New Zealand

Hello there it's been awhile.

Just popping in to share some layouts that I have made for Joe's New Zealand album.
You have probably already seen these on Instagram but you can get a better look here. Before I start I must tell you that all photos are taken with my iPhone as my DSLR is packed away somewhere due to the big house flood.

This will be the first page. I am doing a 12x12 album with some Project Life inserts as Joe is a good scrappers son and took over 400 photos plus with this wonderful technology today all of the other chefs have uploaded their photos so I have literally thousands to choose from.
There isn't a great deal of journaling on the pages because
a) I wasn't the one there to tell the story and Joe is not the most talkative person around
b) I will have heaps of pages that will follow on from each other so the story should be easy to follow.

Having said that I am not scrapping this in any order, when I put them in the binder will be when they go in date order.

OK so on to the first LO above. It is a lift from an Amy Tan class that I am doing (ha along with about three other classes) Normally I would have found using that background paper extremely hard but it was perfect for the aeroplane photo and I just remembered that I took a great photo of Joe walking with his suitcase at the airport so that will have to be the first page not this one. hmm see what I mean lets just call it a work in progress. The bottom photo is not a bad one its just the light coming in from the aeroplane window. I got to use lots of stamps on this one and it was fun.

and the reason I am not doing this in date order is because of this photo. I love it. So meet Beth a chef from the winning New Zealand team. I couldn't wait to scrap this photo, I think I have done it justice. Again I used inspiration from my Amy Tan class but my LO came out completely different than Amy's. Although all of my scrap supplies are packed I did keep my Studio Calico kits out and my ever growing stash of washi that I don't use nearly enough.

Yep still love love this photo.
So Beth this post is for you so you can see what I have created and so that you can get a better look other than Joe holding the page up when your on Skype. Hope you like them.

Hopefully not promising anything but there might be a short PL post tomorrow. Pff and can you believe it Caitlin has just popped her head over my shoulder and told me off for not making my iiiii's capitals, ha, is the teacher coming out in her or what, so I will now go and amend all of my iiiii's

Ha I I I I I cant believe how many time i use the word I, it is nearly in every sentence and I am not correcting the one in this sentence...

Music Festivals

Good evening-i will stick with that as it is evening here
Popping in to share a layout of Joe at some music festivals he attended on the weekend.

Sorry the colour is a bit dull as i couldn't wait until tomorrow and beautiful sunshine to photograph it.
He went to two festivals and had a huge weekend, being the good child of a scrapbooker he kept me the tickets and the wrist band they were given for the over 18 festival, looks a bit like wash tape so of course i had to use it.

The skull i cut from the programme and the two guys in bubbles are friends of Joe. Joe is in the top photo on the left. As it's so hot here they always have sprays mists and water showers for people attending to cool down, i am not sure were the bubbles come in.

The middle photo is of the stage for one of Joe's favourite bands, Blink 182. He was right at the front of the stage after half an hour even he had had enough and asked for a security guard to pull him out. I would have loved to have seen that as Joe is 6ft 5 so it would not have been an easy task.

Well tomorrow is Sunday and you know what that means in my world, ironing day, i am sure i have the biggest pile to date Andrew even suggested we go out to lunch BUT nothing comes between me and my ironing. Ha i wish, it's just that if i don't do it tomorrow my mountain will be huge.

Good night all.
xx

Circles

Happy Saturday everyone
We have just been out to lunch and i am FULL to bursting, so there is nothing better to do than take a few photos and sit here at my Mac and let all of this food digest.

A couple of weeks ago on Instagram i posted a picture of a lacy circle background that i had cut out with my Silhouette and with inspiration from Lory (when i saw her Layout i just had to give it a go)
this is what i came up with.

unlike anything else i have ever made, it uses scraps from the scrap bin. I tried to keep visual triangles of some things i.e.) the people and the cabochon flowers and the red paper, then it got all too hard so it was anything goes.
I didn't know what to put in some of the empty circles so i filled them with journaling.
On another note, i am starting a quest to organise my albums. At the moment they are different sizes,colours and makes. Although the colour doesn't worry me i thought it would be nice to have them all in uniform albums. So hello Studio Calico for the next eight months or so i will be ordering a binder, my first binder arrived yesterday so i grabbed a random old album and started switching the papers, holy moly i haven't looked at my very first pages for a couple of years. WHERE WHERE WHERE is the journaling and soooo many flowers, lol the fashion and my style has certainly changed over the years.

