Some news…

Hi there guys,
You must wonder what I get up to in my little world offline, huh?
I mean, why so long between posts?

Well, there is a bit of news from me that I would like to share.
I have, in the last month, ended my marriage, moved and started a new life.

It’s been a tough time, I’m sure you can appreciate, so please understand when I don’t answer emails or requests. It’s pretty busy here, lol!

I have no intentions of closing this site or stopping scrapping. I want the scrapping and photography to continue as they are important to me, but not as important to me as my four beautiful babies. I need to take care of them right now, so if it’s quiet on here, don’t think I have disappeared completely. I love hearing from everyone and that is more important than ever, right now.

So please take care all – for now, please go through the site and take inspiration from the work in the gallery and in the tutorials.
There WILL be more, in future.

Love to all,
Sares xxx

Pestillence is next?

Well, we’ve had Flood, we’ve had Cyclone, we’ve had Fire, we have had even had a plague of locust at the beginning of this year – so what’s next??? I’m starting to wonder!

Poor old Queensland has just been hit with a double whammy of flood and cyclone and I feel for my family and friends up there – it’s awful to watch it all unfold on the television and know you can do nothing to help.

I am very proud, though, of my family and friends up in NOrthern Queensland who have weathered such appalling conditions and still manage to fight on with a smile on their faces and a giggle. Well done guys! Aussies are built tough, let me tell you.

Well, onto brighter things.

I have just finished updating the blog for all lesson plans in the next two weeks, for those members of my saturday classes. If you are having trouble getting to see any of the images, please let me know and I’ll email you directly.

This week, my baby girl started school for the first time and I don’t mind telling you that I was a bit of a basket case. I cried non stop for about three days before and afterwards. I would never have expected it of myself! I felt like an idiot – but then again, she is my baby and I almost lost her at birth so it’s a bit of a gut-wrenching experience to be seeing her walk away from me with a backpack almost as big as she is.

I look at her and I think, now what? for the first day, I walked around in circles not knowing what to do with myself. But don’t worry – that was soon fixed by a bit of scrapping! LOL.

I have managed to finish off some articles for the magazine, some class prep, some organisation of my studio, make a Library Bag, a paint shirt and umpteen muffins and even just scrap for the pure pleasure of it! Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I did that?

I am in the process of taking a whole heap of shots but in the meantime I wanted to show you some of the photos I have taken just in the past week – we have been suffering through a heatwave of over 40degrees celsius every day this week so far – so where do you when it’s that hot? The Beach of course!

At the time I took this photo it was at about 8pm and still 38 degrees C. It was good to be in the water, let me tell you!

Hot Aussie Sunset!

I think this picture says it all about the aussie summer. Sand, water, waves, bare feet, bar-b-ques and sizzling heat, lol.

Have fun and happy scrapping everyone!

Sares x

Hello all!

After a few months, off, I am back.

Where did I go? Nowhere special, just buried under a pile of kids and the usual Christmas hijinks. Phew, what a year!

The Photography business took off like a rocket towards the end of last year and I was literally snowed under with jobs – what a great way to be!

I hope everyone out there had a lovely and joyous Christmas season and a fabulous New Year!

Now that the New Year gas started I can also OFFICIALLY unveil a new project of mine – “SARAH’S SPACE”.

Some of you may remember that, last year I was awarded the position of Scrapbooking Memories Master and I began a year’s worth of work for the magazine over here in Australia.

I know that the mag also gets published and sent around the world, so a big HELLO! to all my girls in America (both North and South), Canada, Asia, the UK and South Africa!

Boy am I glad to see some happy, familiar names and faces amongst you all!

“Sarah’s Space” is an article I will be writing for Scrapbooking Memories magazine once a month. It is going to feature in it everything from new products and new techniques to

fascinating new sites, blogs and things from the scrapping digital world. I am so excited to be bringing it to you! Of course, I have had to keep it a secret for MONTHS, which has nearly driven me bonkers, but if you get a chance to pick up the magazine and see the first article, that would make me smile. The first article is in the current issue – Volume 13 Number 2 and it is on page 71. Woot!

Some other projects that have been published this month are:

 

This is a LO I created about my son who is a bit of a dreamboat. You can almost hear the cogs whirring around in his head and when he shows you what he has been creating, you literally hold your breath. I drew the background in with felt tip pen to picture what I thought was constantly going on inside his kooky little mind. I then hand coloured it using Watercolour pencils. I love this technique – it’s perfect for those of us who freehand doodle while we are chatting on the phone! lol. For those of you who have the current issue of Scrapbooking Memories magazine, this page is being used for the Technique of the Month (page 41) and there are some close up shots and some tips and techniques for creating this page yourselves.

Another fabbo accomplishment I had over the Christmas holidays was to score the cover of the Scrapbooking Memories magazine for their Christmas issue – woot!

Here it is, with my gorgeous eldest son as the subject:

And here it is on the cover:

EXCITING!!

So, what else has everyone been up to? For those of you in the southern hemisphere, scrapping while the kids are on holidays? I hope so!

For those of you interested, here are the images from this month’s “Sarah’s Space” article. The article was all about Dry Embossing and using it in ways on your scrapping pages and projects that brings a little “lift” in dimension as well as gets to use your products in ways that are a little “Outside the square” (I hope!).

