Monday, February 28, 2011

So Happy For Ewe

I was in a somewhat whimsical frame of mind last night when I sat down to make some cards. I made one with Aviary first, but it wasn't quite whimsical enough ... so I was browsing through my files to see what fitted my fanciful mood when I came across something just perfect ... something I have been meaning to make for ages ... something especially for kiwis ... something sooooooo cute it made me chuckle out loud ...

Sheep.

Oh yeaaaaaaaaa, I hear ewe say, those kiwis have got something like 46 million sheep! (Used to be 72 million ... the rest left to live in Australia! ROFLOL!!!!!) About 13 sheep per person, apparently - I kid ewe not!!!! So I HAD to make a sheep. And having made one, I HAD to make another - ewe know what it's like. Well then, of course, it was decision time on how to get them on a card. My grass punch came in very handy (thank ewe Martha Stewart) and so my card was born. Check it out:


The SAB set 'So Happy For You' (I think there's a spelling mistake in there!) was perfect and I added a touch of contrabaaaaa-nd organza ribbon. The bow and button gave me a lot of grief, I have to say! It was by now around 11.30 pm and I was very tired and needing some sleep, but it just would NOT sit right. Normally I would decide to leave it until I was rested and fresh in the morning, but it was the last touch on my card and I just knew it would drive me crazy and stop me sleeping, so I HAD to get it sorted! So I undid the button (sewn on) and the bow (small, fiddly knot) and started again and thaaaaaank goodness, second time it worked like a chaaaaaaarm.

So, I hope ewe like my touch of whimsy ... and may ewe have some whimsy in your day today!

Cheers
Kez

PS: Here's looking at ewe kid!


Edited to add Punches used:
  • scallop circle (regular size, not the XL one) - body 
  • five petal flower - ears and feet
  • large oval - face
  • owl - eyes
  • boho blossoms - wool on head

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Suckers!!!

The 3D project this week over at Stampin' Addicts is a "sucker holder" or lollipop holder, which I thought were really cute. I've used Chupa Chups in mine and made a boy version and girl version using the Party This Way set.

For the boy one I used Celebrations papers and Lap of Luxury DSP for the girl version:



Aren't they cute? And so quick and simple to make - gotta love that!

Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers
Kez

Friday, February 25, 2011

JAI Challenge 57

(second post today; scroll down for vintage birthday cards)

The colours for this week's challenge over at Just Add Ink were picked by Danielle and apparently came from the colour coach. With Cherry Cobbler in the mix, there was no way I was going to miss this one! LOL. They certainly were a challenge for me, though - I had to think long and hard about how to combine these:


Much as I like Daffodil Delight, it is a real "in your face" kind of colour, so often needs to be used in small doses only! I originally had in mind ribbon, a bow, a pin ... but in the end that would have been WAY too busy, so I've gone for simplicity and I'm quite happy with how it turned out. Here's what I eventually came up with:




Materials used (all SU):
  • stamps - Elements of Style, Baby Blossoms, Teeny Tiny Sentiments
  • card - river rock, cherry cobbler, very vanilla, daffodil delight, river rock DSP
  • punches - 2 step bird punch, scallop trim border punch, 35mm circle punch, scallop circle punch
  • other - dimensionals, stamp-a-ma-jig
Thanks for dropping by.

Cheers
Kez

Vintage Birthdays

Birthday cards are of course the most commonly needed kind, so I've been building up my supply and playing with some goodies that arrived from the US earlier in the week.



I've used some retired Purely Pomegranate satin ribbon for this one. PP is very close to Rose Red (the colour in the papers) and you know how I love big satin bows! The small rose on the sentiment panel is made using the scallop circle punch, similar to the roses in this post.

The same layout was used on my second card but this time I added in a punched border and some gorgeous Baja breeze seam binding. This is so soft and pliable, just lovely to work with. This time my sentiment panel is only one layer, but I've used my marker to add some colour.


For my third card I've cracked open my new Garden Green ink pad - can you believe that I have never bought this before, having been a demo for over 2 years?! Now that I've got it, I love it and can't understand what took me so long. The embellishment on the corner has been in my stash for a very long time and is, I think, just gorgeous.




Non SU items: adhesive rhinestones (Kaiser), Martha Stewart border punch, Melissa Francis embellishment

My thanks to those of you who left kind messages about Christchurch, your thoughts are much appreciated.

Cheers
Kez

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Almost Beyond Comprehension


I'm sure that many of you, like me, have been glued to the TV the last few days watching the news from Christchurch. I have been in tears many times as I see my beautiful and beloved birthplace reduced to rubble and looking like a war zone, and even as I type this my heart is in my throat. I am so distressed at the extent of the tragedy and cannot even begin to put into words how sad I feel for those people who have lost loved ones, friends and colleagues.