Random;;;

Joe recently ordered over $1000 in cook books,
1-can you actually imagine how many that is
2-where are they all going to go
3-half of them are not cookbooks you and i would use, trust me and i consider myself a good cook. When i opened one of the books and picked a random page i couldn't understand the first instruction and it was only for lemon cordial..Something about some machine that does something and something, luckily Joe knew exactly what is was about.
4-these are resource books for Joe, there was one huge book just in sauces and jus and a great book from David Chang about Momofuko, oh i so want to go and eat there.

This is only half that have arrived

See those books no 1 to 5 they came with the most amazing photography and some actual large photos just floating in the box, so i had to take a photo of the this photo as i think its AWESOME

how amazing is that mayo dripping of the bun? May have to nick borrow this from Joe for my work.
After looking in this set of books i think the photography is by Ryan Matthew Smith and Nathan Myhrvold, my apologies if it is not.

Phew so there we have it my some what long and random post, enjoy your weekend everyone, we have a public holiday here on Monday so i will be having a great weekend.
xx

Clean Out

My mum is not a sentimental person, and definitely not a crafty one. After dad passed away/OK to be honest before he passed away she was down in his shed clearing it out tidying it up and i remember dad saying "for gods sake Loo (that's what he called me Lindy loo) I'm not dead yet." But that's mum she had to do something at the time. Well, about two months later when dad passed away mum cleaned out all of the photos and albums and of course i couldn't let her throw them out so i just had to take them.
Amongst the treasures was this photo from our wedding day, i know you are not meant to use real photos but that's OK this photo is in our professional wedding album and we must have got another copy for mum and dad. On a side note, have you looked at your wedding album/photos lately? We will be 25 years in December so i guess now is as good a time as any to have a peek down memory lane.

Digressing AGAIN
Here's the LO

Again i used my inner Shimelle and thought about my colour scheme. I started looking for green papers , then i wanted a paper that had some red and pink in it for the roses and mums dress. The rest just came together after that. I have used 5 different background papers from 4 different companies, they are all old and from my stash. Yahoo.

Then i went through all my embellishments looking for red, green and pink and i found that chip board flower from Crate paper which i thought matched quite well, then i got a bit stuck as i couldn't find any other flowers that kind of matched so i decided on butterflies. To make the title match in i used the asterisks from the letters as embellishments and placed them here and there about the page.

No washi on this one but there is some stamping. All in all i am very happy with the way it turned out.

There is quite a few professional photos in the box i got from mums just waiting to be scrapped, luckily i have plenty of paper and embellishments.

Now i may just go and pull out my wedding album, the wedding video can wait for another time.
Good night all.
xx

Get Your Boogie On

OK not words i utter much these days but definitely words Joe does mutter. Unusually for a male he loves to dance or should i say boogie and not to any type of music that i would ah boogie too either.
So i couldn't resist doing this LO of him that the photographer took at The Causeway. Incidentally Joe is friends with the photographer so he was hamming it up for the photo (I hope)

 This was a sketch from Shimelles blog way back in 2011 i think. I used arrows and cameras to depict the movement in the photo but yes i know cameras don't exactly move but they are fitting to the story.

 I wanted to do some ink dropping :) but had no blue studio calico mists but i did have some Stampin Up re-inkers in blue oh you should have seen me- how was i going to get this on my page..well i got a tiny piece of scrap and put a blob of ink on it then turned it over and started flicking it on the page, love the end result i got big blobs and small ones.

Everything i used came from my Studio Calico kit except for the cameras and the label.

