Creations From The Heart

Got lots of time on your hands?

If you've ever got loads of time on your hands (huh! who has that?)....well head on over to Scrap Scene where you can literally spend hours surfing to all sorts of places across the internet!  I visit this site regularly for some inspiration.  They give you all the goss and happenings in the scrapbook industry.  For example, advice on new designers, competitions, links to blogs, storage stuff, new product releases, classes, kit subscriptions, etc, etc and it's all across the board including paper scrapping, digital scrapping and stamping.  Loads of places to go and check out so make sure you stop by the have a sticky nose...quite a few Aussies get mentioned on a regular basis too!

And for some gorgeous vintage eye candy, head on over to Artful Dreamer Boutique...one of my cyber friends Susi linked this site up on her blog.

Posting digi layouts

Just wanted to let you know that I will only be posting my digital layouts over on my digi blog from now on.  I'm doing a lot more of them these days now that I'm on a couple of creative teams but had been popping them on this blog to give you some inspiration for your scrapbooking, not necessarily to get you inspired to go off and digi scrap as it's not something that comes easily.  It's taken me quite a few years to get to the level and understanding of Photoshop that I'm currently at.  So if you're interested in seeing what I'm doing, just pop on over to my digi blog via the link in the right-hand sidebar under MY BLOGS.  This blog will continue to be displaying my paper scrapbooking and stamping projects along with my daily life happenings and anything inspirational that I find out there on the internet!

guest CT spot at Snap & Scrap

This would have to be one of my favourite digi kits...this is a layout I've made for my time as a guest Creative Team member at Snap & Scrap (a digi shoppe).  I've used a kit called Moroccan Sunset that all the shoppe's designers have put together for July and it will be showcased on their blog along with all other layout samples by the regular CT team.  If you want to check out my last layout, here's a link to the Snap & Scrap blog post and this one will go up at the end of June as the kit is promoted in July.

In other digi news, I have accepted another CT position, this time at Laura Lively Designs.  At this stage the new CT are just on for one month to see if we fit in there as Laura's shoppe is brand new but full of beautiful goodies.  Hopefully it will lead to a permanent role there....who knows but I'll be doing a couple of layouts with her kits shortly!

I'm finally back to somewhat normal routine...it's taken a day or so to wash, unpack holiday gear, shop and restock the fridge....oh, had to buy a new fridge first as my old fridge died just before we went away so had virtually no food in the house because we were going away and because the old one carked it!  Not good.....  I still haven't even looked at uploading some more pics of what else we got up to in Cairns, but they'll be done at some stage.  I caught up on lots of magazine reading while I was away.  I have never thrown out any of my old scrapbooking mags as I can't bear to part with them "just in case" I ever needed them to refer to!  Well, I'm in a cleanout mood lately, so I just ripped a few pages out of each mag that I took away and came home slightly lighter than when I went....felt great to offload them as I rarely find time to sit and read them cover to cover as I'm usually scrapping at night when the boys are in bed.  Another thing I got around to was watching loads of shows I'd downloaded off the internet that I have never had a chance to watch.  I don't even turn the TV on anymore and just download the few shows I do want to watch....caught up with the current series of Grey's Anatomy, Survivor All-Stars (thanks heaps for lending me these Ange), The Apprentice & Private Practice.  I just loved PP, which is a spin-off from Grey's.  This first series was only 9 episodes and I want more so hoping they air it soon in the US.

Toby had his last day of kinder for the term.  Ryan is now enrolled to start 3 year old kinder for the rest of this year which he is excited about.  He always loves going to Toby's kinder and will find out for himself what it's like to go on his own.

Off to get things rolling with my solicitor next week in regards to my financial settlement with Mark.  It's been over one and a half years since we separated and with everything rising in prices, I need to know where I stand for the future.  Hopefully Mark agrees to everything so it doesn't have to go through court.  He's heading off overseas for 2 months in September, so that will mean the boys are going to struggle even more with not being able to see him and my parents are going travelling in their caravan at the end of July for up to 4 months so it's going to be interesting to see how I manage with things while Mark and the family are away.  Won't be able to do any workshops or go too far with these two little terrors in tow!

