Christmas is just around the corner.... so I'm told

Hi everyone, thanks for dropping by. 

I really appreciate all the lovely comments you are making and the fact that you take time out of your day to come visit me. So big hugs and kisses to you all...

Each year I paint and then donate Christmas ornaments for my son's special needs school to sell at their annual Christmas concert. All of the money raised goes directly to the school so I am happy to be a part of it. 

My son has been going to this school for about 7 years and this is his final year. Yes that is going to be another significant day for us when he finishes there. They are a wonderful school and have made such a huge difference in our lives and I am deeply grateful for their existence.

 Each year I have families who collect the ornaments so i have to come up with different designs each time. 

Here is the start of the process. I had them all base-coated and ready to go. Then I line them up, usually on my ironing board and paint all the one colour at the same time so by the end they are all finished at around the same time.

As I am not proficient at designing my own and knowing that there are Queens of Christmas out there, I borrow ideas and designs, with their permission of course, and paint those.

These cute little elves are designs from the lovely Kerryanne

These ones are from Jamie Mills Price

 I love Jamie's designs and have painted many of them over the years. I was also lucky enough to paint with her when she came to Melbourne a couple of years ago. A lovely lady and so generous with sharing her painting secrets.

 I used a stamp for the background which was stars and dots and looks a bit like snowflakes.

These are the puddings and cupcakes that I will be teaching at our True Blue Christmas workshop on Sunday.

 I used Jo Sonja paints and painted on some Opal Dust to make them sparkle

And here they are lined up on my ironing board all ready for some varnish all 52 of them.

I also dabbled in a bit of card making yesterday. 

A friend of mine is getting married on the weekend and I made her a card to give her with a couple of little gifts. I found a couple of videos on you tube as inspiration like Natalie's.

I used my Big Shot and the Spellbinders Die Template called Flying Beauties to emboss and cut out butterflies. I distressed them with Imprez ink in Fawn and Jo Sonja Rich Gold paint. I used this paint on the ribbon to get the matching colour and also rubbed it around the edge of the card face.

I embossed and cut the tag from the Spellbinders Nestabilities set which I stamped and distressed with the same ink and paint. I stuck pearls on the body of the butterflies as well. The heart paper on the left hand side is printed vellum. Inside I printed what I wanted to say in matching ink colour on vellum. I really like card making and think I will do more of it in the future.

Well today I have a lot of scrapbooking to do on my sons album and will be going to a scrap night at Scrapper's Warehouse so I can hopefully get it nearly finished by his party. I have my fingers crossed.

Today I offer you a Buddhist saying

"Live in the present and make it so beautiful it will be worth remembering"

I hope you all have a great weekend and remember to find beauty in the present moment no matter where you are or what you are doing. Here it is supposed to be sunny and around 29 Deg so I'm looking forward to getting out in the garden and enjoying the sunshine..... ahhh come on Summer.

Namaste

Lee

Spring is in the air...............and up my nose!

Yes you guessed it I have hayfever. First time in about 4 years and it is driving me nuts. I hate sniffing and not being able to breathe and the sneezing is enough to give a girl a hernia. I don't like taking drugs unless I have to so I have pulled out the big guns today, the blue lace agate and citrine crystals, the garlic, horseradish and vitamin C tablets and the olive leaf extract. I rattle like a pill bottle and I have crystals stuffed down my bra and in bracelets and necklaces.
 I have looked up Louise Hay's book to see what the metaphysical reason is, here is what she says - Hayfever is usually caused by emotional congestion and fear of the calendar. Now we get to the nitty gritty.
Christmas is coming and I am usually running around like a ninny and not organised till the last minute, although this year Kerryanne over at Shabby Art Boutique is helping me with that this year, I have my sons 21st in less than 3 weeks and I still haven't finished his scrapbook album or put together the photo slideshow for the night and we have ALL of our relatives (that would be 9 ) staying at my place. Don't get me wrong I love having the family here as it doesn't happen very often that we are all in the one place at the one time. Lucky for me I have a great neighbour who has generously donated the use of some beds. So yes, I think I am scared of the calendar at the moment and that I won't get it all done on time!
So my affirmation to rid myself of hayfever is I am one with all of life. I am safe at all times.

So on a lighter note here is what I have been up to in my absence.

I have been playing with a new toy. A Big Shot embossing and die cutting machine. As you can see in the background I have taken over the dining room table with this "little" project so I will be glad when I have finished it and it is cleared away ( and so will dear husband).