I'm of to Nobu for lunch tomorrow, yes again Tracey i loved it that much, with Joe this time so we will get the full Nobu experience (Joe is a chef in the Nobu kitchen). Its my last hoorah before going back to work full time on Monday :( the holidays must finish some time right.

Thanks for stopping by
xx

The last of JYC 2012

Hello there
I spent most of Saturday finishing of my Christmas album, so here are the last pages.

These are just two pretty simple pages, i like having different sized pages in my albums i think it makes it fun to look thru

sorry about the glare of the plastic and here is the other side

more glare but you can get the general feel, i loaded my mini Instax camera with new film on christmas day and put it out on the table for anyone to takes photos, its a bit of a novelty so everyone one was having a go.
Now here's the last page i shouldn't put it here but i'm saving my very favourite until last to show you

very simple this one and i thought i would go up to New Years Day and call it finished. I have journaled until the sixth in my ah journal (as you would) but i am going to finish my album here and i had to finish with lots of those would veneer stars, i love them.

Now on to the next page. I channelled all my inner Shimelle for this page, everything i've learnt in her classes i tried to put in this page, so here is my favourite page of the whole album and i even used circles the hardest shape i find to use.

I even used all of my christmas papers (mainly b sides) to complete this LO the only things that weren't in my christmas stash were the flash pin and my new sequins which i think give it that sparkle. (i couldn't quite get my christmas washi to work on this page)
here's another angle

So that's it for JYC 2012 i have loved writing in my journal and completing a scrapbook album, it really did help me enjoy christmas more and if you are not signed up for this class i really really encourage you to do so next year. You don't have to do a scrapbook some of the photos on Instagram just had a lined journal with a bit of washi tape and lots of writing and they looked awesome.

So thanks for reading and following along with my JYC 2012.

Two Lay Outs & Project Life week 7

Well hello, how are you all?
First of all i will start with my PL
Here is the LHS

A bit of a heart theme, it was Valentines Day during this week. Nothing super exciting just your everyday stuff but how good does that tuna look in its heart shape that Joe prepared at work?

Here's the RHS

which includes a not very good photo of a red back spider that we nearly sat on.
Even Caitlin's friends know that i scrapbook and like to have photos, so they are always posing/acting up for Caitlin, a good example is Caitlin's friend Nathan who always says "lets get some snaps for Linda". Here he is hanging of a street sign (i don't think he was 100per cent sober at the time).
The papers this week came from a 6x6 pad from My Minds Eye called "Love Me".

I also completed two lay outs to go with my PL

am super proud of this one. The scrapping is simple but i did a lot of digital work on the photo. Andrew didn't take a photo of the actual horses so i had to source this one, then i fiddled around in photoshop with masks and opacity, i printed the whole lot out on cardstock. I also made a little envelope (using the cricut) out of vellum as i wanted it to be kind of translucent. Love how it turned out

For the next LO i also had some fun in photoshop

i used one of their "create a page" features and it gave me this nice photo collage with vintage frames. I just printed it out on photo paper and cropped it, a bit of studio calico mist, some doily's, stickers and a wee bit of stamping and voila all finished.

Tonight i hope to play around with some cards and stamps and tomorrow after the ironing is done i am going to concentrate on cutting out all of my remaining blocks for the caravan quilt that the "Three of Us" are making.

thanks for stopping by

have a lovely Sunday
xxxxx

A challenge

A couple of weeks ago i challenged myself to create a LO using an oldish photo. I had to open my album and pick a photo on that page.

I did it and had so much fun.

a bit of doodling and lots of jounalling talking about everything in the background of the photo and of course me and my mum or if my mum was reading this mum and I (the grammar of children is getting worse these days is a topic mum frequently refers too).
It bought back a heap of childhood memories especially the story about Shaun Cassidy which lead me to a U Tube search and i sat there watching/listening to That's rock & roll and Da Do Ron Ron...ah was anyone else a Shaun Cassidy fan?

and last night another challenge a card this time
i had the latest Cards Aug 2011 mag on my desk and i closed my eyes picked a page and had to make the card on that page.
Now this was a challenge as this card is a bit shabby chic which although i love is really not my style. I had loads of fun doing it, needless to say mine turned out nothing like the original which was made by Maureen Plut (page 20)

and you know what? I enjoyed this process so much i am going to do another one. (i don't have to think, just copy and that's what i need at this moment in time)
Hope you are all enjoying your week
xx
and if you get time go and search Shaun Cassidy and watch the videos and yep even in his satin pants i still think he's pretty cute.

