CTMH Australasian Blog Hop - 'Down Under'

 

Hello, and welcome to our 'Down Under’ Australasian 'Blog Hop'. If you've arrived here from Lauren Moore - CTMH Craftings, then you're in the right place. 

If you've landed here by accident, then welcome to the fun! Please join in by following the link at the bottom of this blog.

 

 

 In this blog hop, we will be following the theme of 'Down Under', inspired mainly by the March Stamp of the Month, which has lots of iconic Australian animals on it. 

 If, like me, you are a New Zealander, you will note that the stamp is totally Australian animals, but the blog title is 'Down Under', which is intended to include us kiwis too. 

 

 

 However I imagine I am not unique in the fact that I am a New Zealander (Kiwi) with an extended family of Australians. In fact, I am the youngest of 22 cousins, and the only Kiwi amongst us! Even my brothers are Australian, but being the youngest in my family, I waited until Mum and Dad had moved to Auckland before I put in an appearance...haha.

But the problem I have is that this stamp set, and all the animals and flowers etc. are just begging to be coloured, and I am not that proficient at colouring yet! 

But I am learning. And hopefully improving. I also don't have a huge selection of tri-blend markers, so I needed another plan!

 Small things are way easier to colour than big open spaces, so I've used the tri-blend markers to blend the colour on the flowers, and other small items in this set. But for the larger parts of the animals, I decided to use the blending tools to gently colour the general area. I've used the pewter ink on the Koala in this image.

With a couple of Koalas in the set, I decided to make small gift cards out of them. Taking a slimline card, and cutting it in half gives two perfectly sized smaller cards, that make ideal additions to a small gift or a bunch of flowers, for example. 

 

 

You will see I've added some sky and grass to the left hand card. I've also added some shading with colouring pencils, to help give the animals some dimension.

Then I wondered how it would work if I grouped a few different animal stamps together, so I could use them as a border on a scrapbook page about some of my relatives.

BUT.....there's nothing in the set to represent a kiwi, so I chose one from an older set that I have, and grouped them like this.....

 

I think that looks like a good representation of my family...😂 

So I coloured it in a similar way, using a mixture of the tri-blend markers that I have, and then with the inks, either pewter or mocha for the animals; pine for the ground and bluebird for the sky. I also added some shading, again with the colouring pencils.

I'm pretty happy with that, and will use it on a scrapbook page where the photos show a collection of my cousins. I had hoped to get that finished in time to share on this blog, but I'm afraid I ran out of time.

But when it's finished in the next week or so, I will share it on my Instagram and Facebook page. 

This stamp of the month is called 'Precious Moments' and is only available for the month of March. It costs $10.00 for customers when they spend NZD$88.00 or more in the month, but if you're a VIP, it's totally free with that spend.

Contact your CTMH consultant to order. If you don't have a consultant and live in New Zealand, please contact me, or place an order through my website.

I'd love it if you left a comment below, before heading off to Danielle Edwards - Scrappy Chicks.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers for now. 

Happy crafting.

Lynda

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CTMH Australasian Blog Hop - Life's a Hoot!

Hello, and welcome to our 'Life’s a Hoot’ Australasian 'Blog Hop'. If you've arrived here from Maz Wood - Amazing Creations,  then you're in the right place. 

If you've landed here by accident, then welcome to the fun! Please join in by following the link at the bottom of this blog. 

The feature paper with CTMH for March is called ‘Life’s a Hoot’. The tonal range of the papers is divine, and includes the pinks, purples and some glacier green, along with some golden foil accents on some of the paper and the sticker sheet. 

It’s amazing how when I first see a set of papers, generally a specific photo or set of photos will come to mind, and then I’m on a mission to hunt them out and get them printed, so I can use them. This month was no exception! 

My husband and I have had Golden Retrievers for the past 20+ years, with our latest one arriving in July 2020, at 8 weeks old. Her name is Gracie, and she has an older role model in Pippa who was 6 when Gracie arrived. When Gracie was four months old, and at that gangly stage, one of my sons was visiting, so we set up a quick photoshoot on the back deck. We used a tablecloth as a backdrop to start with, and then added a colourful duvet cover, which has the same colours as this paper. That’s why these photos came straight to mind. 

As a photographer, I’m a bit embarrassed that I haven’t ironed out the wrinkles in the backdrops (either manually or digitally), but the expressions on the dogs faces kind of make up for it😜.

Given that the dogs are Golden Retrievers, I decided to work with the golden theme, and chose the paper with the big circles and golden accents. Dividing it diagonally from one corner to the other, I ended up with two triangles, that form the base of this double page layout. 

The card making stamp set that comes with this range, has many shapes on it that are printed in gold on the paper. So, to add some extra interest and build on the golden theme I used the stamp set to heat emboss more golden circles and shapes directly onto the white Daisy cardstock. This was quite random in terms of layout.

              

The stamps in the set mirror the shapes on the paper, so when the patterned paper fills the blank half of the page, they will blend well together. 

To add more to the golden theme, I used the Gold metallic paint markers to edge pieces of white daisy that  I used to mount the photos of the dogs on the left hand side. I used the same method to edge another piece of white daisy that goes between the glacier and the wisteria on the right hand page. 

I then used both the heat embossing and the gold edging to make a title for Garcie's photo, including her age of 4 months. 

The 'Life's a Hoot' title, seemed perfect and ended up fitting really well above the most appropriate photo, and in the middle of the left hand page. The colours in the title are reflected on the right hand page in the mounts I used for Gracies photo. 

Journalling was done on journalling strips, and is highlighted by one of the owls from the sticker sheet. 

The sticker sheet provided a couple of strips to anchor the bottom of the pages and I then added some flowers with the gold accents which provides a nice mix of colour with the gold. 

The finished pages:                                          ....left.....

and right.....

There is a process video also for this layout. You can check it out by heading over to my YouTube channel: The Scrapbooking Photographer. 

This range of 'Life's a Hoot' papers, embellishments, stamps and die cuts are available up until the end of March, or while stocks last. 

Contact your CTMH consultant to order. If you don't have a consultant and live in New Zealand, please contact me, or place an order through my website. 

I'd love you to leave a comment below, before heading off to the next stop Danielle Edwards - Scrappy Chicks.

Cheers,

Lynda