Stencils 101

WOW! Ok I really really suck at using stencils, and now I know all the reasons why, and so can you. Julie Fei-Fan Balzer has a FREE class on them, it has heaps of videos and tips. Visit her blog http://balzerdesigns.typepad.com/ and click on classes. Then scroll down to Stencils 101 and follow her instructions to get access.
I made myself tags so I know what to do and what NOT to do. I used chalkboard spray as my ‘spray’ and even when I sprayed fairly close, it didn’t bleed under the tag as much as I thought it should have, so I’ll be doing some using glimmermist and homemade glimmermist, just in case there is a difference. I also have another couple of ways I want to try out – inkpad direct, chalks and something I’ve forgotten haha.
Thanks again Julie! Was an awesome class :)

First tag is using Goosebumps spray (FUN!)

Btw get too and DO this class, I think it is only up til the end of 2011 :(

12 Tags of Christmas

Well I fell behind on the 12 tags. This is Day 10. We had Michael’s work Christmas party on Sunday, so wasn’t able to get that day done and only just got day 11 done tonight just before Tim put up day 12.
I couldn’t find my fragments for day 10’s piece and I couldn’t find my shrinkee’s for day 11 LOL. Good thing though, for day 12 I just got a box of the tissue paper in the mail on Sunday LOL. Funny too, as I used it as the background for tag 10, which I made BEFORE Tim put up his ‘using it as a background’– Great minds and all that!!

Here is day 11’s.

12 Tags of Christmas

Day 9

Here we are at day 9, only 3 days to go :( I’ve enjoyed challenging myself everyday. I’m going to have to find new challenges :D

12 Tags of Christmas

Day 8

Well I’m a few minutes late getting this one up. Michael came home and I got busy. Had actually gotten this done last night, so was more just slack getting the photo done.
I meant to add a holly and berries to the blokes hat, might add it later :)

12 Tags of Christmas

Day 7

Well uploaded and more than 10 Minutes to spare…. Pretty good
I really liked Tim’s tag today. I couldn’t do most of what he did as I didn’t have the same gear. Instead of the glassine paper, I stamped a flower/flourish image on PP then crumpled it up. I ran the inkpad over the paper and painted Tattered Angels GlimmerGlam over it. Added some flowers, pearls and some fibres. Topped it with a distressed ‘peace’ :)

12 Tags of Christmas

Day 6

Uploaded with about 1 min to spare.. I think I’m getting worse :P
I like the background of my piece today. I didn’t use daubers, just used some regular acrylic ink. I had to apply it twice to stop the silver coming through.

12 Tags of Christmas

Day 5

It is really hard to see the detail on this piece, the main part is acetate, so it’s really hard to take a good photo of it.
I like todays technique, I had done it before, but done it on smaller pieces. When it came to blotting and rubbing the archival ink off it was harder as it had started to dry a little and the alcohol ink made it sticky. It’s a little more grungy than it should be, but I like it :)
Made it on to the blog with 2 mins to spare today, because I spent 25 mins looking for my camera LOL!

12 Tags of Christmas

Day 4

Finished with 13 minutes to spare today LOL. My best friend rang me this arvo and we chatted away merrily for 45 minutes. When I hung up I remembered I had to get cracking on my tag :O
I followed Tim’s instructions on my bauble with the stains- then crackle paint. Once it had dried and I added the stains on top I had all the crackle lifting off as I tried to wipe it.. Not sure what I did wrong so I added a top coat of glossy accents over the top.

12 Tags of Christmas

Day 3.

Here we are at Day 3 and I am posting in the last minutes of the day LOL! I was at a 12 hour crop yesterday so that cut into a good chunk of ‘Timmy time’. Here is my piece for today. It’s fairly basic, which is good as time was running short.
Thanks for stopping by.

