Stamps Ahead

Scrapbooking from Scratch (SFS) has a series of monthly challenges.  One of them is a quote challenge and the quote this month is "Life is good".  This is the first time I have participated in one of their challenges. In August I moved from Sydney to Central Coast of NSW and life is certainly good in this part of the world. My nephew, who stayed with me recently, took a series of photos of Umina Beach and Google created this montage of the photos he took - I love the photo and I hope I have done it justice with my layout. Firstly, I used a Clear Scraps mask called Chicken Wire and onto white cardstock I sponged it (well, really I used a makeup remover pad as I could not find my sponge!) with Stampin' Up! (SU) Brilliant Blue ink and then went hunting for papers that would add movement to my layout.  The papers come from various companies. I then tore the papers to reveal the white core - top to resemble the clouds and bottom to resemble waves.I then cut out some tull...

I have recently moved to the Central Coast of NSW and one of the things I have rediscovered is -  I love a walk along the beaches.   Today we are expecting hot and windy weather (and it is only Spring here in Australia), so I was out early for my walk. Here is my selfie - beach walk style.  It has already got to 32C today. Keep cool everyone.   Margaret

Wow 2nd challenge post today - on a roll !!! When I was last in Las Vegas I went to a Rubber Stamp Convention and one of the people I met there was Rose - a Journey Coach (Representative) from Fun Stampers Journey.  Rose runs a challenge each week and this week it was to use one of their doily stamps (or a paper doily) to create a card.  You need to use their products. Now Fun Stampers Journey does not ship to Australia but I was able to gather (read buy) a few supplies together of their products before I left USA.  This stamp is one of theirs it is called "Stamp On". I used a paper doily and I have distressed it and the edges of all the cardstock (CS) with ink. I used blue CS as I find this a very calming colour.  A little bit of bling in the centre of the flower on the main image completes the card.  You could use dimensionals to raise the greeting but as this card will more than likely be on its way to another friend in US I did not use them.

Over at ARTastic Challenges their current challenge is "quirky and fun". Now this did stump me for awhile. So off to do research I went.  First I looked up quirky and found the following definition "having or full of quirks",  not much help there.  So I looked for words that would describe quirky and came up with far-out, kinky, off-beat, way-out, odd, bizarre, off-the-wall, peculiar, strange, unconventional, unusual, wacky and weird. Okay, feeling more inspired. Next, the word bizarre kept jumping around in my head - then why not bizarre holidays in September. So off to I went to research bizarre holidays in September.  2nd September National Beheading Day - I think not!!!  22nd September Elephant Appreciation Day.  Appropriate as I had photos from a trip to San Diego Zoo in November 2012 yet to be scrapped. Again back to Google this time I typed in words to describe elephants and found the words above that I printed onto Grey cardstock together wit...