The Studio Cyberblog

Last weekend The Studio had a cyberblog. Unfortunately I didn't get to do any of the challenges on the actual weekend but the challenges are open until this Saturday. This is for Fabi's misting challenge - you know I love the mist...

I used some sticky lace that was lilac coloured (not going to be using that particular colour anytime soon) that I peeled off after misting.

This was Miss Meaghan off to the Yr8 social. I was so pleased with the outfit she ended up wearing, trendy but not over the top like many girls her age seem to favour. The dress which you can't quite see has layered flounces for the skirt and she wore leggings with a butterfly cutout on the leg. very cute.

She has since updated the hairdo to a side fringe and that makes her look so much older (getting a photo of this is proving quite tricky...).

One of my new Southern girls friends, Sue, has done a wonderful Lo, very much to my liking, lots of mist and white space. Go check it out on her blog here. Must try one with that red/black/white colour scheme, it works so well.

More Lo's soon, am hoping to get some more of the Studio's challenges done.

Have a great week. xx

Yay - a new challenge site ...

And I'm on the Design Team. So very excited to be part of the new team at Southern Girls Challenge Site. I will put up links to all girl's blog posts so you can go check out their work, lots of card makers as well, maybe they will inspire me to start making cards as well...

The new challenges will begin in September, I will let you know (of course!!) when they begin, yay.


Ok onto a different challenge. The Studio sent out the challenge to use your ugly paper. Boy did i have some ugly paper. Once upon a time , the first kit club I belonged to wasn't the best choice of supplies (nor was it cheap...) and so this is a selection of some of those papers..

I narrowed it down to these which I would struggle to use...
and came up with this (which I hated, so awful)..

more tearing and finally produced...

I think it is a bit of an improvement.

I still have lots of Lo's for their cybercrop, go check out some of their work, just wonderful.

busy, mad day (soccer BBQ duty this morning, Matt had French Oral exams, university open days for him as well and Meaghan's soccer). Geoff is off skiing tomorrow, I think we will just have a quietish day (after hockey, playdates for Henry and Meaghan is cooking for a renaissance fair on Wednesday) hmm maybe not such a quiet day after all..

but at least we will get a sleep in ;)

have a great day. xxx

PS we still have no government but nobody has noticed yet...

Election Day

Well, after weeks of dreadful campaigning on both sides, we have a hung parliament- well hooray...

On a more exciting note, matt came with us to vote for the very first time (although if I am completely honest, I suspect 13yo Meaghan has a better grasp of politics than Matt does. After reading, legitimitly I might add, her facebook page, her and her friends had a lively debate about the outcome. This also involved lots of >:( and ;) and many many !!!!!!! and a few ???).

Lo break before my political say (non Australians may want to look away soon after...). this is Matt on polling day, I wasn't allowed to take one of him voting, Matt imposed ban). this is using a Design Dollies sketch and I have dug out my digital supplies, it has been a while.




Any way we successfully numbered the boxes, mercifully small in our electorate. Today they are talking of another election soon, I will agree to this only if all politicians are banned from using the following words and phrases- moving forward, working families, great big new tax, stopping the boats (don't get me started on this, grrrr), ranga, budgie smugglers, faceless power brokers, just to name a few. Please feel free to add some of your own.

I would be more than happy to hear the following words that were missing or very watered down to invisibility this election - indigenous people and the environment. Do those in power not remember the last election??

Rant over.

Have a great day, xx

Southern Girls Challenge Site

One of the lovely ladies I met while on the Butterfly Crafts Design Team was a kiwi girl, Louise. Louise and her friend, Trace have started a Southern Girls Challenge site aimed specially at us Down Under (due to the fact a lot of challenge sites exclude those outside of the US/Canada from winning prizes due to postage costs).

The site hasn't quite started yet as they are looking for a Design Team and I have decided to apply. Part of the application was to put a LO up that incorporates some of your favourite techniques. I hadn't really though about it before but I guess it's obvious about the things I favour.

Let' see, that would be misting (tick), lots of layers (tick), patterned paper (tick) and buttons (also tick).

The colour red usually gets a look in as well.

I usually tear my paper as well although I didn't this time.

So this is it...

Ta da.

I did the following Lo before this one, and it had a lot of the same elements (predictably), but the paper was premisted sort of. And it has machine stitching which I am loving at the moment.


This is for Twisted sketches , sketch is this -
with the twist being fold (my red paper along the bottom of the photo).

