Twiddleybitz comp!

Just thought that any scrappers who might read my blog would be interested to see that Twiddleybitz has a comp on for some freebies. Check out this post & get all the goss!!

Today's craft

We spent the day at home today, as per the girls' request. I asked them yesterday arvo what they wanted to do today & they said they wanted to stay home. Mind you they didn't know that I'd been wondering if we'd go to the movies. I'm sure if they'd known that was a possibility, I'd have had a different answer.

Anyway, they had a lovely time playing with the dress-ups boxes. You can't see the floor of the games room due to all the dress-ups ALL OVER the floor!

At some stage during the day I had a bright idea to make some matchbook notepads with the kids. I did most of the making, but let them help out. They punched the circles out, and inked the letters, and die-cut the letters, and they stuck the embellishment together onto the fronts. I did most of the cutting & folding. They turned out kind of cute. Here's Sasha's one.

The Wish

Wow, I'm really stoked with how my entry has gone for this week's SYTYCS competition at Scraptacular. This round's scrap-eography was hosted by Clair Bremner, who has long been a favourite scrapper of mine. This week the final week of 'heats', so I wonder what's in store after judging & results on Tuesday night (?)/Wednesday? I wonder if it will be relevant to me? I'm hopeful, but not confident - there's still another 15 LO (or thereabouts) still to be posted & I'll probably be even more blown away by the quality of the entries this round (again!!!).

In other news, well school holidays started as of 3pm yesterday afternoon & I've got a few things lined up to do with the kidlets. Hopefully tomorrow though we can have a 'home day' to get a few housework things done. Beds need some attention, as do bedrooms. Just for a start!

Today we went to Larissa & Christiian's in the morning to celebrate them being together for 20years. Wowee - I feel so OLD!!! It was lovely to see some of the pics from years ago. They had loads of friends staying on for the AFL Grand Final. The kids & I headed down to Karlene & Leo's for Grand Final though as it was Geelong v's Hawthorn. Like many of their guests, we went to see Leo as much as to watch the game - he's such great entertainment value watching the footy, and today was certainly no exception. I took some video footage, so hopefully I'll be able to put it onto DVD so they'll have a keepsake from how they celebrated their victory. Just another thing to add to my ever growing list of things 'to do'. I really need to invest in a HUGE external hard drive & some good video editting software & then download all my footage & start processing it into DVD format! I've got years worth of stuff to do. But for now, bedtime!!! I'm soooo tired!!!

Legend #2

My Braveheart Sasha. She had a marvellous day today at the sports carnival. She tried her best & had loads of fun. And once again made me so proud to see her give things her best shot & not be dismayed if she's not 'the best' at something. Our team had an extra person for the team games, so consequently whoever was last in line for the competitions, would appear to be the 'loser' and Miss Sasha had that honour a couple of times. However she didn't get rattled by it, but rather seemed to revel in the cheers and encouragement from all the supportive parents.

I'm so glad she had a fun day. I did a crap job of the photography. The sun was out which meant harsh light - bad for photography. Plus I was juggling video v's camera v's cheering & encouraging and participating, so I have mediocre photos and I haven't even bothered to look at the video yet.

Maybe tomorrow night I'll get myself organised enough to PP the photo's & post the best one or two.

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SYTYCS Round 3 - I made it through! Yay!!! This next round is a Clair Bremner scrap-eography. I just KNOW that I can't do her style justice (much as I would like to), so I won't be surprised to see this as my final Round. There's only 4 rounds of heats, so I would really like to have survived the heats, just to see what lies beyond from a participant's point of view, but I'm certainly not holding my breath. I have no idea how much I'M going to love/like/not like my creation, let alone what anyone else will think of it. I have no idea even WHAT I'm going to create!!

Scallops

Just putting this here so that I can hopefully find it again someday if I need it. Plus you never know, someone might find it useful!!

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There is a formula for working out the brush size v’s brush spacing to get the perfect ‘holes’ in a scallop shape.

To give that scallop shape perfectly centred holes, you simply use the same path (new layer is a good idea). You decrease your brush size, eg to ½ of the original, then you conversely increase your spacing by multiplying it by 2. If you decrease your brush size to 1/3 of the original, them you increase you spacing by multiplying it by 3.

Eg. If an oval has 216px circle shaped brush, spaced at 93% to get a perfect scallop. Punchout holes using a 108px circle shaped brush, spaced at 186%, using the same original path.

