Next month I head away on a big adventure with my good friend Annemarie,its her adventure really ,she has been dreaming of this for years. Where do I come into the picture? Well it was a crazy idea that popped into my head one sunny afternoon last year,after id joined Annemarie on a Garden Walk and then a drink or two at the Glenavey Hotel on our way home. Think Annemarie said "you should come with me"and I maybe said ..."why not, perhaps I will"..and now here I am. I have a brand new pack, sleeping bag, tramping boots and half the clothing stock from the Katmandu store in Christchurch ..more than im ever going to be able to fit into that nice new pack (told you Hannah, Aimee ,Debbie and Andrew that I needed a much bigger one). Anyway on the 17th of next month I set off for Peru for a whole month. So I hope to share some of my adventure on my blog as I go, so my friends and family can,in a small way, share my adventure to. How do I feel...terrified at the moment and worried about everything from the plane going down to forgetting to take my roll of tiolet paper and bag of soap ends. So let the count down begin...

Testing

Altered Mouse Traps

Goodness me, its been ages since I've crafted or blogged. My first creative project this year....MOUSE TRAPS !!

 

 

These were made for a Swap over on our NZ Paper Chase Facebook page.

 

I wanted to make each of my three traps useful

 

Click on the link below to check out the rest of the mouse traps, so creatively altered for our swap.

 

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.10152268796885407&type=1

Im back

Here I am back after a very long time out from Blogger. Soon I will post a photo walk through of the highlights of 2014year and let you know about my upcoming adventure in 2014.

A Day with Friends and Finnabair

On March 29th I had a wonderful, wonderful time in Dunedin. Andrew and I went to Dunedin the day before, booked into a motel and the next morning it was up with the sparrows to get to Scrapbook Paradise to a class with the very talented and creative  Finnabair, who comes all the way from Poland. The best part about my day was getting to meet my scrapbook idol Donna O Leary and some of my on line scrap friends, whom id never met before. A definite high light of 2013 for me.

Here is the beautiful Donna hard at work...how exciting, I got to sit next to her :-) Beverley (in the blue top) has been a long time Facebook friend and another incredibly talented lady, so I was very excited to meet her for real as well. 

Elena, in the background, owner of Scrapbook Paradise is so lovely, I'm looking forward to getting back to the shop to visit her...and all of the goodies that dwell within Scrapbook Paradise. Finnabair is showing us the next move!

LOL, look at the mess I have here, taking up more than my fair share of space I think! 

Here we all are at the end of the Journal Class.

 And this is my journal...The front...

     and the back....

 ...and a close up

 Thanks for poping by, updates have been few and far between this past year or two, life just seems to have become so busy, but I promise myself to make more of an effort to visit my blog more often :-)

Sketch Challenge now up

This months sketch challenge is up over at NZ Paper Chase, do pop over for a look and feel free to join in

This month I challenge you to layer...

Hers is my sample page,it didn't end up quite as Id envisioned it would, but my pages never do! 

Part of this months challenges involves adding a piece of decorated chipboard. I used a mask and gel medium to add texture then a coating of Glimmer Glam to add a little sparkle.

Welcome back to blogger world ..to me

Hi there. I'm back!!! I'm not even sure where I've been, just busy with the craziness of life I guess. I'm still scrapping, mainly for NZ Paper Chase, but after three terms I thought it was time I moved on because my work must be getting very boring for people! However I'm still running the blog and Face book page and helping out to full the odd gap in the magazine.

Talking of NZ Paper Chase, the latest, Autumn Edition is fresh out now, keep your eyes open for it and do support NZ's only scrapbook magazine by picking up a copy.

 

NZ Paper Chase now has a new blog, I know, because Ive just finished putting it together! Please pop over and have a look and if you leave us a comment you will go into the draw for a crafty prize. You can find our blog HERE

 

There is a challenge posted, so don't be shy, come and join in and show us what you can do. Love to see you there.

A whole heap of nothing much!

My blogging is patchy this year. Other things seem to soak up my spare time. Garage business is just busy enough and I tend to spend the better part of my afternoons down there doing ...well, not much of anything really..just cleaning up, answering the phone...mopping the floor..sweeping the floor, stoaking the fire, burning the rubbish...LOL, not much of anything! But a whole heap of 'nothing much'.

I have branched out and taken up ladies golf at Tokaraki. I had a small taste of golf earlier this year and had fun, but didn't think about taking it any further, until recently I decided I needed to do something other than house work, garage work and scapbooking...so away I headed. I enjoyed my first day, played with the lovely, patient and very kind Yvonne Duff. And goodness me those golf ladies must be super fit, I mean some of them were almost double my age and I bet they didn't hurt as much as I did at the end of the day!!
  Camden was home at the weekend and kindly gave me a game at Kurow Golf course. Tokaraki was, and still is, closed due to the ground being so sodden.

Camden and Abby brought my wee dog Millie home for the weekend. They have her in Mosgiel these days, she is on a strict diet,and loosing quite a bit of weight. Millie was double her ideal weight..whoops, how did that happen?! I miss Millie and it was so nice to have her home again for a short stay.

