Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to you all!!

May you have been touched greatly by Jesus' love 

and peace as we celebrate this wonderful season!

Vintage Ornament Christmas cards

It's only 5 more sleeps!!! WOW can you believe it?!?!
How is all the preparations going? Shopping? Christmas cards??
I'm nearly done, just a few more handmade gifts to finish and we should be good to go! YAY!
Here is a selection of cards I've made using the gorgeous Ornament Keepsake stamp set in the mini. It's sooo pretty the ornaments in this set, but this one is my absolute favourite!
This first card I kept it more simple than the rest, you can always "step it up" with cards so you will see with the other ones that I've added a greeting and a row of pearls. It's been cool to make cards with more of a twist on colour this year, I've been really happy with them!

Cherry Cobbler and Midnight Muse

 Pool Party, Midnight Muse and Lucky Limeade

 Summer Starfruit and Sahara Sand

Well best be off, more Christmas cheer to spread, hope the next 5 sleeps are full of the seasonal spirit and love and joy!

Clearance Rack, get your Bargains NOW!

You have to love it when it's SALE time, of course if you don't have to wait till after Christmas then it's even better!!! So check out the latest promo from Stampin' Up! and grab yourself a BARGAIN!!!! It's totally awesome and you'll find something just right I'm sure!

Here are the lists.....

Week one 14-20th December

Week two 21st Dec - 3rd Jan

Week three 4th - 10th Jan

Week four 11th - 21st Jan

Be sure to order with each new release of clearance items as they come available in the following weeks!
I look forward to hearing from you soon!
YAY!!!! YAY! YAY!!!!!!

Christmas Deer card

Can you believe that it's only 11 more sleeps till Christmas!!! It's excitement city here in the Torrents household as we are having a super wonderful Christmas season!!
The last 2 days have been filled with glitter!! Yes it's quite literally EVERYWHERE!! Before Allan (my super man) left for work today I saw little silvery sparkles in his beard and on his cheek! I tried to get it off and all he said was...
"Hey I've got 4 girls, it's going to happen!!"
Sooo love it, and him!! What a great response!!!! :)
So my card I'm showing you today has been posted and is happily on it's way to Denmark! My gorgeous blogging friend TINA loves teal and so I made it to suit!
What do you think? DO you stick to the traditional colours of the season or branch out into colour land??


I added some smooch spritz and a bit of this and a bit of that, it's looking a little like a
MORE IS MORE CARD but I'm really happy with it and hope Tina likes it too!

I was planning on doing my 12 days of Christmas with you all this year, but I decided to cut myself a break the fact I have a 9week old and well, life is full of wonderment as we look after her....... I figure there's always next year! I will endeavour to come and show you some of my Card making station as I've been having lots of fun coming up with new Christmas designs and would love to hopefully inspire you to do the same!

So until then, enjoy this "best time of the year" (words from the fabbo song have a Holly Jolly Christmas courtesy of Micheal currently playing in the background....)

Make your own party hats (easy!)

Not so long ago it was my Step Dad's birthday party. While driving there Esther asked...

"Will there be party HATS??"

Well I had to say no but I knew then that there had to be HATS at her birthday!! So with the wonderous Google I found THIS SITE and the children and I got making some of our own! It was super fun and incrediably easy! LOVE THAT!

 

 

We continued with the rainbow theme, so they were all very colourful (and co-ordinated thanks to all my Stampin Up goodies!!)

Here is the gorgeous birthday girl, now 3 with her hat on!

 Sooo cute!!

Rainbow Party Invitation

I wanted an easy but pretty invitation for Esther's 3rd birthday this year and so the idea came to me to make a rainbow on her invite. It was really easy to make, by just using sponge daubers and the right ink colours. One of my all time favourite things is CLOUDS so I had to add them, using the cupcake punch!
I thought about making the rainbow look sparkly and wondered how to put dazzling diamonds on it, but then I remembered that the Shimmer paint would work a treat!

I was sooo super happy with how they turned out that it ended up being the whole THEME for the party! What fun I had making decorations, party hats and yummy food!
What do you think?
Do you like to make your own invites?? Love to hear about it!

Love to share a cuppa with you

Just wanted to pop in and share a cuppa with you! Well the card type anyway!!

How have you been??? What's new? Getting ready for Christmas??

I'm pretty impressed with my Christmas shopping, I've actually started!! (believe me this is a feat in it's self!!) I think with Esther's birthday on Monday I've been in town a bit and so why not use that time wisely and do some EXTRA shopping!!! So excited!!
I have a super cute invite to show you but that will have to be another time, but if you're interested click HERE to see some cool ideas I've found that will help the party theme shine!! (it's a rainbow party, FUN!)

Well my cuppa is almost gone, so I'll continue on my way and get some other jobs done! Nice chatting to you all, have a super rest of your week.

Hello with a International Bazaar card!

I just wanted to pop in and say HELLO!!

We are all doing well here, our beautiful little Sapphire is such a treasure and I'm enjoying having a baby in the home again!
This is a card that I made to show case the new Product suite "International Bazaar!" I've used my Apothecary Accent Framelits and the range of colours from that suite. The stamp set is Circle circus (such a fav!) and the hello from the My friend stamp set.

I hope that you are well and getting in some stamping time, catch you all again soon.

