Sheer Heaven Transfers & Victoria (flower alert!!!)

Today is my first atc class with the Sheer Heaven Transfers, well not actually the first one as I've done this technique before in my classes, but it will be the first time many of my students will have used this fantastic product! It's got to be the most fool-proof type of transfer one can do. All you need is a sheet of Sheer Heaven (available at Scraptivate of course), a teaspoon and some 70% Isopropyl (rubbing alcohol). I also like to use watercolour crayons to add extra colour around areas where the transfer doesn't go so the transfer blends fairly seamlessly onto the background.


It does need to be transferred onto a porous surface, watercolour paper, card stock, scrapbooking paper, book paper or even fabric! Definitely a non-coated surface, though you can use inks to colour your paper before hand if you like, just keep the colours light so you can see the transfer. Jessica is the creator of this product and she has a wonderful website where you can learn about all the different things you can do with it, here's the link.



"Secret of Life"...

"Beauty"...

"Trouble"...

"Accursed"...

"Classic"...

Towards the end of our trip last year we visited a wonderful city called Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Of course a visit to the famous Butchart Gardens was an absolute must. I DO like real flowers, really I do!!! I have an aversion to flowers that are used in abundance on scrapbook pages as fillers and as I'm not a frilly, pretty type of person (my style I'm talking about...lol) you won't see flowers appear on anything I do. But hey, I'm a Gemini (yep a BIG birthday coming up soon) and I'm quite within my rights to change my mind. You never know, I could end up with grand-daughters one day and I might go all "florally"....but don't hold your breath. ;-)

So back to Victoria, we also visited the Butterfly Gardens before Butchart and was amazed at the beautiful habitat where butterflies flit around in an enclosed (humid) garden and the visitors can walk through to be amazed by their beauty.

The first picture gives you a glimpse of what lies on top of those glorious wings....we followed this one around for ages trying to get a picture of it when it landed but it kept flying away. So we sat for a while, it landed on the seat and Grant put his hand out near it and it opened up it's wings for us. What a tease!!! Fabulous colour!

Butchart Gardens is 55 acres of lovingly maintained gardens, pictures speak louder than words....

I have culled my photo's from the trip and I have 103 of Butchart Gardens alone! That gives you an idea of how fantastic this place is, if you go to Victoria...it's a must-see place.

On a final note, my friend Joan turned 50 last Sunday so we had a little get-together at Michael's place to celebrate her birthday and catch up with everyone again who attended her funeral. Joan was always 2 months older than me which was always a cause for a little ribbing here and there about her being the oldest. I had decided that it wasn't particularly fair she should stay 49 forever so she is going to age every year, as I do. There won't be any more birthday celebrations at Michael's, but I'll be having my own little "happy birthday today Joan" day on the 26th of April each year. It would also have been their wedding anniversary which makes it doubly difficult for Michael. But she's still around, floating somewhere on the edge of my consciousness all the time and occasionally I catch a glimpse of some "thing" at the corner of my eye.....you never know!!!!

Sheer Heaven transfer class & more of the TRIP!

Back in November was when I posted the last instalment about the mega-trip we did in April/May last year. I have all my photo's as my screensaver (about 1000 of them!) and my computer runs fairly constantly so as I come in periodically to check my emails etc, I am constantly reminded of the wonderful times we had. So I'll bore the pants off you for a little longer with a few more stops before I go onto the Sheer Heaven transfer atc's which is the next class I'll be teaching.

After Skagway (previous posting in November) we went to Sitka. I've checked the photo's and they are pretty boring, we went to a wonderful museum there and I took lots of photo's of masks and wonderful eskimo type stuff but it probably doesn't translate well so I won't put any of those up. Next up was Glacier Bay and viewing of the Hubbard Glacier.....what can one say about a 6 mile long piece of ice than constantly breaks off into the ocean....utterly amazing!!! Nothing that photo's can do justice to so I won't put those up either.

THEN we went to Vancouver and this city is absolutely beautiful! We spent a little time at the Capilano Suspension Bridge and the park where it lives. Kinda scarey walking across, for others though, not me, I'm not a 'fraidy cat about heights or wobbly things.

Capilano Suspension bridge in the background, myself, Grant and Joan.

