Postcard Swap

Most of you have probably thought I have left the face of the earth as I have not been blogging for quite some time. Well, LIFE has been happening around my ends of the woods. Wow, I only realize now that it has been nearly 3 months since I have last written something! Since I last wrote on my blog, my dear Mother lost her battle with cancer (4/9/2011); it has been a rather sad time for us all. We are however thankful for the 75 years that she lived a full life and for having had her as a Mother. (You can read a bit about her here.) Everyone who has lost a parent will know that it is not easy; thankfully, the every day Lord is there to to make the hurt more bearable.

We have also had our annual Stamp Camp from the 14th to the 16th of October. What a wonderful weekend!! I will at some or other stage post pics of the cards we made there. I have learnt sooooo much. Every class were on a technique that was either altogether or relatively new to me. Have heard about some of the techniques, maybe tried my hand once at some of them, so it was wonderful to be taught all these techniques by our talented tutors. All-in-all - I wish we could have had a stamp camp every quarter!

Our local craft shop also asked me to show a couple of ladies who have bought Cuttlebugs how to use their machines. I was nervous as can be - never taught a class in my life! Some had their machines for up to 6 months and have never taken it out the box! I think after the class they will be making more use of these little treasures they own. I for one will definitely be using mine more often too. Self inspiration :-)

I am also still busy with my share of the preparations for our WI Conference next year and hope to finish with most of it this week. Some of our invitations have been handed out at our last meeting with the other areas, most of the others are boxed and ready to be posted. We also took a short break - much needed - and after the rest, feel ready to take on the world. VBG!

Recently one of the ladies on our stamping group proposed a Post Card swap. The theme this time was Asia. Some time ago I received a lovely Asian stamp from Jo at JoZart and were able to take part in the swap. I colored it with Twinkling H2O's and Steadtler Luna Aquarell Silky Pastels. The background was done with  Distress Ink (Shabby Shutters).
The stamp on the front of the postcard is a Hero Arts stamp.

It was fun doing this swap & I plan on taking part in the rest of the range Rosemarie might propose.

That's it for today. Thanks so much for visiting. I hope to be able to be a bit more active again as far as blogging goes.

Have a wonderful & blessed day!

Flourishes Scavenger Hop Challenge!

Ooh wee!! Flourishes has a Scavenger Hop Challenge on the go with awesome prizes!! Go have a look for yourself here. You have to hop to a couple of blogs to collect the 'recipe' for a card, post about it on your own blog and then enter your card.

Okay, this is the first requisite - to have this notice in your post. Done!

The 'recipe' includes - white, bling, decorative paper, floral, green, square, pink & ribbon. I think I have got them all on my card. Done! Oh, and if you use a Flourishes stamp, your name is entered twice! How great is that! Jippee - I have two chances!

I suppose now you want to see my card? Well, here it is! I love my Sweet Pea stamps from Flourishes!

The pink & the green board are both Bazzill. The image is colored with my trusty old Tombows. Gross grain ribbon from my stash and the bling buckle I got from Just-Imagine (a local business) many moons ago. Oh, and some more bling - a little bit of Stickles on the flowers - just because. Please do click on the pic of the card so that you can see everything in detail :-)

And that is it!

Thanks so much to the Flourishes team - I really do love all my Flourishes stamps and wouldn't mind to have many, many more.

Good luck to all the participants!

Zipper Flowers

A warm hi on this cool Monday morning! Here in the part of South-Africa where we live it feels like summer is on its way. It would be wonderful as this winter was extra cold for us. Having moved from a much warmer area to the cold Freestate, we suffered a bit. But, we are happy where we are and by next year I am sure winter won't worry us one bit any more.

I am still busy with the goodies for our WI conference next year.  This week I will be making zipper flowers which are going to be used as rosettes. Different colors and sizes for first, second & third places. I thoroughly enjoy making these and have made quite a couple of them already. My daughter-in-law also made some which she will be wearing as a broach. This was my first two experiments. I found the idea on Sandy from Keepsake Crafts blog here.  It is super easy to make! Thanks so much for your easy instructions Sandy!

 

The pink one was a white zipper that I sprayed with various colors of inks. I prefer the metal zipper flower, even though it is a bit heavier than the plastic zipper one.  I will be adding broach pins to all these flowers/rosettes so that the recipients can wear them, if they would like to.

Well, I am off to start measuring and cutting - I have around 50 of these to make. Hope you like what you see and will also give it a try.

I won some candy!

