Back to the real world

Hello again everyone! Well I'm back from my trip to Melbourne & I must say that I had a grand time down south. I like Melbourne so much more than Sydney.....wide streets, plenty of parks, beautiful alleys with great cafes & restaurants, very well-dressed people & the list goes on. And of course I took heaps of photos too. One of the many highlights of my trip was the time I was able to spend at the first Melbourne Scrapbook & Papercraft Expo at the beautiful Royal Exhibition Centre.

I took two classes; one with the lovely Angela Peardon & the other with my friend Kim Ewins from Orange. I was so lucky to be able to book into Kim's class at the last minute. However this Expo was a tad quieter than the one held in Brisbane in June, which was lucky for me because I attended on the first day (Friday) & I ended up with Angela all to myself! Wow! a one-on-one class with this very talented lady. It was so lovely chatting & getting to know her. I won't waffle on anymore I promise, but here is the layout I did with Angela.

This was so much fun to do. I learnt a new technique & was introduced to a few new products which I hadn't used before. Angela showed me how to use paper serviettes to make my own background. So the pretty flowers & bird in the background are actually cut from a serviette & blended onto the background paper with fine "napkin glue". It looks more fantastic IRL. The background behind the ships wheel had Structure paste added to it & then inked. Structure paste is like Texture Paste only very gritty, so it gives a great textured feel to a project e.g. as sand etc. All the chipboard is from Scrapmatts - gotta love that! Here are some closies:

Next is the page I did in Kim's class. The reason I like to take classes at these events is to get me out of my comfort zone & Kim's class really did that! I love Kim's style & I was so excited to have a go at it. Now if you know me well enough you will know that I hate sewing (much to my Mother's disgust). I don't even own a sewing machine. But I do really love the look of stitches on a scrapbook page so I usually hand sew with embroidery thread or the like. But Kim got us onto the sewing machine & I machine stitched for the first time on my layout & photo - I was a bit scared that I would break the machine! I didn't have time to finish the page during the class so I finished it at home. I changed the wording to how I was feeling at the time - sorry Kim. I'm really happy with the end result.

And closies of course:

I loved doing all the distressing on this & Kim had us using some canvas as well, which distresses really well.
Thank you to the lovely Kim & to Nicole from Craft Queen, I had a blast!