 I have been using it in my sons scrapbook with the coloured core cardstock so when you sand the embossed areas they reveal another colour underneath, so neat. I have also bought a couple of die like this tag below. You can emboss and cut out shapes with the one stencil. Here is a photo from his school pages.

Another thing I have discovered and hence now have an addiction for is Opals embossing powders. My friends at Scrappers Warehouse had a sale on last weekend and so I went to support my friends :) and bought a few more things for my sons album. Here are some chipboard letters I played with using two or more colours.









In the Water baby photo I also used fantasy film on them as well.
I am still perfecting it but love the look I can get.
You can also paint the chipboard letters and then just clear emboss over the top so I can see endless possibilities here for my scrapbook and art journal pages.
What do you think?







I have been doodling a bit too. It keeps me sane and relaxes me when everything else is getting too hectic. Just 15 to 30 minutes and I feel so much better. I especially love doodling after a meditation so it keeps me in that habit as well. The first one was inspired by a lotus flower hence the name, and for the second I wrote - 'the eyes of the soul in a woven tapestry of life'.

In this next one I painted the background first in Jo Sonja Prussian Blue Hue and Aqua and then thought white pen would be nice over the top but I had a terrible time getting the white gel pens to give me nice flowing lines. Then I remembered a packet of Souffle pens I recently aquired and they worked a treat.

I leave you with a photo of my rose which is gloriously flowering and smelling delicious.

and a quote

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson 

 

I hope you are all having a glorious day wherever you are and that you take time to smell the roses

Namaste

Lee

So many photos, so many memories

Well it has been a lot longer than I anticipated since I last posted. I feel like it has been a week when it has been two! Since then I have joined in on a free online workshop called Art Heart and Healing by the beautiful, multi-talented Tam at Willowing.It is a great course that introduces healing with your art journalling. I am running a bit behind but hope to catch up this week.

I haven't really done anything in my art journal but have been doing creative things like going through and printing out photos that I want to use in a scrapbook album for my son's 21st and then choosing the papers and embelishments for the pages. I haven't looked at some of these photos for a long time and it brought back some really good memories. It would be a lovely thing if the family sat down one evening every now and then and just went through their old photos and reminisced a bit. Boys don't seem as interested in doing this as girls are and in our fast paced hectic lives this is one thing that can bring us back to each other.
I also taught the second half of my purple iris class on Sunday. It was a lovely day to catch up with friends and paint at the same time.
So my only offerings this week are a couple of doodles that I did last week and a mandala I coloured in. It started as a photocopy from a book I have called Coloring Mandalas 2 by Susanne F Fincher and I added some more lines and curves and then coloured it in with coloured pencils.

 I like curves and swirls

 This one came after a chakra meditation. The bottom looks a bit out of shape but I like the rest of it.

 I was limited in the colours I had so probably didn't match up the colours in the way I wanted but I liked the meditative state and relaxation you feel when doing these.



I am still a bit behind in leaving comments on your blogs but I will get there this weekend. We have a long weekend with the Melbourne Cup on next Tuesday and my work always take the Monday off too so it is a really nice break.
I have just realised that I forgot to lead you guys over to Suzana at Creative Therapies. She kindly featured me on her blog during my absence and my manners flew out the window in not acknowledging that. Thank you Suzana for the mention :) Suzana is all about healing through creativity in our lives and is also currently doing the Artists Way so if you are interested in sharing that journey be sure to have a look.

I did start the Artists way a couple of weeks ago but have been unable to keep up so I have postponed it till after I have finished Tam's course. Sometimes I overload myself so have taken a self care step to drop some balls that I am juggling.

I leave you with a quote from the book

" What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us"

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Have a great day everyone

namaste

Lee

My baby is turning 21!

Hi everyone

Well as promised I now have the photos taken of what was keeping me busy on the weekend.
My eldest is turning 21 on the 1st of December and we are having a party for him so I thought I would make the invitations. I have had the most generous help from Pam and Jacinta at Scrappers Warehouse who gave me great ideas and where I bought the supplies to complete this little project. As the generation of today does things, most of my sons friends have been invited through Facebook so I only had to make invites for the family and adult friends. I started making them on Saturday and made one card in about 3 hours. I thought, gee maybe this is a bigger job than I thought but then I got into production line mode and completed 9 more by Sunday night, in between helping out in the garden and enjoying the fabulous spring day.