What a wonderful and warm surprise when Canica from Shoestring Scrapbooking notified me that I won candy worth R200 from her store!! Wonderful shopping spree without my own money! Thanks so much Canica!!

Paper Shoes

A very warm hi from a very cold South-Africa to all my blog friends! It is winter here, but we are having lots of rain in our summer rainfall area - had 30mm for today and the weather does not seem to be clearing. Other areas has had much more and some of my friends are stuck on their farms because of all the rain they had. The wind is blowing like it normally does around our area in August! That, with the rain - not nice weather!

Told you in a previous post about the paper shoes that a group of us has to make as invitations. Well, here it is! We are making 40 of these. Everything is cut, all the bling is stuck on, the heel part is stuck to the sole - it is now basically just the front part of another 38 that has to be put on. That is the hardest part! The flowers has all got their bit of Stickles on and the little bows I will do in front of the TV tonight and whenever. To attach the flower and the bow is quick. Papers used are from Prima Marketing - Annalee Collection "Ashton" and good old Bazzill. The flowers are from Creative Talents - a South-African craft shop.

After the shoes it is still the table number cards - 20 of them, some thank you cards and then some rosettes which will be used for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place entries at the function. Oh, there's also the certificates that still need to be done as well as the dolled-up envelopes for them. Our theme for the function is Fleur de Shoe. I will show you these as we go along. Luckily we still have time till October for it.

I found the tutorial for the shoe here on the blog of Terri Lynn Heinz of Artful Affirmations. Do take the time to go and look at hers. They are gorgeous!

That's it from me for today. Thank you so much for taking the time again to visit me! It is much appreciated.

Candy at Shoestringscrapbooking

Have a look at this! Canica is offering a R200 shopping voucher to be spent at Shoestringscrapbooking! Winner to be announced on 1 July 2011.

Have a great day and good luck with entering!

An LOTV card

Good Morning to all my blog friends

It is bitterly cold here in the good old Freestate! Our weather is something else. Coming from a much warmer Kwa-Zulu Natal, myself and hubby is going to have a battle to get used to this Freestate weather this winter. Yesterday morning we woke up to frost that looked like snow on the lawn! But the day turned out to be quite nice and I managed to get some work done in my craft room.

I bought some LOTV stamps some time ago, one of them specifically for the Come to Tea swap we had, and then some of them just because they were so cute. This week in between all the other things that I was busy with, I did this card.

It was colored with my trusty old Tombow markers. A bit of stickles and red flatback pearls were also added. The swirls is cut pieces from a Marianne die which I bought from Country Crafts, one of our SA craft shops. The embossed background was done with one of the Cuttlebug embossing folders. I rather enjoyed doing this card as I have not done any cards for quite some time.

One of the reasons for not being able to make cards is because I am busy with a project where myself & 2 friends from our WI group have to make 40 paper shoes. These will be used as the invitation for a congress we are having here in Heilbron next year. The shoes only need to be done by October, but there are more things that need to be done for this function and as the saying goes: what's done is done! I will show some pics of us working on this at a later stage.

I do hope that you will have a fantastic weekend full of wonderful things.

Thanks so much for visiting!

Reason for absence

A warm hello to all my friends! It has been some time that I've been able to post anything - but this is the reason, and I think a very good one too :-)
This is my son and his bride! They were married on the 30th of April. Been together for six years or so and decided there was no reason to drag it out any longer, but to do the right thing and get married. Everything was arranged in approximately 30 days - and what a great day it was! Here's some more pics from the day.

The couple wanted to take some cowboy pics too and this was the hat that the bridegroom wore. Cute pic, I think!

These are pics of hubby & myself and my daughter & son.

This is the bridal couple with my Mother. She will be 76 years young next week!












This pic is of the four generations. And to top it - all 4 firstborns are girls! 

 My sister, myself, Mom and my brother.

This was the table setting. Their color-scheme was red, black & white. The mothers had to wear something red and so did the three sisters from both sides. The fathers as well as their best man, MC & chauffeur all had to wear red ties. Very dramatic but striking.

May they have a long, blessed and happy life together!

Thanks for visiting!

Come to Tea ATC Swap

A very happy Friday to all my blog visitors! I do hope that you are all keeping well and getting lots of crafting done. I am happy to say that since my craft room has been moved into the house, I spend a lot more time in here than I have for the past three months. And it is wonderful - does me the world of good.

