The desire to travel.

One of my rules are:

A girl should always have a cold beer in her fridge and a valid passport in her safe!
That is besides the rule that you should always have enough money to be able to fly TOMORROW!
*******
I always go a wild colour of green when I hear of anyone traveling to Europe,
but next year it will be my (our) turn. Eating the wonderful and sometimes strange food,
enjoying the small and interesting shops. Seeing the wonderful handmade products......

Visiting the local markets and the impressive old castles.

My friend Alida moved to Switzerland in 1983 and we used to send each other letters, stacks and stacks of them. Later I've learned to type and we send emails. Now we communicate by phone or we skype, but an air mail letter will always remind me of those precious letters I received in the post. It was a difficult time in my life. My best friend living in Switzerland, we living on a nature reserve, miles from anything and I was struggling with infertility.

                                    

 But she is part of a huge family and she came to visit all of us as often as she could,

I have only been there three times, but I am going to visit her next year in June/July. I can't wait.

It will be Opera season in July in Switzerland and as we quickly talked this morning, she said that she will get us tickets to the opening night of the Open Air Opera in StGallen. As a hobby, her husband sings in the opera, so maybe he will be singing that night.

With the cat semi out of the bag... yes, Benice and I will be traveling to France next year and spend a week in Durfort, after that, she will be traveling the rest of France and I will go and visit Alida in Switzerland.

As a good team works, I created this double page and Benice provided the photos.

It was from a previous trip to France......say no more.... I am going green again!

Christmas Cards and Chocolate Marshmallows

It has been a while, but I am getting better. The big tummy bug had me down for a couple of days last week, but I am feeling much better, I had a haircut and I bought some purple nail polish for the summer, so I am definitely feeling better. Living on Cream Crackers and black tea wasn't fun either, but today I had 3 chocolate marshmallows just to make up for last week. 

Here are our Christmas Cards for this year.

 The designs are simple, so you don't have to spend hours on one card.

The swirl was cut with a Sizzex die.

The border pattern was punched with a Fiskars punch.

The swirls were cut with a Kwik Cuts die.

A Spellbinders die was used for the circles. 

 A Martha Stewart Punch was used to punch the circles.

A Cuttle bug embossing die was used to emboss the white paper.

Just cut the trees, don't use a template!

 The new Tim Holtz die was used for the rosette.

The small coloured strips (like the turquoise) are just small coloured strips, not full pieces of paper.

Take one or two designs that you like and start making your cards!

Thanks for visiting.

World Card-Making Day Revisited

Don't you sometimes have the urge to create, but not have the time or inclination to "reinvent the wheel"??  That is exactly where I found myself on Wednesday...

I am more of a "pastel" kinda girl and have been itching to see if I could use the "layouts" of the cards from our World Card-Making Day class and recreate them using different papers...

The paper used are from Webster's Pages and the rubber-stamps from Darkroom Door and Tim Holtz.

Same rubber-stamps as per the original.  They are from Hero Arts and A Country Welcome (still not sure who they are or where I got the stamp from!?).

This time I decided to use a rubber-stamp from Crafty Individuals for the focal point and two smaller stamps designed by Tim Holtz.

Since our WCMD class, we've bought the Tim Holtz Paper Rosette die and I used that to make the flower.  The quote rubber-stamp is from Darkroom Door.


So there you have it...  Same layouts, different colour scheme!?


May you have a weekend filled with love and laughter...

Birthday Cards with a twist

I've mentioned before that I belong to a Yahoo group for rubber-stampers from (mainly) South Africa.  One of the "initiatives" that we can sign up for, is the Birthday List.  The idea is that you make a greeting card for everybody on the list which you then (ideally) send to them  during their birthday month.  The reward - receiving lots & lots of unique cards on your birthday!!

In January 2009, the reality of the global financial crisis was foremost on everybody's minds and that was my inspiration for coming up with the idea of a birthday card with a purpose.

A Scrap-Pad-to-Go from K&Company, complete with sheets of stickers & quotes, provided all the papers, etc needed to decorate about 90 blank notebooks, measuring approx. 4" x 6" each.  Once decorated, the books were covered with a transparent layer of contact adhesive.  Inside was a personal note to the birthday girl (& gent), explaining the purpose of the birthday card with a twist...


Hope this has inspired you to make something pretty with a purpose!?

Nelspruit here we come...

A week from now Elna and I will be teaching at 4 Keep Sakes in Nelspruit!!

Elsa Lategan has invited us to be part of their 4th birthday celebrations and we are almost packed and ready to leave...

The first class will be our mixed media tekkies (sneakers), followed by a double-page scrapbooking project, using the Travel Ledger papers from Teresa Collins and other goodies (including some of Tim Holtz's ephemera).


Their are still a few spots available, so we suggest you contact them ASAP to ensure you will be able to join in the FUN!?


Looking forward to seeing you in Nelspruit...

2010 Calendar Collaboration

I've participated in a 2010 calendar collaboration, hosted by Debbie Harris.  This was the second year that I've been invited and I was really pleased when Debbie allocated "October" to me...  October being the month of "Breast Cancer Awareness", the colour scheme I chose was a no-brainer!?

Audrey Hepburn is one of my idols and I decided to use a rubber-stamp image of her as the focal point.  A stained doily, postcard, an envelope, a paper serviette (napkin) and patterned paper were layered, together with a rayon ribbon, to complete the page.


Please follow this link if you want to see what the other pages from this collaboration look like.


Debbie is in the process of binding the calendar for 2011 and I cannot wait to see the end result!?


Thank you for visiting....

Get ready for Christmas

Hi Everyone

I have been very quiet lately. Our cables where stolen and the whole area had no Internet or landlines. It took a week to sort things out from Telkom's side. So now I have done all my emails and I am back in business.

 Time to start making those Christmas cards!

We will be making 8 cards with Basic Grey Paper and you can adopt anyone of the 8 styles to suit the paper you have. 

Dates for the classes will be in our next Newsletter, remember to subscribe!

The Owl House in Nieu Bethesda

The first town we stayed in during our road-trip in September, was Nieu Bethesda.  Some may only know of its existence because of Helen Martins' & Koos Malgas' "Owl House".  The town is quite off the beaten track and can only be accessed by dirt roads.

We wanted to stay there for a night so that we could visit the Owl House in the late afternoon and then again the next morning.  Helen Martins had a passion for light and her home is testimony to that.  


The house is small by most standards, but if you have a good camera and a sturdy tri-pod, you can easily spend 3 hours in the morning light and another 3 hours in the afternoon light there being surrounded by the most eerie and haunting light images.  

In the garden are many cement statues, structures and enclaves made out of empty brown beer bottles.

Both Leon & I were fascinated by the play of light and the possibilities of photos we could take, using it as a "prop".  Here I found a broken bottle and used it to frame the statues on the other side of the wall of bottles.

Leon took this photo of me where I peeked through from the outside - this is now one of my favourite photos!?

Miss Helen's story has a very sad ending and I urge you to use this link to read a little about a very creative soul and her passion for glass.  These bottles are still filled with the glass bits that she collected with the hope of using them some day...


Hope you find this as fascinating as we did...