Quick Share before the end of week hits us!

Man alive, this week just FLEW past, all good, except for the silly car who flew a stone into my windscreen tomorrow :( I have such a busy time ahead of me for a while, the joys of pregnancy. Got the hospital appointment and chat on Monday, Swimming for Katie and Doctors appointment on Tuesday, back to work Wednesday and Thursday and then cleaning house on Friday. Hmmmm somehow I'm not looking forward to next week much!


Some shares for you though! First off, this tutorial on how to pop a wordart on your photo is on my photoshop blog, clicky click here.


And I promised some Thomas the tank train engine shares! Awesome day, just such a pity that the heat nearly killed us all!!










Sweet and short today :) Am off to play with an easter layout, trying to pick photos is proving much harder than it should be.

Have a gorgeous Friday and a brilliant weekend!!

Australia day shares

Yesterday was Australia day in Australia. So we all got to spend the day together, away from work and the stresses of daily life and it was just such a good and relaxing day!! We ended up going to the Gold Coast to Currumbin beach, it drizzled on the way there and we were so scared that our 45 min drive would end in dissapointment, but once we got there we had the most perfect weather, gorgeous cloudy skies and such a delightful cool breeze. We had an awesome awesome time!!









I also managed to do two layouts this weekend :) A purple one!!! And a red one, so stepping out of my zone a bit :)

We also had a great day out with Thomas the Tank train, but gosh we all died of heat, it was so unbelievably hot, yucky and sticky and humid! No good for this pregnant lady, but katie didn't seem to notice, she just loved it all, will share photos of that another day :)

I am ultra jealous of everyone who is at CHA, hope you all enjoy yourself and don't drool on the products too much!!

have a great week everyone!!

Week Three Photography Course: The colour of Light

We are up to week three and this week we are focusing on seeing light as the camera see it, and how one of the things we can do to help see the light like we do is to set the right White Balance to fit in with the right light.

For those of you who have been asking, this is just a free course, but an awesomely well and clear structured one, it is one you can find on Two Peas In A Bucket, the link to the first 6 weeks (their are 12 in total) can be found here (it is a PDF so takes a while to open)

So this week we had to find something to photograph that doesn't move :) Meet Mr Fake Sunflower :) We had to do this indoors, pop on a light and also have some natural light.

This was the best and closest photo to the actual flower and vase, and it was taken with my custom white balance setting, using a white cardboard.


This one was taken using the 'Sunny' whitebalance, not too bad, but those whites are def not white.

I have been shooting in Auto Whiteblance, and I never realized what a yucky setting it was till a week ago when someone said that Katie's skin had the 'grey' colour that comes from an auto whitebalance setting. Since then I have changed to custom or sunny and it is sooo much better!


I think this one was taken with your Indoor light setting. Now if it was nightime and my only source of light was the lightbulb it might have worked a wee bit better, but with this photo with some daylight light as well, well yuck!


And I think this one was from the Fluorescent whitebalance setting, obviously doesn't work there!


Was a really fun and interesting learning experience!! Bring on WEEK 4!! :)

Friday, Happy happy Friday!!

Man alive, so glad it is Friday today. Yes that means getting this house cleaned properly and yes it means doing washing, shopping, but I am just soooo looking forward to this long weekend!!


I have been playing with my new 50mm f/1.8 lens and WOWSER I'm totally inlove!! The colours are just so fab and if I get to focus on the right part of Katie the image is so noice and sharp :) Here are three quick shares from our shoot in her bedroom. The light was all pouring in through her window on the left side of the photo :)




And I some more scrappy shares for you all too :)


Have a gorgeous gorgeous weekend everyone!! I'll be back next week with some Thomas the Tank shares :)

Mid week - thank goodness :)

I don't know why, but this week just haven't been fun at all. I'm not sleeping well at night, might have something to do with this belly getting bigger and I'm sure the hot days don't help, but I just feel like breathing fire all day long and everyone in my path might get a burn of it. So I'm trying not too talk to anyone and minding my own business, but I just hate feeling like a 'witch' and I'm hoping this hormonal turmoil will pass on to other pastures quickly.

I did do two layouts over the weekend. This one annoys me and I feel like I need to fix up that bottom circle bit that doesn't match the top. Photo of katie from December on our little holiday. Man she loves being busy and playing and swimming and running and playing.


And while I'm waiting for my CHA Fancy Pants goodies to arrive, I had a play with some of their previous lines and did up a 'goals' layout for 2009.


