Tiny thngs for Easter....

While my childhood was marked by religious ceremonies and the significance of Easter means more than rabbits and chocolate, our multi-cultural world finds new ways to connect people and let them find joy together. I think everything can rest alongside everything else, in an "everything in moderation" sense....so this is a celebration of the secular side of Easter, the bright colours of silverfoil and exuberant decorations just because you can..........

I've added to my collection of ATCs and used a set of wooden egg shapes from Kaisercraft as my beginning.  There are bows and glitter and lots of colours.... and if you look very carefully, there is in fact one rabbit, albeit a very tiny one.  And the chocolate?  That's lying in wait in the bowl.

Come over to Opus Gluei and see what the other Poobahs have made too....

Black is back

Its so easy to make something eye-catching if you choose black, so the challenge I'm hosting at Opus Gluei (starts Sunday March 22) is all about using my favourite colour and another of your choice.  I refuse to enter into conversations about how black isn't a colour, I KNOW that, but humour me.

Inspired by an artwork given to me last year, I played around with a butterfly punch and used up lots of tiny pieces of "just big enough to keep" paper scraps lurking in corners of my work bench.  Once I started, the project assumed a life of its own and I made several cards in different shades.  Inside each one is a lighter piece of paper on which to write, and another butterfly.  Here's what my work bench looked like...

and here's one all by itself....

and this is the inside of one...

I like the look of the raised wings, despite that meaning applying many many tiny pieces of double-sided tape.  I'm thinking this could be adapted to be framed, so I'm off to Ikea to buy a box frame or two and experiment.  Is it too early for Christmas?

Inspired by Irish....

...which is all green to me.

I have a very empty store of cards in my come-in-handy folder so I have been inspired to make a collection of green ones.  

There are so many different shades of green, and my very favorite has a hint of blue, hence this first card which uses some patterned and some embossed card stock and some cut-outs from Kaisercraft.

The next one is for a friend who just loves to move her furniture around and redecorate.  I have lots of twine left over from some Christmas crafting and I think it goes quite well with the tracery on the green paper.  The vase is from a TE stamp set, embossed with glossy black, and the flower and chest of drawers were lying in the scraps tray.

....and finally a salute to St Patrick's Day which falls on March 17th, the birthday of one of my grandmothers.  The clover is made from 4 heart shaped scraps, and it DOES say Good Luck too, but I should have used the glittery gold embossing dust instead of this one.

There's an Irish challenge over at Opus Gluei this week....these will be featured there, and I wonder what the others have created?

Winter Vacation.......

....which in Melbourne is still 6 months away.  One of the Opus Gluei ladies is off on a cruise to avoid all the cold weather in the US at the moment, and here we are in Victoria, sweltering in yet another heat wave.  I hope the leaden skies overhead will drop some of their watery content right over my roses, but right now its just humid.  This is the day my air-conditioner has been waiting for - to convince me it was a necessary purchase.

So in spite of Deena reveling in summery warmth, I am dreaming of a cooler holiday, hence my ATCs to celebrate winter.  The first uses a new embossing folder and my almost forgotten Cuttlebug.

The image was a Christmas one I was going to use for decoupage, but seems to have been overlooked, and under the pearls are the embossed dots.

Then I got a little carried away, thinking I might crochet an ATC, but sanity re-surfaced and I compromised by crocheting a scarf instead.  Hate to think how long this little boy has sat waiting to be used.....

Now lets see what the other ladies have come up with for this challenge.

Love is in the air....

...and as Valentine's Day looms again, and the shops are full of red satin hearts and teddy bears with boxes of chocolates under their paws....its time for some romance.

Adding to my collection of ATCs are these two: 

made with a collection of oddments from the desktop.  

If you're feeling romantic, join in the 202nd challenge of the Opus Gluei team and show us how you feel.

Australia Day 2015

When asked to illustrate Australia, my country, I have to stop to think which part of this island to show.... Is it the wild and largely uninhabited west coast where crocodiles roam the waters, pearl farms dot the inlets and on land the colours are dusty shades of grey green red and orange but the skies are a burning clear blue?  Is it my home state's capital city with its jigsaw of old and new buildings, its maze of theatres, shops and cafes, and home to so many stylish black-clad women?  Is it the wide pale inland spaces between country towns where fields stretch into the distance, cattle rest under the trees and farm buildings cluster in shades of weathered grey.