We took the skyride up to Grouse Mountain where we saw fantastic wood sculptures, lots of snow and generally had a great time fooling around on this picture perfect, sunny day. Here's a shot taken out of the window of the skyride, oh for views like this every day!!!

Here's Mike, one of our ship companions doing his "Snow Angel" for us! I'd never seen that before, coming from Western Australia where there is no snow!

Yes, there was a bit of snow up there!!!

One of the large wood sculptures at Grouse Mountain, these things are huge!

This will give you an idea of the size of them, Joan and Mike inside one.

Joan and I also did a foot wander around of Vancouver as well. I was on a mission to try and find a "Nixon" item of clothing for my son, ended up buying a belt and a key-ring. I did run across a shop that had some really pretty glass vases in it that I thought he might appreciate so I took a photo of them for him. Funny thing was, as Joan and I were about to enter the store, we could smell this strange, familiar odour wafting from inside??? We'd only just passed 2 policemen too! Being good tourists, we just ignored it as if it was a common occurrence here in sleepy ol' Perth too! We were careful not to stay too long though, just in case we "forgot" our sense of time and missed the boat! lol

Here are 3 atc's from the next class, Sheer Heaven Transfers.

"Smile"... (flourish stamp from Michelle Ward's Green Pepper Press "Juliet" plate)

"Reactive Scattering" ... I've had this filmstrip punch for years and thought it lent itself rather nicely to this odd atc! The circular lined stamp in brown is from a Non Sequitur plate, Burning Hearts.

"Secrets"...
More to come...

Multitude of Mixed Media & Skagway!

This post has, as the title suggests, a multitude of mixed media.....

First up is my book challenge page for the Creative Soul Retreat. The theme this month was "A few of my favourite things". Of course, I couldn't get out of my head the Gary Larson cartoon where (from memory) there is a couple of detectives in a guys house, he's dead on the floor, on shelving in the room there is "bright copper kettles, warm woollen mittens, brown paper packages tied up with string" and one detective is saying to the other... "These must be a few of his favourite things!"...... So what I did was to think about some of my favourite things (techniques) and I came up with this page.

Each square has a couple of my favourite things on it.

(top row, left to right)...

Old Germanic text and Micaceous Iron Oxide (a Golden paint - gorgeous!),

Gothic transparency image over foil tape,

Textured fabric with metallic thread wrapping,

(middle row, left to right)...

Canvas Paper with Rinse Aid Resist background & Metal wings,

Texture Paste and Silver Rub'n'buff,

Shrink Plastic with HIM stamp, Swarovski crystals and German Scrap,

(bottom row, left to right)...

Black Corrugated cardboard with black onyx mica glitter & embossed cuttlebug shape,

Foil tape and my tracing wheel to make the little track marks,

Webbing spray in both white and black and metal cogs.

Hmmmm.....the book page above looks suspiciously like the new inchie canvas class that I'm teaching in December at Scraptivate! Even though they may look similar, they are obviously different (to the trained art-eye!!!). lol The girls in this 4" x 4" inchie canvas class have a choice of doing either a Crimson/Black/Silver one, or a Blue/Cream/Burnt Umber canvas. Here's the blue one...

...and the crimson/black/silver...

While I was on an arty roll over the last couple of days, I also made a card for the Inkurable Stampers Challenge. This time the we had to use both a bottle cap as well as some beads in our project AND it was a Christmas theme. Well, you just KNOW that I have loads of Christmas themed stamps with reindeer, Christmas trees, Kris Kringle and the like.....NOT!

This was a bit of a challenge for me, but heck, that's what challenges are supposed to be dummy! (me dummy, not you dummy). Last month I was lucky enough to win a gift voucher from Barb at the Stamping Queen and I promptly chose one of the fabulous Stampotique stamps - Prom Queen. I already have Glimmering Hope and Girl with a Lunchbox so now I have a sister to join the other 2! Here she is in all her glory......warning....please don't take offence at the quote on the inside....it's something I have NO control over. I blame my Dad and my brother for my warped sense of humour. Definitely not my fault!

(see how keen I was to get this photographed? the glue under the crystal is not dry!!!)

I had intended to include some of my remaining mega-trip photo's but there just seems to be too much other stuff here...what the heck, it is my blog after all and if I choose to bore you with some pics, so be it! Skagway here we come.....

