Elmer the owl

Last sunday we decided to go for a drive to Yarragon (115kms away) in Gippsland to buy some locally made soap which we use all the time. While we were there we wandered around the Town and Country Gallery. We have seen some lovely artworks there over time. Well we saw this fabulous wooden sculpture that just made me want to reach out and touch it. We wandered around looking at some nice paintings but kept being drawn back to the sculpture. We left to find some lunch in a nice little cafe in the laneway nextdoor. Over  lunch we discussed whether the sculpture would fit on the wall in our hallway. So after lunch we went back for another look and to do a quick measure of its size. Roughly 1.5 m high and about 85cm across. We have 3m ceilings so he should be OK. We left the gallery with the sculpture wrapped in bubblewrap and headed home. Upon our return home Mike made a paper template of Elmer as we had now called him as he is made of elm wood. It was decided he would fit perfectly and the hook on the wall (which previously held a painting) was in just the right spot for Elmer. Up he went and now observes us coming and going.

backgrounds ala Dyan Reaveley.

Everyone was enamoured with Dylusions spray inks at Paperific. I thought NO I don't need another prooduct to add to my already enormous collection so studiously avoided them at the time...silly me...LOL I did buy some stencils (thanks to my mate Pauline Laing for leading me astray yet again!) and while researching ideas for using them came across Dyan Reaveley's blog and well I got hooked didn't I! I had a go at making my own spray inks with dye inks..and it worked but having to make them up in small amounts each time I want to use them proved to be a bit of a pain. Well I have ordered a complete set of Dylusions ( not to mention some stamps and more stencils) and hope they arrive in time for a play day planned at my friend Marion's next saturday.
Here are some cards made using my own home made spray inks. I love the bright colours.

Tulip die image cards

Time to show what I have been making since Paperific which was held on 31Aug-2 Sept at the Royal Showgrounds in Melbourne. It was a great weekend with interstate friends flying in and 4 days spent rushing around to different stamping shops, attending the fair and eating out. It was great to catch up with stamping friends both local and interstate...even met a few I only knew from online:)
It took a few days to settle down and get out all my new goodies to play with. It has taken even longer to get around to producing cards from these efforts.

Here are a selection of cards made with Memory Box die cut tulip.

Lace themed ATC

For my ATC group this month we had to make an ATC with the theme of Lace.
I went searching the net for images of lace to get inspired and found these gorgeous lacy shoes which when printed in the negative gave a pretty blue hue to them.

Added a bit of real lace and some pearls then printed out some words which you might need to say to make sense of. That is a metranome on the floor by the shoes if that helps make my corny joke make sense.

Image challenge

I have not posted any of my cards for a while even though I have been making plenty.
So here is the result of a little challenge I set myself.
I found this image while looking for something lacy for an ATC I needed to make for my monthly group.
It is printed on photopaper then coloured using alcohol inks.
I came up with 4 different cards.

This one has strips of velvet ribbon with organza ribbon tied round it and the off cuts of photo paper used as the background.

With this one I printed the image again larger to use as the background. The actual coloured image was sprayed with Goosebumps Texture Spray before threading organza ribbon through the image and extending it over the sides.   Tiny diamantes were added for highlights.

 

The cardstock was sprayed with Goosebumps this time, the edges of the layers distressed and black satin ribbon stuck to the image. Black Roxx were added for texture in the bottom left corner.On the last card I printed the image onto coloured cardstock added some black grosgrain ribbon then lots of sparkly bling on the image.

Paradise Falls

We wandered around Beechworth in the late afternoon and I just loved the light on the buildings as the sun was going down.

On our way home from Beechworth we stopped to look at Paradise Falls. A 12 km drive off the road and then a 500 metre downhill walk to get to see them. Definitely worth the effort according to one guy we passed on the way...and go on the path behind the waterfall for a great view...hmm it was not until our return where we found a notice board explaining about the falls that we discovered you were not suppose to walk behind the falls as the rock face has become a home to a local endangered Peregrine Falcon. Oh dear a bit late now...we do hope we did not scare them off:(

Ned's Needles Weekend

I entered a knitted beard in a competition held by the Burke Museum in Beechworth. The prizes were awarded last thursday and on saturday Mike and I drove up to Beechworth to see the complete exhibition. Here is a link to the museum's website. Look under Ned's Needles for more info on the competition.
http://www.burkemuseum.com.au/Home_Page
Here are some photos I took.