We love Australia Day here in Australia. We spend the public holiday celebrating in so many different ways. Today we will be having a barbie (BBQ) with a few snags (sausages) and a tinny or two (a can of beer...lol)! We fly our flags high with Aussie pride, even on our cars!

On to some creative goodness..... I actually made this last year at the beginning of December but it was sitting against the wall until I was able to find some trim or ribbon I like to go around the edges. It is finally up on the wall now and I just love looking at it when we come and go through the front door.


As you can sort of see I have a hall stand at the front door. I found it at a furniture store very cheap as the mirror had been smashed so they took a large chunk of money off it. I was planning on putting a mirror back in but never got around to it (so glad I didn't now). I thought it would be the perfect place for the magnet board. I use the House of 3 digital project kit for the months and the dates. I used my House of 3 House Warming kit to print the frame out and add some mirror paper to the inside of the frame. Similar to the one I made for my house warming album here.

I simply purchased a cheap magnetic board from my local office supply store with some plain brown wrapping paper to cover the board with. I went with the brown wrapping paper is it's really thin, perfect thickness for the magnets to still stick to the board. I used a bunch of stamps from my Kenner Road kits and some from one of Tim Holtz's collections here. I also used Tim Holtz's distressing inks to stamp them onto the brown paper and used a blending tool to ink the edges of the paper. 


I was inspired by Heidi Swapps notepad she made for her magnet board so I made a similar little notepad. I used a gorgeous teal Prima flower and added a gorgeous crystal Christmas decoration to it and stuck a magnet on the back of it.


I cut a piece of muslin, inked and frayed the edges, added a Kenner Road stamp and a vintage photo from Old School (August '09), added some hand embroidery with pearls, leaves and glass hearts, and added a hand drawn bird on canvas stuck onto some chipboard and added some vintage trim from my stash as well as some teal trim from We R Memory Keepers. I then attached all this to a vintage paper bag that I received with some free goodies from Blue Bazzar. I inked the edges of the paper bag as well to give it a more aged appearance.


I printed out the Hof3 months and dates and inked all the edges, attached some beads and wire to some of the dates and hung them from a magnetic clip with an album ring to hold the dates.
I took another vintage photo from KR kit Old School '09 and hand sewed around the edges, added some vintage trim from the same KR kit and threaded the trim with some teal embroidery thread with wooden beads in every second loop. I simply added a Prima butterfly with a magnet on the back to hand it from the board.


Lastly I took an small old frame I found in my stash and covered it with the brown paper with more TH and KR stamps and added some little teal pearls from Kaisercraft. I inserted a photo of the girls inside and added a little word bit I made in Photoshop, "You are loved". I found a gorgeous teal 'Paris' broach and added a magnet on the back of it and added it to the board.

As promised I finally found some time to edit the Christmas gift photos. This year I had so much fun creating some of the Christmas presents for friends and family. I plan to keep the tradition going each Christmas. I loved the look on my family's faces as they unwrapped their handmade gifts. My sister especially. It took several hours to convince her to just open the gift. She said it was wrapped so beautifully she didn't want to open the gift. I had to threaten her saying that I would go home now if she didn't open it. My niece Miss C loved her gift, she has it sitting on her dresser and to my surprise, the colors in her room go perfectly with the canvas. Ok, on with some photos!

I made my 3 nephews gift card holders for their gift cards. Nothing fancy as they just tore them open as I suspected....lol. I simply stapled a bit of ribbon the the bottom of the gift card to use it to pull the gift card from the handmade envelope. Stamped them with Pink Paislee's Mistletoe and Co Impressions clear stamps and also used Fiskars a to z clear stamps that I got in one of my Teckni Colour kits from Tarisota. I used a sewing machine to seal the edges of the envelopes and stuck a Making Memories glitter foam sticker on the back to seal the envelope.


 My brother has a terrible memory (either that or he just couldn't be bothered....lol) and he always forgets our birthdays so I made him a magnetic birthday reminder calendar so he can put it on his fridge. I got the idea and the printable perpetual calendar from the Pebbles Inc blog that Celeste Smith made. A perfect and fitting gift for my lazy bones brother! I  used all Kenner Road goodies from Windy Corner (October '09 Add on kit) and Handmaiden (October '09 Main kit).

Each Christmas I change the colors I use for wrapping the presents and this year I chose gold, red, green and beige/tan/brown. Wrapping presents would have to be my favorite part of gift giving.

I was inspired by a Christmas tutorial that Kendra McCracken (this woman has such amazing talent) did for Fiskars called Cardinals and Tags Tree so I made similar ones as my gift tags for my family's presents and added American Crafts Thickers for the first letter of their names.

I wanted to make my sister an art quilt similar to this one but with a neutral color theme so she could hang it in any room she wished. I had so much fun with this doing all of the sewing by hand. Time consuming but loads of fun to play around with different stitches. I really can't sew to save my life so I just googled a few videos on different types of stitches and away I went...lol! Here are the materials I chose:

I didn't end up using all of the materials, just  a few patterns I thought went really well together. I have loads left for future ideas, I think I may make a few more of these as I loved the way it turned out. I went with the flow and didn't worry about making any mistakes (one you can see quite plainly......lol) I wanted it to look like I had made it, not purchased it. So some of the stitches aren't straight, I love that it isn't perfect it just adds charm! Here is what the finished quilt looks like:

The material squares have all been hand sewn onto canvas and I framed the inside with this gorgeous sequined trim I found in my ribbon stash. The material and the frame are the only items I went out and purchased, the rest of the products I found in my art cupboards. Oh I did go out into the yard to find a twig......lol! Here are some close ups of the individual squares, hope you like them!

Continuing on from the last post.... A canvas for my niece Miss C. This is the final part of the Mixed Media Canvas, hope you liked it!

Continuing on from the last post.... A canvas for my niece Miss C.

For this post I want to concentrate on adding highlights to the canvas and touching up any area's that I thought needed that little bit extra.