I’ve tried this on circles, squares, & ovals & have had success. The tricky part is getting the right sized & spaced circle brush to fit your path in the first place!!

Olympic Games

Well, once again, I missed most of the Olympic Games. I missed the last ones pretty much too. Such is my focus on children & stuff that I don't get a lot of TV time (that's not ABC kids or some such anyway).

But I did my ironing tonight, which took slightly more time than the Closing Ceremony & am actually looking forward to London 2012. How cool is that going to be. I keep thinking of Belinda & her gorgeous family living right there in London & the excitement they're going to experience over the next four years. It's going to be such a wonderful time for them. :D

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We had a quiet day at home today. Started off with me waking to find the girls had taken almost a full box of tissues & shredded them in Nikita's bedroom and were sticky-taping 'costumes' onto her teddy & whatever other toys they could find. I was not impressed. No wonder I insist that they stay in their own bedrooms until I come & tell them it's time to get up. Short of locking their doors, which I'm not going to do (fire hazard & we don't have locks on their doors anyway), all I can do is remind, insist, get cross, coerce, reward. They missed out on their special Sunday breakfast of Fruit Loops & had to tidy up the whole mess.

They did play together loads today & most of it was happy, kind, creative play, so that was great. I got through all my washing, folding, ironing, etc. Man that's a neverending cycle. This past 2 weeks has been incredible just how much washing I've done!!!

And now that I've finally caught up on most of my chores, I'm going to spend a quick 1/2 hr at my scrap table to do some more work on Larissa's Mini Album. It's been put to one side whilst I went on the scrap retreat, so now I need to get it done & handed over as I have numerous other jobs lining themselves up already!

Couple of LOs from the retreat

A couple of weekends ago I was lucky enough to go away to Jarrahdale for a scrapbooking retreat with Just Scrapbooking - one of my LSS. David was home with the girls and they all had a lovely time. It's the first time I've been away from my kids overnight since 20 June 2003!! (Well I had one night away from Sasha - 17 Sept 2004, but I had a very fresh Nikita with me then .)

Anyway I quite enjoyed the weekend away, although it wasn't terribly exciting. I was kind of hoping for a bit more fun, frivolity & laughter - it can happen on retreats, I know because I've heard of them. lol It was however quite productive. I made a single layout before the retreat for a challenge. And then whilst on retreat I made 4 single layouts, 2 double layouts & 2 cards!! Some of the layouts I'm not entirely happy with so I'll have to tweak them a bit. But for now, I thought I'd share two that I have finished & am really happy with.

Earth Angel























and Pieces of You

Mighty Blues

Started this LO on Friday night when Rose & Pam came to play. Finished it (already!!) on Sunday whilst watching Carlton win against Collingwood. We're in the 8!! Yeah!! It's been a much better year than we've had for quite some time. Anyway, this LO is to go into my BOM (Book of Me), as being a blue girl is part of who I am, so a BOM would not be complete without a LO dedicated to my dedication. :)

Just love how the page turned out! Mini book on bottom LHS contains pictures from when Rose & I went to Perth airport in 2001 & met some of the players. I had no idea where to go from that point. I knew I was going to use th Carlton Blues chippie, but then couldn't work out how to construct the page. I found a book which Karlene & Leo had given me & on the back was this painting of the Team of the Century. I scanned it, put it into Photoshop, added the text & then printed onto transparency. And I couldn't be happier with the end result. It's a footy page, it's a scrapped page & it all worked together perfectly. :D TFL

Couple of scraps - again

Just a couple of pages I've completed in the last week. Neither are particularly faves of mine, but I'm going with the theory that if I just keep plugging away, I'm learning, creating, exploring and finding my scrapping style. LOL. Sounds like a load of BS, but I've seen it work for others.

And really with the pile of stuff I have sitting here, I need to pull my finger out & get using it up!!

Three Months

Gosh I'm on a roll with scrapping at the moment!! :D

Started this one last night & finished it throughout today. It helped that the girls played happily together for quite a while today. Geez there really is no sweeter sound than listening to them playing nicely & happily. :D

Anyway this page may be the start of something - I'd been meaning to do a page for each month of the girls' first twelve months, so hopefully I can continue!! I'm also thinking about doing a scrappy present for NannaJay for her birthday - I hope that it will be a 'good' present to give her. Seems a bit wierd giving a hand-made gift - just not something that we tend to do within our family.

