Merry Christmas!

A very Merry Christmas to all my family and friends, here and around the world. I hope your day is special and a safe one for the festive season. I would like to thank you for your ongoing support throughout the past year. Collections will not be closing over the holidays so if you need anything please email or call my office. Well, heading off to have breakfast at the beach! Have a great day and thanks for looking.......Julie xxxxxxx

This time last year

It was roughly about this time last year that I had the opportunity to do something I have wanted to do all my life, climb Bluff Knoll. I have always had a fear of heights and I think I always will, but I wanted to see if I could try to get over that fear for a little while to climb the highest peak in the south west of Western Australia. Bluff Knoll is situated in the Stirling Ranges about three and half hours drive south of Perth where I live. The knoll is approximately 1,096 meters high, about a 1 kilometer climb, however the climb up is over 3.2km. As you can see by the pictures it is in the clouds and they do look fantastic with them rolling off. The top is at the very highest point you can see and the views are spectacular.

Looking down from the peak it's 1km drop, so I could hardly look for too long, as it really killed me! In winter they sometimes get snow on the peak. The day Tad & I climbed the knoll it was in summer, not the best choice but as you can see by the photo below we had a clear sky. We decided to climb it at 6am as it is about 2.5 hours to make it to the top for us old folks! We slept in and didn't start until about 10am. As we made the ascent many people we coming down and were very disappointed the peak was in cloud and was very cold. Fortunately leaving it a bit later in the day we had full views for hundreds of kilometers!

I can tell you it was not a walk in the park, 3 hours to get down and I had sore legs for days after. I was quite hot going up as well being in summertime. I am so glad I did it an now looking back a year later at the photos, I am thinking yeah, I could climb it again .....one day!
This is the awesome view of the knoll the evening before the climb from the Stirling Ranges Caravan Park. I love the way the sunset light changes the colour of the peak rock!

Cheeky Girl

My cheeky little girl Lauren sent me this pic yesterday. She got her licence! Yay, I am so proud of her. She looks very happy here in her car with her sister Danielle in the passengers seat. Being mums you always worry when your little doves go out in the world driving. Lauren turned 21 in October so she has been practising for quite some time to get her licence. It's a bit more difficult to get your licence now here in WA. Years ago when I got my licence (I was 26!) you only needed to have a few lessons, I had 7 and then you could do your test. Nowadays you need to have 25 hours actual driving (with another driver) after you pass your test (second phase) and then you can drive alone. Hey does everyone remember driving in a car alone for the first time? I still remember that freaky moment! LOL!

Posting FINALLY!

Wow I have been a naughty blogger haven't I? I can't believe I have not blogged for nearly 2 months. I have a few people on my case to get something up. Firstly, I want to thank everyone for all the kind comments on the last post. I am still enjoying looking at the tile canvas with all the intricate details. So many people that have come to my home, who do not know anything about papercraft of scrapbooking absolutely LOVE IT! By the way you can take this project (the actual sized one) as a class at Scraptivate. You can call the store or pop in to find out when.

I thought I might show you some buttons that I covered on this 8 x 8 sampler. The chipboard buttons are fairly new. They are so easy to cover and I love the texture of fabric. I have a stash of tea dyed muslin fabric and I used only the round buttons for this part and tied them with some DMC thread. Once glued and covered I scratch around the edges to give them a frayed look.

It's also nice to cover them with paper, transparency, paint and use little metal embellishments including wire to hold them in place. I also like using eyelets as it gives a good definition of the holes.

On another note, I will be trading as normal over the Christmas break, and January 2009. If you need to purchase stock I am happy to mail orders out as normal. I won't be going anywhere, like on holidays etc...In January 2009 I am off to Newman, which is north of Perth to do a special weekend workshop for RTlicious. I've never been officially past Geraldton so I am excited to see some of the northwest of Western Australia and meet the lovely girls that live there. Later in the year I plan on heading to Sydney again for the SIA trade show at Homebush. I am looking forward to releasing some lovely new products at the show. That's at the end of March 2009, in case you were wondering. Then I have been invited to Canberra by the lovely Lana McMurray for a weekend of teaching classes at the end of July. Will post details of both events as they get nearer.