12 Tags of Christmas

Day 2

Wow, I can hardly believe it. I’ve already done day 2. I didn’t have any of the resist paper that Tim had, so I made my own :). I stamped some green spotted paper with Music from Dark Room Door. I then stamped it with a boarder stamp also from DRD. I embossed that image. I rubbed over it with the distress stains then stamped the two Christmas images from Kaisercraft. I added a ‘on the edge’ diecut then added some trim and a diecut from Kaisercraft. Woot. 2/2 :)

12 tags of Christmas

Day 1

I am stoked that I actually finished Day 1, on Day 1, with 7 mins to spare LOL!
Here is my interpretation of Tim’s tag, and his techniques. I embossed the background and just inked over it. For the bird I followed Tim’s ‘embossing – embossing’. I made scrunched flowers using the distressed flower die. My leaves are from the Autumn leaves die. The inking of the background paper/leaves/flowers was using the ‘baking paper technique’ (Distress inks on baking paper-glass-craft mat-whatever and then spritzing water over it and putting your paper on that)
I’ve not added a tie to the top, I am going to stick them down to a mini book

Time Flies?

WOW.. March is the last time I blogged.. that’s ages ago lol. Hmm a lot has happened and at the same time, not much haha. Haven’t dieted in a while. Really enjoyed the CSIRO diet, didn’t lose heaps of weight, though I wasn’t exercising etc, so I guess it’s to be expected. It was pretty easy to stick to and I will go back ‘on’ it. Really it is more of a lifestyle change than a real diet.
Went up to Qld for a couple of weeks. Had an alright time. I went up to Bundy for one of my best and oldest friends 30th, unfortunately her father in law passed away and she ended up having to go to Brissy so we only saw each other once.

Haven’t scrapped lots this year. Have been rather slack on the swaps too.. Hopefully 2012 will be a better scrappy year :)

The garden has been going along really well. Have got all of our spring/summer stuff on the go atm. My favourite time of the year- food wise :)

Have crop for a cause this weekend. Lots of stuff to make and chatting to do. Tim Holtz has his 12 tags of Christmas again this year so am planning to join in.  - which is why I ventured over to my blog LOL!

Week 3 Day 4

Tonight we had a beef vindaloo and the mint yoghurt, had a salad to accompany it. The curry was lovely and flavoursome, but it was really hot, I think the chilli I picked might have been a bit spicey.. that or I should have seeded it lol.. lesson learnt :)

Week 3 Day 3

A basic salad and oven cooked chicken. Unfortunately the chicken was tougher than old boots, and it wasn’t how I cooked it (was lovely and moist, just tough) returned the uncooked portion to Coles and got a full refund AND products to the value of the cost.. so we chose steak LOL.

Week 3 Day 2

I made the lemon cous cous from book 2 and had one of the ‘rubs’ from book one. Was really yummy!

Week 3 Day 1

A nice and simple chicken stir-fry with lots of veggies. I’m really getting into the whole stir-fry thing.. I love sesame oil..
Today was the start of a new week, which means weigh day. I lost 1.6kg this week.. Whoot!

Week 2 Day 7

Open sandwich with rocket, chicken meat and my home grown alfalfas.

I had white fish on a bed of stir-fried zucchini and beans. There were 3 different types of zucchini and those and the beans were from my back yard.

Week 2 Day 6

I really don’t like apples, so I’ll do anything to ‘hide’ them in food lol. Here is a really yummy sandwich that was, apple, cheese, plum sauce, sun flower seeds and something else.. lol sounds bad but it was really yum.

Tea was steak with fried onion and capsicum. Had a big salad, fresh beans and beetroot from my garden.

Week 2 Day 5

I made the spinach and pumpkin frittata today for lunch.. It nearly killed me putting in the effort. The cold is getting worse and standing and cooking was a silly thing to do, but I wanted to make this so bad lol. It’s 2 serves of veg, 1 of protein, fat and dairy. The whole thing makes 4 serves which is perfect for the next couple of days.. and I can freeze some.
Was really nice! Next time though I’m adding 1/2 as much spinach and will add corn and zucchini instead.

Week 2 Day 4

I cooked up a double batch of the Stroganoff and will have that on Sat night as Michael will be away metal detecting. It will save me cooking for just me.
Have come down with a cold, so didn’t want to go to the effort of preparing veggies, so used frozen instead.

Week 2 Day 3

Today a bright fresh yummy day
Lunch was to be left over Tandoori Chicken, salad, and bread and butter, but I skipped my bread, and had a half serve instead, so I could have Apple Crumble in the evening. I didn’t over cook the chicken at lunch, plus it had marinated overnight, so was much yummier than the evenings meal.

