How much can a Koala bear?

Back to nature and its bounty again. Whilst visiting the Blackbutt Reserve near to Newcastle, N.S.W. the other day, Des took these photos.

Good! This one's awake.

This one is soundly tucked up on a skinny branch, amazing how they can sleep like that.

More Papercutting

My first post in March started with papercutting and here are two new ones to share.
This is Chickadees, a design by Ellen Brown and available on her website mentioned in my earlier post. Cut with a craft knife from an unknown but sturdy weight white textured paper, adhered with aerosol glue onto green Bazzill cardstock and a decorative burgundy leather-look paper.

The Church is a design by Kathleen Schanbacher. This design is one of many made available on the wonderful paper cutters site. Access from out of print copies of Back Street Designs Pattern Books scanned into the paper cutters Galleries found here

...it's not that easy being green

This post shares a little of my love for nature's bounty. Yes, it's a long way from paper-crafts and other creative projects but I'm sure you'll enjoy seeing the new addition/s to our household.

Firstly, this is the terrarium that became a "home in waiting" for the past few weeks, while we waited patiently for a licence from National Parks and Wildlife of N.S.W.

When this paperwork finally arrived we were able to go pick up the four "babies" we'd ordered from a licenced breeder, and bought them back home only last night.

These Centralian Tree Frogs are just four months old. This species originates from the MacDonnell Ranges of Central Australia and will grow upto 110 mm (3-4 inches). Their diet currently is three small crickets or wood-roaches, each 1-2 days.

If you're interested to know quite what it takes to set up a frog terrarium, all my learning curve details are documented in this article on Helium website.

A Quilling Experience

It has been a long, long time since I've worked with my quilling materials but I have a feeling it is making some resurgence so I decided to put my fingers to the test again. This first project really possesses more paper-sculpture features I guess and it is the Sturts Desert Pea, being the floral emblem to our state of South Australia.

Next is one of Crimson Bottlebrush flower stems, another of our Australian native flowers. I found inspiration for this design in Jean Woolston-Hamey's book titled Quilling Australian Native Flowers.

My Helium article on The art of Quilling is here for further reading if you like.

Technique: Create an Easy Card Background with Printed Image

Here's a quick an easy background effect to build your cards with.

For each of these Oriental themed cards I've used images from a Singaporean newspaper article relating to Chinese New Year.

To isolate any parts of the image that you don't wish to show up in the background, paint over with white gesso.

For added interest I've also brushed some gold acrylic paint.

To eliminate a parched, dry feel to the finished background, just lay a sheet of waxed paper on top and iron with a moderately hot, dry iron. Be ready to peel it back before it grips to the paint though.

Complete your card with chosen elements.

Jazzing up a Dollar Store Spiral Bound Notebook

If you enjoying creating with your own materials, you can try using any cheap spiral bound notebook and turn it into a unique gift. Determine a theme and colour-scheme with your recipient in mind (it might be YOU), and with few supplies including acrylic paints, rubber-stamps and inks, a little something special is in the making.

For this notebook I've used an Oriental theme, one which I work with often for my cardmaking too.


Further reading on making this notebook is here in my article written for Helium. I hope you might be inspired.