Journalling on this page:
At 3.5 months of age you have already celebrated your first Christmas. You enjoy playing under your baby gym, and have just about finished going in the electric rocker - too big already!! You are still so sweet and happy with us, but you don't like people you don't know. 7450gm 67cm long 45.2 HC

So Special

So Special
It's basically about how I felt to be Sasha's special guest for Mother's Day Morning Tea at Kindy last year. She was so excited & proud to have me there, which made me feel So Special. It felt like my first real Mother's Day now that they're getting older and want to make me feel good.

Beautiful, Me?

I don't see myself as beautiful, by any stretch. This is a nice photo of me though (thanks Photoshop!!). It's amazing though that when my beautiful DD's look at me, they see me as beautiful. It's just one of those amazing things about being a mother isn't it!

I've finished another LO tonight which I'll try to upload in the next couple of days. I'm just waiting for the Dimensional Magic to dry.

Not much of excitement to report. DB has been home for almost 2 weeks already, with another week to go! He came home a week early due to lack of space on the rig! So we've been taking it a bit easy sharing the duties at home, etc. It's a bit harder to maintain routines when he's here. But so many positives too! I just think we're so lucky in the lifestyle that we have - it has many negatives, but soooo many positives too.

The girls are both enjoying school (N only 1 day a week, but always looking forward to it!!). I'm really enjoying the routine and structure brought about with schooling. Afternoons revolve around get home, debrief on how their day/s were, unpack, prep for dinner, prep for bed. Mornings revolve around getting brekkie, lunches, dressed & out the door. Then we have a few short hours in between to do 'other stuff' before Nikki has her afternoon sleep before school pick-up time.

Sasha's changed friends again. She's now playing with someone called Jordan from PP5. I hope she'll settle down with a lovely good friend to really bond with sometime soonish. I'm a little scared that she'll get lonely, or get 'stuck' with one of the less desirable friends. I know that sounds awful, but I'd not be happy for her to bond with someone whose parents are complete dero's (& from the way some of them talk you can tell that their lifestyle is incompatible with ours). Anyway, time will tell I'm sure. She's doing really well and learning just so much it's amazing. She's drew a really cool picture of our family which is hanging up in the classroom - I hope it makes it into her portfolio. I'm enjoying walking to/from school as much as possible too.

Wonder if/when the novelty of schooling will wear off for me - considering we'll be doing this for 8 years!! I hope it doesn't wear off, I'm sure it will just change. I get excited walking past the classrooms for Yr 1 - with all the little tables & chairs & how they have a set seat. Pre-primary has a couple of table stations, but it's not set up like a classroom.

Anyway, I'm just rambling. Will have to come back & post about Nikita & her Pre-Kindy another day as that's a whole other story. Full of amazement for me, again, too!!

Natural Beauty

Couple of scraps

Here's one I did on Saturday night.






















And one I just finished tonight - Bramble Rose Lovin' how this one turned out. :D

Hot & Busy!

'Twas a stinker today - 39.something. I've been baking - made a cake and also some cheesies for Sasha's teacher who is finishing tomorrow. She's having her 1st baby next Wednesday via c-sect. Anyway over the past few weeks I've made up this mini-album for her as a thank you. Finally got it wrapped and Sasha & I made a card this afternoon, amongst all the other jobs for today.

I've still got a pile of washing, ironing and dishes to sort out, but maybe they'll wait until tomorrow.

Here's the mini-album. The song might sound a bit funny to have with the album, but it's current and funnily enough it's what the girls were singing in the bath tonight.

WW has been going okay. I've been having trouble sticking to it of late. And today my ankle has started filling up again with fluid - I can see it & feel it, so despite another loss of 900gm (3.4kg total to date), I'm sure a gain is just around the corner if I don't get back on top of things again.

Oh, and whilst I remember, Sasha is going to give the mini-album to her teacher as her news item tomorrow. We've rehearsed it a bit. Along the lines of "Today I've got a present. It's for Mrs Bramley. Here you go. It's to say thank you for teaching me" *insert teacher crying here* lol.

Okay, off to finish decorating the cake & tidy up a little before heading to bed. Hopefully with a good night's sleep I'll get back on the X-Trainer. I think the exercise if key to keep the fluid draining from my ankle.

Callin' It

Okay, I'm calling it. I'm SURE this week I'll be out on Embellished Idol. Funny how things can change so much in just a few days. A couple of days ago I was really pumped because I was so pleased with how my LO turned out, and very proud of my digi-art. And now, I can see I'm just not getting as many comments as others, so I really think I won't get the votes to stay in either. Kinda spewing as I don't think they really get just how much effort went into making something as technical as my digi-piece. But I'm also kinda okay about it too, because it was really only a matter of time before my time was up anyway. I could have told you the winner by about Round 2 or 3 - far and away the favourite, and very talented too - no denying it.

