Heard the latest?

Jamie Waters is coming to town! One of my most favouritist scrapbookers - can't wait!

For more info and how to book check the NZ Scrapbook blog.

Latest dare

Go check out NZ Dares for a fab dare using digitally altered photos. I had a lot of fun with this one. Here's my original photo:



I made 2 copies of the photo, then on the first one i used a colour pop action to give the colour a boost and I also lightened the photo a bit and played with the contrast a bit. Then I used a filter called Accented Edges on it. This gives it a bit of a painted-type look but with almost glowing edges as well. Then on the 2nd copy I put a Graphic Pen filter on the photo.

Then I layered the 2nd copy on top of the first one and erased over my daughter so that the coloured copy shows through. Here's the photo after all the changes:



And here's my layout for the dare:

Stand Up and Scrap

So a few weeks back I took part in a digi-scrapping competition that ran for 6 weeks with different challenges each week. It was called Stand Up and Scrap and all proceeds from entry fees went to the Alliance for Climate Protection which is run by Al Gore. In return for our entry fee we got a fab digikit designed by some awesome digi-designers. The competition itself was run by Little Dreamer Designs, Sweet Shoppe Designs, and Disc Talk Radio, and was run very well I thought. Everyone had an entry number and you could only load your entries to the gallery by this number so theoretically the judges wouldn't know who you are (unless the people in your photos were well known in the digi-scrapping world). Also there were different judges for each week so no bias also. This is the first competition I've ever entered for digi-scrapping so didn't really think my chances would be good - I was just pleased to complete 6 layouts!

I didn't find out until the end of the contest how I did. There were over 450 entries split into 2 categories - Advanced and Intermediate (that's me!) but in the end I came 40th in the Intermediate category out of appox 150 entries that actually received points. I don't know how many didn't receive any points and I was thrilled to find out that I actually received points for all my layouts except for one so that was pretty cool. So here is my layout for the first challenge which was "Dream" and also had to use brushes. This is the layout that didn't score any points. I guess its quite hard to read but the journalling basically says how my dream is to be there later in life for my family, to grow old with my husband and to see my daughter grow into a woman.

Happy Mail Day

Yay, this turned up in the mailbox this morning.

I've had a quick flick through it and it looks really cool and inspiring - just what I need right now. And the best thing is that it's all Ali - no contributing artists, just her.

And this caught my eye - love this philosophy.

BTW: Isla was 23 months old yesterday. Eeeek! Only 1 month till she's 2!!! Where does the time go?

Baking

So the other day we did some baking for the first time with Isla. We made shortbread cookies, yum yum. We even had an apron for her and she looked so cute in it! Though its a bit big so might have to make her another one. The only apron i had was my Fiskars one so I had to wear that, rofl! She didn't really want to get her hands too mucky in the dough mixture but was keen to try out the rolling pin and make shapes - just like playdough! Then we did the washing up together and by then the cookies were cooked. And they tasted really good!

Latest Digi purchases

So on Saturday it was Digital Scrapbooking Day which of course meant there were lots of sales over the weekend and some during the previous week so naturally I had to partake. This is what I got:

Some cool alphas:

I think this is my favourite one:

A few other things:

A couple of cute kits:

And this very large but free kit from MSA:

Can't wait to play now!

Scrapjacked!

So the fab girls over at the Kiwi Jack Me Up blog have picked me for this month. How cool is that? Go check it out and get scrapjacking!

Hello Blog, it's been a while ...

Yes, a bit slow (or rather nonexistent) on the blog front. Life got in the way during October. But hey now its November (or should that be 'Mo-vember', lol). Maybe I'll post a bit more often this month - that would be good.

So anyway here are a couple of layouts from NZ Scrapbook for October. Using BasicGrey Mellow range. I had a lot of fun using my Cuttlebug alphabets for these ones, just love those!