LouLou's new room

This is Elouise's new bed. She's 2 years and almost 5 months - such a big girl! She loves her new bed, and only woke up last night because she was running a temperature. The bedspread is Laura Ashley - something I've always wanted. When Lou gets used to sleeping in a bed we will move it away from the wall into the centre of the room, and then I can add some artwork to those bare walls. We're in the middle of a big thunderstorm, so the light is a bit funny in the pic.

DISGUSTING!

This is the reason I've been having to work out on the kitchen table. I am soooo embarrassed! I was careful to pack up after myself when I finished at 4:30 this morning, because I remember giving Sammy permission to throw out any of my supplies that strayed outside my craft room. "I'll never need more space than my craft room." Famous last words! Just as well for me he has an incredibly poor memory.

My keys from Jo

This is a set of keys made for me by my friend Jo. It was part of an ArtyOz swap, and it's nice to receive something from a friend instead of an anonymous name.

Jo is currently experimenting with soldering. Check out her blog here. I'm hoping she will master it and then teach me how to do it when I get my soldering iron for Christmas ;)

besides Christmas..........

Believe it or not, there are other things going on apart from Christmas! It's catch up time for me. I have a long list of projects that need completing, and this was one of them.

Our niece Amanda asked me to make some thank you cards to send out after the wedding an embarrassingly long time ago. I've finally finished them. I had a lot of trouble designing these, and I still don't think I got it right, but there they are. x 50. I hope they are ok. I'll deliver them in the morning.

8 days til Christmas

.........and the Christmas cards only went out today. I stayed up until around 4am to complete them, and I felt a huge relief posting them this morning. Why oh why did I not get to them before last night? I think I'll learn from this and start planning next year's cards in January. (I say that every year don't I?). Stamps (Merry Christmas and Michelle's little scroll by justjohanna).

a new objet d'art

This is my Christmas gift from the very talented Micky Choo. It was part of a secret santa swap on ArtyOz. I'm thrilled with this piece. It's so interesting - I see something new in it every time I look at it. Thank you Micky! I just love it!

Another Christmas giveaway!

Don’t you love a good giveaway for Christmas? This one is hot off the press:

Philippa from Lime Tart is running a competition for Christmas on her blog Zest. Go here:

http://www.limetart.com/blog/?p=92#comments

and leave a comment telling her how you would use the Christmas scroll stamp by justjohanna. Pictures are provided for those as yet unfamiliar with this stamp, including some work by moi!

The prize is one of the December A la Tarte kits! How great is that – it contains papers and ribbon and of course the Christmas scroll stamp. I've had a play with this kit, and the papers are just too yummy.

Go ahead and enter – some one has to win this, and it could well be you!

Have a great day everyone!

Teresa

.........and we have a winner!

Congratulations:

LIANNE!

You are now the proud owner of a very exclusive Al on top of the world stamp!! I don't think I mentioned in the competition post how exclusive this justjohanna stamp is - only a select few design team members and winners of our World Card Making Day in October have this stamp, so that is how special it is!

The correct answer to the question "Who is the distributor for this wonderful range of whimsical art stamps here in Australia?" is of course Lime Tart. I don't think anyone got that wrong! BTW, the gallery has been updated, so check the site out now......don't forget to read the blog while you are there. Tell em Teresa sent ya!

Lianne, if you contact me by email with your postal details, I'll get your new stamp in the mail to you ASAP.

Thank you to everyone who entered. I tried to contact everyone I could to say a personal thank you, but if I haven't, then please know that I really appreciate you taking the time to read my blog and leave a comment.

I'm sure we'd all love to see what Lianne eventually makes with this stamp, so when you get around to it Lianne, we want show and tell!!

Some exciting news to share.........

An envelope arrived for me today, and I thought "What's this? Everything I've ordered from the USA has already arrived." Well to my surprise it was a complimentary copy of the latest Stampers' Sampler Take Ten. Yep - at last - I'M PUBLISHED! I've had some collaborative work published before, but this is my first time on my own. To say that I'm thrilled is an understatement.

