I have to do this…

…post this entry now, that is, because I am smack in the middle of having my studio refitted and I don’t know how long it would be before getting a chance to scrap again

So before I say anything else, let me post up some photos of the most recent little projects I have created -

ONE: – handmade Chrissy cards.

This year’s colour theme – Kraft card, white, pink and silver colour scheme.

TWO – Handmade Christmas Village:

Using My Mind’s Eye “A Colourful Christmas” paper range – i love it, but more importantly – the kids helped me make it – it was a fabulous family project! LOL….I won’t say I wasn’t tearing my hair out by the end of it but I will say that there was a lot of laughter, bickering and gnashing of teeth to make it happen – in short, a perfectly normal Christmas activity.

Another project I have been working on (shhhhhh…..secret squirrels) is the 12 Days of Christmas Crop over at Scrapbook Divas - Yay!

Here is a sneaky peek of what we will be doing in my “class”…

If you get a chance and you are stretched for inspiration, why not join in on the Diva’s Forum and 12 Days of Chrissy celebrations?? There is going to be plenty of motivationa, a great team to work with, some prizes and other fun stuff PLUS the chance to get to work with Marion Werren, Anne Marie Cox and myself as Guest DT as well as the wonderful regular DT who have all sorts of yummo projects lined up for you!

Last for this week (but certainly not least) is that we are up  to WEEK 9 (!!!) of the TWELVE WEEKS OF CHRISTMAS celebrations over at Addicted to Craft. I can’t believe we are at week 9 already – how fast has the year gone??

This week it is my turn to show you something special – and I have been given the new PRIMA transparencies and other gorgeous mid season realease Prima products to tempt you inot entering our wonderful competition…

So far we have had some fantastic entries and some great guest designers – who knows? the next winner could be you! But you have to be in it to win it, right?

To enter, simply follow the instructions on the Blog entry page This week’s theme ————9 LADIES DANCING…wonder what I come up with, hmmm? (wink).

That’s all from me for now – but keep posted on a regular basis for news of what we are all doing during the Christmas break – when you need some inspiration and motivation, simply visit me here or drop me a line – I’d love to hear from you!

Take care all,

Sares xxx

I’m not ready!

Christmas is coming waaaaaaay too fast this year and I, for one, am not ready. Presents? Not done. Not enough,anyway. Decorations? Half the blimmin’ street has theirs up already! Stop it people! You make me look slow.

It’s a good thing I live across the road from the world’s biggest Scrooge. Our neighbour refuses to do anything Christmas related to his house, inside or out. So as slow as I am getting the decs up, he looks worse! LOL.

One thing I will say, in my defence, is that I have been neck deep in preparations for this studio to be remodelled. Yes it’s finally happening! After nearly 6 years of waiting, I will soon have a whole new studio. I’ll keeo you posted with pics, ok?

Despite the schedule that I have set myself leading up to Christmas (crazy idiot), I had a chance to play in the studio last week and came up with these:

They are the presents for the ki’ds teachers at school. They are supposed to be Pencil Cases but I think I might put choccies in them, instead. God knows, they have enough pens and pencils already in their stash, don’t they?  Primary school teachers, help me out here! lol.

I actually managed to do some scrapping as well – miracle of miracles. These are the newest LO’s to add to the family albums:

TIP: One large photo can often set the “theme” or “scene” for the LO. It doesn’t have to be the usual portrait.

My first LO of little Oscar while he will still in the NICU. I wanted to celebrate his birth like you would every other baby, even though it was a rough start.

I found these Peter Rabbit stamps in Spotlight the other day, so I had to give them a go.

TIP: If you are too scared to stamp directly onto your LO, stamp onto spare paper or cardstock, then cut it out and use it as an embellishment.

TIP: Watercolour paints need not be so daunting. The better ones come in “cake” form, which means you are in control of the lightness or strength of the colours. The above border was painted with a lot of water and some Windsor and Newton’s Watercolours and a very small Taklon brush.

The LO below is definitely my favourite of the week:

I’ve been mucking about with Low Light photography and my kids are so trained now that they just sit still in front of the camera, hence this shot. And I have to admit to liking the “girly girl” appeal of the Pink, White and Black colour scheme with some bling added on.

What else has been going on around here? Not much else except I smashed my car first thing Monday morning while taking the kids to school. Argh! I am now unable to go further than the local shops for three weeks – I am going to go stark raving blimmin’ mad I tell you! On the plus side, my house has never looked so clean .

Well, I am off to do some more sorting of the Studio – I am having a big “cleanout” while I go through everything but I can’t say much scrapping stuff is being chucked – why on earth would I do that???? However, I AM very happy to get rid of the cockroaches, dust bunnies and 4789 Daddy Long Legs spiders that live in here (it’s half the garage). Find another house, bugs!

