Where has the time gone?

Hi there to all my wonderful readers. I know, this spot in ‘Blogland’ has been so so quiet – please forgive me.

This year has simply forged ahead leaving anyone slower than a bullet train standing on the platform! Have you also found that unless you rushed around, you simply could not make it to the train on time?

Now Santa’s about to arrive! On a train? Perhaps not, but I would guess that he too would have to keep up with the times and add a motor or two to his sleigh to speed up Rudolph and company.

We haven’t yet put up our tree. My son, just this minute, came to ask if we can put it up. My train is slowing down towards the station now, so I am more in the mood for some Christmas spirit, so I guess today will be the tree day.

This year I’ve had an amazing opportunity to get back into designing! I have begun designing scrapbook papers for a local company and am thrilled to say that 3 collections have already been printed. A Christmas range, a soft floral themed range and a beach range.

I am so enjoying designing again and working with Lorna, the owner of Scrap Collections is such a pleasure! Do pop by the Scrap Collections blog here and the website here.

What a feeling to actually see my designs in print!

Here are the 3 collections along with some layouts designed with the paper:

CHRISTMAS COLLECTION 2012:

 

Layout by Michelle van Wyk

PURE BLISS COLLECTION 2012:

 

 

Layout by Michelle van Wyk

layout by Nikki Preece

BEACHES COLLECTION 2012:

Layout by Lisa (Memory Shed)

Layout by Michelle van Wyk

To all you crazy cut & glue, ink & punching people out there, do let me know what you think of these papers. I would also welcome any ideas for colour schemes or themes!

Today I have a fun printable to share with you. It’s an A4 size sign. So simply click on it to enlarge, save to your computer and then print it out onto A4 size white cardstock and pop into a frame or hang it up with ribbon.

Enjoy preparing for this fabulous festive time!

Till next time

Practice

I stumbled across this quote recently and thought it to be so true.

If you want to achieve anything; be it in art, in sport, at work, the only way to improve is to practice. Then practice some more.

I find that if I haven’t painted for a couple of weeks, once I pick up a brush again, it takes a little while to get comfortable with it again. Do you ever find that?

So I made myself a little reminder….

If you like it, feel free to click on it for a larger version. then right click and save.

Frame(edited) and bird are from The Graphics Fairy.

Have a great weekend!!

Gifts Galore

Everyone loves getting gifts. I love giving them too, especially if I can decorate them beautifully. I feel it adds a little of yourself to the gift, adding a personal touch. An added benefit is that you never run out of wrapping paper!

I always make my own cards and now I also make my own gift wrap. It’s especially easy if you have an A3 printer as you can print out slightly bigger paper. If not, just print two sheets of A4 and join them. Get creative in hiding the tape – it’s really not difficult. I do it all the time with A3 paper too.

Here’s a photo of gifts I gave a friend yesterday for her birthday:

Not just for cake-toppers… I attached a cut-out of the bird to a wooden skewer and threaded it through the ribbon on the gift for just an added bit of whimsy.

The very simple card (my friend loves ‘plain & simple’)…

          

The images I used are all from my all-time-favourite-vintage-image-site : The Graphics Fairy. Karen has the most amazing images you can use for absolutely anything!

Here are the images I used: click images for link to original images

     &       

I grabbed my faithful Photoshop and edited the images till I was satisfied with them. In this case I changed the images to black & white, removed the background to the botanical & also tweaked a few other settings.

The gift paper print is printed on ordinary A3 white printing paper. The card and bird cut-out were printed onto white cardstock.

Here’s a free printable A3 sheet of the wrapping paper – my gift to you!

Love,

Ready for a weekend?

I certainly am!

Today I am sharing some photos I took this week of a part of our garden we affectionately call “The Secret Garden”. When we bought the ground, and were planning the building of the house, there was this natural grouping of wild Black Protea trees growing which we immediately earmarked for a perfect little secluded garden.

Over the past 6 years of living here, the garden has transformed a little season by season. This year, my husband has been planting Bromeliads and air plants in old twisted tree branches/ trunks which he has collected from all over.

I love the pretty entrance with the metal pergola and gate smothered in a crimson creeping rose and flanked by a purple potato bush which has made its home in a dead Protea tree. It looks so welcoming and through the gate you can just see the little 4-seater concrete table and benches.

This is where we like to have a sundowner over the weekend. In fact, my husband often ends up gardening here, pruning his Bonsai’s or planting a new log full of colourful Bromeliads while I chat away sipping wine. My parents inevitably join us and the kids pop in from time to time or run around on the lawn. The dogs are always around- especially if we’re also snacking on biltong!

Talking of wine, I have been wanting to make a little sign with this saying for ages. I just love it! So I thought I’d share it with you today in celebration of the weekend approaching.

