Craft and Quilt Fair in Adelaide.....

....is this weekend! It started yesterday and runs until Sunday.

If you do come along, make sure you say hello to us lovely ladies at the Kaszazz stand! I will be there on Sunday until 1.30pm, can't wait!

If you'd like to find out more about the fair, click here.

The Colour Wheel

Inspired by last week’s blog war challenge – primary colours – I thought I’d share my thoughts on colour with you.
For those of you who do not know me well, my background in more recent years is predominantly digital. I love designing and creating from scratch, and this has meant from time to time coming up with colour schemes.
Believe it or not there is logic..yes, logic...to the art of creating great colour schemes.
The most important tool for this– a good old fashioned colour wheel:




You'll find them at any good art supply store, or Spotlight (where I got mine).

Obviously primary colours are red, yellow and blue. They are ‘primary’ as all colours are primarily derived from them.
Secondary colours are the result of the combination of two primary colours. Green, purple and Orange.
Tertiary colours are a combination of one primary and one secondary.
Adding white to a colour creates a ‘tint’, adding grey creates a ‘tone’ and black creates a ‘shade’.

In the centre of the wheel are shapes and arrows which show colour relationships. Moving the arrow your dominant colour, these shapes show the different relations.

On the colour wheel, directly opposite your chosen colour is it's complimentary colour. If you choose a colour from either side of the complimentary colour, (or a tint, tone or shade of it), you will come across a split complementary colour scheme. This is one of my favourites to work with.

If I choose a dominant colour, this lovely red-violet colour:and then add the split complimentary colours from my colour wheel, yellow and green (or a shade, tint or tone of these colours). These colours make up a basic split complementary colour scheme.

Go one step further, and to each of the colours from the bottom, combine with the dominant colour to add two more colours to your scheme:

You can create great colour schemes just by using just the one colour and it's shades, tones or tints. These are known as 'monochromatic':

Here is a complimentary colour scheme. Starting with red and it's complimentary green, we have a very well known Christmas colour scheme. Combine shades, tints and tones of these colours and you have many variations:

Other relationships include 'triad' - 3 colours evenly spaced around the wheel (Primary colours are an example of this). 'Diad' - using two colours which are spaced two colours apart. 'Tetrad' - 4 or more colours, obtained by using the colours at the points of a uniform shape in the centre of the wheel. 'Analogous' - using two colours adjacent to each other.

And don't forget the famous 60/20/10 rule. Use your dominant colour for 60% of your layout, and another two colours for the 20% and 10%. Of course there are some great layouts which do not necessarily follow this rule, or rules of colour relationships, but I've found this to be the best and easiest way to ensure aesthetically pleasing layouts.

For the most eyecatching layouts, choose your colour scheme from a colour in your photo(s). The results can be striking. As I get more adventurous with my paper scrapping and card making, I try to think of these principles when choosing my coloured cardstock, and which inks I will use. Even though patterned paper sets are lovely, I don't like to think I am limited to using them with every layout.

I will be applying these principles to my next layout for this week's blog war challenge, so please stop by again soon to see what I have come up with :)

Tamsin.

Blog Wars - Primary Colours

As it seems my usual fashion, here's my project from last week's Primary Colours challenge:



These little dinosaurs are to be framed and hung in my youngest son, Ryan's room. At three, he just loves dinosaurs and anything to do with them....they match his floor rug, curtains and wall stickers!
I used the papers from the 'Brights' collection to make these.

Tamsin.

Blog wars - double sided adhesive paper and glitter.

From last week's blog wars challenge:

These are my ATC's for October's swap. As you may have guessed, it's themed Halloween!

My glittery little Jack-o-lanterns are made from doubled sided adhesive paper, punched out with the Super sized circle punch. I shaved a little off the top and bottom, these pieces then were used to create the eyes, mouth and stalk. The circle was cut into segments, rounding the edges with scissors, and then adhered to the card. Then I poured on the glitter!

