LOOK AT THE STARS ~ 13 ARTS CHALLENGE

Greetings !

Today I would like to share a layout for the challenge over at 13 Arts . I came across the challenge a little while ago and it appealed to me. FINALLY got around to doing the challenge last night and if finishes tomorrow , Phew !

The criteria is 

Rules of the challenge # 23:

1. Use a white background for your project. It can be cardstock, watercolor paper or patterned paper. You can have motifs and designs that are coloured but the base must be white and the white should still be visible after all your alterations.

2. Use a black and white photo. For cards or art journals, your sentiments/journaling should also be in either black or white.

3. The colours on your project should come from paints or mists, or any other colorants (distress inks, water colors etc). This applies to embellishments as well ie. if you use flowers or letters, they should be white or cream and you color them with your paints or mists. There's no restriction on what colours you want to use - you can have rainbows or you can have all black and white.

4. A song (title or words are ok, in your language of choice) as your theme/title.

I think I have the criteria covered

Look at the stars

I chose the Cold Play song "Yellow" to remind myself how blessed I am. I have a beautiful family, friends, health and my children are healthy. So many people today have so much to contend with, so I feel I am very fortunate.

I have added a tiny bit of ink and paint to my flowers and gessoed and ink/painted the leaves

and some gessoed stars for the title

Thank you for calling by, I hope you are enjoying your weekend

Love , Peace and Happiness

Mary x

ALWAYS BELIEVE IN YOURSELF ~ SKETCHABILITIES

Good evening fellow scrappers. 
I was inspired by Jo's layout to have a go at the challenge at Sketchabilities this month. Actually all the DT's take are pretty dam amazing. So much inspiration

The sketch 

 and this is my take

Always believe in yourself

I am really enjoying creating with the beautiful Fab Scrap Papers I purchased the other week, they are sooooo gorgeous

I have added some texture with texture paste and a mask and also added some water paints in areas over the texture. A little bit of ribbon and some Georgia Heald Washi Tape. Rosettes for my cluster and some fussy cutting and die cut leaves.

The beautiful dancer is my Grand daughter.

Thank you for calling by 

Love, Peace and Happiness

Mary x

MY HEART WAS LIFTED ~ ONCE UPON A SKETCH CHALLENGE

Good afternoon, I hope  you are enjoying your weekend thus far.
Today I would like to share a layout for Once Upon A Sketch
and the the theme is to scrap about the woman/girls in your life.

My heart was lifted

One of the special girls in my life is my daughter. The quote reads " My heart was lifted on the wings of a thousand Butterflies the moment you came into my life "

Beautiful Flourish frame and butterflies are from Scrapmatts. I have just rubbed gesso over the flourish frame and the butterflies I embossed with Metallic Melts.
Prima chippies and satin seam binding and rosette from Craftqueen. I purchased some Fab Scraps papers last week and oh my they are gorgeous.

I carefully peeled back the wings between the layers of the chipboard to add dimension on the butterfly.

My journalling I have attached to the back of my layout and reads ~

 "I feel so blessed for the gift of you , my beautiful daughter. You mean the world to me, my best friend, confidante and my rock. Right from a little girl you have had a strong personality ; I swear that you think you are the mother at times. You were stubborn, determined and strong ! Even though the youngest amongst all the kids in the street you would tag along with the boys and would not cry if you fell over , you would pick yourself up and continue playing . You can be bossy. 
However now you are older you do like girly things as well, my gosh you LOVE shoes & shopping ! You have blossomed into a beautiful, capable, brave, strong woman. When it comes to your family and close friends your love and loyalty is fierce.
Love you to the moon and back and then some 
Mum x

Thanks for calling by

Love , Peace and Happiness
Mary

ALWAYS AND FOREVER FRIENDS ~ SKETCH CHALLENGE ANOTHER FREAKING SCRAPPY CHALLENGE

Hello scrappy friends. A new sketch challenge is up over at AFSC  I hope you find some time over the weekend to join in with us and inspire us with your interpretation of the sketch.

