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Q Tea Add-on Kit

Now available for ordering at Q Tea - check the pic out here if you have trouble viewing the blog itself for some reason.

I'm off to Adelaide shortly, must go!

Rocket Trip

Since Sienna calls airplanes 'Rockets', we are going on a rocket trip this evening which she is quite excited about. I guess she doesn't remember the last time she went on a plane, it was a couple of years ago for her. I tend to take whichever kid is free, LOL, which is NEITHER OF THEM ANYMORE. Now that Ash is 2 I pay for both their seats, and leaving poor Ben at home to work away, while we trot around the Adelaide Hills without him.

Yay for free babysitting!

OK I am trying to whip around the virtual world this morning, but Ash is climbing all over me and making it very hard. I took some photos yesterday after the convention, since Sienna was dressed so beautifully. Here are the few I've looked at this morning, and then I'm off to finish packing.

Thank you to everyone for your lovely congratulations and excitement for me on the MMM runner-up spot, I was very chuffed :)

Check this out: Dust Echoes. Ben's older brother Toby is an illustrator and animator who works with Vishus Productions and they were part of the second Dust Echoes project, featuring short animated videos of Aboriginal dreamtime stories. Toby worked on Moon Man, The Curse and Namorrodor (hope that is the correct spelling!). Ben and I watched them on Friday and they are really fantastic, we're very proud of how clever Uncle Toby is :) Sienna really liked them too, even though they were a bit scary, and wanted to watch them again. Ash fell asleep, LOL. OK packing calls. Bye!

Made Something

Made this mini-album this afternoon, though I made the cover last night actually. Uses lots of the goodies that are in Q Tea's August kit, and lots of fun! The September kit is online now, though there are only a small amount left, 7 I believe. Must get on to that extra kit I promised.

The rest of the pics of this album can be seen on Q Tea's flickr here.

Adelaide next week - yay! Will be fun and lots of photo taking I'm sure. I will even try to fit in some relaxing.

Top 11 to 20

out of almost 600..

OK a couple of you are ahead of the game, LOL, but the official announcement happened while I was happily snoozing.... I am really excited to announce that I was one of the 10 runners-up in the Memory Makers Masters contest!

I was even more excited this morning when I saw that Amelia made it to the team (yay Aussies!), and that I have the privelege of being listed alongside Celine Navarro and Lisa Garay as runners-up - just LOVE those girls' styles!

A huge thank you to the gorgeous Nic for mentoring and advising me with my entry, you are awesome :)

Here's a happy garden pic from last month

Yep, I'm still alive,

..and kicking. So to speak. Didn't get out of bed much between Wednesday night and Sunday midday. Man this cold flu virus whatever really takes it out of you. I feel sad for all the littlies that have it. Mind you I guess they don't have to look after themselves while they are feeling sick. LOL.
Anyhoo

Did the drawing for the cushion cover RAK, with a random number generator cos I am too lazy to print them out today, and the winner is.... Vita! I have your addy though, so I'll post them this week sweetie :) Thanks for your comment the other day about me being 'out of it' last Tuesday, totally made me laugh.

And now a random picture cos I feel like it:

I might have posted that a month or two ago, I'm not sure. In any case, I don't think I mentioned the hat - isn't it adorable? Sienna got it from www.perfectamity.com
a new business started by a local mum we know, specialising in gorgeous knitted kid's stuff, hats at the moment. Sienna has all three of the hats in the current range, as I designed the logo for the business. Anyhow, the strawberry is her fave :)

ciao!

Oh Man

I'm sick :(
Weird thing
this afternoon started having a bit of a cough every now and then
and I mean late afternoon

felt weird as the cough was quite deep and painful
even though it just began

a few hours later
all tired, but

couldn't sleep
too cold
sore chest

now all lathered in eucalytus stuff (which I hate, eucalyptus oil gives me a headache, but man does it work)
chest burning with the stuff
electric blanket on
cup of tea by the bed
hoping for sleep soon

Oh yes, and in answer to the question from last post, nope you can't vote online for the Centro thing - they had 37000 entries, about 1300 photos chosen as finalists, and since they haven't put the finalists online, you have to go to the shopping centre to see them. Bummer, hey. LOL.