If Mum and Dad are serious about moving to Port Douglas, I'm off like a flash to move in with them!  Just need a house big enough to fit all our scrapbooking stuff in as I could never go back to not having my own scrapping space after what I have here...a big luxury I know!  Anyway, time to get to bed as have some visitors coming tomorrow and need to get the house waaay more cleaner than it is!

I'm home!

Arrived back home from Cairns last night to freezing cold weather after 2 weeks of sunshine and warm weather....

Haven't updated much about my holiday so have lots to share from our trip.

Plus I have a brand spanking new mini catalogue in my hands which starts on 1st August, so stay tuned for more details as it's full of absolutely wonderful goodies!

Lots of washing, ironing and shopping to do before our house is back to normal.....

Because I'm restricted for time here on holidays, here's two more layouts I've just completed.  Hop on over to my digi blog for a little more info.  The first layout is one that I am making for my Guest Creative Team Member spot at Snap & Scrap for the month of June thanks to my layout winning last month....yippee....I'll probably be doing some layouts into July as they only gave me access last week so watch the Snap & Scrap blog for more layouts of mine showcasing some new kits.

Here's one of the two layouts I've created since being away on holidays.  Still have to add some journalling on the other one so will just post this for now.  All the details are on my digital blog.

We spent the day up at Kuranda yesterday after catching the train up and the skyrail back down.  It was just gorgeous travelling through and over the rainforests.  Need to upload some pics when I get a chance but today is our rest day as we've been out for about 4 days straight now and we're all needing a swim and a rest....aaaah, the life!

Some more shots of our family swimming in the resort.  Boy do the kids go crazy once they hit the water! Toby just dives in and goes for it and is very cocky...so much so that he was asked to get out of the pool by me the other day and ran and jumped into the deep end to get away from me.  He cannot swim without the aid of his floaties so luckily they were on as I was fully dressed.  He swam right the way across the pool.  Then today, he ran off from my Dad at Port Douglas beach as he didn't want to go home.  So nothing's changed with their behaviour even though they're away on holidays, the little buggers!

  This is the whale waterslide for the kids....it's got a sprinkler that drenches you with water and they slide into the pool.  The kids all love it and Toby manages to swim off after he hits the water.  Here he is in his Action Man one piece suit.

Here's the family at Flecker Gardens, the Cairns Botanical Gardens.

This is the villa we're staying in with Ryan out the front.  We look across to loads of tropical plants and trees and the mountains behind the resort.

This is my little cutie doing his thing!

Here's a shot of Ryan patting a 1 year old crocodile at The Rainforest Dome in Cairns. It's mouth has been taped shut so as not to chomp off any little fingers!  Didn't think the kids would like touching these reptiles, but they proved me wrong.

Here's a python with beautiful coloured skin.

Think that will do for today as we've been in Port Douglas all day and I'm zonked as we're heading to the Kuranda Skyrail and railway tomorrow so another full day.  Swam at Port Douglas today and boy was the water just beautiful and warm.  It was only 25 degrees today so didn't think it would be warm enough for a swim but the water was deceiving so some pics of the boys swimming in their clothes tomorrow!

coconut resort, cairns

What a beautiful place we're staying in....just perfect for families and there are loads of them here.  Tonight we've just come back from watching The Bee Movie on an outdoor movie screen similar to a drive-in but much smaller.  We took our blankets and sat outside under the moon and stars and the boys loved it - didn't move for the whole movie!  Here's some pics of what we've been up to around our resort so far.

Here's Toby with his new kid-tough camera taking a pic of me taking a pic of him!

These gigantic jumping pillows are just the ants-pants!  They are huge inflatable trampolines - one huge one as seen here and one smaller one behind.  When you all get jumping on them, you go flying in the air.  Here's Toby up front and Ryan waaay down the back under the yellow sail.  We're right on the highway, so it's very noisy but our villa is nestled up the back with views of beautiful mountains and palm trees behind us.

This is my big cutie lying on the pillows posing...as he does best!

