Snip, Snap, Crop

Sometimes being a Fiskateer leads to some surprise benefits. Not only do you get great hints and tips from the forum about how to use your Fiskars tools - both scrapbooking and gardening, on the odd occasion you receive a surprise parcel in the mail to try. This happened recently when I received this great pair of pruners - The Power Gear Pruner. This product has recently received the Ease-Of-Use certification from Arthritis Australia and New Zealand. When I first opened it up I thought that I had broken it already because the handle moved unexpectedly and I was immediately disappointed with my stupidity. However, when I actually read the instructions I quickly realised that it was designed to move that way - how clever! So in actual fact I wasn't as stupid as I thought, apart from the fact that I should learn to read the instructions first and then try. Being a sufferer of Rheumatoid arthritis for almost 20 years I was pleasantly surprised by how easy the pruner was to use on quit...

My dear friend Ingeborg has her sketch blog that she started a short time ago and I have printed off the sketches but not used any yet. So, this weekend I had a play with a couple. This layout was part of a CC challenge to use eyelets and buckles and I did not have a large photo like the sketch showed so used two 4" x 6" photos instead. This was a card challenge for World Card making day, to use several patterned papers, an old preprinted chipboard element and make it a hello card for someone you have not seen for sometime. Kim gave us the challenge to create a shaker card and it is a couple of years since I have made one. I like to do them with winter scenes from old cards and a window of glitter but didn't have any scenes to work. So, I pulled out the Joy2Christmas stamps from the Stamps of Life and made a snow globe instead. I wish I had a more suitable background paper to use as I am not so happy with the result but it looks okay. Kerri challenged us to make a lo...

Happy world cardmaking day to you! I almost forgot but am about to head off and do some now before I go to bed so at least I can say I have done something. In actual fact I have been working on a layout based on one of Ingeborg's sketches but just not finished yet..... maybe tomorrow for that one. The weekend before last I headed to a Fiskars workshop at Michelle's place and we made a couple of lovely layouts and a number of cards so here are a few of my favourites to share: And before anyone asks..... yes that is me in traditional Javanese costume for my "daughter's" wedding in Indonesia in 2003. She had the kebaya (top) specially made for me and my hair is done with a sanggul, a traditional hairpiece, held on with lots of pins. I am used of this style of dress after having lived there as an Exchange Student so quite enjoyed the opportunity to dress like it again. The same weekend I had a cybercrop at Scrap of Difference . They were able to blame me for the them...