Always and Forever Friends

I chose to create a bright , happy layout. This is with my best friend of nearly 40 years , we were at a fancy dress (Leanne has toned her make up down over the years ) 21st birthday party of another friend. We are quite young here maybe about 18.

I have used a gorgeous flair that says ~ always and forever ~ from StudioFourteen40 and The Friends Vellum tab also from StudioFourteen40 to create my title of Always and Forever Friends. The lovely red flower circles are from The Trinket Track

My background is created with water colour paints and I have added stamps, washi tape and fussy cut circles. The Hello velum circle is from StudioFourteen40 ( you really should pay a visit to this awesome shop)

thank you for calling by and I appreciate when you take the time to leave a comment.

Before leaving you today I would also like to share with you a art journal page. I am really enjoying this form of creating

I really hope you join in with the challenge at Another Freaking Scrappy Challenge

Love , Peace and Happiness

Mary x

CSI CHALLENGE #143 & CHALLENGE YOURSELF ~ TODAY I CHOOSE TO BE HAPPY

Helloooooo

On a wet, gone back to cold day here. But a nice day to be home and catch up on some crafting and blogging.

Today I would like to share a layout for the challenge at CSI , it has been a little while since I have joined in , so many challenges, so little time, but the colour palette really appealed to me, so I made sure I got this one done.
Also the challenge over at Challenge Yourself is to scrap a affirmation. 

So my affirmation is ~

Today I choose to be Happy

Evidence and Testimony requirements plus a lovely sketch by Emma Stafrace

Evidence 

I have used mixed media

Bird and Birdcage

Flowers , leaves

book page

butterfly

Testimony

I have attached my journalling to the back of my layout and I have chosen the theme of something on my mind.

" I was finding I was getting sadder and sadder at the state of the world at the moment. I can not believe humans can be so cruel and hateful. I was actually waking up sad and dreaded to see what new evil had occurred , I was despairing . 

Then it occurred to me, even though I despair of the bad things in the world and wish there was none of it , My despairing and sadness did not change a thing. But I could choose to be happy and spread happiness in small ways and that can maybe change someones day for them and also I can be a better person to be around . So if we all spread happiness where and when we can , in small ways in makes the world a better and happier place for some. At least it is being pro happiness instead of feeling helpless. "

I have created my banner with Material, lace and PP. Also I have cut the flowers from the same PP and layered them. You can see the sneak of a Book Page. I have added a butterfly and can you see the diamante strip ? that is from a brooch

I have added some gelato's , water colour paints on the masked texture paste and then gone around the pattern with both white and black charcoal pencils.

I hope you take the opportunity to visit CSI and Challenge Yourself to see the amazing layouts by the DT's

Thanks so much for calling by. 

Love , Peace and Happiness 

Mary x

CHRISTMAS CARDS

Good afternoon! I hope you are enjoying your weekend so far. I would like to share with you some Christmas Cards I made . 
In the interest of everything can be saved, I had misted this green paper with white mist and a stencil and added red washi tape. It was so long ago I can't even remember now what layout I was trying to create. But..... I hated it and shoved it away ( I think I have only binned something once), this was lucky to survive. I came across this misted paper the other day again and thought "You know what it looks like snow ", so out came the Kaiser Christmas collectibles and in a short amount of time I had four Christmas cards Created ( the collectibles make it so easy , it almost feels like cheating ) So if you are still with me, just goes to show , even if you are really not liking a layout it can be saved or used for something else. :)

So four more Christmas cards done and dusted with a sense of achievement using paper I thought would never get used and I am pretty happy with them.

Thank You for calling by
Love, Peace and Happiness
Mary x

BEING FRENCH IN FRANCE ~ 365 SKETCH CHALLENGE

Hello to my visitors here. The long weekend is nearly over :( but last night I did manage to complete a layout for the sketch over at Scrap 365 . Also Jennifer has a tutorial of her layout on the blog, so I recommend you take a look :)

This is the Sketch 

as so often happens, I started with the sketch and then I went on a little journey, so here is my take

Being French in France

The lovely chipboard circles are from Scrapmatts and I have to thank Cheryl for bringing them over to me all the way from Cootamundra and we had a lovely day that went way to quick !

