Must learn French...

Was blog surfing the other day and found this amazing blog - except it's all in French so I can't understand most of it! Now I did do French for 3 years at school but that was over 10 years ago, so I seem to have forgotten most of it. Noel bought me a "Learn to speak French" computer programme for Chrissy last year but I haven't used it much (except for the first 2 weeks I had it!)

So my resolution for next year is to learn to speak French!! Even if I can't hold a whole conversation, I would still like to be able to read it and understand.

So here's a look at one of the fab layouts I found... I just love how the closer you look at it, the more you see.



You can check out more of her work here.


Well, must get back to work. We have our monthly crop tomorrow night so am hoping to get a few of my half finished art journal pages done. So hopefully I'll have a lot more to share by the end of the weekend. See ya!!

Making the most of today!

Today is the only day that I get off from the shop this week so I 'm going to make the most of it!! I've got a few background pages done in my journal already so today I'm going to try and finish them.
I did finally finish my layout for Friday Night Live this week! I made the mistake of wanting to sew on it.... I am totally sewing machine challenged! Because I broke mine... kinda... Noel's Mum thought she'd pull out her brand new one that she hadn't used yet. Well, there was no instruction manual in the box so after about an hour of trying to get it to work we gave up - i think a button was a bit stuck so once that popped out we were right.
Here's a look... the challenge this week was to do a layout using a song title or lyrics. There's no journalling on this one, just a reminder to myself to not worry about things so much.
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If you haven't had a go at this weeks challenge, you still have time! Entries don't close until this Friday so give it a go and you caould win a set of Autumn Leaves stamps! Check out all the details here.

Keep an eye out at Embellished too for some big changes! Ali and Glenn are setting up the new forum as we speak and it is looking fantastic!! You'll already see a few changes to the gallery so if you haven't been there for a while you should check it out.

See you all later!

Check out my card....

I've been checking out the Daring Cardmakers Blog for ages now so I finally decided to do one of the dares! This week's challenge is to include gold somewhere. So here is what I came up with....



Off to do a cj now! Bye!!

Going Camping!!

Well it's now all booked and official.... I am going camping for New Years Eve with the Russell's and the Sinnamon's!! Now those who know me are probably in shock right now because am SO NOT a camper... my idea of camping is a 3 star hotel instead of 5! But anyway, now starts the buying of camping supplies as I have nothing to take with me! I put a tent on lay-buy so that is kind of sorted, it's got 2 rooms that both have fly-screens, VERY important as Noel is allergic to mosquitos. (So why are we going camping??) We bought an air mattress on Monday... had to be a comfy one... I think it is the biggest air bed ever!! Here's a pic...



We've had it blown up in the lounge room ever since and have been laying on it watching TV. Well, we had to test it out! LOL

Haven't had a lot of time to play in my art journal recently..... have just been working on it when I can... even if it's just for 5 minutes. I like that about my journal - there's no plans for it to turn out in any way so I can just add anything as I go. Here is a page that I did over about a week.

Ali bought a huge pack of oil pastels that I have been playing with on the page I am doing now... so much more colour choice! I'm like a kid in a candy shop! (I promise I will give them back to you tomorrow Al!!)

The 16th of November was the 6 month anniversary of Embellished the retail store!! The shop has changed so much in that time it is unbelievable. It has almost gone better than I could have imagined.... and the best part is that Ali and I are still the best of friends and haven't killed each other.... yet...LOL!!

So here's a look at how much the shop has changed from when we first had access to the shop to now. Notice all the footprints on the tiles.... they had to grind back the concrete to lay the carpet. There was so much dust all over the place it was like you were walking on the moon in there... little clouds of dust would puff up whenever you took a step. Not good when you have asthma!! I think you'll agree that it looks a lot better now!!

Well that's it for now.... I'm off to do some creating! I actually have the house to myself at the moment for the first time in over 2 weeks! YAY!!

Some More Stuff...

I've discovered that I'm better off not choosing photos before I do a page.... lately I've just been messing around with all my stuff and then once I'm happy with it, finding a photo which goes with what I've created. The one time I had the photos picked first, I didn't like the way it turned out!

Here's my layout I did for Friday Night Live using Sares' techniques. I had so much fun playing with the tissues and glue! We run challenges every Friday Night, so if you're bored pop in and have a look!

This next one is a page in my art journal, I stuck some paper down because I had leftover glue at the time and wanted to use it up. Now you can barely see the paper at all! I've always liked this photo of Noel, but never done anything with it.

Better go and head off to the shop.... BYE!!

A Not So Boring Post.....

Well, finally I have the pictures of what I've been up to.... The weather has turned sunnier over the last couple of days but have been busy out and about.

Last night I went to Leesa's (my netball coach) place for my netball teams break-up party, so ok, the netball season finished months ago, but we tried to get a date that we could all be there. Unfortunately Rachael's kids were sick so she didn't make it but everyone else was there.... Megan, Lynda, Belinda, Aidan, Sarah and Jolene... We'll all be with the Runaways again next year so it's nice to socialise out of the netball season.

These are 2 pages that I've done in my art journal.... the first didn't turn out as I wanted, I think I was trying too hard so it just didn't work... painted the page and then covered it with clear making tape and painted over it with gesso.

I love the second one, even though it has no photos it has a journalling underneath the layers. This was inspired by SuziBlu's "Mandala" challenge.

Last up is the progressive page from the crop last Saturday. All I did was choose the paper and stick down the photo and the girls did all the rest! Thanks everyone, I love it!

Finished my book the other night so went and got another.... I love it! It's funny and I totally get it... Dan Matthews is the Senior Vice-President of PETA and is involved in their campaigns. I totally understand he's empathy towards animals.... I always feel sorry for the cows I see crammed onto cattle trucks.... I know I wouldn't want to be transported around that way! That's part of the reason I became vegetarian, don't like to think that an animal suffered just so it could be my food.

Well, it's time to go have dinner... have heaps of cool links that I want to add to my blog as well so will try to get that done tonight... maybe.... if I get around to it.... definitely tomorrow anyway... LOL.

BYE!!!!

It's Raining!

Well, the last few days here have been pretty eventful.... I've had lots of visitors, Noel's family is here to stay with us until they buy a house up here (yay!) AND my Mum came up to visit. So finding time for the computer has been hard.

Had heaps of fun house hunting on Monday, I SO want to buy a house up here so I can stop renting but have to wait... at least I can live through Noel's parents for a while! They are buying a house which needs a lot of work so there is paint colours to choose, flooring to be decided on and decisions made on which walls to knock down... I love it! Lots of excuses to go shopping!!

Monday afternoon we had a huge storm come through Rocky, luckily we live up on a hill so we had no water damage, the shop wasn't so lucky. We had water coming through the doors and even leaking from the roof - good thing Jo was working and was able to mop it all up... so no stock was harmed! Thanks Jo, you're the best!!

Have been doing a little bit in my art journal the last week. One page didn't turn out like I wanted and the other isn't finished... will share here but am just waiting for a sunny day to take some pics. Will also share a layout done on our crop night on Saturday... Dee and Kirsty hosted a "progressive page" challenge. We had 12 people take part and we all had 10 minutes to work on each other's layouts. The results were amazing, all the layouts looked fantastic.

I've announced our free online card class at Embellished, it's at 7pm EDST on Thursday the 29th November. Here's a sneak peak.....

You can check out all the details here....

Well, I'm off to bed now... will take some pics to share as long as the weather is a bit sunnier!