The FINAL week!!!

Yep the FINAL week is here...til Kaitlyn and I fly off into the wide blue yonder for the distant shores of Tuvalu!!! It will take us 2 days of travelling as there are only 2 flights a week into and out of Tuvalu so everything has to be coordinated around them!! We leave here in the wee hours of Monday morning and fly to Sydney. Then we have a 6 hour wait for our next plane which takes us to Tuvalu. We then get to spend a night in Fiji at the Mecure Hotel, which I can really recommend, and then in the morning a 30 minute flight to Suva, then finally the last leg of 2 1/2 hours to Tuvalu!!! Fortunately Kaitlyn is the consumate international traveller nothing phases her. As long as she has a book and her Nintendo DS she is all set!!!

The creation of digi LO's for Kerry is in full swing here is one I did last night of Kaitlyn and her beloved Patchie!! Patchie is my younger brother, Patrick, and from the time Kaitlyn could talk she has never called him Uncle Patrick, he has always just been Patchie....and I think he always will be. Anyway she idolizes him and the ground he walks on....

This LO was done using the Princess of Pop kit by Sweet Blossom Designs and the word art is by Bethany....

Just before Bed Time....I like to.....

....sit and have a little play with Photoshop!! Well it's certainly different to having a cup of warm milk!!! I find it very relaxing and it helps to slow my brain down after a very busy day. I can sit and fiddle and experiment with this and that and funnily enough I talk to myself a lot while doing it. Comments such as "Oooooh thats what that clicky thing does" and "WOW I'll have to do that" can be heard on a regular basis coming out of our computer room. However I have to make sure I write notes to myself on how I did things because guarantee that when I want to use and effect/brush/font etc I'll forget how/what I did!!!

Anyway my latest efforts aren't digi layouts I have been playing with effects you can get with photos and here is one of the first things I have been and am still playing with:

If you look very carefully the words Love You are cut out and you can see the photo in them. I found the most amazing tutorial while trawling the net on how to do this. You can check it out here:

http://simplyshayla.com/2009/01/photoshop-tutorial-picture-wordart.html

Ok the other thing I have been playing with is creating word art...you know the word thingies to use on your scrapping either digital or paper...ok look here's an example of what I have been doing:

Or here is one of my first efforts:

Now all things going well once I come back from my Tuvaluan holiday....mmm 3 weeks in the tropics...I will be full bottle on word art and have created a stash of WA to post on here that you folks can download for free....

Ok time for a gripe. We are ALL aware of the body image problems our youth of today have especially our teenagers...but I really do have to wonder what clothing manufacturers are thinking. Do they just go "yeah that looks like a size whatever" and make up their own sizes??? My DD is only 7 1/2 and is already getting mixed signals about her 'size'. In her school uniform she takes a size 8 child in everything dresses, shirts, sports gear etc, which is about right for her age. However buy her clothing from Big W she needs to have a size 12!!! Best & Less she needs to get a size 14 child and Target and K-Mart she takes a size 10 childrens!!!! Talk about a mixed messages!! I bought her some clothes recently from BigW as they had marked down their summer stock for clearance and when she saw the size she wanted to know if she was getting fat because I had to buy her a size 12!!! I ended up showing her that the t-shirts were the same size as her sports shirt from school which are a size 8!!!

Talk about unfair...thoughts anyone????

I knew I would forget something!!!

Well I knew I would forget to tell/and show you something.....Here is another digi LO I did today....

This LO was actually inspired by the word art (taken from Twilight) which was made by a very talented lady called Bethany. She does some really fantastic word art and has something for just about EVERY ocassion that you could think of!! You can check out her blog and her word art freebies here:

http://elegantwordart2.blogspot.com/2009/03/sing-all-night.html

The rest of the digi came from yet another Sweet Blossoms Designs Kit called "always in My Heart"

So busy....

Geeze I tell you at the moment all my days are blending together as we rush headlong ever closer to taking off to see Kerry in Tuvalu!!! I have lost several days so if anyone has found them can they please send them back home!!!!

Well not a lot of 'real' scrapping at the moment but here are two LO's I did for Challenges over at Hybrid designs.

The first one is Challenge 6 in the Survivor Series which was "use at least 3 different PPs on your LO, AND choose a motif (leaf or shell) to use somewhere on your LO."

My second LO is one from the Hybrid Cyber Crop held last Friday night. This one was fiendishly thought up by Toni the Wonder DT!!!! Her challenge was "1. ONLY 5 embellies on the page, and at least one must be a charm (you can have more if you want) -alphas do NOT count as embellies.2. use as much CS and PP as you like unless it is cut to make an embellie, then it gets counted as one of the 53. use a photo of someone you are lucky to have in your life.
So here is my entry

The other thing I have been playing with is of course Digi Scrapping. this is so when I go to see Kerry I don't have to lug lots of supplies with me. Here's one I have done just recently:

I created this Digi from a kit called Butterfly Kisses from Sweet Blossom Designs.

Not a lot else has happened but keep tuning in for the next installment

Bah Humbug!!!!!

Nope not a reference to Christmas but to the bout of food poisoning I have just been through!!! I felt as though I wanted to die!! But I was soooo grateful that Kaitlyn didn't suffer the same fate....for 2 days I didn't dare venture far from the toilet or the bucket and the whole time Johnny Cash's song "Ring of Fire" kept rolling around in my head!!! However I am now on the mend.....

