It's been waaay too long.......

.....since I updated my blog. I always have the best of intentions to keep my entries up-to-date, but so often life gets in the way. Now that I am on holidays for the next 2 weeks and Christmas is pretty much done and dusted, I have no excuse.

My scrapping table is on loan to my brother's family at the moment, so thought I would attempt to catch up on blogs and forums for my scrapping fix.

I spent just about all of last weekend making Christmas cards, which I hope got to their intended destinations in time for the big event. As I get bored with production line scrapping, I made each card slightly different, and used a variety of techniques to keep me enthusiastic and 'on task'. Here are some of my creations.....

My Masters Entries

My first Masters' experience is now over, and after intensively pouring my heart and soul into the set projects, I have just found out that I didn't make it through to the Top 50 (or top 67 as it is this year). Although it didn't totally surprise me, what did throw me was my reaction.... after all that effort, I was more hung up on the outcome than I realised. But it has been a fabulous experience...it pushed me to my limits both physically and artistically, and it is lovely to now be able to share my creations with everyone.
Congratulations to all you wonderful scrappers and artists who have made the cut to the next stage....I hope you survive the tension until the final announcement. I can't wait to see the special edition of Scrapbooking Memories that showcases all your wonderful work.
As for me...roll on next year!

Here are my entries....

Project 1 - My Greatest Achievement

When I first thought about this LO, the obvious road to take for the subject matter was the birth of my children, but I wanted to move away from the obvious, so after a big year of personal change for me, I decided to go with my own personal growth. This is my absolute favourite of all my entries, not only because I love the LO, but because it truly represents me as I am now in 2009.



Project 2 - think outside the square

This LO was made possible by my wonderful Pazzles Inspiration Cutter...it made it possible for me to create any shape I wanted for this project...



Project 3 - Double LO

I wasn't particularly happy with this one, and struggled over many hours to get it to stage where I could bear to start sticking things down...doubles are such a challenge! Looking back on it now after a couple of months, I really am not happy with it, but I love the subject matter...some of my gorgeous friends from the Scrapchat Retreat in May this year, which was another major turning point in my life...thank you girls...I love you all so much!



Project 4 - Mystery Project

My first OTP project...in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have attempted this for Masters, because the mystery project was supposed to represent who you are as scrapper, and I haven't as yet done any OTP projects, but I wanted to show some versatility, so I came up with the idea of a box of inspiration cards with magnets on the back that could be placed on the fridge and interchanged at will. I actually ran out of time, and didn't get as many cards done as I would have liked. :(

Embellished Idol Week 6

Well alas for me, there is no Week 6 Challenge. I got knocked out in the voting after round 5, but I am pleased and delighted to have gotten as far as I did considering the calibre of the competing artists.

Congratulations Chelle (the talent behind Chelley Bean Designs) for getting through to the next round. Best of luck hun! xx

Click on this blinkie to check out Chelle's gorgeous etsy store....you'll be so glad you did!!

Embellished Idol Week 5

I was stunned and thrilled to see that I had survived another week's voting. The number of competitors has now been reduced to 23.
This week we had to do a layout showing 5 places we want to visit or 5 things we want to do before we die....our bucket list.

Embellished Idol Week 4

I am a bit late getting this up here. I was thrilled to get this far in the competition and the 44 competitors were reduced to 27!!
The next challenge was to use the following on your layout...

* stitching
* painting
* layering
* distressing
* chipboard
* a punch

Phew!! What a list...I had to keep checking back on the list to make sure I hadn't missed anything. I really wasn't feeling very well and had very shaky hands, so it's a wonder I got anything done at all!!



Coldplay's music is on high rotation when I scrapbook, so that's what I did my LO about...hope you like it!

Embellished Idol Week 3

I was very thrilled to get through to Week 3 of this competition after the voting earlier this week. Our task this week was to create a monochromatic layout and we were also allowed to use black and white as well.


I actually got this finished well ahead of time this week, and had lots of fun making some of the embellishments as well, without hearing the clock ticking loudly in my ear for once!

Embellished Idol Week Two

I just managed to finish this in the last minute true to my blog name...lol! The challenge this week was to make a layout in the shape of a circle with a choice of themes.... 'Seasons', 'Through these eyes', 'Round the world' or 'Friends'.

The circle layout is not my most favourite thing to do, and I am not totally happy with the finished product, plus a lot of the subtle features of the layout don't show up in the photo...meh..oh well, at least I got it finished....

If you click on the photo, you can see a larger image....
BTW, Chelle's entry for this is AWESOME!

Embellished Idol Competition

I am currently competing in a competition run by Embellished Scrapbook Shoppe that has weekly challenges and elimination by voting. The first week's challenge was to create a layout using this picture as inspiration.....

Here is the layout I created which was very hard to photograph to show the gold leaves properly...


...and a close-up of the leaves...


There are lots of contestants in this competition, and the standard is just amazing! You can check out all the other Week One entries here. Now to just get my Week Two entry done by 5pm this afternoon....

Alz's Monthly Scrapchat Colour Challenge

This is my entry for July's Colour challenge at Scrapchat sponsored by the beeeautiful Alz (aka Me) and in the real world known as Alison Callcott...one fabulososo chicky-babe who rocks my world with her outlook on life despite what life throws at her....The challenge was to use the colours of deep blue and fiery orange plus using paper tearing and die-cuts somewhere on the layout.



These photos are from the 1st birthday party of my neice Katia's gorgeous son Jaden who lives in South Africa, whom I have have never met, but will at Christmas this year!

A little enticement.....

In an attempt to get a few people following my blog, I am offering a bribe for following my musings if you sign up as a follower of my blog within this month. Anyone who signs up to follow my blog this month goes into a draw to win a fabbo prize of 16 assorted Kaisercraft Papers plus some surprise extras!!!! Cool, huh? The winner will be announced at the beginning of September. There will also be a special prize for the first person to sign up to follow my blog!

My garden

My poor garden is very neglected...gardening was my great passion before scrapbooking took over the No 1 position, and I feel very guilty that my garden has been neglected for the last 12 months or so that I have been sooo involved with my scrapping. I was so surprised this week to see that my giant strelizia (Bird of Paradise) had actually flowered.


This was a much anticipated occasion, but I thought that the flowers would have towered above the already enormous leaf growth (currently standing at about 4 metres). To my surprise, the flowers have emerged against the trunk of the plant (at about head height) and are a little underwhelming despite their size, as the colours are very understated and there is little or no stem to make them an effective cut flower unlike their gorgeous smaller common relative.

July - the month in review

July was a very busy month for me scrapping-wise with deciding at the last minute (are you getting why I called my blog what I did?) to enter the Scrapbooking Memories Masters competition. I spent 2 weeks (in between work) consumed by the four projects that had to be received by them by 31st July. For the 7 days leading up to the deadline, I had only 23 hours sleep and I think I went a little crazy...what a ride! But in the end, I had 4 completed tasks that I was reasonably pleased with (some more than others), that I expressed-posted off the day before the cut-off date. Such a sense of accomplishment at the end of it, and an experience I would definitely recommend to anyone considering it....I realistically do not expect to get anywhere in the competition, but I loved the whole process and what it did for my scrapbooking, both artistically and mentally. I would love to post pix of my entries, but they would kill me, or I would have to kill you, or something.....

First ever blog post.....

Well I have finally gotten around to making a blog. After admiring everyone else's blogs, I thought it was about time I started one myself.......so here it is!

Thanks for looking......