And there are some pics from Melbourne that I needed to put up from Paperific that was on in October! Here are Jenny and Sarah contemplating where stock needs to go on the wall. It's a big job and this year took over 5 hours to set up. A full pallet gets shipped from Perth to Melbourne and takes several weeks to put together.

After the 5 hours the stand is complete, thanks to the efforts of the girls and they were really exhausted at the end of it. The booth looked fantastic thanks to Jen and Sarah. We, (Jen & I)shacked up with the Scraptacular boot camp girls (we were scared!). They had an army type uniform with boots, dog tag jewellery! And those chicks really know how to party!

Jenny and Sarah took care of 300 make and takes, some people were good about waiting. We had a six tile tag with embellishments all over it so it took about 15mins to complete. We are supposed to have 3 people at a time but Jen being the sweet girl that she is, loves making people happy, slotted in another 3 to make 6 at a time! Thanks Jen and Sarah for being so generous with your skills at teaching!

The other thing that is keeping me off the streets is a sorta small little hobby thing. I have always had a passion for handmade soap, the cold pressed type where you add wonderful oils like olive, coconut, palm and cocoa butter, shea butters and then add some essential oils to make the best soap right from scratch. Not only do you end up with soap that is wonderful for your skin, there seems to be a therapeutic value in making your own. For the last 20 years I have been buying it from the markets, but now I have been making my own and loving it. I have also been dabbling in lotions, lip balms, shampoo, and soy wax candles. It's a totally different thing to papercraft which I have enjoyed for the last 20 years, however it has been a nice distraction and... my house smells so good! Here are some of my soaps, BTW I have been selling them as I made over 300 bars! LOL!

Here are some of the soaps on the curing rack, below (Ikea shoe racks, a new ones of course!) Oh turn away if you don't like the nude body soap! I make some with scents of lavender, rosemary, honey and oatmeal, sandalwood, lemon scented gum, eucalyptus, and many more luscious scents. I also add some botanicals of lavender rose buds and calendular petals to name a few. I mustn't forget the goat milk soap which is very close to our ph and is fantastic for people who have excema and other skin problems.

The last 2 months I have been pottering around with plants, and we have a HUGE vege patch going out back. Lots and lots of tomatoes, at least 50 plants. So far we have 43g of tomatoes picked! We are hoping for kilos tho! We have lots of kinds like, 5 types of tomatoes, 2 types of eggplant, several types of onion, lettuce. We have managed to grow bok choi, chinese cabbage, chillies, broccoli, beans, lebo cucumbers, zucchinis, more pumpkins than we should, and the same goes for watermelons! Did I mention corn, capsicum, carrots, broad beans, english spinach, rocket, coriander, parsley, mint, rosemary, thyme, basil? It goes without saying there are no chemicals on anything we are growing. If there are bugs they get picked off and sent directly to my sweet friend Joanne, and her quails eat them!


It's fascinating looking at how quickly the veges grow and as we have had plenty of rain for November and some of December, which is unusual. Lucky tho the plants may very well fry!
On the weekend, Deb's and I packed up all of our junk and went to Glendalough Primary School (Wandara) for a car boot sale. It was my old primary school, and even thought they had knocked down some of the classrooms there was still the old canteen and grade seven build to remind me of "the olden days". Brought back some fond memories it did! One of my school mates who came to the sale, that I hadn't seen since high school recognised me. We haven't seen each other for at least 35 years! It was so wonderful to see her again! But it was a shock!

Deb's (I call her Debs, it's her nickname) and I did quite well with our junk considering it wasn't a big event. A lot of my old stamp pads and new ones I don't use anymore went to new homes along with some stamps. Oh and I sold a few candles and soaps, "sweet"!
So that's my news so far, thanks for looking, Julie