Have a great week everyone,

Sares x

 

Busy Busy Busy and more Busy

I don’t think I know of any other way to live, LOL.

Some good news – little Oscar is doing very well and will soon be out of hospital – we are counting down the days until he can be home with his mum, dad and big sister. Yay!

I have been stuck in one of those – “Gotta get those blimmin projects finished or else” kind of moods this week. I started the ball rolling for my new Studio (thanks so much Caz!) and it looks like it will be going ahead. Why does that freak me out? Because it means that every bit of jumk I have accumulated in this studio in the last 5 years will have to be moved out. EEEEEEEEK!

Get ready for a massive cleanout people – there is stuff in here I had forgotten I even owned. On the plus side, though – new Studio! Yay!

In honour of all things “new” I also decided to re-upholster a chair that has been in my studio for about a year.

Here are the before, during and after shots:

The chair before I tore the stuffing out of it.

The chair after I stripped it and pulled out a BAZILLION staples.

The chair as it now sits in our front lounge room.

DH’s grandfather made that chair, so it wasn’t going to be dumped in some antique shop. It needed a new life – and I love love love it now. Except no-one is allowed to sit on it. You hear me, kids?

On to the fun stuff – the kids had a Halloween Disco at school which was great fun – who doesn’t like dressing up and painting faces all night? lol

Everyone had a great time and the kids slept like logs well past 8am the next morning

Now for the scrapping stuff:

“Life is Full of Possibilities”

TIP – use your kid’s clothing labels as part of your LO.

TIP – paint over areas in the background to make the whole foreground “pop”.

“A Hug From You”

TIP – cut out some leaf shapes from scraps with a pair of fancy-edged scissors, ink them and layer them.

“Christmas Angel”

TIP – paint some extended star shapes in the background of your LO – especially if it is a Christmas theme.

“Princess”

TIP – Paint a frame around the base of the photo (without the photo on the page, of course), and then flick the paint around the top left and bottom right corners to make it look like it is “spraying” into the LO.

TIP – Once you have done the painted frame, stitch over the top in a contrasting coloured thread and paint within that frame.

OK, that’s all from me for the moment – I need to go back to sorting out this studio

Take care all!

Sares x

 

 

Some Sincere Thanks

As we speak I am printing out all the Thankyou notes for all of the individuals and retailers/wholesalers that got on board the Memory Gifts Project – all 600 of them! lol

There are certainly too many contributors to mention here in one place, so look out for the postie in the next few weeks while i get this job finished and please forgive me if I don’t get to you – I’ll get there at some stage, I promise!

There are a few of you who have asked how the Memory Gifts have been received and I can say that there have been quite a few “thankyou’s” from the recipients so far but I have to assume that people are still rebuilding their lives and find it difficult to even look at an album, let alone send a thankyou. That day may come – it may not and I don’t care. It wasn’t what we did it for, was it?

There are a few passages from people’s emails and letters that I would like to share with you, however:

“Our family would like to express its delight at receiving this lovely album.   You should be congratulated for the tremendous effort that has gone into creating and organising such a massive project.  The delight I have been seeing on families’ faces when they were presented with this wonderful gift brought tears to my eyes.  Their first new photos now have somewhere special to reside.  I visited your wonderful website and read all about you and was wondering if you could please convey our gratitude to all the amazing people that helped make these albums possible.

 

I am an avid card maker but have never tried scrapbooking.  While things are still very hectic at the moment your album has inspired me to give scrapbooking a go.  It is heart warming to know there are so many wonderful people out there who have helped support us through this difficult time.  Thank you again.”

“To Sarah
I have received one of the thousands of Scrapbooks that you have contributed. I am in grade 6 and love sport.I love it and will have so many good memory’s in there because of you, my sister has also got one and treasures it more than i can say.I am very touched by the way you have lighted up our days and so many people will be smiling because of what you have done and this is not like any other donation it is more and i am so very happy to get it. Thank-you a thousand times and more.”

 

 ”I must admit that it was quite emotional receiving my albums, remembering the two I had as an ongoing project for my two children.  After losing all my photos in the fire I didnt know where to start.  You kind of push it to the back of your mind because day to day sometimes is an effort in itself.  This is the incentive I needed to start tracking down some copies of the ones that i had. For this I have to say thank you because I have located some wonderful photos from family and friends…ones that I had forgotten that I had given them. 
 
My husband and I are so very grateful for the time and effort put into these beautiful albums and I am excited to start putting them together along with the new photos we have started to take. Memories will always remain with us even though we lost everything in the fire. These memories we made in the past will forever remain in our hearts and now we can make new ones.  Its the generosity from people like yourself that is so overwhelming.”

 

Give yourselves a pat on the back everyone.

If I had to do this whole project all over again, I would, based on what I read in the above letters. Cheers girls xxxx.