Watercolour background with inkers

For last month's Paper Dolls I show cased different ways of watercolouring. The first was just the usual way using the ink pads to add colour to an image but the other one I demonstrated was from a cool technique I saw on Spiltcoasters HERE.
I used some re-inkers on a plastic lid (Early Espresso, So Saffron and Cherry Cobbler) and then added them to gloss paper with the aqua painter. You need to have the aqua painter really wet to give you the best results. Stamp your desired greeting in Stazon and you have a very groovy and pretty speckie background!
I was super excited with how it turned out, especially with the wonderful colours in the World Spectacular Product Suite.... SO LOVE THIS SUITE!!!

Have you seen the Scalloped Tulle Ribbon from the mini.... soooo pretty and a perfect addition to ANY project (especially Christmas of course!!)
Then another of my FAV goodies at the moment is the ticket punch which co-ordinates with the stamp in the "You're Amazing" set.
Well I best be off and attend to my sweet baby girl, have a wonderful weekend!

And then there were FIVE!

We are especially excited to announce that our newest addition to the family was born last Thursday!

It's a GIRL!

Sapphire Elizabeth Torrents

born @ 7.05pm

11th October 2012

7lb 2oz

49cm long

All went wonderfully and we are enjoying all the joy that babies bring! 

Thanks to all for your love, prayers and warm messages in the last week!

Playing some more with the JAI challenge #138 (take 2)

HELLO! I'm here to show you another card I made with this weeks JAI colour challenge! I made this last week with the other card and wanted to do some show and tell before the time was up to submit.
I was super excited with this combo of colours, Grey and Summer starfruit with the cleanness of white is soooo awesome!! I had another new set to ink up, a Christmas set called "Christmas Deer" and though I tend to lean more towards traditional Christmas colours I thought it fun to see what I could come up with.

Again I used shimmer, the faceted buttons and the wonderful satin ribbon (currently on promo) but also added a felt scallop (with my bigshot die) made the super easy torn paper frame and added some texture with an embossing folder, the Vintage Wallpaper, lastly topping it off with rhinestone jewels.

I could get quite used to making "out of the norm" Christmas cards, I think this has come up pretty well!!
Thanks for popping by, I hope that you have a super rest of your week,

JAI #138 Colour Challenge

When I saw this weeks JAI challenge I made it top of my list of things to do to play along!! What a wonderful arrange of colours to make something with.... I was EXCITED!!!

As our little one has decided to "rock" on longer in the comfort of my tummy I decided to go and stamp at my dear friends (Leith's home. She has a monthly stamping time on the last Friday of the month) yesterday and took the challenge colours with me.
I had recently ordered some new "wish list" sets and so I inked up "Postage Due" for the challenge! The children happily played and I happily stamped... what a super way to spend a sunny Friday.

Here is what I came up with:

I added shimmer paint and spritzed it too in the Summer starfruit and grey. I'm loving my new big shot die "lattace" and the new faceted buttons and the white bakers twine!! Oh and see that lovely stitched ribbon... Well for the month of October you can earn that for FREE when you place a $60 order! All the wonderful in-colour ribbons..... so yummy!!

Thanks for popping over and saying Hi! I hope you like my take on this weeks challenge, do make sure you check out the JAI blog, I'm telling you those ladies are talented to the max and you'll be sure to see something to get your creative juices flowing!!
Enjoy the weekend,

Woodland theme, ABC picture

 

It's not in me to buy anything, from ANYWHERE other than Stampin' Up! I'm just that kind of loyal customer but recently when I was given a gorgeous Woodland theme bunting for our new baby... well....
I was at Kim's house last Wednesday eve for our monthly scrapping time and she did some show and tell on some DSP she had recently bought. I instantly recognised it to be the same series from my new bunting!! WOW! Where did she get it?? I was there!!

 

This is the inspiring picture for my ABC print and with the co-ordinating paper and then goodies from SU, chipboard letters and my ink pads I was off and creating a fun, easy print to hang in the nursery.

What do you think??? I found the great frame from my fav local photo shop and my super hubbie hung it on Sunday! All done! YAY!!
If you'd like to see more of my Woodland theme nursery then click HERE and pop on over to my family blog, The Torrents Times.

JAI Scrap #9 Sketch Challenge

Each month since our stamp camp Kim has decided to have a regular night of scrapping! It's been sooo much fun to hang out with her and the lovely Jayne who also comes along, chatting and of course scrapping!
I try and take along the latest JAI challenge for the night, that way I hopefully put up a post and have some guidlines to follow!
I was heaps excited to see a sketch this month and needed to scrap a page of my Mum for my August page in next years calander, so I was off and racing with this great sketch....

I wasn't sure what colours I was going to use, but as the page unfolded, the highlight of my teal eyeshow and the gorgeous green garden behind us made for fun colours to bring in to the colour pallet!

 

 

Some elegant embellishments including the new Poppy background stamp, vintage faceted buttons, big shot die "Lattice" and the wonderful pearls,  my page was done! I'm sooo happy with how it turned out and look forward to next August when I can look at it every day!
Make sure you check out the wonderful JAI ladies and their creations, they are sure to inspire!

 

p.s WOW I just found out that along with the very amazing page done by Louise HERE that I too was chosen as a winner for this challenge!! Thank you sooo much dear Delys and the rest of the team at JAI!