Anyway, this week's challenge is to create a LO using a piece of packaging from scrapbooking products. So not up my alley, in comparison to last week. I'll prob give it a go even though I don't expect to go through to Round 7.

Sasha's Kindy sports carnival tomorrow. Weather's looking really dodgy. Can't believe I've only just realised that dodgy weather probably = overcast = great photo weather!! Camera's on charge, DVC already charged up. David's in charge of the video, I'm in charge of the photos, and Nikita's in charge of mayhem.

On a good note, Nikita's pretty much day trained with the toilet thing. She still has occasional accidents (as does Sasha - just today!! *mad*), but most times we don't have problems. Yee-ha - life just gets better and better!! Keep going Nikki & we'll give night training another try soon!!

Anyway, it's 20 past bedtime & we've all got a BIG day tomorrow. We're lovin' the Kindy Life!!

OMG I'm through!!

I truley can't believe that I've made it through to Round 6 of the Embellished Idol comp for 2007. What an amazing thing to have happen!! To see my name up there with some really serious talent is amusing at best and somewhat embarassing. But anyway, it's been a really great journey.

This week's challenge is hybrid scrapping, which is right up my alley. I often use a bit of hybrid stuff on my LO's - using Photoshop to add text, or create elements. Of course if I really want to stay in the game, I need to push the limits and I think I need to create a really beautiful meld of images together. I can kinda see in my head what I want to produce, but getting there in reality might be much, much, much more of a challenge of course.

Another thing I tend to think is that the more fabulous the photo, the better the chance of staying in the comp. I'm starting to run out of really fabulous photos I think.

I need fresh eyes!!

Anyway, tomorrow night's scrapping night, so for tonight I'd best finish playing with my playgroup paperwork and then hit the sack.

Stuck on You

Here's my latest for Embellished Idol. I've actually made it through Round 4!! I'm so surprised. I never thought I'd get through Round 1, let alone Round 4.

So anyway, this is my entry for Round 5. The challenge this week to do a LO without using adhesives. ie. no glue, double-sided tape, or other traditional adhesives. So I've stuck my photo down using wet paint. The other items are attached using staples, brads (split pins), hand stitching and machine stitching. It's come out kind of cool and the original idea came from the title which is an obvious play on words from the challenge.

Will find out on Friday if I live to play another week. Every week I expect to be my last entry, and this week is certainly no different.

I'm also quite proud of this LO as I made it from start to finish in one night!! Almost unheard of in my scrapping experience. And especially as I was at a crop at Just Scrapbooking at the time, so plenty of chat going on too. The girls were intruiged at the idea of a adhesive-free LO. This comp has definitely been good for my albums. I've made 5 LO's in 5 weeks.

On top of that I also finished my Harry Potter LO which I started about 6 weeks ago. Not super happy with it, but I knew that I wouldn't be as soon as I found I had too much to fit on the page. If I wasn't so lazy I would have made a mini book to sit on the page with each of the books on a separate page & a little bit of journalling for each book. But I suck at journalling anyway, so probably not a bad thing. Otherwise I'd still be working on getting the LO finished at Christmas time. Anyway, it's 1am, so I'd better head to bed. Will get around to scanning the HP LO tomorrow (later today) methinks.

Instructions for Care

Here's my entry for Embellished Idol 2007 - Round 3.



The challenge was to use tags on the LO. Whilst I actually like tags, I found it quite a challenge to try to use them in a way that isn't "been there, done that". Trying to do this, along with the post-processing of Nick & Joan's wedding photos weighing on my mind, made it quite hard going. However, tonight, the last few pieces of the puzzle of this LO came together and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Teddy is such a sweet little guy, so it's nice to have a couple of LO's dedicated to him. I'm sure Nikita will really treasure them in years to come.

I'm pretty sure that this will be my last week of Idol, the competition and talent is just so amazing, I know I'm really out of my league. But it's served its purpose of getting me getting some stuff done.

Full of Spunk

Quick post & run of this LO I created for the Embellished Idol 2007 - Round 2 Challenge.

Very stiff competition, so I'll definitely be lucky if I get through to Round 3. Still quite happy with how this turned out, especially considering how busy & distracted I've been.