The only other thing to tell you from this week has been the very exciting arrival of my new little nephew Oscar :). I have to say, he hasn’t had the easiest delivery or first week of life, but he’s getting there and we are all doing our best to help. Little man, pull up those socks – it’s time to go home with mum and start your little life, ok?

I wont show you the rest of the pics I took of him – too distressing. I was lucky to get these. But he’s gorgeous – he takes his good looks from his aunty, of course

And then of course, we had a full weekend of family stuff. This is what we decided to do this afternoon:

What coud be better than a Sunday afternooon at the local down at Salamander bay? Glass of champers, beach, steak, awesome live music and taking photos. Didn’t matter about the crappy weather. James (after promising he would NOT get wet) did a face plant into the water about 2 minutesafter these pics were taken. Picture a dripping wet, screaming kid being dragged out of the water. Not screaming because he was wet, but beause he didn’t want to get OUT. God help me.

One last thing I managed to complete was some wedding ring demo shots – I needed a few more for my website – here’s a few shares:

Happy with that last shot, especially. DH was having a heart attack because he thought we were going to lose both rings and spend the afternoon snorkelling to find them

That’s all for me folks – lots more scrapping happening this week so there will be heaps to show you next post – stay tuned!

Love to all

Sares xx

 

Project Memory Gifts Finale

Well, it’s taken 9 months, about 2000 emails, about 200 phone calls, about 3000 man hours and about 20,000 LO’s but guess what?

THE MEMORY GIFTS PROJECT HAS FINALLY COME TO AN END.

Honestly, I don’t know how to feel. I thought I would be ecstatic to have my house/garage back in order but I don’t. I think I’ve been concentrating on this for so long that I am a bit lost now that it’s finished.
What I AM looking forward to is imagining the faces on the kids when they open their albums. My DH is driving down to Melbourne with the last trailer load of albums packed and ready for delivery.

The back of the car paxked with the “Starter Kits”.

The boys having a last minute hug goodbye (awww).

Some of the boxes within the trailer (there were over 50 altogether).

….and off they go.

Here we come, Strathewen, Kingslake, Marysille, Taggerty and Wattleglen!

Scrapping news:

Here’s a few shares from this week’s playing in the studio -

TIP: Don’t be afraid to crop your photos quite tightly around the face to help focus on what the real “story” is.

TIP: Embellishments don’t have to cost the earth – cut some extra bits out of co-ordinating papers and mount them off the surface of your page have done with the animals on this one.

TIP: Don’t just use patterned vellum against a white or light background – place it off centre against a textured or flocked paper and the results are gorgeous!

Every single LO I produced this week was about James – purely coincidence because the photos are all jumbled up and in no order (just the way I like things lol). He must have been on my mind LOL.

What else have I been up to this week? A wee bit of socialising and I have to tell you I had a ball – two nights down in Sydney attending a Reunion and a birthday party was great fun.

The reunion was of my old Year 12 class of ‘99 – it was great to catch up with them all again and see what lovely adults they have become. There were some suprised there, mind you! (yes, Paul, I mean you lol).

Here is a terrible photo of me with Meeks who organised the do – she is still as gorgeous as always on the inside and out.

Sat night I went to my aunt’s 60th – wow, I was blown away by the entertainment. Has anyone ever participated in a “Drum Circle Event” before? Well, I am addicted and I have to have one now. Basically it means that there are several drummers at the front of the crowd getting everyone to participate in bongo-ing out a rythm together. Everyone has their own drum. There was over 100 of us drumming – awesome stuff! By the end of it we even had my 85 year old great aunt up on the dance floor LOL. Aunty Shirley! two words! BROKEN. HIP.

The guy in black (standing) was the maestro and he had us all swinging, baby. And the noise! We were attracting people off the street LOL.ss to say that at the end of it all my hands were fleuro pink from banging my drum and I was an addicted Bongo player (and the guys were a little bit of “allright” if you know what I’m say’n ).

So that’s all for now until another update later in the week – PLEASE don’t forget to check in and participate in the TWELVE WEEKS OF CHRISTMAS weekly challenges and competition we have going on over at the Addicted to Craft Blog - there are plenty of opportunities to win prizes and participate – whether you are a retailer or an individual!

Oh! I nearly forgot! There is something else a little bit exciting I wanted to share with you all – here it is:

That is the cover of the latest Scrapbooking Memories Magazine over here in Australia – and THAT IS MY LO ON THE COVER. O.M.G. I’m a little bit excited – heck I am wetting my pants I’m so excited – WOOHOO! Hannah is getting such a huge kick out of seeing her face on the mag when we go out (me too lol). I am very honoured to be a part of the special Breast Cancer awareness issue too – GO PINK.

That’s all folks – y’all take care now

Sares x