Mmm what should i title this post?

Gosh its been so busy around here that i actually forgot to play with my July Cocoa Daisy kit. So the other day i had a little peek and found this beautiful paper that i just knew would go with one of my Papertrey Ink Stamps, so i made a card

well several in fact all of the same design
and because you follow my blog you know what comes next
yes a tag

and i haven't cropped any of these photos as you are all meant to be going ooo ahhh over my lovely new blind and voile's in the background...are you, i cant hear?

and then i had to do a LO with some of the bits and bobs that came with the kit
the photo i used is one that catches my eye whenever i am going through my Adobe catalogue so i thought i should use it. Caitlin took it of herself with my IPhone when i was driving   taxi-ing her around, i just love how the light has reflected of her sunnies.

and here's a closer view

very simple, but i got to play with some ink and a stamp from my rather largish collection it was fun to do.

Off now to play some more
see ya
xx

oh and i haven't forgotten about my antique juicer, its just that we haven't got the side-board yet, but i should go and get it out of its box and give it a polish, yes that's why its been in said box for nearly 10 years its silver and needs frequent polishing and its so intricate oh maybe i should do it now instead of playing with crafty stuff.

Fabric & Paper

Hi there

i have heaps for you today so not too much chitter chatter

here are my last months blocks for "The Family Gathering" quilt that the three of us are making.

i am too lazy to hold my patterns up to the window to trace everything so i have just free hand drawn my people and boy if you look close it tells. I cant work out whether the guy in the middle looks like a frog or if he has the mumps and as for the poor little wee one on the end he's looking a bit cross eyed

this guy is kinda OK he has very long skinny arms and i drew the fishing rod which turned out OK. On to next months block which is meant to be a family tree and as i don't think this particular block goes with the quilt i have designed my own block (god help me), will show you when it's finished.

Here's a quick boy card using SU stamps and ink.

and here's a LO, the photos were from my IPhone and the sun was way way shining so the photos aren't that crash but i still wanted to scrap them. Poor Andrew has got a nice big ink blob on his face from when i was inking the photos, all journalling is tucked away in that gorgeous envelope.

Yesterday saw me making some more tags and dying my seam binding with different types of inks and sprays

and now you can meet my tag lady. As you know i make a few tags, so where does one put them, on a tag lady of course...

now all i have to do is just grab one when i want one.

Now i have tried to resist, even when i have seen some amazing blocks completed i have still tried to resist, i have too many projects on the go as it is so i still tried to resist, all to no avail, here is the book which arrived last week

and the fabric should arrive in a couple of weeks. So i will be behind but that's OK i can work at it  at my own pace and i haven't decided yet whether i will hand piece it or machine stitch it.

Whew that was a long post thanks for persevering and making it to the end.

Have a great week

xxxxLindaxxxxx

I'm Lucky

I'm one very lucky girl and here's a few reasons why
lucky to have a husband that doesn't mind me spending a ton of money on craft
lucky to have the money in the first place
lucky to have a husband that is interested in whatever crafts i do
lucky to have great crafty friends
lucky to have great children
and lucky to have a daughter that loves having her photo taken (in fact she takes more photos than me) and she happens to be very photogenic (not a trait she got from me)
and this is what i am talking about

This layout uses bits and pieces from a few of my Cocoa Daisy kits. In the last kit we got some 5" fabric charm squares and i used one under the rosebud ribbon. Apart from sewing the fabric the rest of this LO was just simple glue and stick, when you get a great photo like that you don't have to do much. No journalling on this one but that's OK.

