I’ll slowly catch up…

Filed under: ATCs, Published — Philippa at 12:45 pm on Tuesday, June 24, 2008

I’ve just finished packing up ATCs for a Goth Swap. Here’s my contribution:

The image is from Folkvangar.
Lots of embossing with my new Cuttlebug.
Overlayed with a 7Gs ATC transparency and a bit of Grungeboard. Too easy!

I’ve also finished packing a set of cards to send to Cardmaking, Stamping & Papercraft. These are Christmas cards, and all I will reveal is that the theme is alternate Christmas trees.

I received the latest issue of CS&P in the mail yesterday. I have a card and a canvas in there. Here’s a closeup of the canvas. I really enjoyed making this one. The flower stamp is by Kaszazz, and the sentiment is by Odd Bird Planet.

I have to admit to putting the sentiment on incorrectly and I had to ask Jane at CS&P to rip it off, cut it up and restick it back on for me. Don’t tell anyone!

Okay I have a semi-sick child at home so I should go give her some love and attention.

Where have I been?

Filed under: General — Philippa at 5:09 pm on Monday, June 23, 2008

I will be back to update on birthday cards and other things, but this announcement is what has been keeping me extremely busy!

Happy Birthday sweetie

Filed under: Family — Philippa at 8:58 pm on Friday, June 6, 2008

My little girl, Mary, was born 8 years ago today. I went shopping for more baby items in between contractions and got quite a few funny looks. That night I couldn’t sleep as it was getting too painful so I wandered the house for quite a while. Luckily we had quite a large house at the time, so Tony & Billy could still sleep. About 1am, I rang the midwives at the hospital to ask them if I could tell how dilated I was myself. Now don’t laugh! I just didn’t want to be in hospital for too long, waiting and waiting. Of course I couldn’t find out that information myself! Anyway, by 2am I couldn’t stand it any longer so rang mum to come and look after Billy. She lived on the opposite side of town, so arrived at 3am. Tony and I got to the hospital at 3:15am, and little Miss Mary was born at 4:45am. We went home just after lunch that same day.

So here is my first ever layout, created in a beginner’s class in around October 2000. I remember that the teacher was freaking out about my bright coloured background, but I liked it!

Here’s another one created late 2004.

And just some gorgeous photos:
Mary1
mary2
mary3

Bunny, carrot, gun…

Filed under: Cards, Family — Philippa at 3:27 pm on Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Excuse the “unpoliticalcorrectness” of my title, but it is rather funny. To set the scene, the girls were playing at the other end of the house last night and it sounded like they were saying “bunny, carrot, fun” over and over and over. I laughed and asked them what they meant by it. Well! That’s when they told me it was actually “bunny, carrot, gun” and it was their new version of “scissors, paper, rock”! So the bunny eats the carrot, the carrot blocks up the gun, and we all know what the gun does to the poor bunny! Where do they get these ideas from?

Thanks for the birthday wishes. I turned a ripe old, now into my late 30’s, age of 37 on 31st May. We didn’t do anything special as I had an all day stamper’s meeting. Which was probably the best thing I could have done as I got more cuddles, kisses, cards and cake than what I would have, and did get at home! But that’s another story and when I stop seething over it, I may share, lol.

I will share some more cards that I received though.
From Sarah:
Card from Sarah

From Fran:
Card from Fran

From Margaret:
Card from Margaret

From Judy:
Card from Judy

From ACTSA:
Not sure which of the members made this one, there was no name on it.
Card from ACTSA

From Peggy:
Card from Peggy

From Helen:
Card from Helen
Helen starts chemo next week for breast cancer, so please send as many good karma vibes her way that you can spare.

Look what I got!

Filed under: Cards — Philippa at 12:42 pm on Thursday, May 29, 2008

Aren’t I lucky to receive this beautiful card in the mail from Teresa this week! Thank you! I think I might have to frame him.

My new toy!

Filed under: ATCs, Cards — Philippa at 7:29 pm on Wednesday, May 28, 2008

I joined a Cuttlebug ATC swap quite a few weeks ago. Not sure why, as I didn’t have a Cuttlebug to use! The lovely Teresa said she would Cuttlebug some stuff for me to use, but I couldn’t make up my mind what I wanted from her expansive list of embossing plates! So what did I do? Well I bought myself a Cuttlebug, of course! Purely for demonstration purposes, of course! So anyway my large shipment of Cuttlebugs arrive for Lime Tart, and no I haven’t put them on the site for sale yet, lol. But not one of the embossing folders I ordered arrived! How could I Cuttlebug without folders?! Luckily my other lovely friend, Tanya, came to my rescue and I borrowed nine embossing folders to play with.

We had a lot of fun making birthday party invitations:
Mary\'s 8th invite

Then I made my swap ATCs, and boy did I have fun with these!

