the farm when she's older.

On our HUGE slippery dip that Grandpa made.

On the header with Popsy- we went with him for a bit while he was reaping canola. Luana loves the fact the header goes 'round and round and round' (and also imaging the hands and arms going round and round and round!!)

Another Photo Board

Just another quick one tonight. We have had a few very busy days up in Darwin with a friend who came up on the Ghan (hi Suze!!); we did a few touristy things we haven't yet like the East Point Military Museum the IndoPacific Reef display which were very interesting, as well as some old favourites. There is just SO much to see and do up here - thank goodness for visitors otherwise we'd never get around to seeing anything!

Anyway, this is the photo board I made for my desk at work (I've already ok'ed it with the girl I job share with to have photos of my beautiful girl gracing our office! I've put the same photo as Paul's on it.)

Quite straight forward this one. I used Fall Flowers DSP (love this pattern, even though I'm not a huge fan of orange/rust usually) and the coordinating card stock - Soft Sky, Old Olive and Really Rust. I cut a flower out of the DSP, and finished it with a Eastern Elegance rub-on from the Spring Mini, and a bit of white grosgrain around the clip. I really am happy with the outcome!

Also, thank you to everyone for Paul's birthday greetings. He had a good day - Daddy time with Luana in the morning, and Cutta Cutta caves and swimming at Edith Falls in the afternoon, followed by dinner out. Here he is with Luana at the falls - we're waiting for the rains to come, hence the dismal looking falls in the background... It's such a beautiful place still.