My lucky list could go on and on but that's enough for today.
xx

Making Pasta

I think that i am one of the few people out there that loves this wet rainy cold weather. I love nothing more than being inside nice and snuggly warm looking at and hearing the rain outside, and that is what i am doing right now. Although the floors are taking ages to dry with this cold weather.
Anyway the cleaning is done, i am home alone and browsing on the PC so i thought that i would share with you the layout that i made last night.

Pretty simple and straight forward. I had this wonderful photo of the finished pasta so i made my title out of it. Then i thought it needed some colour and i wanted red, alas no red paint so i got out my paintbrush and rubbed it on my stamp pad.
Definitely not an award winning LO but its not meant to be. Its for Joe's album and i tried to write my journalling as if i was talking to him.

Anyway that's me done today
have fun and enjoy whatever you are doing, me- i am going to make myself a George (yes i still love him oh so much and he gets used daily) and go and see what you guys have been up to.
xx

Quilting,cards & LO's

oops that should be a LO as i have only done one.
Hello all and happy Sunday, its a wee bit cccold over here in my part of the world, whats it like in your part?

I have finally caught up with my Caravan quilt and completed June's blocks, now i can start on July's and seeing as its school holidays over here which means i am on holidays maybe i can get ahead.
Anyway here they are

yes this one was very simple, the top animal is apparently meant to be a bird-i cant see it- looks more like a sheep to me with funny ears.
here's the next one

Picking Blackberries i believe it was called.
here's a close up of my french knots

and here is a really bad photo of a LO i completed last night, sorry its a bit blurry and on a funny angle

I used a template/sketch from my Big Picture class-what a great class, and i got to incorporate some of my Ali Edwards stamps. The pink holey edge paper was cut with the cricut.

and because i like to  use the left over scraps, a card, inspired by Christina (link in sidebar)

This uses Papertrey Ink's dies and stamps.

Well thats it for my crafty Sunday, everyone is out at the moment so i have the house to myself.
ummmmmmmm what shall i do?
xxx

Finally

Yes finally i have completed a layout.
I have been doing an online class at Big Picture (when i say doing i mean reading) called 28 Sketches with Lisa Day and yay i have finally got to play along. The good thing with these classes is that you can do them any time, the classes stay on your profile for ever.
This was sketch 9 and it suited me as it uses 16 photos so you can really get a lot on this page.
Please excuse the photo as i was eager to share with you  my work and its late here and definitely not the best lighting.

The photos were taken by my 13yo niece on my SLR camera and may i say NOT on auto, she was having a great day playing with all of the settings and most of the photos are great, some are even breath taking.

Joe must be in a risotto mood as he came out of his cave oops bedroom and made a cheese risotto this time, he needs to remember that at work he has stewards to wash the dishes after him, at home.....no wait.....he has Andrew who was standing there washing Joe's dishes as he went along. There is something very wrong with that picture as no one follows me and washes the dinner pots and pans.

With that in mind i will bid you all a good night>
xx

Some scrapbooking

Hi there
happy Monday (does anyone suffer from Mondayitis? My husband does real bad he hates Mondays) alas i digress as usual
i have finally done some scrapbooking and enjoyed it very much
the first lay out was from my hybrid class that i forgot to post.
my dad always used to call Joe "Joebee" and it has now stuck in the extended family although none of us at home call him that only his cousins and uncle
and boy look how cute and little he was here it seems like only yesterday

the other two lay outs have been used with my February Cocoa Daisy kit
i have just realised that this next one doesn't have a title on it, do you think it needs one?

the bird cage tag up the top is made out of canvas, i thought that they would look really good on some cards but then i would have to give them away so i put one on this LO instead. The journalling is hidden in that cute little envelope. The die for the envelope came today in my big pile of happy mail, it is from Papertray Ink.

The next photos sat on my desk for about two weeks waiting for inspiration and then when inspiration came it only took me about 20mins to start and finish the LO.

Not much journalling on any of these LO's but you get that sometimes.
I have been eagerly reading my emails every half an hour as i have signed up for Kelly Purkeys Sketchbook 3 to hopefully give me some more inspiration, alas its not here yet, i will have to go check again.

thanks for dropping in
enjoy the week

Linda
xxx