All About Me

A new niece!

2008-01-05T22:27:00.000+08:00

My gorgeous new niece Celeste - isn't she a darling?!

Little Artist

2007-12-30T19:08:00.000+08:00

Well it was time to do another couple of layouts for myself after all the Christmas cards and Christmas shopping the past few weeks. The first layout (Little Artist) I did at Kathy's house last Friday and was nothing like I first imagined! I have decided not to try and plan out my layouts too much, rather to let them grow organically as I go along and try not to be too particular. This has been a success for me so far and I've been pretty pleased with the results.

The second layout I finished today and I took these pics with my new camera at Leighton beach last week. She and Rich have such a close relationship and I realise from talking to other friends how lucky I am to have a partner who is such a hands on Dad and husband. Ashlinn and Rich will be firm friends in the future.

Happy New Year!

2007-12-29T13:10:00.000+08:00

Well it's been a while and hence I have a few things to add to the blog so without further ado here they are:

My Little Beauty LO:

Beach Comber:

Love You:

Fun in the Sun:

Freya's Christmas Wand:

We had a great Christmas (if not a little hot), with boxing day setting the record for the hottest December day at 43.7 degrees!! Phew, was very glad when it cooled down. Enjoying a nice relaxing break from work as the Uni closes down for 2 weeks over Christmas so it's nice to have some time out. We're off the Busselton on the 3rd Jan as Rich's sister Helen will be having her 2nd baby by casaer on the 3rd. Very excited about welcoming a new little girl to the family!

Our little one is fast growing up now and is steadily becoming not so little! She now knows all her colours, a few shapes and can count to 10. She's a super water baby and is happily independent now with either her floaties of backpack on. We couldn't get her out of the pool on Christmas day!! Here are a few pics from our Christmas day - click on this link and it will take you to the flickr photo album.

Happy New Year everyone!

Tracey

Robyn's Wall Picture

2007-10-07T12:29:00.000+08:00

My new baby niece arrived in the world on August 16th having kept her Mummy waiting over a week. I thought I would contribute to her nursery by making a picture to make her feel at home. This is a shameless scraplift from the lovely Jen and Alinta from EB - thanks for the ideas girls. It's a 12"x12" canvas and I have used cardstock to make the frame and covered chipboard squares for the central detail. I was pleased Vikki liked it. Now I just have to finish my other projects!

A Mothers Treasure

2007-09-05T19:51:00.000+08:00

Well I've finally finished a LO for my album. I feel like all I've been doing recently is things for other people which I love doing, but it's nice to get back to a good old plain layout rather than OTP. I started this one weeks ago and thought I had a really clear idea of what I wanted, but like most of the things I make they take on a life of their own and become more and more complicated! Still, this is my first attempt with black and red, I've steered away from them in the past, but I have to admit I love this layout.

The photo was taken when we went to a cuddly animal farm in Margaret River which Ashlinn and I both loved. Rich thought it was funny that I made him get a bucket of food for the animals so that "Ashlinn could feed them", but really it was the big kid in me that wanted to touch and feed everything! Ash just ran around shouting DUCK at everything!

Grandad's Mini Album

2007-09-04T20:25:00.000+08:00

Well I finished this a little while ago but I forgot to take photos so I'll just post the scans I took without the rings. This was a kit I bought from KitiQ and it was lots of fun to do. I had fun following the directions and making some changes of my own and I loved the papers.

My Grandad got it a week ago and I think he liked it as Mum told me he shed a tear. He's so worth it though, such an amazing man and I have such fantastic memories of all the love and affection he's given me all my life.

I've been tagged!

2007-08-04T13:40:00.000+08:00

OK, whilst blog surfing today I realised I have been tagged by my scrapping buddy Donna

1-Post these rules.

2-Each person tagged must post 8 random (... hopefully interesting) facts about themselves.

3-Taggees should write a blogpost of these facts.

4- At the end of the post 8 more bloggers are tagged and named and released back into the wild.

5-Go to their blog and leave a comment telling them they're tagged*.

So here are my 8 random things:

1. I only got my drivers licence last year at the ripe old age of 27 - better late than never. I love driving now!

2. I grew up in a suburb of South London and managed to avoid a cockney accent. Could never see myself moving back there now.

3. I went to University in Liverpool and ran the University Surf club for 2 years. We used to drive 6 hours from Liverpool to Devon/Cornwall for our surf trips and I got a womens team together that came in the top 10 at the Student Nationals. Great times. I haven't surfed since I came to Australia - go figure!

4. I like traditions. My middle name is Frances after my Grandad Frank and I named my daughter Ashlinn Audrey after my Granny Audrey who I was very close to. Audrey is also my mothers middle name.

5. I had 2 weddings to the same person! Richard and I had a traditional English wedding in my family parish church and then flew back to Perth and repeated the proceedings for all our friends and family in Oz. At least I got to wear my dress twice!

6. My Grandad is an amazing artist and paints the most beautiful pictures, I seem to have inherited some aspects of his creativity but I can't draw to save my life!

7. I'm a perfectionist and a Virgo. Things have to be perfect and lines always straight. I'm not very good at doing 'messy' layouts and my pages take me forever cause I have to get them 'just right'

8. I'm messy! You'd think that being a perfectionist would make me neat and tidy but I'm a disaster zone! My nickname as a kid was 'What-a-mess' after the books. I like being organised, I;m just not very good at it!

