well i dont know about you but....

i am starting to shake and get a bit jittery.

It must be blog withdrawrals ;)

so here we are - back again! Thanks regulars for letting us have a little break to advertise our new retreat date :)

I have had a few lovely entries for last weeks challenge.

The first one to come in was Maryannes who was inspired by some footy guernseys! Black and red are an absolutely STUNNING combination to use on the page.

she writes -

Anyway bit slack because Im using just the color factor for inspiration, sorry!

some of you would be aware of my liking for black and red, and have done a LO today of our dog molly, when she was a puppy.

Have been wanting to do a LO of her for a while and have always planned on red, black combo, mostly because shes mostly black with a bit of white and has always had a red collar.Also have a liking for red and black because take lots of photos of the kids playing footy and of course being cougars its the red and black combo also.

Thanks Maryanne and i think you have done a brilliant job here!

The second entry was from Sandra who did a fantastic job being inspired by an old canister she had in her kitchen.

The choice of photo and subject that she chose is excellent as it almost seems a bit psychadelic and hippy so it transfers over to the page, using the photos that she picked really well.

Sandra wrote -

Here is my entry for the challenge
I found it really hard..... LOVED IT!
I found this old canister... and used the different colour pears as my inspiration... might try the wardrobe next.
great challenge!

The last entry is mine. I saw this book cover and thought that the placement would work on a page. The journalling is in the strip of paper - just explainin that as some others i have shown haven't realized and actually thought it was that Jenni Bowlin book print patterned paper!

The journalling says -

When you and Georgia were tiny babies i would read to you. I hoped with all my heart that you would grow up to love reading as much as i do. As you got bigger and started school, it became clear very quickly that you would really struggle to learn how to read. We would listen to your readers every night and i felt like you would never get it. With lots of extra help at school, and your perserverance, bit by bit we finally got to a stage where you could read well. Last year Granny bought you some 'go girl' novels and ever since then you have been devouring these with great gusto. I am so proud of how well youread now, and i love hearing the reply to my lights out call at night by you saying 'just one more chapter please mum?'

we are at long last at that place i wished for.

So there have only been 3 takers on this challenge - come on girls! It really isn't that hard. Dig out some of your son's rip curl t-shirts, dig in the pantry, look at magazines, at catalogues and in you bookshelf and see if you can find yourself a dose of everyday inspiration!

Learning how to transfer the things you see everyday onto a page is so exciting! To look at something and say 'ooooh how cool would that look as a layout??!!' is a very handy skill - and kinda an obsession LOL.

a date to ESCAPE in 2009!

FRIDAY March 13th 2009

Mark this in your diaries NOW!

Yep the 2009 Escape 2 Create will take place from Friday the 13th of March until Sunday the 15th.

The venue is booked (Nt Shields Lions Hostel) so we are set to go.

Next month Meredith and I will be doing a trip to Melbourne to attend our first retreat run by Scraptacular - a very popular and up to the minute scrap shop! It will be strictly business - no drinking, socializing, smoking, shopping or scrapping but purely getting ideas and bringing them back for you ladies to improve our own scrap retreat! ;) *ahem*
So you see the lengths we will go to - to provide you with the best scrap retreat possible!!!

Start saving, organizing child care and buttering up those husbands! woohoo bring it on! keep checking in here for tit bits of info and sneaky peaks :)

PLEASE NOTE THERE WILL BE NO PRE BOOKINGS. WE WILL NOTIFY YOU WHEN BOOKINGS FOR THE WEEKEND ARE OPEN

If you would like to go onto our retreat newsletter database to be kept totally up to date with emails etc. please contact Tiff - katmfirth@bigpond.com

To the regular blog go-ers we will not post a new entry here for a few days to allow everyone to see this post and note the new retreat date!

Please pass on the word to all your scrapping friends :) and please leave a comment regarding the retreat (particularly if you are new) Just press the comment button, write your comment, write your name down the bottom of your post and press 'anonymous comment'.

We would love to see/read some familar faces from our last retreat on here!!

a new challenge....and some changes

Firstly congratulations to Jenny for her win! What great luck to be pulled out of the hat by Sue's gorgeous little helper! We hope you enjoy your prize pack!

Apologies to Amy who sent me her entry yesterday but i didn't check my emails until the wee hours of the morning as i was out all day and at meetings at night. Sorry Amy.

Also a note to all that i cannot stitch your scanned images together - sorry if that sounds grumpy but i am finding it very difficult to manage my time at the moment with so much going on.

