I participated in my first ever swap this week

I participated in my FIRST ever swap this week. Wendy over at My Head Space had a cloud and/or Tree swap going – I mean how could I resist ... with my cute little tree charms. Not knowing what I was suppose to make & send ... this is what I came up with

Every Cloud has a Silver Lining

The clouds are painted corrugated cardboard lined with silver ink and our sun charms tied with blue organza ribbon

For the trees I made postage stamps with my friskars scissors which I am trying to track down to get onto my website, no luck so far. Inked it with my template I have made up and using my white tags (left blank for a date or small journalling) and our dark blue flowers.

I enjoyed making them, and even did a few extra ... I have 3 more sets left if anyone would like one, just let me know. AND before you ask Amanda, yes I have put your set away LOL

There is 12 of us in the swap. I am looking forward to seeing what everyone cames up with.

There are so many CCs going on this weekend



Scraplounge



As much as I wanted to join in, time is not on my side at the moment, but I hope you are all having fun and your mojo is being kind to you - mines being a bit of a jerk actually - my own fault really, spending too much time on the computer, getting sore eyes and not enough sleep. On that note, I am off to bed. Night everyone

She made me do it

Amanda “demanded” I submit to the ARTastic Challenge for this month LOL, as she is Guest Designer. Of course I said anything for such a loyal customer who has turned out to be such a good on line buddy! Yeah good on me, until I saw what we had to get our inspiration from!

What the heck!

Okay abstract that ain’t me, so I did a bit of changing – turned it into a sketch and dumped the white for yellow. Shazza’s probably thinking what planet is this girl on! Its my own planet Shazza so far off this one!

The dress Sarah is wearing had pink flowers on it, perfect, the colours matched our new yellow and pink flowers. And our new pink fabric brads, which are a darker pink this time were the exact colour of our other flowers. So I was onto it … well so I thought …. 2 weeks it has taken me to get this completed. Am I happy with it, sort of!

I used our white scalloped felt frame and sprayed it with Yellow Daisy Glimmer Mist - doesn't show up there well on this photo

Deep Pink flower with Eye Pin, White Organza Ribbon and our Large Heart Locket Charm

Yellow stemmed flowers tied with our new 20mm white organza ribbon and our yellow and white frangipanis

These are the new flowers I mentioned with our Princess Crown Charm. Used two different sizes of our white organza ribbon on these flowers.

I sprayed the Buzz and Bloom chipboard with Yellow Daisy again, and the scroll chipboard is from SBL in the chipboard misc section. The stemmed flowers are the dark pink ones.

Oh well all good things come to an end … school holidays start in 40 minutes. Mind you these holidays are going to be a good one with us going down to Tassie, stopping in Sydney for about 6 hours, so I can show the angels the Bridge and Opera House. And most importantly my gorgeous beautiful boy is turning 13. (I can still say that cause the hormones haven’t kicked it too much YET!)

I feel old!!!!!!!!!!! How about you mum? what’s worse a forty year old daughter or a 13 year old grandson. I can hear the phone ringing now LOL

Take care

Tips, Examples and Techniques for using Craft Charms on your creations

In conjunction with this months CC over at the Top 50 I have written up a collection of tips, techniques and examples for using charms on your projects.

It is something I have been meaning to do for so long ... thanks Vicky for making me get off my backside and getting it organised.

So go and put the kettle on, its 15 pages full of examples and ideas (I seriously could have easily done 30 pages, hmm maybe a part 2 could be in the making )
Tips for Using Craft Charms

And as a special offer till 20th September 09 if you purchase & pay for orders of charms you will receive free charms.

buy $15.00 of charms and receive FREE 1 free packet of assorted charms
buy $20.00 of charms and receive FREE 2 packets of assorted charms
buy $25.00 of charms and receive FREE 3 packets of assorted charms
buy $30.00 of charms and receive FREE 4 packets of assorted charms
for every $5 more you will receive an additional assortment of FREE charms

You will also receive our free gift of the month for September

In order to receive this offer you must state BLOG at checkout when asked how did you hear about my2angels

Postage starts at $2.70 (postage is flat rate $5.20 if you also purchase papers, tapes and bottles)

I hope it gives you all some ideas and inspiration for incorporating charms into your creations.

TFL

Have a fun and creative week

Pink Dancing Ballerina Layout

This is my entry for the September Challenge over at the Scraplounge where we had to have polka dots (2 x frames), fabric (tulle behind the frame) and a journaling block

My gorgeous little girl back in 2002 being a fairy / ballerina

This is a redo of an old layout, so glad I redid it, couldn’t stand looking at the other one – what was I thinking the paper was hideous! And I obviously had too much time on my hands back then cause there were 5 photos which I cut around her – no easy task with the tulle skirt!

I like it but think it might be too busy, DS said its too busy and Sarah well she loved it cause she was in it! And mum said it was beautiful, but still I dunno…

Papers are from Carolee’s Creations Adorn it Dance Collection

I framed the main photo with our white scalloped felt frame and the pink butterfly is cut out from our Flowers, Scrolls & Butterfly felt ribbon

Tucked in the background is doilie sprayed with glimmer mist and a music sheet of Swan Lake downloaded from the internet.