Last week I was super busy as I had my NZ paper Chase work to get done, in amongst everything else. I have been going to share these photo for a wee while now. They are the pages I scrapped at the last Embellish It Crop day in Oamaru. My memory card crashed, right in the middle of photographing my Paper Chase work,and the photos of my pages were on it, so today, between showers of rain I managed to re photograph them...here they are.

Thanks for popping by. if you have loads of rain, like we do in Duntroon, I do hope you manage to stay dry. take care out there.And if you want something to full in a wet afternoon...or a dry one, do check out our latest challenge over at NZ Paper Chase. xx

Smashing Goodness

As promised ...here are the Smash Book pages I received from NZ's Paper Chase  Smash Book page swap.

My Theme was "My Favorite"

Which meant I asked that all of the players designed a page around something that was a 'favorite' to them.

Check these out, they are all delightful!

Jonnece has created a page show casing her favorite time of the year!  I love the warm antique colours, the the whole page makes me smile.

Donna has a whole heap of favorite things and has managed to add them all, right down to the tiny bit of stitching on her page, anyone who knows Donna will also know that the stitching is her trade mark! I can always find some thing new each time I look at these pages. 

 Maggie has used a soft colour combo on her pages and added gorgeous textures, so these pages not only look awesome they are also very touche, feel'ie! Love the images and the embellishments Maggie.

Jean, like Donna has many 'favorites' and I enjoyed getting to know more about Jean from what she has told me on her pages. I love the collage style and all of the 'eye candy' here! 

 Angela has used her favorite technique, Paint Embossing, and she has me hooked on this technique, Angela told me she'd love this as wall paper and so would I...hmmmm!!! 

 Ngaere's page is so full of crafty favorites that I have to show you more than one photo! Ngaeres favorite craft goodies include anything that can be recycled. Ngaere is the Queen of recycling I'm sure! 

 One of Ngaeres favorite images are wolves. 

 These pages have heaps of hidden journalling  pockets and tabs. 

 ...and fold out booklets! 

 Beautiful, and clever, all rolled into one. 

 I was extra lucky to receive these goodies,made by Ngaere as a gift for hosting the swap. I have already used some of the home made paper on my scrapbook pages. Will show you those tomorrow.

Ngaere made each one of us a Junk Journal...so cool! I'm looking forward to a bit of spare time to decorate mine. 

Thank you to everyone of you who played along and made this swap a success. I know it was alot of work, but I'm sure you will agree it was all worth it in the end! 

The rest of the pages can be viewed at NZ Paper Chase's Facebook Page 

Lifehouse - You And Me

Smashing Fun!

On Saturday 21st/ July I had 'time out' and escaped to Oamaru, with Kathy Grey, where we spent a day Scrap Booking in Oamaru with the lovely Joanne  from  Embellish It,  in Timaru. I did however forget to pack my mojo amongst my scrapping supplies. All was not lost however, I managed to  get three pages on the go and tonight I have finished  them, so hope to get them onto my blog over the next couple of days. In the mean time I am going to share the pages I created for our NZ Paper Chase Smash Book Swap.
 In return for my pages I received amazing works of art back from all of the talented ladies who took part in the challenge.

These are the pages I created...

My Vintage page, made for Maggie

 I have embossed on Perspex and used it to frame a vintage image. This technique is one handed down to me from my dear scrapping buddy Carol Noake's  

My next page was created for Donna O Leary. Donna's theme was 'All things Tim'

I must confess here that I did rush out and buy Tim Holtz goodies especially for this page, lol...any excuse!! 

I have created a tiny 'Tim book' and attached it to one of the journal pages.

 A close up look at Tim Holtz crafty bitz

 ...and Tim Holtz dies.

Tanya's theme was 'Random'.I  know Tanya loves paint and bright colours, so tried to include both on the pages I created for her. Have also included tags and a pocket using an envelope for Tanya to journal on.

Found out after completing this page that Tanya is not a huge fan of 'bulky'..sorry Tanya!! I'm a big fan of bulk...just in case you cannot tell!! 

Nature, was Angela Knight's chosen theme. I loved creating Angela's pages. I chose to cover the pages with a serviette before adding top layers. 

For fun I collected seeds from my herbs in the garden for Angela to plant, and lavender which I secured in a  fabric bag, so my page will even have the smell of 'nature'. 

 This little bird is cut from the same  serviette that I  used on the base.

Jean's 'Random' page is next. Again I have pockets that hold journaling tags.

Quotes to Live By. Jonnece's pages .

Again I have hidden pages for journal ling and quotes 

All Things Recycled. These pages are for Ngaere.  

Almost all of the embellishments on my pages are recycled items. I endeavored to make a 'kind of flower' from an old broken zip along with flowers from rolled and dyed newspaper. 

 Oddments of ribbon and pages from old books  come in very handy.

Using an envelope stuffed with card and magnets, I made a secrete Heidi hole for journalling 

 This 'cog' is not a chipboard one, its a real life one that I rescued from the bin at the garage,

 ...an another envelope pocket book!

This old playing card made a fun pocket after I embossed it to add some texture. 

Thanks for looking and do stayed tuned as the pages I received from this swap are super cool and I will add pictures very soon! 

To find out what Smash books are all about be sure to check out the latest NZ Paper Chase Magazine.