This is steamed salmon, with Thai sauce and stir fried veggies… OMG! It was divine, delicious, spectacular, stupendous, fantastic, phenomenal.. best fish ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Apple Crumble, same as last night, but this time I added the custard then took the photo

Week 2 Day 2

Today was salmon and salad.

One complaint I have about the CSIRO’s Wellbeing Diet, is that I am using book 2 and it refers to a few recipes that were given in book 1. I don’t think that’s right. Luckily I was able to get book 1 out of the library. Tandoori Chicken with steamed broccoli and brussel sprouts. I didn’t feel like only those two, so I also steamed cabbage and pumpkin. Both are on the free list so a-ok.


I saved a fruit, fat, and bread unit so that I could make the apple crumble from the recipe book from the CSIRO (it’s a separate book). Was great! I also had a serve of low-fat custard with it. Who said this was DIET food?

Week 2 Day 1

Start of week 2. With the big blowout reception, birthday cake and 1 extra piece of bread, I managed to loose 1kg. Not bad..!
Here is my lunch, was a tin of salmon, various salad items and 40g of Avocado.

Tea tonight was supposed to be a meat in a broth type thing.. It didn’t appeal to me, and as I have been a little ‘off’ today (sore throat) I didn’t want to go shopping for the various things I need for this week. So I used everything from my fridge and some porterhouse steak. The stir-fry is similar to last nights, but I added chilli and garlic as well.

For a late snack I had this shake/smoothie, I had a fruit and a dairy unit left, so I made this, fruit unit half half with banana and mixed berries and dairy was 1/2 yoghurt and 1/2 milk. YUM!

Week 1 Day 7

Well here we are at the end of week 1. Have to say it’s been really easy. Foods a little more work than I usually do, but it’s really yummy and therefore worth the extra effort.
Tonight’s tea was two lamb meat patties, mixed brown and white rice, stir-fry veggies and natural yoghurt. Such a strange combo of foods… but all worked so well together lol.  I’ve been borrowing the CSIRO’s Total Wellbeing Diet books from the library, but I think I might have to buy them.. Very handy!

Week 1 Day 6

Ah back to the full diet lol. Last night was great, but I noticed when I woke up I was actually kind of hungry, which makes NO sense as we were all stuffed full of wonderful yummy delights.. When I’ve been waking on the diet, I’ve been able to eat, but haven’t actually felt hungry as such.
Here’s tonight’s tea, it’s fish and a warm salad, asparagus, 2 colours of capsicum, pumpkin and tomato.

Week 1 Day 5

Well yesterday was day 5 and we had a wedding to go to, so I tried to cut as much out of my day as I could so that I could enjoy my blow-out.
For lunch I cooked up a mix of veggies and my protein portion. In hindsight I should have skipped my protein… Live and learn lol.

I forgot to photograph the other glorious food from the wedding, but I managed to remember the dessert ;) It was beautiful. I ate too much all night, but as I don’t really drink, least I missed the calories/kj there.

Week 1 Day 4

Day 4 on the CSIRO’s total wellbeing diet. It’s going quiet well, I don’t get hungry and certainly get lots of variety, with out it being ‘over the top’. I photographed lunch, which was a turkey and cranberry sandwich with salad, I didn’t add the avocado as I that didn’t appeal to me.

Dinner was polenta 'crumbed’ chops with fetta & zucchini(it actually had onions and tomato in it, but that’s the name of it lol). I also added beans it. I included a salad with tea so I could have the avo from lunch lol.

Week 1 Day 3

Well I had a busy day today. My great friend Tracey rang me up and came over to my house to collect her table from Scrapping the other night. She surprised me with cake, belated, for my birthday and also for Holly’s birthday. So we went over to Holly’s and shared the cake joy :)

I had a small portion of the cake (which was a delicious Jam, Cream Sponge cake). For eating the cake I traded in 1 bread, 1 dairy, 3 fat and 1/2 a fruit serve. I thought I could do with out the extra sugar from the fruit lol not that the jam counted for 1/2 a serve of fruit :)
Later I had an appointment then Michael and I had to go shopping (again right?). This time it was a wedding present, pants for said wedding and a tie. I got myself a couple of kitchen goodies while out and about
Anyhow tea was supposed to be fish and salad, but when I got home I discovered that the fish (which the boy chose) was FROZEN so I ‘stole’ steak that is an up and coming meal and we had that instead lol. Here is my meal.