To download, simply click on the sign - printable A4 size.

The pointing hand and background are both from The Graphics Fairy.

TGIF!!

If the shoe fits…

Here’s my first design for the new digistamp drawing challenge at CDAC.

The theme for October is “Sparkle, Twinkle or Shine”. Although there are already so many digi drawings of shoes out there, I decided that after all, a girl can never have too many shoes now, can she?

I ended up playing around with the shoe idea and made these two ‘shoe quotes’ – if you like them, click on the image to view larger, then right click to save.

 

 

Have a fabulous day!

Printable Bookmarks

Links have been repaired! Sorry for the mix-up!!

Today I have some printable bookmarks to share with you.

They are so easy to make. It’s a case of print, cut, a dab of glue, an optional embellishment and voilà, ready to use.

There are four bookmarks to choose from -

1. Alice in Wonderland

2. Book Quote

 

 

 

 

3. Vintage Bird

4. & 3D Vintage Bird background  & here is the bird. (same as Vintage bird, but the bird is printed separately from the background).

Here’s how to make them...

1. Cut out
2. Fold back the two sides (A & B) so they fold back onto each other.
3. Trim these sides a little if necessary so you don’t see the back sticking out from the front.
4. Dab glue onto side B. Glue the two backs together by flapping side A over side B.
5. For 3D : Add the vintage bird using foam squares to pop it.
6. Add an embellishment – optional.
7. Your book page slips into the little pocket opening of the bookmark.

All graphics courtesy of the Graphics Fairy.

Linking up here:

Have a great week!

World Rhino Day

Today is a day very close to my heart. We regularly go to the bush to enjoy seeing our beautiful natural African wildlife we are fortunate to have here in South Africa.

Not once have we been and not seen a rhino – often more than one. These beautiful pre-historic animals are protected in a reserve with very a aggressive anti-poaching system in place. They are, however, still targeted every day.

Almost everyday in South Africa, a rhino is murdered for its horn and the carcass left to the scavengers. Sometimes these poor animals are not even dead, they are left to suffer. That is the reality of rhino poaching. All for the greed of men, all to make money.

Today is International Rhino Day. Let’s save our rhino’s for our children and their children. Make sure we still have the “Big 5” in years to come, not just the “Big 4”. It won’t be the same will it?

Here are two anti-rhino poaching labels I made today using a label from the Graphics Fairy which I altered. Grab one or both, and display them on your blog to make more people aware of this terrible crime.

 

 

For more information on how to help make others aware, CLICK HERE

Have a great day!

Tuesday Tutorial : treat cones

Today is laundry day in our house. So while the washing machine is busy with its cycle, I was browsing around the internet and found this cute tutorial for making a sweet treat gift.

I got thinking how pretty it would be as a hostess gift, or perhaps a teacher’s gift filled with chocolates or soaps. It would also be ideal to put birthday money or a gift card in.

So, after adding another load of washing, I used some images from The Graphics Fairy and created two gift cones. {Nothing like being creative to make the task of doing the laundry so much more pleasant!)

The hydrangea paper cone:

The Toile paper cone:

The finished cone is around 9 inches (23cm) from top to bottom.

Toile Cone Gift Bag – DOWNLOAD

Hydrangea Cone Treat Bag – DOWNLOAD

Note: I found double-sided tape worked really well to secure the cones so you don’t see any cellotape on the outside.

Love,

I’m linking to:

Cubs & Mice

Hello!

Well firstly, let me tell you about our weekend. We went away with friends for my son’s friend’s birthday. The game farm we stayed at allows you to play with the lion cubs as they are hand-reared. There were three 6 week old cubs. So cute! The one cub was named “Kylie” as Kylie Minogue adopted her when she visited South Africa. There was a photo of her on the front page of the Sunday paper with Kylie the lion cub.

These cubs were such a highlight for the kids!

Here’s the birthday boy feeding the one cub and getting a little nip on the finger too!

Taking a break…

If I can’t have a bottle, I’ll just settle for a finger…

Just look at those claws!!

Now I also have to tell you that my son won the Junior Victor Ludorum trophy for athletics at his new school on Friday at their Inter-house athletics meeting! I was amazed how determined he was. He broke the high jump and long jump record and also won the 100m, 1200m and came second in the 70m hurdles race. So we’ve discovered a little athlete in the family!

Today I’m also sharing my second drawing for the CDAC Drawing Challenge for September… a trio of mischievous mice.

I also drew another version with the same little mice, only this time with a cupcake….

And today, I have a freebie… You can grab last month’s (and my first) digistamp – just click on the image below, right click to download.

If you make anything with the image, please share it with me, I’d love to see what you do!

Have a great day!