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