They are based with a red cardstock, then the striped paper  which I have stamped and grunged with a black stamp pad. The photos are also grunged and stuck to red card stock. the stamp was appropriate in saying 'Time Flies'.

 As you pull the ribbon on the right hand side the photos flip open. I chose 4 photos of Scott from baby to now.

 

until finally the details of the party are revealed.I thought the technique was really cool and Scott was very happy with them. He thought he was just getting a standard invite. Well, without girls in the house, I don't have a chance to do crafty things just for the kids so I thought I had better put my best foot forward for this milestone. And yes it makes me feel old but very proud of him.

Now I did mention that chocolate was going to be involved and I had all good intentions of making my now famous chocolate fondant volcanoes but I was so engrossed with what I was doing that i just ended up eating chocolate Toblerone.  Maybe next weekend I will make the fondants and share the recipe.

So there you have it, a very satisfying creative time and with the Toblerone a yummy one too. Do go and visit Pam and Jacinta if you are in Australia and in person if you are in Melbourne. Their shop is packed full of scrapbook and card making goodies and they are lovely ladies. Thanks girls :)

Have a great day everyone

Namaste


Lee

My Artist Date

Hi and thanks for popping in.

Last Friday I took myself off to the National Gallery of Victoria to view the European Masters Exhibition before it goes back to its home. I must say that I was just awestruck by the early masters paintings, the realism, the mood they captured, the glow they had in their paintings was incredible. I have only seen photos of these before and to see them up close was a real treat.

 Here is a shot looking down the Yarra River from Princess Bridge.

And another looking down Swanston Street.I love the sight of contemporary buildings beside the old St Pauls Cathedral and Flinders Street station.

Here is the front of the National Gallery of Victoria. The glass wall with the blue writing on it is actually a waterwall, very effective.

After catching the tram to the Carlton Exhibition Buildings I stopped in a the Craft Expo and called in to see Anna who had just finished demonstrating at a booth there. We had a great time shopping, watching demonstrations, shopping, looking at new products and shopping and buying things like............

 These lovely butterfly paper cutouts

Some more great stamps

 Some paper kits 

and a journal handbag and ATC box

And some paper cutouts that i will use as stencils.

After I had spent all my money I was booked in to see the movie about a expedition to the Titanic at the IMAX theatre. It was in 3d and was fascinating to see the places they can now get their cameras in to.  After the movie I was booked in to see the Titanic Artifacts exhibition at the Melbourne Museum. I had about an hour before I could go in so I went to have a look in the rest of the museum. I am ashamed to say that after living in Melbourne for 23 years this is the first time I had been there. I walked around the rainforest exhibition and the Melbourne history exhibition which were both great. I will definitely be going back again to see it in more detail. 

Here are just a couple of things I saw - some textile designs

 Some beautiful lead lighting and some pieces that you vintage girls will love.

After that it was on to the Titanic exhibition

I have always been fascinated by anything to do with the Titanic so I have been looking forward to seeing the exhibition for a while.

I absolutely loved my day in the city and will definitely be making it a regular occurrence. Isn't it funny that it seems the city where you live you generally see the least of. I suppose you take it for granted that you can go anytime you want but in reality you spend time going on holidays everywhere else but near home. 

I know I promised details of my weekend but the light is too bad now for good photos of what I was up to so will post them in the morning.

Sweet dreams and good night everyone

Namaste

Lee

Life is a journey

Here is another page completed on my play date with Anna. Yes we did a lot, don't you agree that when you are with someone else doing the same things you get so much more done than on your own, well at least that's what I found last Friday.

I was so engrossed in what I was doing that I forgot to take step by step photos.  Here are some photos of what I used that I put together afterward.

The background was sponged with White and Claret rose using a round sponge.

Then I added a photo I liked in a magazine. I love the flowers and her whole look( you will see this in the final photo. I then added some stamps about growth, journey etc.

I then used Antique Green for a stenciled flourish down each side and also on a script stamp randomly over the pages.

 

Here is the page so far. I say so far because I think I want to journal on this page about what the stamped words are about but not sure if it will be too much so I am leaving it for a while to see what feels right.

Anyway, that is all I am posting today. It is magnificent weather here in Melbourne today so I am going out to enjoy. Tomorrow I will post the photos and stories about my ME day in Melbourne that I had on Friday and about what has kept me busy this weekend - all I can say is that it is creative and satisfying.... and yes chocolate will be involved at some stage!

Happy Sunday everyone

Namaste

Lee