    

Two cards using embossed cardstock from the Cuttlebug, plus some Die Cuts from the Quickutz range.

The LO using the same technique – just taking things a step further. This time, after embossing some white cardstock through the Cuttlebug machine, I hand cut out some pieces and then coloured them with small cubes of ink. After they were placed around the window frame and layered, they were spritzed with some Glimmermist. I LOVE this effect. The sky is the limit in terms of how you place everything. You could use a canvas as a base, for example, and cover the entire thing with embossed and cut out sections of cardstock to make it look like an entire GARDEN of 3D scrumptiousness.

Well, I am going to head off now and have a cuppa before bed – this is enough to keep you going for a little while, I hope!

I will be back soon, of course, with more details of techniques, more Photography tips and even more ways of getting your work to look better and better using some of the newest products around.

Have fun and happy scrapping!

Sares x

Doesn’t Time Fly?

…when you’re having fun?

I have been “batching it” as a single parent this month and I have to say – there seems to be less hours in the day, for some reason. I mean, seriously – did someone take away an hour or three? That’s the only explanation I have for getting to the end of the day and having no time left to scrap! Or sleep, for that matter, lol.

It’s been a hectic month, as you would imagine, with 4 kids, the dog, the cat, the fish (now sadly deceased) (thank god – one less mouth to feed), the garden, the housework, the school work and the newest batch of snails and hunstman spiders my front garden seems to love to procreate. Eek. Going out the front door feels like running the gammut of the Haunted House at the local circus.

I just sprayed the whole front of the house with “get-rid-of-spiders” type stuff and now I am sorry! Their little bodies are all curled up on my front porch as a testament to my genocide. Eek! It was too much for me, I’m afraid. I went around the back and out the side gate to get the post. I WILL have to go out there at some stage and get rid of them. Or maybe, if I wait long enough, we will have a stiff breeze and it will blow them all across the road. Here’s hoping! lol.

So, scrap wise – there are a few things on the agenda.

Firstly – class this week. We are doing an “All white” project of mine.

It seemed like a good idea, at the time, to have an “all white” page but I didn’t count on the fact that I am a MESS and I attract dirt and other unmentionables to me like a magnet. Keeping the page clean for class has been a nightmare! Anyway, enjoy 🙂

Next thing to show you is my start to the Halloween decorations for the year. The kids are right into it this year – and why not? A bit of fun never hurt, I say.

I call this, “The Bellfry”:

I can finally show you this page:

“Into the Wild” was created as one of my last Masters projects for the year using Karen Foster’s Zoo papers and embies. I liked this one. The papers are kinda cutesy but they work with the calico in the background.

This is a LO with a vintage feel to it that I created for one of our Sat classes. I LOVE the combination of brown, cream and gold. The photo is actually digitally manipulated to look like a drawing and then printed onto canvas:

So, now I am off to publish something on both the Upsy Daisy Blog and my Photography blog. I have been a busy gal this month, with weddings and family shoots non stop most weekends. It’s a stressful but wonderful time to share with people. If you get the time, pop over to my Photography Blog and take a peek.

That’s all from me for now – thanks for stopping by!

Sares x

Well, it’s about time!

It’s about time a few things happened around here, actually.

First, it’s about time I should write this post.

Second, it’s about time I realised it was only two more weeks of school left until the holidays and work something out to do with the kidlets. Maccas for lunch each day is not an option, lol.

Third, it’s about time I thanks the team at SCRAPBOOKING MEMORIES magazine for a wonderful year of friendship and support while I travelled the road of a Master. To Kristy, Cassie, Sherry, Sharryn, Jane, Emily, and whoever else had to help me stumble through it – thanks girls!! You have been wonderful to work with and I look forward to many happy months working together in the future 🙂

Fourth, it’s about time I posted up some LO’s here! Seriously, I have been that busy with the kids, sicknesses and photography that I haven’t had two miutes to sit down and do this – but here they are!

I’ve been working on our snow holiday album – some pages are very minimal (like the one above), while others have a bit more pizazz.

…and my fave of this week’s efforts:

I LOVE the teal (my fave colour) with a splash of red to make it pop, if I say so myself, lol.

I also have had a few bits and pieces published this week, which I can finally share with you.

The first thing is a set of cards done using a new Stampit product for the Cardmaking, Stamping and Papercraft magazine:

 

Both of those cards used the stamp on metal shim in some way. I thoroughly enjoyed doing cards for a change and I will be doing a few more of those for the mag in the future – so keep your eyes peeled, lol.

 The other one to show you from this month is a Product Challenge for Scrapbooking Memories magazine using the new Bo Bunny range of papers:

and some detail…

Here’s a tip – I had a heap of those acetate Ghost letters by Heidi Swapp left over from previous projects. I had enough to make the title but rather than just whack them on the page, I used them as stencils and traced around them with a white gel pen. Gel pens can write over most surfaces – even felt it seems!

Speaking of birthdays, my little man James turned 7 last week. He also managed to pull another tooth out of his head to celebrate the occasion. If we are not careful, there won’t be many left to keep his food in!

Happy Birthday, gorgeous. You bring a smile to my face every day xxx.

That’s all from me folks – I won’t bore you with much more, lol.

Y’all have a good week now!

Sares x