And just cause I'm a good girl, this was my homework for my photography course I'm doing through two peas :)

We are playing with shutter speeds to see the different effects, which is totally cool.

I had to use a tripod for this one as the shutter speed was soooooo slow that I couldn't handheld it, but doesn't it look prettttty! this is what people do with nature shots that include rivers or waterfalls to make them look all enchanting like.


ISO 200 - 70mm - f/22 - 1/2 sec shutter

This one was taken with a 'medium' fast shutter, so it is halway between sharp and blurry.
ISO 320 - 70mm - f/11 - 1/80sec shutter



And then this last one was a quick shutter, so we can haver it all nice and 'frozen in action'.ISO 320 - 70mm - f/4.5 - 1/1000sec

I have to do a part two of the chapter for homework, so will hopefully get to that this weekend!!

Speaking of weekends! We have an exciting one lined up. We are off to see Thomas the Tank Train Engine at a day out with Thomas, Sooooooo can't wait to see Katie's excitement!!
And then hopefully on monday we can get to the beach for a halfday outing, I just feel like I NEED to see the beach again!

Hope you all have a gorgeous weekend with whatever you might be doing.

I'm off to work again tomorrow and have a busy friday lined up, so it will be weekend before I get to blink!

Am off to bed now, the third trimester 'tiredness' have hit me already!

Bits and Pieces of my life atm :)

Okay so I'm a bit bored. I have been fiddeling on layouts and so wish I didn't as I loved them before the fiddeling and now they are just bugging me. Do you ever have those sorts of days, when you quickly learn that it is just not going be a good creative day and that you NEED to leave the scrap table before you destroy all your layouts with yucky final touches? *sigh* And I sooooo badly want to scrap too! Maybe tonight will look better!


So I've been browsing the net, doing this and that and not much of anything.

I just LOVE LOVE these Happy hats, MAN I NEED one for little bub on the way, aren't they ADORABLE, they have one in their shop which was meant for Xmas, but gosh it is the cutest with its touches of pink,red and white. *sigh* now if only the dollar wasn't as bad at the moment and we could afford one of these.


Onto other areas, Fancy Pants is starting to reveal their new lines!! I SOOOO can't wait to scrap baby piccies on these, won't the make the most adorable baby or toddler layouts?? When I look at them that is what I see :) Those stamps (the round circle on the right) are just toooo die for too!!


On my scrappy table - all in disaster and annoyance haha, I have done a layout using this photo of me, myself and I and did a page on my goals for 2009 :)


I have also used two of these photos for an article page for SC, yep another one that I wrecked with my silly fingers today, it will have to do though as I have run out of time and need to post off the layouts on monday!

AND on other news, if you like the look of the of the above and bottom photo, I have popped up a quick tutorial on pencil borders on my brand new photoshop tutorial blog. they are all done for Photoshop CS as I have NEVER worked in elements, so no idea if they would work in there or not, but you can clicky clicky here to have a look see!


And I'm off to browse more of the web for a wee while, I'm starving, so got good old hubby to make some macaroni and cheese, quick and easy :)

Have a good weekend!!

Yay and Horay!! :)

I'm one happy and very lucky girl today.


I little while back I heard that I got a For Keeps Creative Paper Awards for excellence in Design. I was so mega proud of myself and when I got to the see the layout in the magazine inbetween all the mega talentad scrappers, I couldn't help but have one aweful terrible grin on my face!!


Congratulations to the Elite Team gals!! WOW, awesome entries there!! And congrats to all the other ladies who also got awards for excellence in one area or another.


I see the gals are sharing their layouts, so thought to do the same. Not sure if we can share our other entries though???

But this one the one that got picked to get published :) Such a pretty piccie of hubby and Katie.


On another note! I just found another photographers blog and boy oh boy does she rock the flash!! Man I would LOVE to be able to do what she does!! If you love photography, you NEED to go and check this out!! http://www.rockthatocf.com/

I should be sleeping! I am sooo tired today, but no matter how tired I am, I just can't seem to sleep properly at night, prob something to do with this tummy sticking out and all the jabbing and stabbing from little bub that I feel every now and then through the night, but I keep thinking this is my last chance for a while to get some proper quality sleep and it is just not happening :( blah! But I'm off to go and try again, as attempt number 1 resulted in frustration and I got back up and obviously got stuck on the internet again haha!!

Have a good night/day everyone!!

Layout Share and some of my Sketches

Well I actually ... believe it or not hehe ... have a layout to share. I did this one just for fun using some of my newest yummy goodies. Basic Grey Bittersweet goodies, which you can buy from here together with some new Collage Press.