Smiling With Centro


Man I am tired tonight. Stuff to share: two of my photos have been chosen as finalists in the Smile With Centro photography competition - yay! The comp asked for photos that made you smile, which is pretty broad, and each shopping centre has their 20 finalists on display until the end of August. My photos are at Brandon Park Shopping Centre, corner Ferntree Gully and Springvale Roads, in Melbourne's Eastern suburbs. If you go in to vote, you are also entering a voter's competition to win $5000 of shopping vouchers or something like that. If anyone does want to vote for me, please vote for the one of Ash on the swing! The other one is the black and white of Sierra tickling Sienna and Alannah. I think the photo of Ash is more of a 'make you smile' photo myself, and apparently that photo will be printed in the Monash Journal (a local paper) as advertising for the competition, so that will be exciting to see if it actually happens.

In other creative news, I did two mixed media paintings and one layout this afternoon. Kell had the kids and I was at home by myself for about 4 hours - it was so nice to play music super loud and mess up the kitchen. Which I tidied up after, as well as put dishes away, hung out and put on a load of washing and tidied the lounge. It is AMAZING how easy it is to do stuff when you are concentrating on it, usually these things happen on the sides while watching the kids. Anyhow. I'll just post in order of creation.

This big painting is called 'Beauty in the Breakdown' (I know you can't tell, but it is about 80cm wide) features words from the chorus of 'Let Go' by Frou Frou. It uses some Hambly transparency and a Hambly paper my sis Kell bought for me. There is also tissue paper, German newspaper, Basic Grey letter stickers and lots of tiny letter stickers that you can't really see here. Oh, and a big feather.
The second painting, 'Before', is smaller, about 10 inches square I think. It uses more German newspaper, a MME transparent flower, some fantastic crochet lace trim stuff I from my EB embellishment swap partner (thank you!), some other aqua lace, and some more of those tiny letter stickers. Also a vintage piece of glass (from some old photography stuff I picked up) and a vintage orange filter.
And after those I made this layout for the Kiti Q Gallery using new Cherry Arte Morocco papers, a scrap of a new Bam Pop paper and a couple of different Hambly rub-ons. OK I'm off to bed!

Jack and Morocco

I've been really enjoying scrapping over the past couple of days, and am happy with the layouts I've done. On Friday afternoon I did this one, which is this week's jack on ScrapJacked - Meghan Dymock. I had this photo and title (a song title from a jazzy track Bjork once covered) worked out for awhile and wanted it just like this - big title all over the left side, photo at right - so this jack was perfect inspiration to do it. I loved grunging it up a bit with rough outlines etc.
Yesterday morning I dismantled our bed all ready for the guy who bought it on ebay - he picked it up at about 10, and seeming quite amazed at what a nice area it is out here. You'd think we were in the middle of nowhere, LOL, which is of course why I like it - hills, trees, kookaburras and only 40 minutes to the city. Not that we need to go there often with Knox nearby. Hmm. I wouldn't mind really living in the country one day. As long as we had good internet!

OK getting waaaaaay off topic here. Kell then helped me pick up the new bed I had on layby at Freedom, and we then spent the afternoon munching and scrapping at her place. I did one layout there using the Candytown collection from ScrapInStyle, of Ash playing his little piano.
At dinner time we dropped the bed off at my house before heading off to Chirnside Park where I was picking up an ebay purchase. We had dinner at Nando's before heading over to Danni's for a bit of an EB girls crop night! I did two layouts there, first one is for Sketches Oz so I will show it when they are uploaded there in a few weeks. The second one is for Kiti Q using the Morocco range, with some Hambly rub-ons also from Kiti Q.


So today I felt pretty rubbish when I woke up but got motivated enough after awhile to tidy up our room. Ben had put together the bed yesterday, so I just finished it off by screwing the slats into the frame, and making the bed. I also removed the shelves that had been on our wall - they were really just leftover from when it was Sienna's room a couple of years ago, so I took them down and then installed them above Sienna's bed instead.


In the process of cleaning up the bedroom I had to sort some boxes of fabrics, and found these two little cushion covers I made a couple of years ago from vintage fabrics, felt and crochet trim. So I decided I would make them an odd sort of RAK - anyone who would like the cushion covers just leave a comment saying if you like them, and I'll pick a name out in a couple of days.

My big sister loves me...




She gave me these beautiful Oriental Lilies as thanks for looking after Kiti Q while she was away - aren't they gorgeous?

SC and Sketches Oz

A bunch of layouts to share today, as the kids watch Winnie the Pooh in German in the background. They don't seem to mind that it's in a different language today, and it gives me a bit of variety ;)

OK so my article in Scrapbook Creations is about stepping outside your comfort zone, and here are three of the layouts, I didn't photograph the mini album (which is also a gift for Bec so I wouldn't show it yet anyway) and 'Beautiful Specific Details', the one of the lattes in Hamburg. My name is on the cover this issue, which is very exciting :)

This layout is based on Ngaire's sketch on Sketches Oz (link in sidebar, I'm feeling lazy today), kept pretty simple and based on the reverse side of one of the new Cherry Arte papers from Kiti Q.