Ok have a great weekend, we have elections here, so I'm on the cakestall at school (come on down between 11-11:45 and buy something). It had been a depressing campaign so far with the media minders keeping the teams under such rigid control, nobody wants to vote for either party. I have decided that focus groups should hereby be banned as they are the cause of much stupidity.

bye. xx

PS we came second in the trivia night at Meaghan's school, about the strangest event i have been too, more explanations later.. xxx

my boys

Two Lo's about my boys (actually they are easier to do than my girl because she is continuously hiding if there is a camera around..).

The first is for The Dollies, last weeks sketch. I started out trying to do last weeks colour challenge as well (yellow, kraft and white) but failed. I did scraplift the corrugated cardboard for Metal Minish's Lo, love the effect.



Not sure where we got the mini maracas from but Matt can't help picking them up every time he sees them. (although at the moment he isn't picking anything up as he had the webbing between two of his fingers torn open, with the aid of a stray hockey stick on Sunday. Luckily we could get into the local 24hr clinic and it took less than 2hours to get seen to - not too bad for a Sunday. He is now held together with glue...).

The second Lo is for the guest design spot for September (already!!!) for sketchy Thursday. The prize for winning this month is astonishingly good, tonnes of stash.

I must say I am not very keen on circle photos - The very first exposure I had to scrapbooking was in the late 90's at one of the party plan events. The woman insisted on cutting out every photo into one shape or another, circles and silhouettes being a preference. She insisted we use original photo's (no digi back then..) and that all background's were just distractions. It was awful, I could see the point in telling the stories to go with the photos but I could not see any artistic value at all. It took me a good 5 years to rediscover scrapping after the trauma of that afternoon.





My circles are still a bit dodgy...


Some good news is that one of my Lo's for scrapping the music won!! Yay. And the prize is a chioce of some yummy embellishments from pixie petals. I think i will be using some of my own cash as well, love the crocheted flowers.


Off to a trivia night at Meaghan's school tonight - the third one we have been to this winter. Hopefully this one will be as fun as the other two.

have a great day xx

Garden state

One of my all time favourite movies and best soundtrack ever. So when Scrapping the Music came up with one of the tunes for this weeks inspiration, I leapt on in. AND I came up with two(!!!) Lo's both from our holiday in Cambodia. I have tried but incompetently failed to load the song on my blog (no idea..) so to hear the song pop over to Scrapping The Music or go here. Just do it. Now. Please.

This one is from a trip we did onto the Tonle Sap at low season. The smell and poverty will linger for a while but so important for the kids to see how the third world is. And to know that it is ok to jump on in to theses experiences.

The next photo is from the ruins near Angkor Wat, where they filmed Tomb Raider. Wonderful atmosphere, would love to see it in the wet season. These great big strangler trees are breaking the walls of the temples and will eventually be removed. Glad we got to see them though.

Have a great day xx

I am now officially old...

No it isn't my birthday, they don't particularly worry me (and hey, I get presents so how can that be a bad day???). But my first born turned 18 on Tuesday. How could this be true??? My tiniest of babies (3 weeks early and come out bottom first) who refused to feed until a bottle was produced - is now legally able to vote in the upcoming election. Sigh.

I take comfort in the fact that we are very proud of him so far, he hasn't caused us sleepless nights yet and his friends are suitably daggy that they aren't out to impress anyone.

Matt had his year 12 trials this week so no great celebrations until later in the month.

At least I still have Henry to cuddle...

My Lo for my new official adult (now I know that isn't quite right) is for Cocoa daisy's sketch Lift for August, perfect for these photos. And I have managed to incorporate a technique I have learnt from Claudine Hellmuth's class at BPS (which I have done very little yet but am keen to get into when I have a couple of hours at home, ah dreams). The torn pages at the bottom of the Lo is something I will use again and again I think. I know it's not terribly tricky but sometimes you have to be shown something for the little light globe to go on.


The next lo is for Sketchy Thursday. Not great photos but it is hard in a dark hall with hundreds of people in the background. The occasion was a trivia night out at Bungendore for their town band to raise money to buy a new tuba.

The theme was Christmas in July and it was lots of fun. Unfortunately the powers that be decided that a tuba band (no other accompanying instruments to soften the sound) would be appropriate to play half way through the night. not a bad idea in itself except that the band decided that 30 minutes of tuba music would encourage us to donate more - so very wrong. They had to cut out two rounds of trivia because the band played far longer than was desired but no one knew how to stop them.

Our team came forth - my perennial position it seems.



On some sad news that pissed me off enormously, the zebras that I did a Lo on last week were vandalised on the weekend and have been destroyed. I hate senseless destruction and they were such a fun addition to look out for on the way home from Sydney.

Goodbye zebras and spontaneous art to share with all...
xx