Life Is....

Evening all,

Just a quick post tonight showing a gorgeous image and sentiment from Darkroom Door.

The background behind the bike was made with alcohol inks on gloss card.

The striped piece at the back is the waxy Cuttlebug technique.

I have my new camera. Now to work out how to use the jolly thing! so...NOOO...I won't be showing off world class photos ....just yet...It's a wee daunting to tell the truth, but I am determined to master it. I almost had conniptions today when checking out how much I needed to transfer over to wipe out my CC for the month. I saw this figure from Harvey Norman...and thought!...Wait...I haven't bought any big ticket items from Harvey Norman...What the heck is this??...Then the penny dropped...I bought the camera....Phew! BEFORE I rang the bank! That would not have been pretty...Image of Michelle trying to crawl back out of the embarrassment hole....

All booked to go to stamp camp now. Looking forward to a weekend with Jeanette Trappett as the tutor. (Best pack lots of wine!) Looking more forward to annoying my mate Grace for a whole two weeks...And looking forward to having my hubby join us, albeit, for one weekend.

Sending You Hugs Watercolour

I had this background piece in the backgrounds box and decided to get it gone! It was quickly made using H2O's on watercolour paper, some time ago.

I just quickly stamped the Penny Black image in StazOn black ink, distressed the edges...HEAPS...and mounted it, using a couple of embellishments! The Hero Arts wording fits just beautifully. I find Hero Arts have paid a great deal of attention, of late, to the sizing and the look of their sentiments. I am really enjoying the direction this company has been taking!

Pretty in Pink

Well my mates were here in March for a little stamping get together. I wanted to try out a few of Michelle Zindorf's style of brayering and scene making.

Ok then. It is not as simple as it first appears! I gave up on trying to replicate this http://zindorf.blogs.splitcoaststampers.com/2010/12/20/flamingo-love-tutorial-385/ .

Instead of brayering, I sponged. I was somewhat determined to get those flamingos on a card! Cheryll had gifted the set to Grace. I wanted to get it dirty...Pronto! ROFL!

Anyway, even though I did not brayer, I am still happy with this scene, and of course, now I, too, own that set! Thanks Cheryll! Such an enabler!

Subdued With Sympathy

Ok, one of my varying excuses for lack of blogging was that my camera had died a lonely death.

My beautiful DIL to be and I also enrolled in TAFE to do a digital camera course AND a Photoshop course. Whilst the digital camera course was a total flop for us, we did get one thing out of it. We now want to learn how to take a good photo. This, of course requires a good camera.

We have been in the pursuit of finding us a good SLR camera and have now done so. Melissa has hers and I am waiting for mine to come in. In the meantime, without having the camera for more than an afternoon, we just did a series of point and shoots in terrible fluorescent lighting of some of my recent cards (seen the last two days and coming for the next two also). I am pretty chuffed with them. They have been merely cropped and straightened within Photoshop...Nothing else! Cannot wait until they unearth another Sony A55 for ME!!!!! The two from the last two days were stamped on gloss card. Any gloss card work I have ever tried to photograph has been a royal pain in the bum. This was so easy with a great result.

This card uses a beautiful Hero Arts shadow stamp. Have you tried looking for nice shadow stamp lately? I have! For someone else and they appear to be non existent! Hello manufacturers! There should be some out there. Highly useful a nice shadow stamp is!

The wording is hero Arts also but I think the main image is from Stampin Up.

Thinking of You Stampscapes

Another Stampscapes scene. I love them!!!! They are sooo generic and can be adapted for almost any occasion...mmm.....maybe NOT babies and kids! But you know what I mean.

I am so going to enjoy attending stamp camp this year and playing with Stampscapes! (amongst other things!) It's always much more fun when what you are doing is something you are totally absorbed by....and if you haven't already guessed, I am just a little absorbed by scene making!

The only downer for scene stamping is the amount of time it all takes to come together! You really do have to put some time aside, especially in the learning stages.

This scene was also an early one ....I found a little stash of partially completed and throw out ones and resurrected them. This one had quite a bit I wasn't happy with, but now I think it to be passable, after working on it some more. It certainly is evidence to put something away and then revisit it down the track (and not just throw it straight in the bin with little hangmen drawn all over it, hey Cheryll?...ROFL....She actually DID do that!)

Follow the River

Hi there everyone!!!!

Long time away from action here. Lots of excuses! Lots and lots!!! But, I will not bore you here with them.

This is a Stampscapes scene, actually stamped up quite a while ago, but only recently mounted. I sometimes have real tortuous moments trying to think of interesting ways to present Stampscapes scenes, and often fall back on simple, as in the card here. This is because i hate to see any element covered up by embellishments etc. Am I wrong? Who knows?

I really was in learning mode when I stamped this.

Trying to organise a trip to the US next year to encompass a stamp show...oh AND some sight-seeing...I am told.....(If I have to!...I DID say, sightseeing = the inside of as many stamping places we could find! This did not go down well, hey Grace?)

So if you are American and can offer us up some information, that would be great! Stampaway in Ohio in August is supposed to be one of the best around. Opinions please!