Last day to order the Free Wheel special

Click here to see the details of this great promotion!

Without a doubt this special has been one of my customer's favourites! But it comes to an end tonight, 30th September 2008. Just call me before 9pm tonight if you would like to place an order, or you can email me at higgiz@bigpond.com to let me know which set you would like. I can have your order delivered anywhere in Australia. I will be placing the last order from this promo later tonight.

Linda H
0412 375 552

World Card Making Day Event - 8th October 2008

Each year we look forward to taking part in World Card Making Day, and Stampin Up comes to the party (pardon the pun) by discounting some product during this period too. So I wanted to let you all know that this year I will be running a WCMD event at my house at Narara on the Central Coast of NSW, and I've decided to make it into a fundraiser. This past year many of you would know that my family has been touched by cancer, and so it is a cause close to my heart. I've decided to open my home to anyone who would like to make a card with me, and I will be asking for a $10 donation to go to the Cancer Council. I will provide refreshments so that people can grab themselves a cuppa and a snack, but if you would like to bring a plate, it will be gratefully received. My doors will be open between 10.30am and 2.30pm, so feel free to turn up any time between those hours.

There will be some of the Simply Sent kits on sale at 20% off, so these would make great gifts if you are looking for something special. There are also some other discounts too. I have also decided that I will donate 10% of any sales made on the day.

If you are unable to make it to my house that day, but would still like to donate something then please visit my "Girls Night In" website:

http://nsw.cancercouncilfundraising.org.au/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=56764


(Yes, I realize that it's not nighttime! But I dont think the Cancer Council minds what time we donate our money do you?)

Finally, it would really help me if you could let me know if you plan to drop in - that way I can make sure that we have enough cardstock for everyone. Im looking forward to it, and hope to make it a big success and something very worthwhile.

When you book in I can supply you with my address details, so if you would like to come, please email me at higgiz@bigpond.com or call my mobile which is 0412 375 552.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Scrapbooking class this Wednesday 24th October

Just a quick reminder that I am running a "Beginner's Scrapbooking" class on Wednesday this week. Even if you have done some scrapbooking before, feel free to come and learn how to use the Simply Scrappin' packs, which I just love. I will show you how to incorporate stamping into your scrapbooks and we'll go over some design and colour ideas. The class is $15 and I still have a few spaces left. I'll have morning tea provided as well, as the class begins at 10.30am. Classes are held at my home in Narara on the Central coast of NSW, and I am happy to give you the address details when you reserve your place. Email me at higgiz@bigpond.com or you can ring my mobile which is 0412 375 552.

I hope to see you there!

Card for Molly Louise

In my previous post I mentioned that my friend Penny and her family had welcomed their new little bubby to the world. I wanted to show you the card that I made to celebrate her arrival. I've used the "revitalized vellum" technique again, and used the Nursery Necessities set for the star. I also stamped off the little flowers from "Little Pieces" on the vellum, and used the Polka Dot stamp on the background. Didn't it come up nice? And the Taffeta ribbon sets it off I think.

Very happy with this one. :-)

Margy's Baby Shower

My best friend of more than 2o years (!), Margy, and her hubby Wayne are expecting their first baby next month. How exciting! So this coming Sunday her sister Janet, niece Sarah, and myself are putting together a little baby shower for her. Janet and I were on the phone going over ideas for the afternoon, and trying to come up with something that would be suitable. Margy isn't really into "Party Games" and we were wondering what might work for an afternoon tea kind of occasion. I was making a card whilst we were chatting and Janet asked what now seems kind of an obvious question: "Why dont we make a card or something?" Now why, I hear you ask, didn't I think of that in the first place? I don't know!

So we are all going to make a couple of little projects. I thought I'd show them to you here. Hmmmm, anybody want to guess what gender baby Margy might be expecting?

Hope you like them Margy!


There seems to be a lot of little pink babies being born at the moment. My dear friend (and team member) Penny also had a little girl a couple of weeks ago. Her bubby is named Molly Louise and I'm hoping to catch up with them all in the next couple of days. So she will probably be the proud recipient of one of these coat hangers too. Arent they cute? I didn't come up with that idea by myself by the way... the coat hanger idea is featured in our Idea Book and Catalogue on page 59, so I copied the idea and just changed the colours. Some ribbon finishes it off. The baby suit card was featured on Lauren Meader's blog, and I just thought it was so sweet! And easy too, which is even better.

