OSA Kokeshi Doll Swap

This is the swap card I made for the OSA Kokeshi Bobasheely Swap. We were sent a Kokeshi doll image, provided by About Art Accents ,to use for the swap. I paper pieced the kimono on my image, coloured her face with a white pencil and used markers for the rest of her. I chose a colour combination to match the washi yuzen paper. The friend symbol stamp is by Pink Cat Studio, I used Brilliance Crimson Copper ink to stamp it and also to highlight the Swiss Dots embossing on the burgundy panel (bit hard to see because of the coppery shimmer!).

OSA 'Other Asian Cultures' Swap

I received my swap cards back yesterday from Bonnie B., the hostess for the OSA group 'Other Asian Cultures' Swap, so I can share them here now. The directions were to make a card featuring an Asian culture, different from Chinese or Japanese.

I chose an Indian theme. I used a Stamp-It Indian lady stamp, stamped onto watercolor paper and watercolored with Twinkling H2O's. For my background piece I used a piece of Tyvek painted with Violet Lumiere paint. Tyvek is wonderful stuff, it doesn't tear, it's very thin so it doesn't add bulk to your card, you can paint it and it doesn't warp, stamp on it, sew it and use a heat gun on it to get lots of texture.

After I painted my Tyvek I stamped it with some Buzz and Bloom paisley stamps with gold Brilliance ink - bit hard to see the stamping as it's hidden by the other layers. The yellow/orange layer is mulberry paper with gold highlights. It was rather difficult to get a decent photo of this card, the camera didn't like the textured watercolor paper, so this was the best I could do - you might get a better view by clicking on it to enlarge it.

I received some beautiful cards as swaps, if you'd like to see all the cards from this swap here is a link to the OSA swap gallery - Other Asian Cultures swap. There are 2 pages and you can enlarge the thumbnails by clicking on them.
Edit: There are some problems with the OSA gallery right now, if you get an error message please try again later!

This was a wonderful swap to be involved with, Bonnie was a great hostess and apart from receiving some beautiful artwork, Bonnie also provided some fantastic goodies in our parcels.

Thanks for continuing to stop by and leave comments, I really do appreciate each and every one of them.

Black plus One Colour Swap card.

This card is for an OSA swap, the theme is Black plus One Colour. I chose Turquoise as my One Colour. You can see the other cards in this swap so far in THIS OSA gallery.

The stamp I've used is by About Art Accents , I used a Cuttlebug embossing folder for my black background and swiped it with Nordic Ice Opalite ink, this is an interference ink that shows up lovely and shimmery on dark coloured cardstock. I used Stampendous turquoise and gold hologram stickers as accents on the background, and added a butterfly eyelet in the top left corner.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today!

OSA Dragonfly Swap (from November 2008)

These are all the cards that I received in the OSA Dragonfly Swap, I showed you the card that I made for this swap in the previous post.

Minda O.


Mary Wi.


Margo S.

Katrina S - our lovely hostess for the swap.

Jean S.

Chris.

Fantasy Film Dragonfly card.

Sorry, this is not a new card, I made this for the OSA Dragonfly Swap late last year and had completely forgotten to post it here. My background is created from Fantasy Film, I found a tutorial on how to use it at Penelope's Pitstop blog . My stamps are all by The Darkroom Door and the ink used is Black Staz-On. I've taken 3 photos of the same card just to show how different the colours appear, depending on which angle you look at it.

I was hoping to post a link to the OSA swap gallery to show you what the other members did for this swap, but somehow they didn't get put into the gallery. I will post the cards that I received in the swap, but it will have to wait until tomorrow!

I'm sorry to say that the bushfires are causing a lot of anxiety again at the moment. More fires have flared around the Dandenongs and in Central Victoria around the Daylesford area and high winds are making it hard for the fires to be contained. A lot of people have been evacuating since yesterday...no-one is taking any chances this time after the catastrophe earlier this month. I hope everyone is safe wherever you are in the world!

Technique Junkies - 'Just One' October

I haven't had much of a chance to use some of my 'artier' stamps, but I decided to join in the Technique Junkies 'Just One' swap for October. You submit your name and are partnered up with another TJ member, so you are only required to send one card to each other using at least one technique from any of the Technique Junkie newsletters.

The 1st card pictured is my card, I chose to use the Patina technique from the current Oct 2008 Newsletter. I'm quite pleased with how this technique turned out and it was not too difficult to do. The Mona Lisa stamp is by Stylish Images Australia, I'm afraid I don't know the makers of the quote and the key stamps, they are from a clear set of stamps I purchased on Ebay. I stamped all the images using Brilliance Versafine Vintage Sepia ink.

The 2nd card is from my partner Rose A. who lives in New Mexico, USA. Rose chose to use two different TJ techniques for her card. The wishing well image is from 'I Brake For Stamps' and is coloured using the Marker Water Color technique from the June 2008 newsletter, and the background is made using the Createx Creations technique from the April 2008 newsletter. Unfortunately my photo doesn't show how nice and shimmery Rose's card is in real life.

Thanks again Rose for being my 'Just One' partner and for your lovely card!

Darkroom Door ATC Swap

I recently participated in an ATC swap at Rachel Greig's Darkroom Door blog. The theme was to just use any Darkroom Door stamps. This is my ATC pictured on the left. I used stamps from the DD Essentials Wildflower set. My background is Basic Grey paper and I sprayed it with Tattered Angels Bronze Glimmer Mist - you might see the shimmer if you click on the pic for a larger view. I also added some Sandylion holographic stickers to give the composition some balance.