Flair is StudioFourteen40 , I encourage you to pop over and look at the beautiful ranges. Sandra puts her heart and soul into what she creates .

I think we may have stood out as Aussies. Can't imagine why 

Thank you for calling by, I appreciate your comments

Love, Peace and Happiness 
Mary

SCRAPKI-WYZWANIOWO CHALLENGE ~ IS IN MY HEAD ~ AND MOST OF ALL BE HAPPY

Hello on this lovely long weekend in Oz.

 Today I would like to share with you my take on the interesting challenge over at Scrapki-wyzwaniowo  ~ Is in my head ~ now as I said interesting as my head is a little crazy, But..... then as I was doing this art journal page I realized that over the last few days I have made the conscious decision to be happy and try and spread a little happiness when I can. I just think in the world today there is so much sadness and horrible things going on ,that it was really getting me down, and then I realized that I can at least try and spread a little happiness.

So this is what is in my head at the moment, looking for and sharing the happiness

I participate in Snail Mail Revival  (something that makes me happy ) and my lovely Pen Pal sent me the gorgeous vintage image. 

Thank you for calling by . I will leave you with a photo of some blossoms that I took on our walk this morning, because Spring makes me Happy ( Hay fever and all)

Love Peace and Happiness
Mary x

WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY ? ~ ANOTHER FREAKING SCRAPPY CHALLENGE & PIXELS AND PAPER CHALLENGE

Hello ! 
I am back with another new challenge for the new month. This one is over at Another Freaking Scrappy Challenge and we would LOVE  you to join us.
The Challenge is to scrap something that made you happy or makes you happy. I don't know about you but I think we can all do with more happiness in the world today, so lets spread some happiness and share what makes you happy :) 
So My take on the challenge is a layout on how happy I was to find My Mum's old Teapot under the house and all the memories it evokes. 
I also could not believe how perfect the prompt at another of my favourite challenges sites Pixels and Paper  is for my layout
 So spread some more happiness and join the challenge for what inspires you in the picture below at Pixels and Paper as well.

A cup of tea is a cup of love

I would also like to thank Lizzy Crust for the title. I can recommend visiting Lizzy's blog, Lizzy creates beautiful layouts.

This all came together really easily and I was so happy with the way it turned out, maybe because it means a lot to me.

Also on my layout I have used some goodies from my Snailmailrevival PenPals. The big white flowers are from my Pen Pal in Melbourne and the cute little blue buttons from My Pen Pal in Ireland. The other flowers are from my Mums craft stash. I thought the forget me not theme was appropriate as well.

Thank you for calling by and please share what makes you happy over at AFSC and also check out the other DT Members layouts and leave them some love , spread the happiness :) and also join in at Pixels and Paper and leave the DT members there some love as well

Love and Peace and Happiness

Mary x

YOUNG HEARTS ~ NEW CHALLENGE AT ARTastic

Good evening , October is here and Christmas is looming ! Gosh the year has flown by. But a new month brings a new challenge over at ARTastic and its a beauty, Especially as I do love a bit of vintage ;)

This month we are being inspired by this delightful artwork Under a jacaranda tree (1903) by R Godfrey Rivers.

Criteria is using a vintage photo (more than 30 years old) but if you can't readily find one of these a vintage style layout will be fine.

Also if you pop over to ARTastic you will be able to read a 

little about the artist.

Young Hearts

I decided to use my old book journal and use a old picture of my Uncle, Aunt Dad and Mum when they were very young.
The colours turned out a little more pink than I wanted, but I decided to stop as I didn't want it to turn muddy.

I had to laugh my Uncle and Dad look like gangsters in their trench coats :) Must have been the trend when they were youngsters . Funny how you can never imagine your parents being young, let alone being trendsetters !

Flair from StudioFourteen40 "always" range.

Some stamping, rubons, paint and doilies.

Thank you for calling by, I really appreciate any comments and I hope you can join us over at ARTastic. I encourage you to visit the blog and be inspired by the DT's  take on the challenge.

Love and Peace 
Mary x