Here's Ryan doing some running on the pillows.  Boy, does it get your heart rate jumping.  Half an hour on here bouncing with the kids and I was totally exhausted!

Yep, that's me!

  Here is some of the resort transport!  Frogs on this one and Nemo on the other one.  The kids yell out every time Nemo drives past our villa!

Here's Ryan getting friendly with the local croc at the entrance to our resort!

Plenty more pics to share of everyone swimming in the resort pool.  We have visited The Rainforest Dome at Cairns Casino yesterday where we all got to pat some reptiles and check out some birds flying freely in a big dome similar to Melbourne Central in the city.  Toby got the fright of his life when a black cockatoo decided to crash land on his head.  You all know how loud he can scream and that was what echoed through the place!  Today we went to Flecker Gardens, the local botanical gardens where we walked for miles through lush tropical plants.  The kids loved it as they were in the jungle pretending to be Tarzan and Indianna Jones.  Tomorrow we're driving to Port Douglas for the day so can't wait to see some gorgeous beaches and have a bit of a swim!  See you soon and hope you're not all frozen down there in very chilly Melbourne.

got to be quick....

Here's some pics of the kids with their faces painted on the Virgin Blue flight up to Cairns.  The plane was full and our two were the first ones to have their faces painted...the young hostesses did a great job and the plane was full of babies and toddlers.  Cairns is obviously a family holiday destination!  This is my Dad with Spiderman!  Got to be quick when I'm online as my allowance is either 2 hours or 50mbs which goes fast by just receiving my emails.  The resort we're at is just amazing and I'll upload the pics of us on these huge jumping pillows tomorrow.

heading North for the Winter!

Yes, we're finally here in beautiful Cairns!  For those of you who don't know, we'll be here for the next two weeks so you might not see too much scrapbooking as I've left it all at home, but there may be some digital scrapping as I've got my laptop with me. 

We had a great flight up with Virgin Blue and they even did face painting for all the kids on the plane.  My boys were Spiderman and a tiger for the flight and they loved it!  So we're planning on just exploring our 28 acre resort for the next day or so before we head off to explore Cairns and the surrounding areas.  We've got a couple of tours booked into the rainforests, out on the local harbour, to a crocodile farm. The resort has outdoor movies and loads of activities each day and there's plenty of people staying here so we'll be having a ball.

I'll leave this post at the top so just scroll down to see what we've been up to once I upload our photos each day!  Hope the weather isn't too cold down there in Melbourne!!!

another card

Just before I head out the door to my workshop at Alethea's, here's a quick pic of another card we're making tonight.  You'll see back on my 4th June post, the card that inspired this one as I just love the colours and the Scribbles set looks so vibrant when clear embossed!

All Stampin' Up products used.

CARD:  Pretty In Pink, Tempting Turquoise, Whisper White

INKS:  Pretty In Pink, Versamark

STAMPS:  Scribbles, Short & Sweet

OTHER:  Flowers & pearls from Pretties Kit, Clear embossing powder, heatgun Word Window punch, Mini Glue Dots.

all i can say is what the!!!@@!!!  saw this on a blog this week and it was linked to some instructional website!!!

cards for dad

 

Tomorrow I have a workshop where the hostess has requested we do some masculine cards.  As most of us know, they are probably the hardest to come up with as we tend to stock up on flowers and swirls and the like which don't really suit a man's card.  So I've had a go at two cards using similar colour bases and just changed the elements around to make them totally different.  In Australia, we celebrate Father's Day in September, so there's plenty of time to make your special Dad up a card like this but I believe it's very soon in other countries.

All Stampin' Up products have been used:

CARDSTOCK/PAPER:  Mellow Moss, Chocolate Chip, Spring Break double-sided paper

INKS:  Versamark, Chocolate Chip

STAMPS:  Classic Stars jumbo roller, Occasional Greetings

OTHER:  Chocolate Chip grosgrain ribbon, Earth Elements brads, large star punch, Stampin' Dimensionals, Cutting Tool

STAMPS:  Classic Stars jumbo wheel, Bronc Buster, Short Order Alphabet

CARD/PAPER:  Mellow Moss, Really Rust, Outlaw double-sided paper, Chocolate Chip

INKS:  Versamark

OTHER:  Cutting Tool, gold embossing powder, XL eyelets, Crop A Dile, heat gun, Natural Hemp Twine, Stampin' Dimensionals, Embossing Buddy (otherwise the gold e.p. stuck to all the stars that I'd inked yesterday!).