These are the ATCs that I received as returns. This was an international swap, so some of the swappers were from the USA, The Netherlands, Ireland. The ATCs from the top left are - Mine, next one, in lovely green is from Janet H, then blue and white butterflies from Damaris M. Next line is a very dimensional doorway from Rhonda C, then a winged lady from Lorri L then more butterflies from Sue B. The last line is the soft pretty umbrella lady from Julie P, then 'spread your wings' from Robyn W, and lastly the gorgeous burgundy coloured flowers from Terry A.

You can see all of the ATCs, as well as the card swaps HERE at the Darkrom Door blog..........and while you're there, don't forget to check out Rachel's newest release stamps........and she has a new ATC swap starting soon.

Hanafuda Swap returns.

These are the cards that I received back from the OSA Hanafuda Swap recently. See my card and the swap details HERE.

The card on the left is by Bonnie W.











The second card is by Linda B.












This Tri-fold card is by Toni.

Sandra G. made a set of playing cards which came all wrapped up in some aged paper tied with string.

This was a great swap to be involved in, the projects were many and varied and no two items were alike. The swap wasn't limited to cards and there were wall hangings, scrolls, jewellery items.............just about anything you could stamp on was used.

OSA Asian Scenery Swap - Returns

These are the return cards I received from the OSA Asian Scenery Swap that I took part in recently. This was my card



The 1st one is by Bonnie B. and features Mt Fuji. Bonnie did a lovely job in colouring this image!









The 2nd one is by Kathy M. it almost looks like a Willow Pattern Plate coloured in shades of blue. Beautiful!








The 3rd one is from Chryss W. Chryss has used an octagonal shaped card and the image in the centre is raised on dimensional foam tape. Very unusal card!

Asian Scenery Swap.

This is a card I did for the Asian Scenery Swap on my OSA group.

I used an image from Art Neko stamps, which I've stamped onto white card using black Staz-On ink. I've then coloured the image with chalks. I like the subtle colour that the chalks give to the image, and I use little eye-shadow sponge applicators to get the colour just where I want it.

I've layered the stamped piece onto aqua, then turquoise coloured cardstock, punched the corners of the turquoise card, then wrapped a metallic thread around the whole card. I've layered this to another aqua card, then adhered it all to a beige coloured folded card.

Thanks for looking.

OSA Hanafuda Swap

First of all, my apologies for not posting anything new for a while. I haven't been totally idle though, it's taken me a while, but I've finally finished these cards I made for the Hanafuda Swap on OSA.

What's a Hanafuda you ask? Well it's a japanese card game using 48 cards that are divided into 12 suits, with each suit of 4 representing a month of the year. We were each given 4 stamps (one suit) to use, kindly donated by About Art Accents stamps. The stamps I was given represented June and featured the Peony flower, I might add that each month features a different flower or plant depicting the season it represents.


Now, onto my card! I decided to make the gated tag card that was featured in the Feb/Mar 2008 Technique Junkie newsletter. On the front of the card I've used stamped one of the images onto black shrink plastic using Galaxy Gold Brilliance Ink, I've also stamped 'Good Luck' from a See-D's set - I figured that was appropriate seeing that Hanafuda was a card game!
The 2nd picture shows the inside of the card. I've stamped each of the four images onto a cream tag and coloured them with markers. Thanks for looking!

ATC swap.........and I've been tagged!!

This is an ATC swap that I was in recently at the Scrapper's Stash forum. The title of the swap was 'Dreams'. My ATC is the top left one. I used a Lynn Perrella Stampington stamp, the background is a Technique Junkies Technicolor Dye Ink background tech. I've also used German Scrap and a tiny Collections scrabble 'dream' word.

My friend Sandie has tagged me!! Arrgh! O.K Here are the rules:1. Link to the person that tagged you and leave a comment on their Blog.2. Post the rules on your Blog.3. Share 7 random facts about yourself on your Blog4. Tag 7 random people , linking to their Blog. Let each person know by leaving a comment on their Blog.

OK, here's 7 random facts about me.

1. I'm left-handed.

2. I'm the mother of identical twin girls, who are now aged 33. Neither my DH or I have any family history of twins, so we're still wondering how that happened. It was great though, they always had each other for company, and I got my family with only having to go through one pregnancy.................we were never quite game to try a 2nd time.

3. I'm terrified of heights and spiders! I have flown in a plane, but I can't look out the window when we take off............I also suffer from motion sickness which doesn't help. As for spiders....I cant' go to bed if I see a spider inside the house, until DH has removed it. If he's not there to do it, I have to do it myself, but it really freaks me out!

4. I'm a bit of a sports nut. I love AFL footy...........my team is Richmond, a bit tragic at the moment 'cos there not very good, but I do remember the glory days of the '60's and '70's. Also love tennis and cycling, and the Olympics when they're on.

5. I spent the first 40 years of my life in Bendigo, a large country town in central Victoria (Australia). I thought I would always live there, but 11 years ago we moved to the big city of Melbourne. I enjoy living here, but the traffic still freaks me out!

6. I'm going to become a grandmother later this year!

7. I'm normally a very quiet, shy, private person and I can't believe I'm telling you all this stuff about me!

OK, that's it! Now, I'm supposed to tag 7 other people, but I'm going to take the cheat's way out 'cos I can't think of 7 people who haven't already been tagged...............so if you're reading this, consider yourself tagged.