OK, now, who to tag who hasn't already been tagged????...

Angela, Melanie, Ryn, Dani, Michelle, Jo and Kim. That's about all the people I can find that haven't been tagged yet, looking around I think almost everyone has had this one!

All Things Grow With Love

2007-07-14T10:33:00.000+08:00

OK, here's my latest project, but it's still top secret so I'm hoping my mama doesn't come stumbling into this blog - highly unlikley given her level of internet surfing!

I wanted to do a quick LO for my Mum that could go on her wall and I loved Carole Janson's 3D style so I decided to cut a few flowers out of the Crate Paper Susannah range. All I can say is that woman must have the patience of a saint cause cutting itty bitty things out takes a lot of time. Still, I think the result was worth it and I'm pretty sure my Mum's going to be stoked. The little book in the bottom right hand corner opens up and is a little note to my mama. The quote was one I saw on a lovey plaque when we were travelling in Scotland last year. There was this beautiful garden next to a babbling brook that anyone could go into and on the gate was a plaque reading "All things grow with love". I always loved that quote and have been wanting to use it since I first saw it.

Now I just have to try and work out a way to send it over to her!

My lovely husband bought me Cat Power's latest album this week and I am loving it, her smokey vocals are amazing and it's a lovely mellow album. I also got my hands on some Crowded House tickets for their concert in Perth on Saturday 17th November! The original gig on the Friday sold out in an hour and I was pretty dissapointed to miss out as I am a big fan. But luckily for me they annoucned a second gig so I get to see them - woo hoo!

I will update the video clip above next week sometime, I just have to find something I like as much as this one... hmmmm... suggestions on a postcard please.

Little Climber

2007-07-06T20:57:00.000+08:00

I'm finally coming to the realisation that I'm too much of a perfectionist to do a quick and dirty layout. What started out as being a really simple layout ended up being a few hours of flower making, followed by a failed attempt at machine stitching which led to a few more hours of hand stitching and beading! Still, I am very happy with the finished product - I don't think I could possible have squeezed any more bling onto this layout. As you can see I have finally acquired myself a scanner. I am now the proud new owner of a Canon Pixma MP600 multifunction printer and it prints me gorgeous photos as well as scanning my LOs - joy!

My next project is something for my Mama (shhhhh it's a surprise). As usual I've already been working on it for days, but you just can't rush these things! :)

Hope you enjoy the musical addition to the blog, I've just discovered Cat Power, don't know how I missed her for so long, she's bloody awesome! I'll try to alternate a few of my favourite tunes around and will move the old ones to the bottom of the page when I'm done.

Scotland in June

2007-05-26T14:08:00.001+08:00

Well, I've finally broken my blogging drought and finished a double LO. This has taken me weeks to finish and I've realised that multiphoto layouts are a lot harder than they look. Still, I wont be completely put off as I do like the mulitphoto pages. So here are the pages - you can click on the image to get a bigger picture to open in a new window (if you're really that interested!) :)

The journalling moves up behind the photo so it is hidden with only the date poking out the bottom.

I went to the Perth Craft fair yesterday and had a great time. Got myself a new big flower punch after doing a 5 minute session with Carole Janson at her stand. Carole is a Scrapbooking Memories Master and her stuff is just awesome. Lots of different layers and 3D effects. I loved looking though all her LOs. Plus she showed me how to make the funky flowers which I did on the LO above and they're so simple and yet so effective. I think I will be using a few of her techniques on my next LOs.

Another blog I've been visiting a lot recently is Ngaire Bartlam. She's on the DT for Tarisota (the kits I subscribe to which are very lush) and her work is just amazing. Very ecletic, colourful and with so much craftmanship. I wish I had an ounce of her talent!

So hopefully it wont be so long before I have something more to post on here next time!

My very own scrapping blog

2007-04-15T21:16:00.000+08:00

So I have a new blog all to myself. I figured this could be somewhere I can post my layouts for others to comment on and have a place for some of my ramblings that the rellies don't want to read on Ashlinn's blog. So where to start? I might try and go back later and add some of my older layouts, but for now I think I'll keep this short and sweet and just post my 3 latest pages.

The first is a LO I created using the EB Scrapframes Magnolia kit. It took me so long to get around to using these papers, only because I had no time to scrap. I've still only done one page with the kit so far, but I really love this one. I've even submitted it to FK magazine for their Dads day issue, but I'm not holding my breath. This was my first time using sewing on a LO (my lovely friend Kathy kindly did it for me), but now I'm hooked! I want a sewing machine!

This one is my most girly page to date, I got to use lots of bling (glitter and crystals) and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I still think there's room for improvement, I'm still not good at using layers on the page and they can often look a bit empty. Guess I'm still learning...

This last LO is my most recent, I did it last weekend and it came together really well, I got the idea of the journalling from a page Donna did. The papers are from the most recent Tarisota kit, I love getting all these goodies in the mail that match so well, and it means I get these really cool papers I wouldn't usually use. I'm really pleased with the result.

And just because this picture is very cute I'll add it on the end here!