Back with more soon.

Using a Brayer

I bought myself a brayer earlier this year and have been playing around with it from time to time. Originally I wanted it to do the Crayon Resist technique - as an alternative to sponging. It gave a completely different result and I was really pleased with it. But it's not an item that I get out everyday. But I've started using it again lately, and wanted to show you a card that I made last night.

Firstly let me say that Brayering is not an exact science. Which means that you are likely to get a different result every time, and probably not what you expect. But that's exactly what makes it exciting.

My favourite thing to do with a brayer is to create backgrounds, and as you can see here, the backgrounds created are absolutely beautiful. For some reason the results are very atmospheric, which I just love. Certainly if you have mastered some of the more basic stamping techniques, you will find brayering a great next step, and a great way to get some really artistic results. I've used just two colours on this Background - Bashful Blue and Brocade Blue, and then I've stamped the tree stamp from "Lovely as A Tree" over afterwards. Really easy to do. Once I had stamped the trees, I felt that the colour needed to be moved around a little, and so I did that with my aquapainter to create a "halo effect" around the tops of the trees. I think it makes it look kind of misty. But after all this, I have to say that this card looks better in real life. :-) I will show you some other ones that I did soon.

Enjoy!

Bling Class Review

Well last week's Bling Class went well.. I've had some great feedback. And we made 3 lovely projects, if I do say so myself! ;-)

This was the last card we made, and I used the Holiday Harmony Double-sided paper from the Current Mini Catalogue on my Always Artichoke Base. I stamped the large swirl from Baroque Motifs, and then tied a piece of Purely Pomegranate Satin Ribbon (how scrummy is that ribbon??!) around the top. The Christmas tree is from the Season of Joy stamp set (my most favourite Christmas set this year), and I've stamped it in Purely Pomegranate ink, and then used my Stamp-A-Ma-Jig to position a versamarked image over the top. I used Heat and Stick powder to make it sticky before adding Dazzling Diamonds to the image. It looks even better in real life.

I have to say I was pretty happy with this card. If you have any more questions about this card or any other techniques, I am happy to help. And dont forget you can contact me any time to place an order which can be mailed to you anywhere in Australia.

Enjoy!

Linda H
0412 375 552
higgiz@bigpond.com

The last of the trip photos... and then I'll shut up ok?

...Well I will unless a brilliant photo surfaces that I have to share with you... but I think I need to finish off the trip photos for those that are interested. (I've had lots of feedback about the photos... all of it good!) I remember last year I was equally interested in the photos of those that went then... and it really motivated me to do it too. I thought... "If they can do it, why not me?"

So where were we?

Saturday was a leisure day and so Cheryl & Craig, and Greg and myself decided on a day trip out to Green Island. Unfortunately for us, although the day started out beautiful, the wind came up quite strongly and the trip out on the boat was a lot rougher than expected. Luckily Cheryl had brought along her supply of Sea-sickness tablets, and I dont know if that's what worked, but we all felt fine on the trip - unlike some unluckier passengers :-(




(Greg and me on the boat)



And here we have Before and After photos of Cheryl and Craig on the boat:



(That's Before)





And that is AFTER the big wave that came over the side of the boat! Poor Craig was directly in the firing line!





Looking across the reef from Green Island (isnt it beautiful?) I have to say that I was a little disappointed in how "touristy" it was on the island. It's such a beautiful place but it has been commercialized, which is a shame. But it was good to go there anyway. We did the glass bottomed boat thing, and even though it was very rough and windy, it was still amazing.





When we got back to the resort there was a photo call for all the girls... we all put on our bathrobes and headed down to the pool area. Here we are:




How much fun was that... we then headed back to our rooms to find the latest gift waiting for us:



And I have to say that of all the gifts that we received over the 5 days, this one was my favourite. It also went with the Safari theme of the evening - as we had our farewell dinner planned at the Lion's Den that night. Did you notice that the bag is monogrammed? I guess when you give 25 demonstrators all the same bag, it's a pretty good idea to put their initials on them!