Munchkins




Pity I had to use flash, but this little scene was too cute not to capture (despite the terrible lighting) - Ash wanting to give Sienna a cuddle, Sienna kept trying to walk while he was hanging on, soon they were both giggling...

Just remembered, Bam Pop arrived today at Kiti Q and it is so bright and fun! I started a layout this afternoon, since I was at Kell's anyway, but I think it is for SC so I can't share. Also it's not finished, LOL. Anyway am looking forward to doing MORE with the BamPop cos it is so cool!

Am trying to add all these kid's clothes to ebay this week and it is so boring, I have heaps to go. It is also kind of sad to see some of Sienna's gorgeous clothes move on, but can't keep everything. This one skirt I am thinking I will hang on to for a little while though, it is so sweet and she looked so cute wearing it last winter... not that I can find any pics right now.

Like this Chino kids oriental dress is just beautiful, hope whoever buys it loves it as much as I did. Never mind, all cute things must end, and Sienna has an absolutely stunning dress for this summer, which is why I have to sell her older stuff to make up for buying this new dress! Will post pics FOR SURE when she fits into it.

OK off to bed now, have a great week all!

Oh did I mention Q Tea sold out? Within the week! Am so thrilled. Also have lots of awesome things coming together for future kits too, and some things still to arrive for August, it is lots of fun :)

Photography - I will be in Adelaide for 5 days I think it is at the end of August if anyone wants a photoshoot I am thinking I may book some in. That is babies, kids, families, couples - no weddings! LOL. Just email me if you wanna know more, I think I have some examples in my flickr, should probably update that. Hmm.

Clarification re EB

Just a quick clarification regarding the EB forums - I was not attacking the moderators in my blog post a couple of days ago, I was expressing my hurt and confusion at being singled out. I know that a member of the forum 'pointed out' my (innocent and accidental) rule breaking to the moderators, hence the telling off. I still don't understand why a link to a personal blog is not allowed, to be honest, but my hurt primarily arises from the unknown member who must not like me for some reason. Otherwise, why not just say "Hey, Danielle, I'm not sure if you realise but that bit of your post is not allowed".

OK, so I am still hurt. But just wanted to clarify I was expressing my hurt feelings and, yes, irritation and also a bit of confusion. NOT attacking anyone. Apparently this has been misconstrued.

And on that note, I have continued to be amazed and - is there a word for 'heartwarming' but as in the result - 'heartwarmed' maybe? LOL. Anyway, you get the idea, at the response of so many sweet women who I had chatted with via EB, getting defensive on my behalf etc. I still won't be participating, besides that last post which I just had to say - Rach you are hilarious, and gorgeous - but I will be doing lots more blog-hopping and the occasional lurking instead!

OK MOVING ON NOW
I'll be back tomorrow with a cute photo from today!

Better

There is this song by Regina Spektor that I love, called 'Better'. I love singing along to it and the music, but I really love the lyrics. Part of it goes "And I don't understand, and I don't understand, but if I kiss you where it hurts will you feel better, better, better, will you feel nothing at all". Sometimes whether a person understands (or doesn't) is not the important thing, but that "kiss you where it hurts", expressing care and concern and empathy is enough to make it better anyway. If you know what I mean.

Thank you everyone for your sweet comments, it feels lovely to have people care. I'm sorry if my blog seems dreary too often. Kate, thank you for your hugs :)

Oh my goodness thank you blogger for autosaving, I lost it all but just cancelled the window and it was saved as a draft. OK as far as yesterday goes, Ash went on to: break a chinese dipping dish (he got into the crockery cupboard, found a bowl and a dipping dish and was whacking them together to make noise), get into the pantry cupboard and unscrew (??!?) the jar of instant coffee and distributing the contents over the kitchen floor, pull an entire roll of toilet paper off and on to the bathroom floor (I was showering, and couldn't see what he was doing behind the shower curtain), stuffed a doll down the ducted heating vent in my bedroom (the vent in the kid's room has been taped down for this reason) and after 3 tries, went to sleep in the afternoon. That was the highlight. But then - this (see photo) happened when I was putting on a dvd to placate Sienna - ouch! My poor little toe is all black and purple.

