My cousin ... the cabaret entertainer

My sister Sylvia was on Skype with my cousin I-Lan in England last night and discovered a budding cabaret entertainer ... she's the one on the right.

“Dance as though no one is watching you. Love as though you have never been hurt before. Sing as though no one can hear you. Live as though heaven is on earth.”

~Unknown~

ATC Club

On the second Friday night of each month, Scraploot holds an ATC club.  At the last session we played with transparencies and Linda Baldock showed us the cuttlebug, alcohol inks and more ... it was fun to play.

1. The first 2 ATCs are 2 transparencies sandwiched together with an image in the middle and PVA and alcohol inks smooched around.  Some stamping on the left hand side and inking around the edge.  The white bits are the PVA that hasn't dried yet so these parts will be transparent eventually.
2. The next ATC is a transparency put through the cuttlebug with ink on the pattern. A memory mist background is showing through.
3. The next ATC is a piece of yellow scrapbook paper with a vellum butterfly sticker, transparency with alcohol ink put through the cuttlebug with the tree shape inked.

 The theme for this month's club ATC swap was big hats, and here's my interpretation.

"Make the most of today. Translate your good intentions into actual deeds."
~Grenville Kleiser 1863-1953, Writer~

Collaborative Project!

When I lived in Queensland I got together bi-monthly with a group of ladies to alter books.  This year we'd not only decided to alter our own books, but also do a page for each other's collaborative project.  The technique I used is one of my favourites and I wanted each of the ladies to have a piece made in my style, hence they all look fairly similar, but are still quite different.

The themes were:

• Karla - Hidden
• Kay - Spring
• Evelyn - Birds, eggs, feathers etc. (canvas)
• Amanda - 12 days of Christmas and I did Days 2 and 3.

They'll be in the post on Monday - a little bit past the deadline, because I couldn't get my act together - but I hope they like them all the same.

Belated Halloween ....

We decided to have a dinner party on 30th October and turned it into a Halloween Party.  Ferg was in his element and decorated the whole house with the help of one of his mates Robert.  His other friend Neil carved the pumpkin ... what a talent since it's not something we actually do every year like in the States.

Enjoy ...

• Pumpkins carved by Neil
• Scary hallway decoration
• Blue light and skeletons in hallway
• Ferg and Robert
• Me and Ferg
• Our friends
• David & Tyrone
• Can't have a party without sparklers!

 

 

"Eat, drink and be scary."

~Author Unknown~

Sydney Statues Project

Dressed up and flamboyantly decorated, Sydney's historic statues put on their finery for Art & About Sydney. The talents of established and emerging artists were called upon to creatively enhance some famous figures from our past, inspired by the colourful wearable art scene of the 70s and 80s.

Ferg, Beau and I braved the windy weather and took a tour led by a colourful performance artist - Eddie Sharp - to find out more about our historical statues, their creators and their times, with an entertaining mix of comedy, trivia and fun.

We walked all over Sydney and Beau thoroughly enjoyed his big day out in the city for a few hours.

List of images:

1. Queen Victoria in front of Queen Victoria Building, gifted by the Irish (after they dug her up from a bog apparently!)
2. Captain Cook Front
3. Captain Cook Back
4. Eddie, the tour guide.
5. William Bede Dalley, the only Australian on the tour.
6. Queen Victoria
7. Prince Albert
8. Beau and Ferg taking a break.
9. Il Porcellino, Wild Boar in front of Sydney Hospital. The legend of Il Porcellino is that he will bring you good luck if you rub his snout.
10. Shakespeare and five of his most famous characters: Hamlet, Romeo, Juliet, Portia and Falstaff.
11. King Edward VII

  

  

 



“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it”

~Michelangelo~

ATC Club

On the second Friday of every month, I now meet with an ATC Club through a shop called Scraploot.  The teacher extraordinaire is Linda Baldock who is fantastic.  Here are the ATCs I finally finished for the very first ATC Club swap.  The next theme was Vintage Dancer, but because I was in Queensland and missed the second ATC Club meet I didn't actually know the theme.

  

The third ATC Club meet had us make a box to hold ATCs.  I absolutely love how this box turned out ... it was made using a faux rust technique ... and is all Linda's creation.  Start with a box template and put it through the cuttlebug ... it'll have to be folded to fit in the embossing template but it doesn't matter that some of the pattern is embossed and other parts are debossed (not sure if that's a word).  Paint the whole thing in black acrylic paint.  Dab orange paint in spots and dry ... you won't be able to see the orange very well on the black, but it adds depth to the technique.  Rub over the whole thing with Gold Gedeo Gilders Paste, making sure to have light and dark areas that show through some of the underneath colour.  Dab orange paint in parts again and buff when you have thicker gold area.  Rubb black paint over the edges, especially if you can see cracks in the paint.  Decorate the inside of the box if you want to before sticking it together.  Add fancy clasp to the front and decorate with black german scrap rubbed with the gilders paste ... pretty neat huh!

 

  



"Out of clutter find simplicity; from discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."

~Albert Einstein~

Knave of Hearts

The July theme in the Alice Challenge through the PaperArts Yahoo Group is the Knave of Hearts and here is my take on the theme.

It's Spring down under and it's quite a pleasure walking around Hunters Hill with gardens blooming and birds tweeting.  Every day our garden has some new colour ...

  

   

"A weed is but an unloved flower."
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 1850-1919, American Poet and Journalist~