One part of me wants to rush over there to do anything I can to help, and another part is so thankful that I was NOT there, and that something like this didn't happen when we lived there and my daughter was small. When you see scenes like those from places you don't know it is bad enough, but to see familiar streets and well loved buildings - the Cathedral, the Arts Centre, the Time Ball in Lyttleton - it just makes my heart break.

Luckily, we have been able to contact most of our close friends in Christchurch and they are all safe. Some escaped buildings in the city just in time before they collapsed, others have internal damage to their homes but are structurally safe, one luckily was in Dunedin on business. I am so thankful.

But my heart goes out to everyone there and I fervently hope that more survivors will soon be found amongst the ruins.

I hope it helps in some small way to know that we are all thinking of you.

Kez

Monday, February 21, 2011

Back To The Grindstone ...

DD18 is off back to Melbourne tomorrow for another year of hard slog at uni ... yeah, right!!! LOL! Anyway, she loves it down there and that is the most important thing, even though we miss her like crazy and I do wish she wasn't quite so far away ...

As I mentioned in my last post, she loved my little Ferrero Rocher suitcase so I offered to make her one for the journey - of course it helps that she's rather fond of chocolate too! Red and white polka dots are her fav at the moment, so I've used cherry cobbler with chocolate chip accents (sounds like a yummy dessert, doesn't it?!).


Naturally, I had to make a matching card and as I don't have an appropriate SU stamp, I thought Magnolia's Farewell Tilda was perfect. Once I had finished the card, I told her she couldn't have it as it's so darn cute that I didn't want to give it away, LOL! I did though, of course.




Hopefully the card and box will survive the journey and maybe sit in her college room to remind her of home ...

Cheers (and tears)
Kez

Friday, February 18, 2011

A Must Have For Travellers

Yesterday I came across an adorable little suitcase box that is the perfect size to fit six Ferrero Rocher chocolates! Brilliant! So of course, I had to make one straight away. I used chocolate chip and retired speciality DSP.



While I was making that I thought ... hmmmm, I could use ribbon instead of card for my straps and then I could thread the ribbon through a buckle so it would look even more realistic... So, here is my second suitcase:




Crumb cake and night of navy are my colours and I ran the crumb cake cover through the square lattice embossing folder. The antique brass buckles and brads are from an old Hodgepodge Hardware set. I love it! And so does DD18, so I'll make another one for her to take with her as she travels back to uni in Melbourne next week.

If you would like to get the pattern and try it out yourself (very easy, trust me) then here is the link: http://margitsschatztruhe.wordpress....ner-pdf-datei/  Thanks Margit for a really fun project!

Now, while we're on the subject of chocolate ... I made another card using the delightful Eat Chocolate set (and if you like this set, save your pennies - that's all I'm saying!) and one of my fav colour combos; cherry cobbler, very vanilla and early espresso.



This is a very good card for me to give ... myself! LOL!

Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day!

Cheers
Kez

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Birthday Bonanza

My ladies have asked for birthday cards for this month's classes, as they just can't keep up with demand, LOL! Here are two of the cards my beginners will be making:


This great masculine card was cased from Linda Keal and uses retired papers. For the next card I've used the adorable little owl from the Aviary set for the first time and it is soooooooo cute! More retired papers (gotta use up the stash, LOL!) plus the sentiment comes from the SAB set So Happy For You.


They'll also be making my punched birthday owl card (see here) - that huge bow is a big hit with everyone!

Thanks for stopping by. Hope you're having a great day.

Cheers
Kez

Friday, February 11, 2011

Simple Card

One of the challenges I remember seeing recently was to use neutrals plus one other colour. I think it was the SUO challenge - well, I can't enter that because I have used non SU papers, but I was still keen to try the combo.

Here I've teamed the simple elegance of black and white with the gorgeous lushness (is that a word? LOL!) of cherry cobbler to make a card that is quick and easy but still has plenty of Wow! factor. Well, I think so anyway; hope you agree - they just never look as good in a photo as they do IRL!

Here's a close up so you can see the shiny stripe on the black card and the richness of the satin ribbon. Gorgeous!


SU materials used:

  • stamps - Perfect Punches
  • card - basic black, whisper white
  • ink - cherry cobbler, basic black
  • other - dimensionals

Thanks for dropping by.

Cheers
Kez

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Yum Yum!

Just a quick drop in to show you a photo - Sue asked the other day, after my post about the pavlova and the marshmallow surprise - for a photo of the MS. So, having made it for our BBQ today, I took a couple of shots before it was demolished! Not so much to look at, but oh so yummy in your tummy!