And so off to dinner we headed. We had 2 full coaches to take us on the 45 minute drive to the park... somehow Greg and I were lucky to make it on to the "Karoke bus". Vicki Dean and Nicki Tidbold (both from QLD) had organised a CD with lot of party favourites and lots of the passengers were called up to sing their way through Michael Jackson, Cindy Lauper, Abba, and various other standards. It was a blast. We were all singing our lungs out, and the trip was over really quickly.

We arrived at our destination, and there were nibblies and drinks to start with right near the hippopotamus enclosure. (I tried to take photos, but my camera just didnt deal with the dark very well.) Then we walked up the hill towards the big cats. At the top we were lucky to have a fire-eater perform for us and he was really amazing:




(Dont try that at home!)

And then we were ushered into the most beautifully lit area where an amazing meal had been prepared for us. There were lanterns all around and it was fantastic. Our tables were literally in the middle of the lion's enclosure, with only a wire fence (including some electric wires) between us and the lions. The most amazing moment for me was when they let another pride in to feast on the chicken carcasses that we could see spread around on the grass. 10 or 12 lions thundering towards you at full pelt is not a sight that I will forget quickly! The fed a mere metre or two from where we were sitting. How amazing is that?

None of the photos that I took do this evening any justice Im afraid.

On arriving back at Angsana we were absolutely tuckered out after our big day, so off to bed we went.


The final day dawned, and we made the most of our last breakfast in Palm Cove. Here's mine (banana pancakes, with walnuts and maple cream) - did I say that I put on a few kilos - Im sure you can see why?!





And then back to the resort to finish packing and spend some last moments with some of the girls in the lounge lobby before we headed off.



This is Naomi, myself, Julia and Charlene.




Krista (from SU in the states), Emma (NZ GM), me, Karen and Aaron (Australia's GM).




Marelle and Dave.





Theresa and Jane. (Jane made me laugh sooo much - they are both lots of fun!)




Me and Miss Claire



Well that's it for the trip this year. I hope you've enjoyed seeing some of my snaps. I am so grateful to SU for providing a reward like this.. it was so worth all the hard work! I really dont know how to thank them... maybe I should send them a card? ;-)



Bye Palm Cove - Im going to miss you!

Bling Class on Monday night 8th September - ONE SPOT LEFT!

If anyone is looking for a night out on Monday 8th September at 7.30pm, I still have one spot left in my "Bling Class". We will be making a few sparkly projects so if you dont mind going home looking like you've been to a disco then let me know ASAP if you would like to join us. I'm at Narara on the NSW Central Coast and the cost for the night is $15. Email me at higgiz@bigpond.com

First in, best dressed! Hope you can come!

Happy Father's Day

I am just about to head off to the Post Office to send Dad's card for Sunday, and thought that you might like to see it before I do. (I love my parents, but they are technologically challenged, and so will never look here - so I'm safe!) I've used the "revitalized vellum" technique on the background panel - it's a really cool background technique I think. Hmmmm, might have to do a backgrounds class one of these days... what do you guys think? This card also uses the "Spring Break" designer series paper - great for manish cards, although it works well for nearly anyone. Im having a bit of a green week this week, so you might notice that my last couple of cards have taken on that tone.

Back with more soon....

Happy Birthday Cheryl!

Happy birthday my wonderful friend. :-)

Just cards this time

After all the trip photos (and I've still got more to go!) I thought that everyone might appreciate seeing a card or two for a change. So today I've just picked a couple of simple masculine cards, considering that Father's Day is coming up. I tend to use a lot of patterned paper when making Masculine Cards - there are so many great "manish" designs available. Punch out some shapes and there you go.

The one above uses the "Spring Break" Designer series paper layered onto Whisper White, River Rock and Blue Bayou cardstock. There's a little Soft sky in there too. But for a simple card, it works really well.

The one below uses the "Outlaw" papers, and I've kept the cardstock in the same colour range to keep it simple. So the card base is Kraft, and I have used Really Rust, Chocolate Chip and Close to Cocoa cardstock too. The star punches came in handy for this one. (Geometric shaped punches look fabulous on Men's cards)






And another version:






I find that if you keep your colours "blokey" and avoid flowers and frippery, then masculine cards are actually pretty easy. I did say at a workshop recently that simple shapes and designs work best for males. Without going into detail you can probably guess what my guest's reaction was to that!


Hope you enjoy the cards, and I'll be back with some more holiday snaps soon... dont worry I dont have many more to go now!

Happy Stamping!

Linda H