Really, it's not earth shattering...

...but it's pretty.

The story goes...I made a scrapbook page using all those papers, actually I made a few pages...and I had a lot of scraps left over as you do.

I decided to make a card out of the scraps to use them up and to just make a card. You know how people suggest these good ideas, but you rarely do them? Well, I rarely do them! Anyway, I decided to try this one.

It was good actually. I loved the papers and enjoyed making the card. There was no pressure to be fab or anything because I was just making a card to use up the scraps.

Turned out to be quite pretty actually. The brads are actually from My Mind's Eye's 2009 Colourful Christmas collection - they went perfectly with my papers. I think they're...actually, I don't know who they are. Pink Paislee? Not sure. The lined paper is an old one...I've had it for years. Coloured ledger.

I'd done the whole thing except the ribbon, that was last.

I had paper, brads (ie. metal and shine) and I needed some softness and some leaves. Cue ribbon and sorted. They're just bits folded in half to make loops and then stuck under the petals.

The card turned out nice in the end and I knew my class ladies would love it, so it ended up going in a class.

Don't you love it? No pressure to make a card and I get a good one. Sit down to make something fabulous for a class and come up with nothing!

Here's the class card. I re-designed it a bit to suit the papers/punches I had available for the class and it worked out better, I think.

Which do you like?

The differences are some of the papers, particularly the flower ones, the Fiskars Apron Lace punch got switched to the Open Scallop from EK and the red buttons.

The red buttons really do it for me and give the card some punch.

The first card could be punched up a notch with some red buttons too. Hey, you do what you do at the time!

Hmm, red buttons. We shall never be parted because we are friends.

And punches, we shall never be parted either because we are friends too.

And to finish off today I thought I'd show you my flower garden again. Remember it doesn't look like this now. These photos were taken in Dec 2008 (summer) about two weeks apart.

I remember enjoying watching them grow - so amazing. And I got to enjoy them from my house each day too - they were at the bottom of the garden (I sound English - been watching too much Escape to the Country). To be Aussie - they were down the backyard, mate.

Okay, that's all for today. Have a wonderful day!

Total randomness...but with a theme.

Hi there,

I'm back from blog-o-cation! 

Did you miss me?

I missed you!

I'm still a bit out of it and my head's still trying to get into it. Thus, today's post. Randomness, but with a flowery theme :o)

These flowers were in my garden, but they're not anymore.

I wish they were.

My husband planted them for me and we had a good little garden going there for a while. We've realised in the southern hemisphere, and particularly in Queensland (the Sunshine State), Australia, we don't appreciate our flowers like you northern hemisphere dwellers. After going without them for so long after the snow and whatnot, I totally get the whole "give me some colour" thing!

In our state, we don't get snow. We had sleet inland once and it was very exciting. If we do get snow in our state it's a freak of nature. We have flowers all year round and we enjoy the sun all year round too. In fact, if there's too many overcast days in a row, we all start getting a bit peaked and gloomy. Not good! 

Flowers in the garden = good. 

Flowers in the garden that dog (Shep, not Cody) doesn't dig up = good. 

:o)

A flower card this time.

I noticed the swirls on the yellow there before. Looks like I tried to get some texture happening that's similar to embossing. Don't you just love embossing? Gosh, the Cuttlebug, love it! And what'd you think of the re-design? Interesting, hey? 

These flowers were taken in the northern hemisphere and in a very specific spot that I remember exactly.

Two words: Green Gables.

This card has a story, but I'll leave you hanging on that one too.

Sorry, it's mean, but I've gotta spread this stuff out otherwise my posts would be too long, even for me!

This card has a story too.

It's not an earth shattering one, but it's a story nonetheless.

And I'm going to share it tomorrow!

:o)

Gone on...

...blog-o-cation!

Back soon!

Punch Art Fun 1 - Look in the Book - page 28

Hey there!

Thought I'd continue with the Look in the Book today and specifically page 28 because that's where we're up to!

The page is titled Funny Faces, but maybe it should be Fun Faces. Anyways, there's a lot of fun faces on there and they were fun to make, I remember that. 

It's amazing what you can use to make hair...

~ Leaves

~ Decorative scissors

~ An apple

~ The candy punch

~ General shapes like circles and ovals

~ Flowers

~ Suns

~ Snowflakes

~ The cloud punch

~ A lot of options! 

This one uses a Scallop Oval. And Cloud scissors match for a fringe.

I've always liked her and her hair.

Ah, another favourite, the Fleur-de-lis.