I learned the art of decoupage and love the challenge of recreating something from scraps of paper.  A teacher introduced me to the idea of filling some of the spaces with paint rather than paper, and then challenged me to start with a picture but then to extend it myself, using the original artists colours and shapes as a guide; make the picture a different shape, take a small part of a larger one and make this scrap into a work of art all its own....and this is what I like doing best of all.

This box begins with a piece of a Fred Williams painting, The Nattai River painted in 1958.  Its colours instantly bring the bush to mind, the vast spaces where it seems no-one moves except birds high above you.  The piece I used is from the right hand corner and is on most of the lid, and then I extended the painting down the sides, creating a sky and ground and horizon where there had not been one before.  

It might not say "Australia" to you, but it does to me.

This post celebrates the 201st challenge at Opus Gluei and I wonder what other people will create?

Let it snow....are you serious??

You have to smile at the complications of a design team spread across the globe when it comes to a seasonal challenge....witness the latest (number 197!!) excitement at Opus Gluei where the theme is snow.  SNOW?  Its a warm 34C here in Australia today, well, in my little part of it, and I don't think its ever snowed in my street.  Now THAT would be an example of climate change, but I'm not advocating for it........

So channeling my inner winter, I attempted a scattering of snowflakes, and then I hung them from a bar and they move in the wind.  Before anyone complains about a distinct lack of white, let me hasten to explain I was thinking snow in the evening....glistening against the night sky.  What would I know? I've never seen it.

I embossed a snowflake stamp and added a glittery centre, then glued them to grey gauze ribbon.  They're double-sided, but you can only see that if I upload a movie....so you'll have to take my word for it.

Treating myself........

The inspiration for this little bit of recycling came from a roll of paper that has been lying on the bench for a while, and a nice solid box that was too good to throw away.  Years ago I found an old broken letter rack and covered it with paper so it could live again in my then new tiny space that was just for me, and as I've just expanded into a big bright sunny room, it was time for something new for there too.  

I have a soft spot for alphabets and lettering and calligraphy.........hence the paper.  The hardest thing to do was decide which part of the paper to cut into.  

Now I have a place to put all the rulers and pieces of dowel and random tools instead of putting them in a drawer and never finding them again.

Halloween

Its a good thing that I have friends across the world, they celebrate different things and different days.......and Halloween is just one.  Once upon a time I would have muttered about how Australia is being swallowed by other countries and their customs, but now I have to admit to liking the richer tapestry it all makes...................and that's my philosophical musing for today.

The lovely Poobahs at Opus Gluei are mostly from the American continent, so they know all about Halloween and they're slowly teaching me.  The challenge this week has a Halloween theme so I incorporated a digi from Make it Crafty.  I like how he unravels, and I like to think he's a little zombie-like, which ties him to my group of Zombie Outbreak Response Unit friends.  Simon, see what you've done!

I like the shiny bat, made with the help of some Stampin' Up Crystal Effects, and to emphasise the link to my favourite ZORU, I had to use the orange spooky cobweb paper.

...and while I'm here

It is no secret that I love making ATC; they're tiny little snapshots of an idea, they dont need to have sentiments carefully positioned, they can have all sorts of things in juxtaposition and not look out of place.....because they're so small.

Here are three I made for a Purple Challenge set up by some friends here in Australia.

Have just realised that they all glitter, which combined with purple makes them most unusual for me.  I freely admit that some challenges are a bit like the books chosen at my Book Club, forcing me to do things I would not ordinarily do/read/combine/bother with at all!!  Just goes to show that it didn't hurt at all.

....and for the most recent challenge at Opus Gluei, we had to use clocks or time or something related to time....and I made these two.  I think inspiration deserted me, but the clocks are there.

The sentiment says "An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth", and I like that thought.  These stamps are an old Stampin' Up set, as are the embossed cogs in the top picture.

Other people's time related work can be found here.