~ Mommy's Angel~

This is my DS Matthew just a few weeks old. I just LOVE new borns and can't believe his 14 months old already. It seems like this pic was taken just the other day.
I used the water distressing technique on this one. At least I TRIED to do it but wasn't very sucessful. I can tell you that it's a lot harder than it looks to get the paper to crease just right. I think I wet my pp's too much which made the paper harder to work with. I eventually decided to just leave it as is, let it dry and then inked it. Hopefully I'll do a better job next time.

I made another one of my braided vines for this one. I used the vine to cover the edges of the distressed circle and hide all the intidy bits underneath...LOL!

I took apart a rose vine I bought from Katie's etsy shop, misted the roses blue and emerald green and then braided them into the cord.

I made all these blooms myself. The centre bloom is the Paperbag flower by the talented Lisa Gregory. I'm a huge fan of her work and LOVE her flower tutorials. I'm using this tutorial as this weeks featured tut in my DIY.....because you CAN group over at PIT.  The Organza Blooms are ALSO Lisa's creations and are super easy to make and will be an upcoming featured tutorial.

Here's a close-up of Lisa's brown paperbag flower. In the tut she says you can used coffee filter paper or even cardstock but I personally highly recommend using the paperbag as it delivers the best results and the flower stays the sames and doesn't flatten out as it does with the coffee filter paper. I used the smooch emerald green mist on this one.

~ Pages in Time~ DT Challenge

As I announced in an earlier post, I've been selected as a DT member for Pages In Time and the first challenge we were given was to each create a LO using the new PIT logo so here's my take.
I used Prima's Rainbow Watercolor pp for the bg. The lovely rose vine is from my good friend Katie's Etsy shop. The original vine was pink and white roses only so I misted some of them pale green and blue to compliment the pp's.

I made this gorgeous bloom using this fabulous tutorial from Rhonna's Design. It's very similar to the layered fabric blooms I use a lot but the difference is that with these you cut slits into the fabric and round the corners to ceate petals and then melt the edges. The best thing about making your own blooms is you can colour co-ordinate to your pp's as I have done here.

~ My little Princess ~ Prima May BAP

This is my DD Erin wearing one of her favourite "princess" dresses. Like most girls her age she LOVES dressing up and will even go to the mall with me all dressed up....LOL!!! She hasn't allowed me to dress her since she was 2 so it's always interesting to see what outfit she has on in the mornings. She sometimes even puts on one of her princess dresses at night as PJ's. We've learnt to just let her be and just change her into proper PJ's once she's fallen asleep....LOL!

I used one of the Prima flutterby collection pp's to cut out the flowers, butterflies and bird. The scattered pearls are also from Prima's e-line collection. These come in such a great variety of colours and are a def must have!! Here are some close-ups

                                                                                                                                                                       

~ You are Beautiful ~

As I recently announce, I'm now a DT member over at Pages in Time and one of the fun attractions is the Thursday Sketch. Each week a new sketch is posted and anyone can submit a LO and stand a chance to win a RAK. Here is this weeks Sketch...........

And here's my take on the sketch. I was so excited when I saw this weeks sketch because I've had this photo in my stash for quite a while but am always nervous when scrapping a large print so I'm happy to have found a way to use it and am delighted with the result. It's quite a simple design but I love it because all the focus is on the picture.

~ Viva SA ~

These are my darling kids in their Soccer supporter shirts the morning of the Soccer World Cup kick off here in South Africa. I did this LO for the colour challenge over at sb.com. This months challenge was to select one of the country's in the world cup and use the colours of their flag in your LO. I obviously selected SA. I must just tell you that scrapping with primary colours is a HUGE challenge for me. This is the first time I've ever tried and I must confess, I prefer toned down colour pallets.

I used Lisa Gregory's Ribbon Flower tutorial to make all the blooms on this LO using ribbon in all the colours of the flag. They're really easy to make and can be dressed up or down depending on the centre you use. I added some Prima pearl centres to the white flowers and an old button to the black. For the smaller flowers making the circle I just used some pearls that I found in a local beading store.

I made the flourishes with some liquid pearls and then doodled around them to make them pop against the black cardstock. This LO is also for the no pp's and doodle challenge at sb.com.  When time is limited but you still want to participate in challenges, I try and combine a couple in 1 LO......cheating I know, but what's a girl supposed to do???/

EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!!

I was so excited to receive the news yesterday that I've been selected as the Internation DT member for Pages In Time. This is my first DT membership so I'm humbled and flattered all at the same time....LOL! I'm sure the next 6 months are going to be fun and exciting and I'm very excited to be part of a fabulous team!!! Please take a moment to check out the fabulous blogs of my fellow design team members; Lisa Valentine, Victoria Warren-Mears, Denise Coulter, Andrea MacDonald, Lacee Broyles, Marie Levite, Helene and our team leader Barbara Lochridge as they are all extremely talented.
Come along and visit us at Pages In Time, there's tons of inspiration to be found in the gallery, join one or more of the fabulous groups and challenges. There's a little something for everyone.

Prima June Product Pick

Look at Prima's Stunning June Product Pick. Are these not some of the most beautiful embellishments you've ever seen!!! This is definitely my favourite collection to date, Prima have truly outdone themselves this month. This is also one of my favourite colour combo's.

~ PARIS ~

This is my DH and his best friend in Paris during the 2007 Rugby World Cup. My hubby's the senior rugby reporter for the Independent Newspaper group in South Africa and was therefore selected to cover the World Cup which I'm very proud to say SA won!! He was in France for about 7 weeks and several of his friends went over for brief visits to watch a couple games.

He took some amasing pictures and it's so hard to select only a few for a LO. What we've done though is download most of them onto the digital frame for all to appreciate.

I did this LO as an example for my June DIY challenge using the Dry Rose tutorial by the fabulous Lidia. They're really fun to make and I just love the finished effect. I also did a lot of paper twisting and inking on the background paper to give an overall distressed look.


Here's a close-up of the roses. Aren't they just fabulous!!! I sprayed the cardstock with some glimmer mist and then tore the circles before the paper had dried so I got some really great distressed edges. I then inked the edges with some Lava black chalk.

I usually struggle with the finishing touches for masculine Lo's but I thought it ok to use these because they're so distressed.

I did some criss-cross stitching with some ribbon to seperate the main pic from the 3 smaller ones. I also used this technique to frame the corner of the main photograph. I love using ribbon on my LO's, it seems to add just the right amount of flair......

I had this picture of the Eiffel tower but had run out of space on the LO so I decided to cut the tower out of the picture and use it as the "i" in "Paris". A little corney I know, but I HAD to have the Eiffel Tower in a LO of Paris afterall!!!

FLOWERS!!

Ok, anyone who knows me, knows I LOVE MAKING FLOWERS!!!! My mom was visiting over the week-end and asked me to please show her how to make some of the fabric and ribbon blooms I use on my LO's. One flower led to another and another and so on.................LOL!!!

Here's a pic of just a few I made. There are PLENTY more where these came from. I used Lisa Gregory's ribbon flower tutorial and the layered fabric bloom tut for the pink and white one.