Great ponytails.

If you look at them for too long they can start to look like horns, so don't do that, okay?

And the Fleur-de-lis again this time as more mature ponytails.

Kinda sixties, right?

Especially with the puffy bit at the back. That's just another 1" Circle glued behind there.

Obviously I took these photos straight from my book (they're my images, so I can do that) - but it seems I didn't take any boy ones.

Oh well, the girlie hairdos are more interesting anyway.

Here are some boys for you.

And a dog. Gotta include the animals in our life.

What we have for hair here is (from left) a leaf, another leaf (but smaller), flowers and a circle.

And out of interest the dog (let's call him Shep and deem him Cody's cousin) has half hearts and teardrops for ears because he has no hair.

Cute card - if I made it again (which I would), I'd brighten the colours up a bit. This card was made back in the day before I used Bazzill and when I only used about 15 colours because that's all that was available to me then.

I'd still do the people and the dog (sorry...I mean Shep) the same way, I'd just use a brighter blue background and lighter pink/green hearts.

I won't say much about this one.

That's because I want you just to have a look at it for a while and enjoy the bits and pieces on it. There's a lot to look at. I found myself looking at it happily for a few minutes too. Oh dear, I just noticed the wonky green balloon, did you?

What I will say is - those swirly pigtails are from this punch (it doesn't have a name) from The Punch Bunch.

I've had it for years and never used it as a border, only as hair.

After saying I wouldn't say much, I've said enough.

Oh yes, check out the rest of The Punch Bunch borders here. The whole PB range is available at Photo Continental too!

New punches

Hi there!

Just a quick one today.

Here are a couple of links to the new Deep Edger Punches from EK Success.

I've linked to them before, but I've found some better pictures.

So, click here first - you kinda get the idea of what the patterns look like.

Click here second - now you really get the idea! Click on the ones you like and enlarge them - great pics. I love how they've been punched out so we can see the patterns they make. And remember, some of them are borders and some of them are paper ribbon.

What are your favourites?

Mine are the ones that are a bit more generic like the Lattice Chain, Circles Large and I quite like the Chinese Knot.

Okay, bye for now :o)

PS. My favourite out of all the new punches I've seen? The Vintage Doily Deep Edger from Martha Stewart (scroll down). Must have.

My tips for shopping on Etsy

There are a lot of great things to be found on Etsy, so here are my coupla tips for shopping there.

(PS. If you're not sure what Etsy is, it's an umbrella company set up for individual people to sell their handmade wares in. Ebay is auction. Etsy is shop - love that. Don't like auctions much. Etsy is handmade, and supplies to make handmade, only. It's cool)

1. Go there, look around, get a feel for the place.

2. Search for something you like.

Up the top there's a search engine. If you're looking for "tickets" for example, make sure you click Supplies on the drop down menu to the left of the search bar bit. No use looking for bakers twine to purchase in the Handmade section. Make sense? I did this and then realised I was a nong.

3. Shop around!

There's lots of people selling lots of stuff on there, so shop around to get the best price. It takes time, but it's worth it in the end. The good thing is you can buy in bulk, or just buy little bits. I love just buying little bits. Gotta watch the postage too, of course.

4. On that, the postage is generally pretty good. If you buy a bit of bakers twine and some tickets from the same person, you may only pay a couple of bucks in shipping. It's quite reasonable like that.

5. When they say "convo me" - they're talking about having a conversation. Like Ebay, you communicate through the site (rather than personal email), so it can be monitored and kept above board. When you register you will probably find out more about that. It's no big deal, you just learn as you go. These sites are pretty easy to work out.

6. You pay by Paypal. It rocks. It's easy.

And I don't think you even need a Paypal account to pay by Paypal. They (the seller or anyone you want to send money to) sends you a Paypal invoice and you can pay by credit card or log in to pay through your Paypal account. I'm not totally sure on that, but I'm pretty sure I've seen them say that somewhere.

7. You know how you just want to buy something and then you end up having buyers' remorse because you spent way too much?

Go to Etsy!

You can satisfy that need to buy and get a few (very cool) things for a very reasonable price. It also takes time to sift around to find what you want sometimes, which can be good for the hip pocket. Not as much spending in the two hours you're on the computer! Anyone, anyone?

You might get some vintage sheet music, bakers twine, stick pins and little tags (maybe from a couple of different people) - all for under $20 (or less) depending on what you buy. It's pretty good like that.

Okay, that's it for now.

Enjoy your shopping!