Some cards from Pene

My friend Pene has created some gorgeous cards that I wanted to share with my blog readers for inspiration.....

Pene has created a criss-cross card (click link for tutorial at Splitcoast Stampers) and has used Purely Pomegranate from the 2008 In Colour range and doesn't it look great?  One of the cards has Going Grey from the Neutrals range in it.  The patterned papers are from the Palette of Prints (May promotion).  She's used some Kindy Glitz on the flower, her favourite stamp set "Baroque Motifs" for the flourish & "cherish", the Round Tab punch, a couple of eyelets and a bit of ribbon.

some inspiration from others

Found some goodies on the net that I thought I'd share with you:

This is a decorated canvas I found today on the Fancy Pants blog...anyone not love Fancy Pants goodies!  They're just amazingly beautiful.  Thought this looks like a great Father's Day idea.

Then went over to Nichole Heady's blog from Papertrey Ink and found this gorgeous card with a very easy resist technique:

And lastly, found this amazing scrapbooking site that you just MUST check out for some major inspiration and eye candy!  There's even pics of some amazing scrap spaces...

Emma's Paperie

If you go back through their blog you'll see plenty of gorgeous ideas especially from Melissa Phillips who's work I just admire so much.  She's on a few design teams and seems to pop up everywhere, but no wonder she's in demand with the sort of work she churns out!

Love the colours on this card from Wendy....thought the Scribbles flowers would lend itself perfectly to this card if I tried to reproduce it.

Also, check out Anabelle's blog too as it's another must-see stop.....

what NOT to take on holidays with you!

Tonight I just had to laugh as Toby spent a good bit of time quietly in his room.  When he surfaced, he asked me to come and have a look at what he'd packed for our trip to Cairns next week.  Well, on the floor piled in the middle of his room were about 13 kids backpacks and library bags (yes, we do have THAT many and some more!) and they were all chock-a-block full of stuff!  He starts telling me that this is what he's taking on the plane with him and I'm like....are we????  I lifted one and it was like rocks were in it.  He'd stuff books in, toys in, clothing in and anything else that he could find in his room.  His bookshelf was nearly empty.  Don't you just love how kids think....he's such a smart little boy my often naughtier-than-nice Toby!!!  But ya gotta love him X X X :)

So, 7 more sleeps till we hit Virgin Blue to take us all the way to sunnier-than-Sunbury Cairns!  Gosh, I cannot wait for the high 20's, surf, sunshine and relaxation.....well and truly need that right now.

This layout is another for Veronica Hurly's CT and I've used a paper from her Such A Girl kit and the rest are from her Such A Boy kit available from Go Digital Scrapbooking.

Today, was one of those 'bad' days with Toby so I wanted to get some thoughts down in writing so I can keep track of what's going on as it's becoming a regular occurrence to see him get angry and fly off the handle.  This again is why I love scrapbooking as it allows me to share my thoughts and document my life through pictures and creativity, otherwise I probably wouldn't have documented it.

You may not be able to read the journalling so here it is:

Dear Toby,

Days like today make life very difficult to deal with. I know you mean well, but you’ve got to learn to control your raging moods. You go from hot to cold in a matter of seconds and it doesn’t have to be anything major to set you off. Today you got so angry because you frustrated yourself using Pa’s computer. There’s no excuse for the behaviour that followed. You scare everyone around you with your anger and abuse, especially your poor little brother Ryan who was shaken by your agression. We want to help you but you need to listen and be patient with everything you do. Life is a long road and you are only 5 so you have many years of trial and error ahead of you. If you can’t do something the first time, you try again and maybe again. You can’t go jumping off the deep end because of something you’re not good at when you’re just learning how to do it. So next time Toby, please take a deep breath and step back. Then when you’re ready, you can try again and we’ll be there to help you every step of the way.