HOWEVER it was a good day in the end, because I scrapped! Yay! Also made a yummy turkish bread pizza for dinner, it was so delicious (even if a little too crispy). It had a mixture of chopped fresh tomato and tomato paste on the turkish bread, topped by mixed mozzarella and tasty cheese, smoked ocean trout, red onion, capsicum and broccoli florets and served with a dressing of Japanese mayonnaise. Mmmmmm. So I scrapped one page in the afternoon while Ash slept, and another in the evening.

This first page features another of Donna Wild's gorgeous photos from our photo session at Reedy Creek and is for this week's scrapjacked challenge, jacking Kristina Contes. This green fabric and the red label may be found in one of Q Tea's first few kits, you never know ;)

My evening layout was roughly based on Celine Navarro's sketch that is on Pencil Lines this week, and is about my 'itchy feet' that long to travel again. The only thing is my photos of these layouts are not perfectly in focus, was too lazy to find the best light, and it's annoying me. I might photograph them again.

Now I'd better check on Sienna - she seems super tired today, she had a late night last night, and has been sobbing uncontrollably because 1. I wouldn't give her more than 2 crackers at a time until she ate what she had 2. her cracker broke in half so she wouldn't eat it anyway, and 3. I cut the last banana in half before giving half to Ash and half to her - she wanted a 'big one' and refused to eat the half. Dramas dramas.

I also have to head out to the post office later to do Kiti Q's orders and check - this is the most important bit, LOL - whether BAM POP has arrived yet! It's due any day, seriously, and I am really looking forward to seeing the Volume 3 papers and the gorgeous new stamp. I can see rainbows making an appearance in my pages soon...

Almost 10am

By 9 this morning, Ash had poured half a cup of cold coffee down my back and on our bed - despite Ben seeing him reaching up to the high shelf above our bed and saying "No! Ash, no!", unscrewed his own bottle lid of milk (?!?!) and poured the contents over the lounge room floor and thrown the bottle on to the floor, (once refilled with milk a short time later) hitting my toe. Not impressed. Now he is crying because he can't climb backwards up the small plastic slide they have in their bedroom.

Yesterday I took the kids to Spotlight, where Sienna spent 10 full minutes, while I was at the counter buying fabric, screaming. It all started when I said she couldn't go on the mechanical car toy out the front of the shop. She was already upset before we got there, because we had chips for lunch and I broke hers in half to help them cool down faster. She burst into tears and refused to eat the 'little ones'. Back to the Spotlight scenario, whenever she calmed down enough to merely sob dramatically, Ash started crying instead.

Now Ash is trying to hit my laptop with the dustpan. I am so OVER how bratty these kids are right now.

Scrapping-wise, I have nothing to share, though I finished my projects for SC and sent them yesterday, so that was good. Q Tea has taken off well, since launch on Monday the first month are over half way to selling out, which is fab. And I am loving the process of planning and sourcing funky finds for future kits.

The bad news about that is that I have decided not to participate in the Essential Baby scrapbooking forums anymore. It's a shame, they are a really lovely group of women on that forum, and I enjoy reading / responding to the various threads. Well, I will still read it I expect. But it seems I have broken some rules by mentioning how excited I was about starting Q Tea, and I also have been warned about promoting Kiti Q or any other scrapbooking business there. Even if I am not being paid to do so, apparently.

Since the majority of my scrapbooking is linked in some way to a business or magazine, I don't see how I can "show off my scrapping" without INADVERTENTLY promoting someone or other. And if I can't share my excitement at my current projects, even for the few days where they are brand new (as Q Tea), I can't really be myself there. It's nothing to do with the women on the forum, they are fantastic, it's just I have enough emotional issues without being paranoid about every comment I make on a forum and whether it breaks rules. I don't understand exactly why I am breaking them whereas others are not (and I have no problem at all with anything anyone else has said or linked to - I usually just appreciate the info and look it all up) so I am likely to make a mistake again. And I hate the feeling of being 'told off', so it is easier for me to simply not participate.

On a forum note, Scrap In Style forums are a lot of fun, lots of interesting and also lighthearted topics to read, and LOADS of inspiration in the gallery there.

I think you can probably tell I'm not having a great day. But, hey, it's not even 10am yet, I'll just do some dishes and then hopefully do some scrapbooking or creating of some kind. That is bound to make me feel better, I figure. If anyone is offended by me having a little 'vent' on my blog, then I apologise. I feel the need to get it out and am trying not to be too negative, but find it difficult to explain the facts without also explaining my emotional reaction to them - I am a 'temperamental artist' type after all. I'll probably re-read and delete it later anyway.

Hope everyone else is having a great day!