The background has been made by sticking calico onto jac paper and then running through the Cuttlebug. The vintage music paper was also embossed and then sprayed with gold mist. But my favourite part is the copper sheeting that was also put through the Cuttlebug. How good does it look!?

The butterfly is from a Darkroom Door stamp set. I stamped it onto cold laminate, coloured with alcohol inks, cut it out, stuck it on to a music sheet, cut out again, then went around the edges with black stickles. A few buttons and some machine stitching and they were all finished.

Now I just have to hope for a quick delivery on my backordered Cuttlebug embossing folders.

Oh and I have another few new toys on their way to me too! How could I resist this punch? You can see a better picture of it here. I’ve also got the Zigzag one on it’s way, plus because I thought they were out of stock, I had also ordered the Threading Water Punch! That one will take a bit longer to get here, but I might have to sell that one as three new punches may be a bit over the top!

Okay it’s now time for all good kidlets to get their pjs on, so I can settle in for some more stamping.

Happy Bloomin’ Birthday

Filed under: Cards — Philippa at 7:01 pm on Wednesday, May 28, 2008

to Johanna!

Card made using vintage music sheets - you can still see pencil notations on it. Stamps are all by justjohanna, of course! Flora Hugabundous, Michelle’s Big Scroll & Happy Bloomin’ Birthday. Coloured using H2o’s and then stippled with brown ink.

Freezing, foggy and flabbergasted!

Filed under: Family, Layouts — Philippa at 10:52 am on Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Freezing - tick! We only had a high of 8 degrees celsius here on Saturday. It’s currently 4 degrees right now and the forecast for the rest of the week looks like this:

Wednesday    Fine, partly cloudy.              Min 3    Max 16
Thursday     Fine, partly cloudy.              Min 1    Max 15
Friday       Fine, mostly sunny.               Min 1    Max 15
Saturday     Fine, mostly sunny.               Min   1    Max  15
Sunday       Fine, mostly sunny.               Min  -1    Max  16
Monday       Fine, mostly sunny.               Min   1    Max  13

Foggy - tick! Yes it was foggy walking to school this morning, not too bad, but fun for the girls in blowing out their breaths and not being able to see the other side of the sports oval.

Flabbergasted - well it started with F and I’m trying to write interesting titles - see post below - and it’s a fun word. Just say it a couple of times. Actually, say scallop a couple of times aloud and it sounds ridiculous. Say it with an Australian accent - skollup. While on the subject of scallops - the food type of scallops, not the trendy papercrafting scallops. Why, oh why, do mainland Australians insist on calling potato cakes - scallops?! A scallop is a “is a marine bivalve mollusk of the family Pectinidae.”, according to Wikipaedia. What has that got to do with the potato cake? (I’m trying to find a picture of one, but all google is throwing at me are lovely gourmet pics, not the humble potato slice coated in batter and deep fried). The only similarity that I see is that you can buy both at the local takeaway, although  my uncle and grandfather used to make great curried scallops.

Anyway enough of that and on to why I might possibly be flabbergasted… I scrapped! Yes indeed, I scrapped a few pages over the weekend. This is my favourite, and look - scallops! The edges are done with the Bazzill Edge strips. They were a bit bright so I sponged and stamped to grunge them up a bit. I used the justjohanna Flower Garland S but I stamped the first impression onto scrap paper. Now that I have the layout hanging up, I realise that I should have pushed the title up to the photo to fill in that empty space, but oh well, what’s done is done. You’ll have to click on the image to see a full pic.
Tickle Me Daddy

Next up is more scallops! These ones were done with one of the Marvy punches…. giga, mega, huge, or ginormous… they confuse me. The pink size! The papers are from the June A la Tarte, which hasn’t been released yet of course, but the papers are gorgeous! I also made a gift set using the June A la Tarte which as already been accepted by Stamping & Papercraft, so I’m pretty pleased with that. It’s the cutest little birdhouse, mini album and card. But back to the layout:
Freedom

Lastly is one page from a double layout. Nothing overly spectacular about the layout except the photos of the artwork by my kids and their friend who lives up the street. I find that scrapping in the size that I do sometimes doesn’t leave a lot of room for throwing embellishments at the page, but at least the photos are scrapped!
Leaf faces

So now I had better go and warm up my body by doing some sort of housework… maybe if I bake something, then when it’s finished I can open the door and absorb all of that lovely heat?!

*insert witty title here*

Filed under: Cooking, Family — Philippa at 10:25 am on Saturday, May 10, 2008

I’m drawing a blank on witty titles, I’m not saying all of my titles are witty, in fact probably none of them are! But I did read a marketing blurb once, that said you need to catch the attention with your title and then keep the reader’s attention with the first line. How do you do that?

