Thank you Lorraine

Lorraine gave me this gorgeous frosted glass wall hanging. I love the saying and that it has green dragonflies, I love dragonflies.

Thanks Lorraine, it means so much to me and it made me cry knowing how much you care.

Flowers from Fran P

Fran gave me these lovely flowers on her last day at the Swarm, they are gorgeous (sadly now all withered and dead) They looked lovely in my craftroom, thank you for them Fran.

Close ups

(oops a little blurry)

Swarm tutorials

I did two tutorials during the Swarm, one was on how to make a wordbook using the Cricut Design studio software. The design we came up with is Mackay 2009 Swarm. I finally finished my book this afternoon and am very happy with the end result. As with all the wordbook I design I used the George and Basic shapes cartridge for the base of the book and for the lettering I used the Hello Kitty font cartridge.

Here is what I came up with. Hope you like it.

The second tutorial I did was using the Cricut Gelly Pens. Let me tell you these pens are fantastic, a lot finer than the Cricut markers. I used the Home Decor cartridge and the Design Studio Software, which is essential when doing this project. You need to have the drawing shape and the cutout shadow aligned just right or it will not work out at all.

Here is the step by step in pictures.

The Gelly pens

This shows the design that will be drawn with the Gelly pens

This shows the design that will be cut out after it has first been drawn.

The Gelly pen and the pen housing, the pen has a strong magnet in the top that attaches to the inside of the housing.

The Gelly pen housing in the Cricut Expression ( also works in the Cricut and the Create machines)

The first pass is the drawing of the design

The second pass, after changing the pen housing to the blade housing, is to cut out the shadow around the drawing.

The finished drawn and cut out design.

Here are the girls checking out the design (we had a pajama tutorial session)

Chris

Lorraine

The card made using the design

Me showing off the card, yes in my pajamas.

I would like to thank Mandy from http://www.scrappy-go-lucky.com.au/  for the Cricut Gelly pens I used in this tutorial and for the set that she kindly donated as a prize for the Swarm.

"Swarmers gone WILD" .......................

Saturday night was BBQ and Spa (hot tub) night. My hubby Rob was the chef for the night. He made all the salads and cooked the BBQ. He even made a "HOT DOG" (not really, that's our dog Muttlee LOL)

Spa time, I will just let the pics tell the story, it was lots of fun in the spa.

yes we did do lots of crafting while we were at the Swarm :)

Here is what we have been up to, some did a lot (like almost doing a WHOLE album) and other did a little (like me LOL)

Fi, this was her first ever scrap page.


Nel's 21st scrapbook, she a lot pages.


Chris's wedding gift card





Chris's card


Chris's mosaic pic page


Lorraine's birthday party page


Michele's wedding albums for her DD





Chris's card


Nel's bucket for friend's 40th





Jackie's card


Jackie's coffee mug this is the first time I tried etching. I really like etching :)


Mel's layouts

I can hear you screaming for Swarm updates so here they are..............

I would like to thank all of our very kind prize donators. As there were so many prizes I do hope you forgive me for not mentioning below all the pics who donated what. I will mention you all at the top here. So a big thank you to the following.


Craftybird-cindy (Cindy)
Terrikrafts (Terri) http://www.stampsalive.blogspot.com/
LorrainIIles (Lorraine)
KristinaByers (Kristina) http://www.yourmemorieshere.com/
AussieAlli (Alli)
Scrappydoo2 (Debbie)
JC (Jenny)
FranTimme (Fran)
RobinGoens (Robin)
Bijou17 (Sue)
Nelandkids (Janelle)
Boo (Boo )
NurseMel (Mel)
Peachy Keen Stamps (Kathy) http://www.peachykeenstamps.com/
FranPayne (Fran)
Scrappy -Go-Lucky (Mandy) http://www.scrappy.go.lucky.com.au/
Marti - Pezadoodles (Marti) http://www.pezadoodle.com/
FiFi (Fi)
CreativeChris (Chris)
Schillin (Michele)
Jackierussett (me)

It's prize time :)

We have just had our first lot of prize draws and we had lots of fun with it all. We had a bucket with all the names and one with all the prize numers on them. I printed out 50 numbers thinking that would be tto much, but we ended up having 70 prizes. WOW!

Here are the winners from this round and a big thank you to all the prize donators.

Michel with her prize donated by Fran Timme, thanks Fran.

Jackie with her prizes donated by Terri http://www.stampsalive.blogspot.com/ Thanks Terri

Mel with her prizes donated by Fi, thanks Fi

Jackie (OMG that is a horrible pic LOL) with her prizes donated by Kristina http://www.yourmemorieshere.com/ Thaks Kristina

Michel and her prize donated by Teri, thanks Terri

A very excited Lorraine with her prizes from Mandy http://www.scrapp-go-lucky.com.au/ thanks Mandy

Nel with her prize donated by Fran Timme, Thanks Fran

Chris with her prize donated by jackie, thanks Jackie

Mel with her prize donated by Fran Timme, thanks Fran

Here is a better pic of the prize.

WE DID IT :)

Yippee we filled up the lolly jar, now to empty it LOL

busy at work?????????????? :)

Here is everyone hard at work, well I think they are. Some just couldn't help themselves and got stuck into the lolly jar and eating picklets LOL

Frangapani caught with her hand in the lolly jar :)

Michele eating the picklet, yummy.

Look what I woke up to :)

I had two little fairies doing the dishes for me. Now that's what I like LOL.

Chris & Michele are my dishes fairies, yippee. Don't you love Chris's pajamas??????????????? :)