parcel

I love finding a parcel at my door. Yesterday the courier brought me the November kit for Lime Tart! Suddenly it's real. I'm itching to get started on it but have a few other things to make first. Like a couple of tribute layouts for the outgoing DT members at Scrapgal. And the next No 8 Wired project too. All before Friday. November 3 is going to be a pretty exciting day on the dare front. Make sure you visit the blog!

I've been wondering..

if good news comes in three's like bad news does after last week's double whammy. I guess it does because yesterday I was invited to join the Executive (=permanent) Design Team at Scrapgal. Yes that is the same place my guest DT spot was finishing this month. They are losing two of their incredibly talented designers - Leslie Ashe and Celeste Smith - who are moving on to other opportunities. I feel very honoured to be working with an insanely talented team of designers there. Life is good!

I added my challenge layout to the No 8 Wired blog too:

I suggest you keep an eye on the blog next week. We've got something pretty cool coming up!

And I wanted to share a layout with a favourite photo of mine that I finished last weekend at a very enjoyable, social and chatty crop. The picture isn't perfect, in fact far from it as it is quite blurry. But I love that expression on Thomas' face. And the whole attitude he's got going on.

It's been a good week!

Very very happy and proud to report that I was chosen as one of four Lime Tarts! Together with Mel Nunn, Lee Woodside and Ange Warren I will be creating pages and projects with the delicious and creative kits with bite from Lime Tart for your inspiration.
I submitted two of the layouts I created for the For Keeps Awards for Excellence (that I didn't get to enter), plus the 2-pager I made after the time zone debacle a couple of posts back and another cool project that I'll share with you next week as I'm saving it for my Scrapgal challenge.
Mind you that time zone debacle wasn't the end of it. I submitted the 2-pager anyway and got an email last Wednesday that they wanted it for the Top 10 issue!! Oh yeah, my first time in CK. I'm a Fresh Face!

Now if that doesn't bring my mojo back I don't know what will....

Here's one of the layouts I sent to Lime Tart. You will find it next to my name in the designers section of the site. It uses the beautiful MME Bohemia, ribbon, fabric and Heidi Swapp letters (love them!)

Random notes

Had some exciting news today. But will have to keep it under wraps for another week or so. It's scrap related of course! It's been a good week actually as I also got a layout picked up by Scrapbook Creations for issue 40. I got my A into G so to speak last week and reeled off a couple of submissions of some layouts I just had sitting in my album and it paid of. Will make a point of doing that more regularly now.

I'm having some serious camera envy lately. I just hate my camera. It takes nice pictures but the shutter delay and other limitations are getting to me. So I am longingly looking at all the junkmail that fills my letter box with ads for digital SLR's. Saving up for one is proving near impossible. Not helped by the fact that I had to cut back on my work hours because I don't have any care for Annabel that I can afford. No point in paying for a sitter with the money you'd earn in that time period now is there?

The wee madam started morning kindy today. She was so excited! Spurred on by her brother who was making a huge deal out of it. He can be such a sweet and caring boy. He has only just begun to realise that she is different than other four year olds. He asked me the other day why Annabel couldn't talk properly, or run or jump. I tried to explain that she just takes a bit longer to learn new skills but that she'd get there eventually with lots of practice. He then started to think out loud what would happen when she went to school and wondered if she'd have a special helper too like a boy in his class. He even said that he'd look after her in the playground and make sure the other kids wouldn't hurt her. How sweet is that?
They are finally also beginning to play together. Yay! Although Thomas gets frustrated because Annabel doesn't want to play by his rules. Cracks me up to hear them arguing. It's a good thing because it means A is learning to stand up for herself. She's a little dragon though because she knows exactly how to push his buttons.

I'm still a bit in a creating rut but did do something sort of scrapbook related at the weekend. I'll leave you with a sneaky peek of it. I'm about to hit my desk and see if I can finally get inspired to design my next class project. I think (or should I say hope?) the scrapping bug may finally be finding it's way back to me.

Time zone debacle

Just a quick upload of a layout I did for Scrapgal. It was my turn again for the 'Free For All Friday' challenge and I decided to set a challenge of creating a 2-page layout considering not many people seem to do these any more. Myself included. It was pretty hard and it took me a few days to complete.
A little bit of background why the 2-page layout all of a sudden. For the first time in ages I decided to submit a few pages to CK. I got an email on Tuesday asking if I'd been published by them before. I answered back saying no, with building excitement obviously. I was then asked to submit some of my favourite pages, including a 2-page layout to increase my chances of getting into the issue. Uhm, small problem as I haven't done a 2-page layout in oh like 2 years. So I emailed back asking if I could have a day or so to create a 2-pager for this opportunity. But... time zones were against me and overnight I received an email saying there was no time and I needed to send my pages immediately as they were 'going up the wall today'. I didn't see that email until 10 am Thursday morning and by then I figured it was too late as it was 4pm in the States. Quickly sent off some pages but haven't heard anything so I guess I missed the boat... Bugger! But lesson learned and kicking myself for not sending my favourite one pagers in with the request for more time to create a double. So if you want to be published in CK you'd better have some 2-page layouts to show as that seems to be the direction they are going.
Anyway I'd already started my 2-pager and it took me forever. I just couldn't decide and kept ending up with the dreaded trapped white space. Still it felt good to create something for me again, no pressure and hopefully I've got the spark back because of it. Now if only everything else would just fall into place...

edited: layout removed for publication

Fears, Foibles and Phobias

That's the challenge theme this month over at Scrapgal. It will be my last month as a guest designer and I must say the time has flown by! I really enjoyed being a part of this enormously talented design team. But from November 1 there will be others taking over this spot.
For the newsletter it was my turn to write an article and I went way out of my comfort zone and decided to tackle 'The Artist's Medium'. Played with melted bee's wax and wax crayons again and got messy doing gel medium transfers. Very cool effects! (even if it took a few tries to get it right)
Anyway here are my projects for the newsletter. It's the only scrapping I've done lately.

Photo printed (dark - for silhouette effect) on transparency then transfered to cardstock using gel medium.

A card, using an image from a magazine (toner copy) and transfered with gel medium.

And melted bee's wax mixed with melted wax crayons painted directly over the photograph. I then took the heat gun to it again to smooth out the wax and make the colours bleed through a bit. After it had set I scratched the title directly into the wax. The background is made up from layers of tissue that I distressed and painted over with silver paint and gesso.