Come Fly with Me

Where I play with paper and inks, my mother creates with flowers. I have no card to show today as I'm away visiting my mother. But I went to her flower demonstration morning with the theme "Come Fly with Me". Each hostess decorates her table. My mother and aunt did ours .... we flew to China.

Here we are, from L to R, my mother, me, my aunt

I loved this English garden table 

 My mother loved this one

Once we'd had our tea, the demonstrators (all chic as air hostesses) took us to their destination. They even made planes ....

Absolutely amazing. Helen took us to Monet's garden in Girverny, Paris. Not only creating, but keeping up an informative and fun discourse at the same time.

And some close-ups of the wonderful details 

Vaughn took us to the Philipines with the vibrant colours

And Clasina took us to the city of angels ... Los Angeles ... look at the angels hanging at the back.

And now comes the part that made me gasp .... after 2 hours of work resulting in such beauty, IT WAS ALL DISMANTLED!!! Can you imagine that?! So glad I captured it on camera to preserve some record of it, but photos are nothing to the real beauty. I don't know how these ladies do it. Can you imagine crunching and binning your card or scrapbook page a few minutes after creating it?

When I get back home, I'll definitely be making some cards inspired by these flower arrangements.

You make such a difference

This is my first card for Maddy ... sending encouragement and support during her fight against leukemia. As I'm posting it from South Africa, I'll be making another to post when I'm back home in Mauritius. 

I started with a sketch from Annabelle Stamps, and so will enter it in their Chose your Favourite Sketch challenge.

I had wanted to do this sketch when it first came out, but didn't make it. This was my idea .... and so happy that I could actually get round to making it.

You're a STAR

I love the challenge at Fusion this week. I was really taken with Lesley's photo challenge.

I saw the blue lines and the star. I knew I was going to use the Hero Arts Cornflower blue ink, then I spotted my tweed stamp and it all came together quite quickly after that. The diecut white star is from cardstock that has a shimmer to it - unfortunately it didn't come out on the photo.

I will also enter this into the Simon Says Stamp "S" challenge .... STAR!

Welcome Baby

For CASology Wheels Challenge

Using the Hero Arts stamp and matching die cut sets.

Light & Lovely

The Moxie Fab World Tuesday Trigger is so light and lovely

I didn't use birds, but love the blue and yellow, flowers and dots.

First Art Journal Page

I've slowly been accumulating the supplies needed to get into art journals. Although, not everything has arrived, I couldn't resist using what I had to make a start. I've sewn 10 pages of folded Neenah white into a journal and I think I'll be making hard covers. Since it was my first try, I thought I would start with a page of Neenah white which I could use as the cover .... and if it didn't work out, I would just try again. But I'm happy the way it turned out, so I will be using it as the cover.

Entering this for the Hero Arts Stamp Your Story challenge.

Gesso'd the page .... dried ... sprayed 3 colours of Dylusion inks & spritzed with pearlised water ... dried ... used the diamonds of Hero Arts Border mask and applied embossing paste to give dimension and texture ... dried (this takes much longer than you think!) ... painted a circle with white acrylic and Hero Arts Neon yellow ... drew the letters "Words" onto a printed page of an old book and cut out .... coloured with distress markers and blended with water - then added more white acrylic and Neon yellow to the tops of the letters ... stamped the triangle arrows in white ink (didn't come out very well so went over the V's in white gel pen) ... glued the letters down with gel medium (which makes the dylusions ink run - learning as we go along) ... stamped the "of life" and embossed with clear embossing as I didn't want the black to run ... added more white acrylic to the centre of the letters to make them shine ... doodled black lines around the letters and some dots.

Some close-ups

 of the embossing paste ... 

the luminous circle and black doodles ...

Sophie's Birthday

My niece, Sophie, is turning 2. She is just the cutest little thing.

I re-discovered some lovely bright party pp in my very messy stash, which I thought would be just right for her card ... especially using the Paper Players sketch challenge.

A close-up showing the rolled candles and glossy accents on the flames.

Celebrate the half

The recipe for Less is More's challenge is humour! 

I have enjoyed this off the internet (don't know who the author is) ....

Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions.

"How old are you?"  "I'm four and a half!"  You're never thirty-six and a half.  You're four and a half, going on five!  That's the key.

You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back.  You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.

"How old are you?"  "I'm gonna be 16!"  You could be 13, but hey, you're gonna be 16! And then the greatest day of your life . . . you become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony . . YOU BECOME 21.  YESSSS!!!

But then you turn 30.  Oooohh, what happened there?  Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out.  There's no fun now, you're Just a sour-dumpling.  What's wrong?  What's changed?

You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40.  Whoa!  Put on the brakes, it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50 and your dreams are gone.

But wait!!!  You MAKE it to 60.  You didn't think you would!

So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.

You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it's a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!

You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime.  And it doesn't end there.  Into the 90s, you start going backwards; "I Was JUST 92."

Then a strange thing happens.  If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again.  "I'm 100 and a half!"

May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!

I have been wanting to use this stamp from Club Scrap and this is the perfect opportunity!

Tranquil Scene

I love Heather's scenes and this is my first attempt. Needs a little more practice, but it's a start.

Using the Annabelle Stamps sketch and my new Annabelle Stamps set.

Bananagrams

It's Ardyth's birthday .... and she's running this week's OLW. We're making cards for her birthday inspired by her cards or interests. I enjoyed finding out more about her, and we have quite a few interests in common like flowers, chocolate, numbers and mathematics (I also love suduko!), baking, cardmaking, blogging, word games and crosswords. 

One of my favorite word games is Bananagrams - sort of like a speed scrabble where everyone plays at the same time and it's a race to see who can finish their letters first. No time to get bored!

So inspired by Ardyth's card 

and Bananagrams, here's my card

I used the new Hero Arts Keyboard Alphabet stamp set. Had to draw a grid to get the spacing right.