We had the 2nd big highlight of our trip in Skagway, a journey on the White Pass Scenic Railway, if you go to Skagway this is a wonderful train trip. It's also the only time I've ever actually been snowed on....and they DO look like individual little lacy things when the snowflakes land on you!!!! On the flats, not much snow....

a "bit" more snow....

Here we are at the end of the rail journey, ready to start the bus trip back. Beautiful scenery, yes, it was cold! From left to right, Mum, me, Ev, Pete and Joan, Grant was the photographer.

There was a fabulous building in Skagway that's being constantly repaired with driftwood, the way it was originally done. Wonderful! Do the 3 little pigs come to mind????

...and just in case you forgot how we got around on our mega-trip....

Technique Book #2, some trip pics.....and my Dad

Next Saturday I have a full class of girls who are going to do my Technique Book #2. This is a marathon effort learning 5 techniques in 4 hours and putting the book together that displays it all as well. Technique Book #1 went really well and is here if you'd like to take a look. As in the Technique Book #1, I've included full instructions for each technique. This time I've gone for beautiful brown, rust, cream and little big of moss green for the colour theme of this book. The girls know I'll never do a bright, primary colour scheme...just not me!

Before I show you the pictures, big news!!!!!!!!........I've finally worked out how to make EVERY picture clickable in my blog. Apparently when you upload an image in your Posting page and then move it down to where it belongs in the writing, not all of the code gets transferred. So now I have to upload the picture in "Compose", go to "Edit Html", "cut" the code string by right-clicking, then "paste" it where it belongs amongst the wording. This way all the code stays put and each picture will be clickable. Just takes another few minutes to do to every picture...bit of a drag but at least it works!

Cover of Technique Book #2

Foil Tape...

Embossing...

Peeled Paint...(I made sure I credited Claudine Hellmuth's Collage Discovery Workshop book for this technique....love it!!! Though I always make sure I write my own descriptions and not copy others words.)
Soot...

Smoosh & Masking...

I did several pages for the Smoosh technique and added them to the book so the girls will be able to add their favourite colour combinations, remembering of course to write the colours on the back of each page so they can replicate it if they want.

Contents Page...
Back cover....(don't you love that Cosmo Cricket faux wood paper!!!)

Time to continue some of my mega-trip pictures. Ketchikan was our next port of call, a lovely little place though a little brisk for my liking! Joan and I visited one of the museums there and saw some wonderful old totems as well as fantastic displays of native Indian life set out in full size displays. This is where I bought my fabulous mask!!! They also had the most amazing Russian Dolls for sale in several stores, yes....we bought some of those too!

Creek Street is a wonderful boardwalk that winds it's way along the Creek in the centre of town. Lovely little period shops line both sides and it's a truly picturesque place.

Heritage Totem Museum...

Russian Dolls in shop window...

Pretty, mountainous and cold!!!...

Masks from the Totem Heritage Museum...


Now for news on my Dad (I have some family members overseas who visit this blog to see how he's doing so I like to include a picture so they don't forget what he looks like!). He had his tracheotomy tube taken out yesterday lunchtime and Grant and I went up to see him at around 3pm and he was SOOOOO grateful to the nurse who took it out. He lovingly called it "that mongrel thing" when referring to the tube and it was really good to hear his voice again. Then I got a phone call from my Mum this morning saying Dad had a really rough night trying to breathe without the ventilator so they made the decision to insert the trach tube again at 7am today. I'm sure he's really pissed off at having that thing in there again but given a choice of breathing and not.......well, I know what he'd opt for!

Just to show you that he definitely still has his funny genes still working, here's a picture of Joan and Dad last Sunday when we went in for a visit. Yes, that's his "sick bag" on his head and no, it didn't have anything in it!!!

So unfortunately it looks like he'll be spending more time in ICU as one of the only patients actually awake in there he keeps his nurses on their toes. His first sips of water after they took the trach tube out was to be at 5.30pm last night but he asked his nurse if he could forgo that and wait until the party at 11pm when the beer would be arriving!!! lol

Tomorrow is Father's Day and we're going for a visit with him first thing, but I have to wait in the waiting room as I have developed a cold and definitely don't want to pass it onto him. So I'll be making him a card tomorrow morning for my husband and son to take into him (along with the new Jeffrey Deaver book)......I have a PERFECT picture of him to use for the card and I'll post a picture of it when I next blog. Think he'll get a kick out of it!