Just do it!

A few years ago I was a real competition junkie. I entered so many comps but did win quite a bit too. From cookbooks, gardening stuff, weekends away, kid's things... It was always very exciting. Well once Lime Tart came along, the competitions fell by the wayside, but occasionally I will still enter. Last month St George were running a competition to rename the Bank Holiday as they weren't going to close. I couldn't think of something witty and clever so I forgot to enter. But hubby didn't! He logged on and came up with "The we take care of our customers bank holiday". Was he serious?! How totally tacky and unclever, and yes I did tell him that. Well now I'm eating my words as in the mail today arrived a gift voucher for one night's accomodation in a Diplomatic Suite at the Hyatt Hotel (valued at over $800!!), dinner, one hour massage each, breakfast, predinner drinks and canapes. OMG! About $1500 worth. OMG!! And the best thing is we spent our Canberra wedding night in a Diplomatic Suite at the Hyatt Hotel back in February 1995. Or was it 96, no must have been 97, lol. How cool is that?!

Gel medium transfer

Here is my dragonfly canvas. It's not really canvas but thick chipboard/cardboard. The background has been painted and collaged with bookpages, then I used vaseline to do that paintstripping technique. Fun! More painting and stamping and fiddling around and then I popped my transfers on. I got out the Cropodile to punch holes and proceeded to poke my eyes out constantly while threading with wire and beads. I think I need a pair of safety glasses! Each square is about 4".

Packing tape transfer

I'm doing a demo on Saturday on gel medium transfers and while I was making (and still am!), my examples, I made up some packing tape ones too.

I found some great images of Hollywood starlets in a newspaper magazine and they worked brilliantly! It's got to be the quality of the paper, lol, these ones had no trace of white fluff left on them at all, I was very pleased.



I'm still finished the gel medium transfer art but I will show it when I've finished :)

Oh and the stamp and the paper could possibly be a sneak of the next A la Tarte!

New art?

I'm flipping and changing with my crafting at the moment. From scrapping quickly with neat, straight, clean and no fuss layouts to pulling out the paints, gels and messy stuff to have a bit of fun. My favourite magazines are by Stampington - any of the Somerset ones, and Cloth, Paper, Scissors. What people can do with fabric is just so clever! Well anyway, I find them totally inspiring and love the work, but when it comes down to me creating something similar it always looks so much better in my head at 2.30 in the morning rather than the finished product.

This is what I completed the other day as one of my gel medium transfer samples. The bird and word is clipart that have been printed in reverse onto photo paper, then transferred using gel medium to the canvas. It makes for a really nice, clean transfer. Although next time, I think I will use a blocked image, a squarish image, in the centre with 'stuff' surrounding it. It might appeal to my clean lines side a bit more.

Perspective is word of the moment. When I'm annoyed, I have to think 'perspective', and as I saw on tv a few weeks ago, a woman said "so what? I have a messy house, at least we are healthy" - Perspective.



I got a bargain on the wire - 50c for 50m at the garden section in KMart! It's a perfect gauge too. I have a couple of other projects in mind with wire so I might even pop in and grab another roll, lol.

Blog candy - well it seems I overestimated how many readers I have, lol, either that or only one reader knows where I grew up! So Margaret, can you email me your postal address please? You get the Opals which are designed in Tasmania, which is where I lived until I joined the Navy at aged 18. Although I lived in a big town with shops, (hey we even had a Myer ;) ) called Launceston, not somewhere like Molesworth! Sorry Margaret, never heard of it, lol. I've heard of Mole Creek, been there, but Molesworth?!

Blog Candy

I have a few little pots and bags of Opals embossing powder to give away. I think the pots are the Cools colours - blues/greens etc. Plus I have some baggies in gold, white, black, red and a pinky colour.

I have to open this to Australia only, sorry. I'm too scared to send white powdery granules overseas! Not that it's *that* sort of white powder, but I just don't want it to get lost or held up in customs searches.

So the third person to email me on philippa(at)limetart(dot)com and tell me what state I grew up in will get the package.