Here's the cover:

And here are my pages (p 11 at the top, and p 45 bottom right):

I used some justjohanna stamps, but the name was misspelt in the credits ;(

I am so happy, I want to eat too much chocolate! Getting published was on my list of things I wanted to achieve this year, and I just made it with only 3 weeks to go. This makes all those late nights worth it. I want to thank my mum, and everyone who has ever offered me words of encouragement. Now I'm sounding like I won an oscar!

15 days until Christmas

......and I still haven't settled on a design for this year's Christmas cards. Yikes! It's starting to look like I'll have to make Happy New Year or even Happy Australia Day cards instead!

I've been playing some more with the December A la Tarte kit from Lime Tart. Here are some sneaks:

The papers are just stunning, and ideas keep popping into my head for using this very versatile justjohanna stamp.

Anyway, off to do some housework.........sheesh!

fresh off the production line

This is the gift I made for Joyce who lives in Western Australia. It's part of an ArtyOz swap for Christmas. Took a lot longer than I thought, but I loved every second of it.

I've had all the pieces covered with patterned paper for most of the week and didn't like the look of them at all. Tonight I sponged ink onto their edges, and I was away. Glad it's done.

Now onto the squillion other things on my list........

Off to a party

Well, the children are - I'll be working at the hospital ;(

Anyway, this is the colour co-ordinated present and card little Elise will be receiving. justjohanna stamps of course! I Cuttlebugged the letters out of patterned paper.

It's a children's party in a commercial kitchen, so all the kiddies will be cooking up a storm. I thought Chef Belle would be perfect - take a look inside the card:

a Christmas LO

Here are some more sneak peaks of a Christmas layout I did using the December A la Tarte kit from Lime Tart. Full pics will be up in the Lime Tart gallery next week. I found the Christmas scroll stamp included in this kit to be quite versatile. I've used the scrolly bits hanging off the banner to decorate the 2007 title.

Beans are now spilt........

Hooray! Johanna has officially announced the new design team. (It almost hurts me to keep a secret like this!) For the next 6 months you'll be seeing designs from some very talented people, including some fresh new faces. Check them out here.

How many days until Christmas?

Is anyone else sick of having to answer this question? I sure am!!


My three little pixies need to know how long they have to behave in order to get presents from Santa. It's like they're going to burst with wholesome goodness! I know they are dying to be naughty, but they dare not.


Anyway, so that they know how many days to go, I decorated this countdown calendar. Kaiser craft have released some MDF wooden shapes, and I picked this one up for $6.95. I used Basic Grey paper, some acrylic paint for the edges and some Distress Ink to age the whole thing. The numbers I cut out on my Cuttlebug. All up this project would have cost me well under $10 - it would make a nice little gift for someone who appreciates hand made things.

Hand made Christmas decorations

My December kit arrived from Lime Tart with some of the most beautiful double sided papers. This always presents a dilemna for me - which side do I use at the cost of the other side? One solution is to do a project that shows off both sides of the paper!

I made these very simple paper baubles for my Christmas tree with my scalloped circle punch and a scrap of ribbon. You'll have to wait for the full pics on the Lime Tart gallery next week, but here's a sneak for now:

Our Christmas tree for 2007

It's finally up! I'm made to wait until December 1 to put it up, but this year I worked and did on call all weekend, and I was just too tired to put up a tree.

On Monday night I had three little helpers. We started at 7:30, then we had stop to go to K Mart to get some flashing lights. We got back at 8:30, and didn't finish putting everything up until 10pm (and it was a school night!).

I got most of the rusted decorations from Cinammon Country, and the red shiny baubles from $2 shops in the area. The children are so pleased with it, they are inviting complete strangers over to our house to see the tree.

A blog giveaway for Christmas!

Thank you for your interest...COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED! See here for the winner.

Due to the generosity (and little faux pas) of the people at justjohanna, I have a stamp to give away! It's Al the owl on top of the world. All you need to do to enter the draw for this fabulous stamp is answer a couple of questions in a comment under THIS post:

1 Who is the distributor for this wonderful range of whimsical art stamps here in Australia?

2 Tell me which stamp in the justjohanna range would put you on top of the world.

I would love for the winner to have this stamp for Christmas, so I'll leave the competition open until midnight on the 13th December (Melbourne time). Then I'll put all correct entries in a hat and get one of my little pixies to draw out a name.

Good luck everyone!