On other news, you if you are looking for a small community to join and chat on, Stamp and Scrapbook madness has got a BRAND new forum up and going, check it out here.

And lastly, I decided to start up my own resource blogs to keep track of everything I do on DT's.
And the first one I wanted to share with you all are my sketch blog. It just contains my favourite sketches that I have done over my course of scrapbooking for various places. It isn't a blog that I'm planning on updating regularly, but will certainly pop up new sketches as I create them for various places. So if you love sketches, make sure to pop over here, it is also now a link under my 'see more of my work' are on the right hand side category list :) Hope some of you can find some inspiration from there :) Do post me a comment when you use one, as I LOVE LOVE to see what people's take on them are :)

That is it from me! I'm off to the doctors tomorrow for my month 6 preggie appointment, so that should be fun :)

Have a good week everyone!

Shares and my Photography Lesson 1 shares

We have had such a gorgeous weekend!! We had a gorgeous play at a local park, I had some much needed sleep-ins and much needed relax time which was sooooo noice. Here are three photos of Katie at the park, she just LOVED it! (but then she does 'just LOVE' everything at the moment )


We bought a gorgeous rocking cradle for baby (maybe Annabella??) And of course Katie got really worried cause the baby has to come out now, and she just couldn't understand why we have a bed for a baby who is stuck in my tummy haha. But she did proclaim, yep, baby is 'just gonna LOVE it!' hehe.

I also did these three shots as part of lesson 1 for the photography challenge over at two peas. More info here. We focused on aperture this week and seeing what impact it will have on what stays in focus and what doesn't.

Not sure how visible it is here, but this photo was taken in Aperture Mode, ISO 400 and f/3.3 so those vines in the back is blurry.


this photo was taken in Aperture Mode, ISO 400 and f/8 so those vines in the back is just starting to get in focus, but are still a bit blurry.


this photo was taken in Aperture Mode, ISO 400 and f/22 so those vines are in perfect focus with the cradle.


This week we are moving onto shutterspeed.

Join in if you always wanted to know more about shooting in something that isn't auto hehe.

Have a good week everyone!!

Happy weekend everyone!

My little girl today!

I'm so glad it is weekend, and going to rest and rest and rest I think. Work has only been on for one week and I feel drained :(

I have a half completed layout on my desk, for the past few days already as I just don't have the energy to go and scrap. So I'm lounging around!

Have a good weekend everyone!

More action shares :)

A few bits and pieces shares, but first a question!

I'm soooo frustrated with my blog. I created a banner for the blog (ages ago I know), but when I load it up in the banner area and say resize and replace text for header it just doesn't fit properly, so I have had to load it in the html part, but then it doesn't cover up the text for the header, so I have had to replace the header text with a full stop or dot (it is just visible by the 'e' in my header), as I HAVE to have something in there, but of course now my blog is coming up with a dot. If that makes sense to you and you know how to fix it PLEASE help me get my name back on my blog please. Cause now if you subscribe via a feeder or bloglines my blog just comes up as . which isn't helpful at all :(

On scrappy news though, month two of sketches and inspiration is up at 'A Page out of my Scrapbook' and this is my take on the gorgeous sketch. The DT really did amazing things with it so pop over have a look, print out the sketch and have a go as you can win one of two prizes!!!

Onto photography, twopeas are running a 12 week photography course for anyone who wants to play with manual settings, week one is about aperture, the lesson are really easy to understand and the assignments loads of fun, if anyone wants to join in, pop in here.

Second share is more actions I found, this is a creamy B/W action by JennH which I found at twopeas.com and it is just yummo! This is my original photo of katie.


Now if you run the action, but actually switch off the top two layers (which make the photo b/w) you get a bit more impact and oomph on your photo, just look at those eyes, so pretty!!



Same action again, but this time with the top layer switched off for a noice soft b/w photo :)



And this one is the full action run for a bit more of a contrasty b/w.

I love them all!! Love that action, think it is my fav b/w action I have and to think it is for free!!!

I also wanted to share this one below, which I used that action from my previous post for, with a wee bit of extra photoshopping. I scrapped this one for a layout for Creative paper and just loved the colours, soooo yummmo!!


Well I think that is it from me. I'm back to work this week, and we just had a mega busy day due to sales. So my back on this preggy body is KILLING me and I have to go back tomorrow for me killing arrrrrgh! Man if I didn't love and need the money so much hehe!!

Have a gorgeous week everyone!! I have a few more actions I want to share with you all :) I'm a bit of an action junkie! hehe