Multiple colours can be used by masking and pouring only one colour at a time, brushing away any excess before exposing more of the adhesive for a new colour.

The colours are from the new September release glitters, Sweet Orange, Charcoal and Ocean Spray.

Tamsin.

Blog Wars!!

I am back with my first official blog war post! Since I didn't get back on here in time to post before the new week began, I am going to play catch up and do two for the price of one!

If you follow the other blog war girls you'll have seen last week's challenge was based around food/recipes, some of my favourite things! I love cooking! My latest kitchen obsession is preserving. I bought a fabulous book, '5-minute microwave bottling' by Isabel Webb and have made a couple of things, and dying to try lots more.
It's based around using only recyclable jars (the ones you buy your sauces, jams etc in from the supermarket), so I have cleaned and kept all my jars and plan to do a mega cook up in the coming weeks, of jams, spreads, sauces, preserved fruit, and label them to give for presents. The whole process is done in the microwave, even sterilising the jars and vacuum sealing the lids!!

Anyway, in preparation for this I made some labels.


Simple but effective. I used the new label stamps from the July new products, white SB essentials cardstock, gold embossing, brown eyelets and papers from the Ebony and Ivory range. These were quite quick to make, I couldn't bear the thought of spending hours making labels which are inevitably going to be thrown out!





This week's blog war challenge is 'Elegance Vellum'.
I made some gorgeous little boxes to put moon cakes in for the Moon Festival......my father's side of the family is Chinese and we celebrate this every year. It falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, or in other words this year it was the 3rd of October! You can learn more about the moon festival history, legends and traditions here.

I made some 'lotuses' to put on top of the boxes, using vellum, white SB essentials cardstock and the super and jumbo sized daisy punches.




I used fluid chalk to edge the petals, curled them with a paintbrush handle, and fastened them with an eyelet.
The lotus, to Chinese people, is a very significant flower. You could apply this flower to many projects.

I created the lotus box template myself, and made mini sized ones which fit on A5 card (I used my earth tones SB essentials card pack for the boxes above), or two to and A4 sized piece of cardstock. They would make great little gift or bonboniere boxes.
I have created and uploaded a template for this box to share, you can download it from here.
All I ask is that if you want to share this with others, please direct them to my blog and do not link directly to the file from elsewhere.

Send me some pictures of your box creations or leave me a comment and tell me what you think, I love to see other people's ideas and variations!

Tamsin.

Dream Journal.

Here's my latest project, a dream journal. I found some inspirational quotes on a quotes site, framed them and printed them on vellum. I wanted something 'beautiful' to look at and be inspired, so I decorated it with sparkly whimsical flowers, butterflies, leaves and flourish.
Most of the products used are Kaszazz.

This look is acheived by clear embossing, blending and stamping with distress inks, and also lots of glittery ice stickles. The colours I used were Dusty Concord (purple), and Broken China (blue). The organdy ribbon in the Kaszazz range matched perfectly.

I am now working on my blog wars project...having lots of fun with it. Make sure you stop by again shortly to see what I've been making.

Tamsin.

September raffle results!

The September raffle has been drawn by my September baby, Cheyenne, who had her 8th birthday just last week.

The winner is ticket number 25!!

Congratulations Mari... I hope these stamps make your Christmas cards look a treat! I know you will get lots of use out of them in the months to come :)

Well, we are now in October! September was a great month for me, I have met so many new crafty people and now joined blog wars. I have found so much inspiration I am now working on a dream journal (idea conceived by Cheryl Devlin at last week's team meeting, thanks for the inspiration Cheryl!) It's the first 'me' project I've done for a while, a lot of my crafting has been for other people.

I am now waiting for the icestickles to dry, photos will follow soon :) And yes, my last order has now arrived along with my products for this week's blog war challenge. You will be seeing these creations very shortly too.

Be sure to pop in shortly to see what I've been making :)

Tamsin.