It also gave me the opportunity to use our ballerina charms which I made a chipboard frame for with tulle in the background. The other frame was done the same except I put one of our pink frangipanis and princess crown charms in.

I left our rhinestone dance word on the plastic backing and just made a chipboard frame for it.

These gorgeous pink and white flowers were originally in the 200 bulk flower pink packs but a few of you have asked for them to be sold individually and finally they arrived last week. I twisted the stem on our black and white flowers for the “I am Beautiful” charm and laid some of our silver cup chain into the mix.

Kindy glitz was added to the Buzz and Bloom Chipboard frame.

Speaking of our bulk 200 flower packs, I spoke my supplier yesterday and he explained to me that mulberry paper is made by hand with a process that has changed little in 1000 years. The mulberry tree is farmed specifically for the production of craft papers.
Once the bark has been stripped and processed into paper, unlike most trees, the mulberry tree will regenerate another layer of bark which can be harvested again in about 12 months making it a renewable natural resource that will not harm or deplete the environment. (that's gotta be good!)

The processing also involves drying the bark out, which can at times take awhile especially if the temperatures are humid, or it is rainy season.

And so after all that ... the bulk packs will be in stock in about 6 weeks LOL finally I got to my point. But I thought it was quite interesting to know of the process.

When I first arrived on the Gold Coast I didn't know anyone so to meet people & to help the community I volunteered at St Vincent de Paul for their Children & Family Programme (which lead onto much bigger things but that's another story) and during this training I heard this quote...

Life is a school, you never stop learning till the day you die

So true ah?

I hope you learn something new today

Running around like a chook with no head

3 massive deliveries arrive today so I have been running around like a chook with no head getting them on the site!!! Check these out ...

Graphic 45 papers at $2.00 eg

Websters Pages at $1.60 eg

Rusty Pickle Halloween d/s papers at $1.20 eg

Fancy Pants in the Misc Section for $1.00 eg

Making Memories papers at $1.10, including fab black glitter dots paper

Rouge de Garance papers at $1.70 – seriously gorgeous eg

Restock of frangipanis, skeleton leaves, plaid fabric brads and check these new arrivals...

Please remember to select the $5.20 postage at checkout when purchasing papers, tapes and bottles ie glimmer mist, kindy glitz and dimensional magic.

TFL
Tracy

I love you my son layout

I love you my son is the title for my take on the sketch challenge over at RSS this month. Here is the sketch

And here is my layout

I have used Three Bugs in a Rug Pattern Paper with white core dinations as the backing paper. Painted some corrugated cardboard with red metallic paint and inked it. Also our 100% boys ribbon for the bottom of the cardboard.

For my title I painted and inked chipboard letters then attached our love and bike charms

There are so many products out there using paperclips for scrapbooking, that I decided to make my own with our charms. To create the circles I punched out 2 circles, 1 larger circle using black core dinations cardstock for the backing and attached a paper clip to the back.

Core dinations is great to distress as it has an inner core colour which I emphasised by running my craft knife around the edges.

Then I downloaded an old newspaper, inked it and then attached the boys cap charm with Dimensional Magic. Black organza ribbon was used to tie the car charm to the paper clip. The arrow is from scrapware which I inked, dimensional magic and added one of our black rhinestones.

Bull dog clip, string (wiped with ink) and our little boy charms for the top corner of the photo

TFL and hope you all have a creative week
Tracy

My layout for Screen 2 Scrap September Poster

This months Movie Poster over at Screen 2 Scrap is Home Alone.

The criteria for this poster is: use either red or blue cardstock, one piece of pp (patterned paper) and two word title. And here is my entry ….

I straight away saw the window so went with that using Kaiser Lovestuck Cupid and coredinations cardstock. I made the window frames out of chipboard then cardstock strips and inked for the shutters.

The bird is a scrapware chipboard swallow which I covered in DM with our Royal Blue Rhinestones.

The letters for my title “cheeky monkeys” are chipboard letters painted and then I crackle painted bits at random. For the word monkey I used our American Craft White Rub on letters, I really like these rub ons just small enough for a titles

I folded the edges over of the pattern paper, covered them in crackle then paint over with white and finished off with stitching from the sewing machine, again blowing off the dust and nearly putting my back AGAIN trying to get it out from under the stairs!

The flowers in the flower boxes (oh which is edged with our white chain), have our glitter brads, pearls and buttons centring them. Of course my layouts always have charms on them and this one is no exception with our leaves and bumble bees.

And finally, our silver rhinestone flourishes flowing down the flower boxes.

So why not give it a go this month, please mention me when submitting your layout, would love to see you over there

Till next time, TFL

Tracy

FREE flowers anyone???

This month to celebrate the warmer weather you will receive, with every paid order, a sample selection of our flowers in various colours and sizes (minimum 10 flowers). The photo is just an example of our flowers that we have available.

Action Take Two ...
The September Movie Poster is up at Screen 2 Scrap!

OMG My layout, Family, was chosen by my fellow DT members as the DT Winner for August

I am speechless I don't know what to say but first I have to thank the Academy, Shazza, my DT members, the angels for leaving me in peace for short periods of time so I could finish my layout, and of course YOU for continuing to stop by and leaving me encouraging comments and giving me the confidence to keep showing my layouts and OTPs. Thank you MWAH MWAH

Tracy