The next bit of news is in relation to the prizes. So far the prizes have come from a few sources; donated from individuals, scrap stores, and from our retreat prize pool. Because of this we have decided to have a monthly prize instead of a weekly prize. If we continue to use our retreat goodies that we use as giveaways over the weekend, come next year and we will have very little if anything left. And we want to be able to give fantastic prizes away on the retreat too!!!

So for every challenge you go in on the blog your name will go into the hat for the monthly draw. If you do all 4 weekly challenges then you have 4 names in the hat. 4 times the chance of winning if you know what i mean!

We hope you understand and will continue to be involved in our challenges.

Ok so this weeks challenge is - to be inspired by your environment!
A little while back Meredith posted a fantastic example of how a cereal box inspired her to make a page using the same sort of layout used on the cereal box. It was brilliant! I have also showed how i used a magazines table of contents page to help with the layout of a page.

See what you can see around your home and use it to influence a page. Not just a colour etc but the whole thing - how elements are placed and how you can translate that to a page.

T-shirts are great sources of inspiration!

This sort of thing is all around you. Look with fresh eyes at advertising, food packaging and music clips - anything!!!

Send your entries to me WITH a photo of your source of inspiration!

I hope you can be invovled in this one :)

Stay tuned for some exciting retreat news

Heidi Swapp Interview.

http://www.epson.com/cmc_upload/pdf/HeidiSwapp_R4.pdf

Found this on the net. It's an interview by Heidi Swapp reviewing the Epson Stylus Photo R1800.
Its an A3 printer.
Anyway I attached her interview here about digi scrapping.
Thinking of Jenny actually.
Might start scanning more stuff into my pages now.... like the spatula.
click the link and it will make sense....
Cheers
T

The Winner is..

Well, THANK-YOU to all you girls who entered the Blue & Brown challenge, and i was thinking it was too boring - but WOW what some great pages and new ideas along the way. It was GREAT!

Now today, Amanda and I (oh, and my dear little grandson Jacob) drew the winner of this challenge. And Congratualtions to Jenny!!! Thanks for entering your page and i will pop a prize around to you in the next couple of days.

Thanks to our prize pool, the prize this time round are some bits and pieces from the lovely new range K&Co Awning!! Now i am jealous that i couldn't win!!! Well done Jenny and Thanks for taking the effort to join in.

Sorry girls for not commenting more frequently just this week, i have only had time to quickly read my e-mails, so i have seen all the comments and pages coming in.....so tonight just had time to make a quick comment. Glad you are all enjoying the blog....it's great to share our pages!!

anotherie

this didn't start out at a brown and blue but it is how it ended up. Thought you may like a squizzy. There's a bit of a shadow over the chip shape and alphas from being not being able to flatten when it was scanned.

Journalling says : as the breeze gently tangled your tresses together, your love for Paige will always be forever and hers for you.10.10.06

another entry!

Thanks Shaz for taking the time to comment AND join in the challenge fun!

Sue your challenge is totally bringing them out of the woodwork!

Shaz your photo is very precious - i had a bit of a moment when i saw it myself :(

I really like how you used a really big photo here so the the main focus is on it and really drives home exactly why it is a precious moment.

Thanks for sharing such a personal picture and i hope you can join in some more challenges!

Sorry i dont feel overly chatty tonight - am at the 'end of my tether' with the kids. Seriously boarding school is sounding like a bloody good option at the moment.

Also apologies to anyone who had the unfortunate luck to be in Kmart today while we were. You might not have seen us but would have heard the wailing and gnashing of teeth of three children. I was the unlucky recipient of 'that look' from many mums/grannies/aunties in there as in "oh you poor thing - i know what it is like". To be honest i wouldn't blame them if they had given me the other look that meant "go ahead and strangle them now"

Spoilt kids. Why do i have 3 of them? :(

goodness - and another one!

Everyone is loving Sue's Blue and Brown challenge!!!

Here is Jenny's page - welcome Jenny :)

and woohoo a digital page also! Fantastic!

The pic is pretty small but am loving those brown borders around the photo and the lace type look down the side. Beautiful Jenny and thanks for sharing!

Sue and I will draw this tomorrow at work *groan* and be back later in the day with pics of the winner and also a pic of the prize!

I will also post another challenge tomorrow night and then in another entry some VERY exciting retreat news.

two more!

Thanks Cassandra and Karen!

Karen your page is so beautiful! I love that big swirly thingamejig on the side of the paper! - stunning! That little ticket is so adorable too!

And Cassandra welcome and thanks for sharing your work. When you showed me your page at the Friday night scrap i was so hoping that you could send it in - really great layout and the horse is the perfect colour!! Your punched flowers add the perfect touch.

welcome Kathryn

woohoo we have a newcomer to the challenges!