Today I used mixed berry yoghurt - raspberries, strawberries and blueberries - then added raspberries and blueberries and put a few remaining blueberries on top of the crumbled Flake. Mmmmmmmmmmm! now what happened to those leftovers? Gotta go ......!!!

Cheers
Kez

Kia Ora

Happy Waitangi Day to any and all Kiwis out there! Today is New Zealand's national day and here in Aus we ex-pats celebrate too. We're having a BBQ around the pool - what better way to spend a Sunday?

Of course I had to make a card for the occasion and as I did an owl card for Australia Day, I thought I'd have a go at a Kiwi-flavoured owl card too. My first thought was sheep, naturally (ROFLOL!!!!), but nah, too obvious! Then I thought a character like Fred Dagg or Wal from Footrot Flats (who look ALOT alike!) ... but they looked too much like my Ozzie Owl.

So in the end I've gone with this:




These are my representations:
  • an English owl and a Maori owl together - the two peoples of NZ
  • a long white cloud - the Maori name for NZ is Aotearoa, usually translated as Land of the Long White Cloud
  • silver ferns on the black lettering - the silver fern is the symbol of NZ and black is often used by national sporting teams
  • the greeting Kia Ora means be well/be healthy and is pretty much used as "hi!".
Hope you like it - especially if you're a fellow Kiwi!!

Thanks for calling in today. Have a great weekend.

Cheers
Kez

Friday, February 4, 2011

Vintage + Lace = Bliss

The vintage style stamps that are so popular right now are lovely to work with and can be used to make some gorgeously feminine projects.

I've been having a play with the SAB set, Bliss, and I came up with a boxed set of cards for my Lana ladies to make in class next week. I used one of my all time fav colour combos - Perfect Plum and So Saffron - and teamed them up with Crumb Cake and Very Vanilla. For a closer look, just click on the photo.

Box top:
 Box:


Cards:




Whole set:

Crochet trim lace and pearls are the perfect embellishments to give your vintage cards an olde worlde charm. Some of my ladies are not too keen on tearing though, so this will be a real challenge for them, LOL! Sorry girls!

I am entering this project in the So Shelli Creative Challenge, which is to use items from the SAB catalogue.  Hope you like them.

Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers
Kez

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

The Great Pavlova Debate

No craft related stuff here today, just me rambling! Read on if you're game!

I mentioned in my Australia Day post here that DD18 and myself are Kiwis (well, Kiwaussies, technically!) and so we always celebrate Waitangi Day (or New Zealand Day) as well as Aus Day. Waitangi Day is coming up on Sunday, Feb 6th.

The main dilemma about celebrating both is that our cuisines are so alike and so having different menus for the two national days is not always easy! There are a number of items in the culture of both countries where there is much debate over "who had it first" and the friendly (?) rivalry between NZ and Aus has waged for many a decade!



One such of these is where Pavlova was invented. For those of you who may never have heard of a pav, it is a meringue dessert which has a crunchy outer crust but is soft, chewy and marshmallow-like on the inside (photos above). Usually it is covered with whipped cream and fruit, quite often kiwifruit (which admittedly, is something Kiwis nabbed from the Chinese, but it was renamed at the insistence of the US importing firm and not by us!) Both countries claim "ownership" of the delicious concoction - although there is no dispute over the fact that it was named after ballerina Anna Pavlova, who had visited both countries during the late 1920s. I'm not going to wade into the argument but if you're interested in reading about the pavlova's true origins, take a wander over here.

Anyways, we had a pav on Australia Day cos the rest of the family just looooooove a pav, so I wanted to use a different dessert for Waitangi Day. DH put in a special request for Marshmallow Surprise (aka Marshmallow Delight or Ambrosia), which is equally delicious and very easy to make. So I thought I'd share with you my own recipe for this no-cooking dessert (NO COOKING! gotta love that, right?!):

Marshmallow Surprise
500 ml fruit flavoured yoghurt (I use Fruit of the Forest)
300 ml cream
425 g can fruit (I use boysenberries)
1 packet marshmallows
Cadbury's Flake


Whip the cream, add the yoghurt and drained fruit. Cut the marshmallows in half and add to bowl. Mix well. Crumble the Flake over the top. Refrigerate. I guess you could add more fruit as a topper if you wanted. Serves 8-10 people.


That's all there is to it! You can change the flavour of the yoghurt and fruit to suit your taste (eg) apricot, passionfruit, etc. It's REALLY good if you make it a few hours ahead of time and let the marshmallows begin to "melt" into the rest. Mmmmmmmmmm! It's quite rich so you only need a small serving - I said need, not want! LOL!

OK, so I'll be back to my regularly scheduled programme later in the week - and yes, there WILL be a card for Waitangi Day! And yes, it features owls!

Thanks for dropping in.

Cheers
Kez