(If you dare)

:o)

What I made with my tickets...

...I thought you might like to see!

See what I mean about them being embellished? These were bought like this and they're the type we crafters like to try to make ourselves. Cue Papertrey's stamp set and you're sorted. I linked to that yesterday.

I actually have a ticket punch (I've had it for years), but I've not used it much because it's just a ticket. No stamps to match, nothing. Should pull that thing out and give it another whirl.

Here's the card I made.

See the ticket tucked in there?

I got the idea of the strip background out there in cyberspace somewhere. The idea is to get a piece of card and put some strips on it, then run it through your Cuttlebug using your die of choice.

I found it harder than I thought. I like precise placement and getting the die lined up on the striped paper was a bit of a challenge. It turned out fine, though I'm sure there's an easier way to do it.

After I had my base piece I just started playing around with bits and pieces.

I used the ticket, of course.

I used bakers twine because it rocks (it's from Martha Stewart. You can also buy it on Etsy - be careful, there's a lot of bakers twine on there and it's hard to resist!)

I used my great grandmother's tracing tool around the edges because it's easy and it always looks good.

I used Stickles on that because that's the way I roll. I do the same things over again - they work, so why not?

I added buttons because I liked 'em and I wanted the texture.

And I used two other finds from Etsy.

1. These little cards from Pretty Little Studio.

She has all sorts in all different sizes. I just got small ones for cards. 

2. These pins.

They're from some lovely lady, I can't remember her name! You could do a search for stick pins or crystal pins to find some.

And here's what I did with a ticket from the Tim Holtz ticket strip. It's embossed with the 5 x 7 Cuttlebug Polka Dots folder. Added just the texture I wanted.

And coupled with bakers twine, well, scrape me off the floor, I've melted.

(The pic above is of a card from the Vintage Inspired class that I'm teaching on August 21, so only a sneaky peeky allowed!)

Here are some little tickety, cardy things I bought on Etsy too. They're small - I love the polka dots. I used my postage stamp decorative scissors to turn them into stamps, which makes a nice accent, I think. They'd look good as faux stamps on envelopes too.

Hope you enjoyed my ticket creations today!

Thanks for dropping by, talk soon,

:o)

Tickets

What do you think?

Do you like tickets?

They've been around for a little while now, but as it usually goes, they start small and then wham, they get huge. Tickets are big right now and I'm liking it.

May Flaum wrote an article for Scrapbook Update recently that talked about all the ticket products available at the moment. You can check out the article here if you like.

(My links used to be orange, but for now they're pink. Blogger has taken my orange out of the colour choices. I miss it!)

May suggests checking out etsy for ticket products. I did a few months ago and got the ones above. They're like real tickets and I tuck them behind things and whatnot. And they were cheap. Can't tell you how much (can't remember), but they were cheap. You can pick up some cool, cheap finds on etsy. Beware though, cute stuff awaits! I'm just warning ya...

May also said that she could see herself using the new postage stamp punch from Fiskars to make tickets. Nice idea.

The problem I've had with tickets in the past is you have the ticket, but nothing to put inside it, or the stamp with no ticket to put it on.

The people-that-make-it-happen at Papertrey Ink are rockstars when it comes to fixing these types of problems - they've come up with dies and stamps to match (and not just tickets).

One of their latest offerings is a ticket die, a ticket stamp set and a ticket Impressions plate background.

Hello! It all makes sense. Buy the die, cut some tickets out and stamp the things you want inside. Perfect. Their impression plates are different to anything else on the market because they don't work like the embossing folders that emboss, but rather like letterpress and deboss. They're very elegant and lovely actually.

If you look at the link you'll see pics of two designs for each plate - they come as the one plate with a design on each side. And hello - more making sense again - the woodgrain plate has a horizontal and vertical option. Love that. I've noticed a lot of the other embossing folders on the market are mainly vertical options because of the specific design. I make a lot of horizontal cards and like horizontal options.

Anyway, Papertrey Ink rocks. Really. I love products that all make sense.

If you'd like to check out what some of their products look like (like the plates etc) go to Dawn McVey's blog or Betsy Veldman's blog - great designers those girls. There are other Papertrey designers too. Here's a Papertrey Ink gallery you might like to look at too.

Last ticket item that I can think of - Tim Holtz's ticket strip. It's a Sizzlets die and the pic shows the die cut embellished. If you purchase it and cut it out youself you'll just get a strip in the cardstock or whatever you've cut. Tim has so much stuff out now - I betcha the Sizzix people are giving themselves the nod for partnering up with him!