I know that my favourite blog of the moment is Gluten Free Girl, just go and read a couple of her posts as her writing just draws you in. She writes a lot about food, including gluten free, but so much more about life.

So what am I here for today? Well the boys are at soccer and the girls are making paper dolls. Once everyone is home, then we’ll borrow mum’s car and I’ll send them out shopping for my mother’s day present, heehee. I’d love an orange tree in a big pot, but I don’t think the budget will allow for that this year, so after watching an ABBA special on TV last night, I’ve put in a request for a CD. Boy did that show bring back memories of the 70’s, in particular I remember the local newspaper giving away a free ABBA tshirt transfer and mum ironed it onto a white tshirt for me. Very cool!

So as you can tell by the previous paragraph, we still haven’t bought a family car. Which isn’t that bad. We walk or ride to school, it makes me stay at home more and actually get some work done too! Hubby now does the groceries - love that! I despise grocery shopping! Then if I need to desperately go anywhere, I’ve been catching buses, not that often, but occasionally. They are quite good for people watching.

So back to mother’s day - I’ve already received two out of three presents bought by the kidlets at the school mother’s day stall yesterday. From little Miss Feralist (feral terrorist) I got the obligatory coffee cup and chocolates that she buys me every year, and every one of them seems to have a butterfly on it! The other miss bought me a lovely beaded bookmark, a magnetic shopping list and bathbombs! Which she knew I wouldn’t use because I don’t use the bath, so she knew when she bought them that she would get them! Nice logic. Billy is now at the age where he can contain his excitement and has hidden his pressie away from me, which means that it’s not a plant this year. Every other year it has been a plant, so I’m very, very curious this year.

So to continue jumping all over the place…. I did catch a bus the other day. I had another dreaded dental appointment. To recap my dental horror story, I had to have one of my front teeth taken out last November so I could have a titanium implant done. This tooth died when I was about 16 or 17. While I was in the Navy, they did a lot of work on it, all free of course, but it weakened the tooth and about ten years ago a dentist told me to never bite into an apple or the tooth could shatter. Well of course you put off major work like that, who wants to spend squillions of dollars being poked and prodded and having needles rammed into the roof of your mouth that come out your eyeball?! But I finally bit the bullet and they pulled it last November… I cried like a baby. Obviously I had a plate, with a false tooth so I didn’t look even more like an old crone. Learning to eat and talk with it was a bit of a task, but I did. Then three months later I went in for the implant, which to be honest, wasn’t as traumatic as having the tooth out. Sure it hurt, and sure that drill sounded like it was coming out of the back of my skull, but I got there without any tears this time.

Did I say this was going to be short? So skip forward another three months and xrays are taken to prove that the bone has bonded to the implant. Along with the xrays, they did a torque test, whatever that means? But it felt like they were trying very, very hard to rip the implant out! Obviously it bonded because it didn’t come out! Then onto the next appointment a week later to have more impressions done. This is the appointment where I caught the bus. It was actually a bit of a comedy of errors at the dentist this time as what could go wrong did go wrong, and over an hour in the chair, about 6 needles, and a bloody sore gum later I am now booked in to have some colour matching done. So fingers crossed that by the end of this month, I will no longer have a plate, but a nice, new and very expensive smile! Looks like I’ll have to keep catching buses for a little while longer!

Okay so what else was I going to write about… Mary. Yes little Miss Mary had another follow up appointment yesterday to make sure her new diet is working. She’s still getting little bits of tummy pain so we are going to have a few more tests done, but I think it could be anxiety rather than anything else. She’s nearly 8 years old and already the girls at school are starting their power plays, so she comes home a bit upset every now and then.

Other than that, her gluten free diet is going okay, we’ve learnt a lot in a short amount of time. We still haven’t ventured out to a restaurant to test those waters though, and shopping mall trips are hazardous. Not to mention the rude icecream shop owner that nearly made me cry a few weeks ago because I dared to ask if they had an ingredients list! Looks like we won’t be purchasing from there again!

I did have some success on Anzac Day though, I was stressing out about making Anzac biscuits. How was I going to replace the oats? Now, I love Google, but for some reason I just forgot to Google “gluten free Anzac biscuits” until the day before Anzac Day. I’m glad I did, because I came across this recipe from the Better Homes & Garden website, and we made these, although I just tip the golden syrup in and there is a lot more than two tablespoons added!

Well I guess that’s enough ranting and rambling for now, the soccer boys should be home soon and I will have a bag of sweaty jerseys to wash! So on that aromatic note… I’m off!

Alphabet packs for sale.

Filed under: General — Philippa at 4:44 pm on Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Yes, I’m still clearing out stash!

Pack 1, $25 includes postage within Australia:
alphapack1

Pack 2, SOLD:
alphapack2

All unused, unopened, still sealed. Email me to purchase.

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