Welcome Kathryn.....who has submitted a fantastic version of this challenge! She actually created this on our last escape retreat - and i distinctly remember it as she pulled out this old dymo with the 'script wheel'. This is VERY hard to find - rare as hen's teeth....so i was immediately interested!

I love how she has used a little bit of red to bring in a third colour which highlights the brown and blue but not overtaking the page.

Thanks for joining us Kathryn and i hope you stick around :)

3rd one!!!!!!!

how cute are those thongs on the flowers on the bottom right cluster. how typical of us scrappers and photographers 'taking photos of everything' You just never know when that perfect shot will happen. The cork suits this page perfectly.

congrats Janice. Well done.

Challenge page

Hello all,

I have done my blue and brown page!! I took this photo at the same time as the hairdresser shots!! I have used some new Carolee's Creation alpha letters in teal blue - can't stop using these little letters!! The title doesn't show up so well here but it says "My Middle Boy". Journaling says "Oh how I love this photo. It takes my breath."

Hope you are all enjoying the weekend ... so nice and sunny here after a cold day at football yesterday.

and another

cant hold a good scrapper down. Another excellent challenge answer for the blues and browns. This is proving a popular challenge (onya Sue)

Matthew is so cute....hasn't he grown so much lately...

Your sanding on the photo edges is really effective and that BG paper catches the shirt on the left photo and the tan tones in the middle photo so well. Also LOVE the journalling strips.

awesome Janice. 2 entries in the hat for you. Thanks Sarah for the scanning ;)

Introducing.....Janice

Janice's answer to the blue and brown challenge. After seeing this layout in her album on Friday night at the Scrap nite in the Bakery I pestered Janice to put up on the blog. I think she yes eventually just to get rid of me (;D).

She left the chipboard raw which works with the brown tones on the PP really well. Love how she has cut the flourishes with a craft knife and lifted them to sit on top of the photos.

Great to see you on the blog Janice. Don't forget to show Kevin and Matthew!!!

scrap night @ 5 loaves Bakery was a hit. Black Friday as the theme, come dressed in black, 13 scrappers. All the ingredients for good fun. Katy baked an awesome Black forest cake and had little black cat lollies and Chico babies on the tables.Lots of fun, chatting and sharing of layouts, not to mention wonderful meals and coffee. Next one is tentatively set for Friday July 11th.Cant wait.

Hello, hello, anyone there???

Hi everyone,

Well we have discovered recently that there are quite a few of you out there that check this little blog out regularly. Dare I say it, some of you check in more than once a day!! OMG :-0

So since we haven't had a post for a few days I thought I would just leave this little note so you have a bit of blah, blah, blah to read!! ;-)

Now, after the scrap night at the Five Loaves Bakery in Cummins last night we know that there are quite a few more blue and brown pages out there so get on and e-mail them to Amanda so we can post them here on the blog.

A big thank you to Katy at the Five Loaves for making a yummy Black Forest cake for black Friday (13th) - apparently it was very nice (I resisted!!).

Even if you are a non-page poster please leave us a message. We know you are out there so check in and say hello. Remember ... the chicks and chooks are here waiting to see what you have to say.

Happy scrappy days!!

Maryanne's page!

here is Maryanne's take on the blue and brown! Love how it seems to go so well with your 'vintage' photo of your Dad Maryanne......what a great momento!

The blue and brown combo is fantastic for heritage type pages.....and for boy pages.....well and for girl pages too LOL.

I like your little cluster of goodies in the corner too! the flowers are there but not in your face (if you know what i mean) so they totally DO NOT look out of place. They seem to belong there and blend in so well with the theme of the page you have going on.

well done chook!

keep them coming!

blue and brown.

Just as I was about to load up my creation, Sandra is already there. She is hot off the press. Onya Chick.

Here's my rise to the challenge.

Cheers.

Sandra's blue and brown!

wowee she is hot onto this!!!!!

arriving in my inbox tonight - hot off the press is this fabulous blue and brown creation! AND i can spy a flower or two!!!

anyone can tell you how much i LOVE basic grey papers - so this page automatically gets two thumbs up from me. Add in a cutie patootie and it is simply brilliant!!! Love the mix of black & white photos with the coloured one!

Thanks Sandra - totally excellent!

Challenge 5

Hiya.

This is an oldie but still a goodie. Searched thru my scanned LO's on the computer and found one that fits Sue's challenge.

Don't worry, I'm doing a fresh page to also meet the criteria. I happened to have a page planned with brown and blue so this is great timing.

Thanks Sue.