If you need a clue - it's the same place that Opals originates from.

Just stuff

I didn't realise it was over a week since I had blogged! I can't even remember what I've been doing! Lots of cardmaking, I know that much. I've had about three sets of cards accepted for publishing in the past two weeks, so I'm pretty excited about that!

I'm doing a demo on gel medium transfers next weekend so I've been practicing, and making samples for that.

We've been baking quite a bit and the kids have even been helping out with making dinner. Billy helped turn the sausages in the pan the other night! I'm such an over protective mother :(

Oh but great news is that he is going to the Gungahlin Athletics Carnival next week! Pretty cool news considering he had two months off sport due to chipped bones in his ankle! Plus he got a credit in the recent spelling competition! My little all rounder. Oh and he's also on book 3 of Harry Potter and speedreading it too! He only started on Saturday and will be finished by this Saturday, I should think.

I went to the Canberra Craft Fair last week, and got to meet Carole. It was so nice to meet her in person and have a chat, I just wish I'd grabbed your mobile Carole! I would have liked to have caught up again over the weekend. I lashed out and bought myself a pack of Lyra Watercolour crayons. Very nice! Plus a roll of masking tape (special masking tape, lol), embossing powder and that was it!

The girls have started playing basketball again and are doing really, really well. I get surprised when they get a basket, lol.

The Lime Tart gallery is up and looks just amazing! I also heard it on good authority that there could be a new designer call happening soon, aimed specifically at stampers. So if you are interested.... keep your eyes/ears out.

On that note, here's my latest ATC using my watercolour crayons and justjohanna stamps :)


Now I best be off to make some cookies before the kidlets get home.... Does anyone else miss their kids while they are at school, but five minutes after they walk in the door you wish they were back at school?

New ATC Swap

Thanks to Margaret for the theme suggestion. Margaret, I can't find your blog link!

Aussie icons, myths and legends. Obviously if you are overseas, then please replace "Aussie" with your country of choice :)

Same deal as always. 9 for 9. Due date 21 September. You can interprete the theme as you like. Send to me with a return self addressed, stamped envelope. In the case of OS girls, we'll work something out, just email me if you would like to join philippa(at)limetart(dot)dom. Yes I still can't work out how to do an email link, but I've read that this is the best way to do it to stop spambots :)

Now the theme comes from this years Floriade . Last year we did Carnivale, it's in the November '06 archives if you would like a look. Oh and the pic in my header is also from last year's Floriade. This year I have a digital camera so can go a little bit silly with pics!

Fire Faery

An ATC that I made for a "Wings with attitude" swap. In the hosts words - "no cutesy stuff!"

I got this image from Folkvangar and printed it onto transparency. I've then covered the bottom half with a plain white serviette and sponged it with ink. I stamped a justjohanna stamp onto a book page, sponged with ink, cut out and attached. After attaching the ribbon and the transparency to a piece of cardstock cut to size, I have coated the bottom half with the web and the serviette with dimensional magic. To my surprise, when it dried it made the serviette sort of see through, which made it even cooler, lol.

I needed a name and Billy decided upon Fire Faery because her wings looked like dragon wings, but I reckon the web at the bottom looks a bit like flames too.



I also got a blogger award from Deb.

The Rockin’ Girl Blogger idea originated from Roberta Flanaghan. It works like this … you have to give her credit, put up the badge and finally, add 5 other rockin’ girl bloggers to the list. Trying to find five that haven't already received it, lol..... let me see, I nominate Julie, Marieke (even Donna Downey thinks she rocks, lol), Mel, Johanna, and Emilia.

Do you like?

Do you like my new header?! How cool is it? I took the photo last year at Floriade, and Michelle banner-ised it for me. Go check out her blog as she is selling her talents, her digital ones that is, lol. Make sure you congratulate her on her new great news too!

Thanks Michelle!! Luv ya :)

So anyway I thought it was time to make this blog mine instead of Lime Tart's. But speaking of Lime Tart, pop on over and check out the August kits. Very nice, even if I do say so myself, lol.