So, what do you think? Do you like tickets?

Have a great Monday!

:o)

Punch Art Fun - Look in the Book - page 27

Hey there,

I thought I'd continue with Looking in the Book today.

So, page 27 - more Simple Samples although it doesn't say it at the top. It's a carry over from page 26 (didn't really realise that myself 'til just now!).

I'm kinda working from the top of the page to the bottom here. So, at the top there's a few frogs. More than a few actually.

Here we have frogs in a row.

Frogs in a line.

Frogs not in a line!

The lilypads are apples with the stem cut off. The gold is the fabric paint I use on the bears.

Frogs are a good default punch for man cards. And you can throw some cheese in (Hoppy Birthday, Hop you have a nice birthday) for the fellas too.

Ah, more cheese.

Cheese and cows - they kinda relate.

The corner punch used on the red bit there is different to the one in the book. That's fine, of course, you can use any corner. I like that it's on a small bit, rather than on the actual corners of the card. That being said, I don't know what's going on in the right corner of the blue bit there. It's a mystery.

The bear with the stars is the bit that's on page 27. I took him and those stars and surrounded them with other Chrismtas bits for a Christmas card. I also took the Kindy Glitz and got pretty heavy handed with it too as you can see. Regular on the yellow star. Red on the bow tie and the holly berries. I remember that red glitter stage I went through very well.

Kindy Glitz and Stickles are similar, but the Stickles is more glittery. And more expensive.

Another Christmas card from page 27, but this time I added the swirl. Took a bit of doing that - haven't done it since! If I did do it again, I'd use repositional adhesive to stick the tree down, do the black pen and then stick the tree down permanently if the black pen worked. Do you do that too? You learn pretty quickly to do the pen detail first because it's easy to mess up, hey?

The other bits and pieces on page 27 include more smiley faces, a star and an apple with a worm coming out of it. The worm is the Music Note - works well. Good for teacher gifts too.

For our next Look in the Book, we're looking at the Funny Faces. I wonder what samples I have of those?

Bye for now!

Punch Art Fun - Look in the Book - page 26

Well, hello, punch art!

It's good to have you back!

And you, you dear blog reader, it's good to have you here too.

Thought we'd do a Look in the Book today and see what's on the down low.

Page 26 is the second page of the Simple Samples section (say that three times fast!) and below are some bits and bobs that look something like the bits and bobs on the page.

I say bits and bobs because that's what they are - Simple bits, or Simple Samples, thus the name.

From page 26: Smiley faces as a border into...

...smiley faces on a card.

I used a gold pen and then a black one for the eyes.

Let's face it, it's kiddy, but it's colourful.

And gosh, not everything we do has to be fantastic all the time!

Sometimes we're allowed to be simple.

Sometimes we're allowed to be kiddy.

Sometimes we're allowed to be over the pressure of being fabbo all the time.

Sometimes we wonder why we put such stuff on our blog when really, it's quite simple...and well, kiddy. But we choose to do it because we choose to. Not everything is timeless, but everything has merit.

And if it's kiddy - the kids will love it.

Ah ha, now this one is deceptively simple.

Simple is simple, but it also has to be pretty perfect. There's nowhere to hide on a simple card. You've gotta get it right, or go home!

A T-ruler is a good idea for simple cards (any cards!). You can line it up with the left edge of the card and use the horizontal bit to line up the cars. I usually eyeball it, but in my old age I'm reaching for the T-ruler a bit more. It's allowed.

I love these bears!

There are no bears on page 26, but they've snuck over from page 24 to join with the square border for this card. Two borders = fun card.

The triangle one up the top of page 26 has potential to be a card border too, I think. Or a scrapbook one, as the book shows.

And yep, that's Andrew lounging around in the photos on the scrapbook page. He was looking through the final proofs of the book and noticed he wasn't in there anywhere. I went looking for some photos (or was it a page?) to get him in there. The pics aren't what I'd normally deem publish worthy, but they were what we had at the time. It's the way it goes sometimes.

The general feeling I have about Book 1 is basically I just threw it altogether (nicely, of course!) and it came out like this. I just did what I did without thinking toooo much about whether it was right, wrong or whatever. I like Book 1, it's the easiest of the three books - the stuff is the easiest for people to make and the book was the easiest for me to make!

And I like the blue cover, I always have.

Okay, that's it for today.

See you soon!

More of PEI

Just because it's so gorgeous.