This little ATC was done for a swap which one of the ladies (Rosemarie Gibson) on our stamping group hosted. The stamp used is an LOTV stamp. It was colored with my Tombows. I saw a card on Bev's blog - All the things I love - and thought that this was the perfect picture for the swap. I ordered the stamp (plus some others of cause :-)) from LOTV and I could not believe it when my stamps arrived just five days after I ordered it! Thanks again LOTV - your service was great!

That's it from me for now. I am busy with the last 3 letters in our alphabet ATC swap and I need to finish them over the weekend.

Hope you will all have a great weekend.

Happy crafting and thanks for visiting!

My streak of luck - I think?!

Hello to all my blog friends!! It has been a very long time since I wrote anything, but life has been going past me with the speed of lightning. Since living on the farm and having to manage a feedlot, I have had very little time for crafting, but I am hoping that it will change soon. We are planning on moving my craft room into one of the spare bedrooms; at the moment it is in an outside room and I don't want to sit out there all by myself at night. Also no security gate fitted to the room. Luckily hubby made freestanding cupboards. Once all my stuff is moved into the house, I will be able to sit and craft till the wee hours of the morning again. I have been busy with some ATC's for swaps though, but will only be able to show them once swapped out.

Since moving here I have joined our local Garden Club as well as the WI ladies group. Originally I thought I would only go as a guest, but both groups have such great members, that I decided to join both of the groups. Seeing that Monday was Valentine's Day, the theme for the WI group meeting was of cause - Valentine! As it was our groups turn for the eats, I was asked to bake 30 cupcakes and I was given a picture of what they should look like. I had to put white and red frosting together in a bag and pipe that onto the cupcakes. What a jolly mess! Firstly, the red food coloring would not make the frosting go RED, even after adding almost the whole bottle of gel coloring. I phoned the group leader and she said to just make it pink and white as a lot of her eats were also pink. What a relief! This is what it turned out to be:

This was done around 10pm after having wasted a couple of batches of frosting and having to make a new batches! Not to say anything about having baked 3 batches of the cupcakes itself! If I did not put too much batter in the little cups, the cake did not rise correctly. Hubby was happy - he loves sweet stuff. Eventually I was happy with everything, but I told them I would never bake something sweet for a meeting again. Give me savory things to bake - that I am more than willing to do.

For this same meeting, there was also a competition to make anything to do with hearts. No prizes though, only a percentage given to your entry and at the end of the year the one who achieved the highest percentage for all her entries at meetings, gets a small prize. There are different categories - I entered my goodies in the Hobby category. Every year around Christmas I make a round wreath from a specific kind of sweetie. For this competition my hubby bent the wires for me into a heart shape and I added the sweeties to that. I packed it into a cellophane bag and added some angel hair. I had no ribbon that exactly matched the color of the sweets and in our little town you will not find ribbon! Well, to my surprise, I scored the highest points in the Hobby category - 84%! The judges thought that it could work well as a centerpiece and it would be a good Valentines gift as you could also eat it. They also felt that it was well presented and of a strong and sturdy construction. This is what it looks like:

The sweets are imported from Brazil and as so many things here in good old South-Africa - it is no longer brought in! There goes all my extra pocket money over Christmas time!

For our Garden Club meeting, which also had a Valentine theme, each member had to bake 6 cupcakes and a winner would also be chosen. Not specifically for the best decorated cupcake. The rule were just that you had to stick with the Valentine theme. Again I had very little time to do this and in the end decided that less is more. I baked some chocolate cupcakes in red cups - remember I had how many flops before - this time I knew just how much batter to put into the little cups! I decided to pipe just plain white frosting onto them and add a little red sugar heart and to present them in a holder with hearts on it. The hearts and the holders I bought from a shop specializing in all things to do with cakes in a nearby town. The judge brought out six different cupcakes - some VERY beautifully decorated ones, I must say. She commented on each of them and then said that she chose mine as the winning cupcakes because I stuck with the Valentine theme the best and that 'less is more'! My motto too! I could not believe it!! Keep in mind that I am a brand new member to the community as well as to these two groups and that in a matter of one week I get the best marks for my heart 'wreath' and I win the cupcake 'competition'! I think it is just a streak of luck that has crossed my path in this last week - VBG! This is what my winning cupcakes looked like:

If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you will see that the little heart on top has 'I love you' written on it.

Thank you for listening to my ramblings! I so hope that my next post will be craft related :-) Though, no craft time this weekend again - we have a rally just outside of town on Saturday and the WI ladies is responsible for the food. From tomorrow it is work, work and more work again.

Hoping that you will all have a lovely weekend and that you will be able to get lots of crafting done.

Thanks for visiting!