I have beeen busy doing a few LO's the first one for you to feast your eyes on is one I did for Hybrid Designs Survivor challenge. We weren't allowed to use any PP or bling or bought embellishments of ANY kind. So I opted for a primitive look and used no scissors at all. Everything on the LO, bar the journalling, was hand done including the FAMILY and arrow which I painted free hand.

I have also been dabbling with some more Digi LO's. This one was created using several kits from Sweet Blossom Designs.....

We are now only 23 days...and counting....from leaving for our holiday to go and see Kerry!!! I have been busy with sorting out clothing for Kaitlyn and I and just about done...although trying to buy clothing suitable for the tropics in Autumn here in Australia has proved a bit of a challenge!!! I have also been busy creating Digi LO's for Kerrys photo frame but I want most of them to be a surprise for him so I will only put up a few of them every now and then here as I know he reads my blog!!!

He, Kerry that is, has submitted his shopping list to me most of which I now have in my possession!!! Check out what he has asked for:

UHT cream - yes you can get long life cream!!
Parmesan cheese
2 Mitchum BO Roll ons
2 Africa Body sprays
block percolater coffee
peppermints
resealable bags
freezerbags
chocolate - Cadburys
cheesecake mix
skintastic 2 big bottles
multivitamins - due to lack of redily available fresh fruit and veg

So that should keep him happy for a while....no doubt though he will find something at the last minute for me to get.....

Well thats about it for now folks thanks for stopping by.......

I think this Digi Scrapping is a bit of all right!!

Well I have done another 2 LO's using digi scrapping!!!

It would appear that I have a bit of a knack with this form of scrapping....but I still prefer the old fashioned way of scrapping....

I do have a Digi Project cooking in my head at the moment though......Kerry loves to see all the LO's I do so I thought I might just do a heap of Digi LO's for him and load them onto a digital photo frame so he can have that in Tuvalu after we are gone.....

Toni the wonder DT has promised to now teach me how to use brushes in digi scrapping so that will help a lot and expand my capabilities. I spent most of today looking around the net and it was unbelievable how much free digi scrapping stuff there is out there if you look for it....

Well here's a first....

....yup today I completed my very first digital LO thanks to the AMAZING Toni the DT over at Hybrid. Toni spent ages preparing a Digi class for those of us who had never done or attempted digi before and it wasn't as painful as I thought it might be.

While I am really pleased with how it turned out real life scrapping will always come first for me. However now that I have learnt how to do this it has solved a dilema for me which was how to get some scrapping supplies up to Tuvalu with me...now I can just take them all on a disk!!! So I will have to go and round up some more supplies from on the net....

Time is marching by......

......which means it is getting closer to Kaitlyn and I departing to go to Tuvalu to see Kerry. Ok ok now I know that some of you are still wondering where and what is Tuvalu so tonights blog is going to be devoted to Tuvalu....

The name Tuvalu means 'eight together', although the country is made up of 9 islands. The most southern island of Niulakita, however, is not permanently inhabited.

Tuvalu is one of the world's smallest independent nations, comprising nine low-lying coral atolls with a total surface area of 26 square kilometres dispersed over 1.3 million square kilometres of the central Pacific.

Formerly known as the Ellice Islands, Tuvalu became independent from the United Kingdom in October 1978 however they remain a part of the Commonwealth as they are a Constitutional Monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II as Head of State. Kerry, Kaitlyn and I had the honor of being guests at Tuvalus 30th year of Independance Celebrations last year.

The map below shows where Tuvalu is in relation to Australia....

The island of Funafuti is the main island of Tuvalu and this is where Kerry is based. this is where the only way in or out by air is located and the bi weekly arrival of the plane, on Tuesdays and Thursdays is a major social event...everyone turns out for it....

Funafuti International Airport

The people are very friendly and are always ready with a smile and a nod. I should point out that in Tuvalu the main form of greeting is 'The Nod"....something you learn to master very quickly.

One thing that is immediately noticable as being absent is ATM's, there are no EFTPOS or Credit Card facilities anywhere withing Tuvalu. So everything is cash based. They do have their own currency however all Australian currency is also legal tender within the country. There are no 'shops' like Woolies, Coles, Target or Kmart. There is a thriving network of Fusi's which is the equivelant of our corner deli with food supplies coming in on a fairly reqular basis by shipping container. Fresh fruit and veg is not a sfreely available as here and fresh milk is not available at all. Powdered milk or UHT milk is the only source of milk available.

Tourist wise there are around 1200 visitors to the country each year.

The lifestyle is certainly like nothing that I had ever experienced before and I have to say I really did enjoy my last trip there. Nothing happens in a hurry and Kaitlyn got to experience a freedom of which she can't have here. I could let her play out the front knowing she was safe without myself or Kerry having to be there. If I had to name one thing I really missed it would probably be access to my scrapping stash. I managed to take over 350 photos while there for 2 weeks....so you can bet I will probably come back with even more photos this trip....it is a little piece of paradise on Earth.

For more info in Tuvalu check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvalu . I'll leave you with a few more photos from Tuvalu......

Funafuti from the Air. Sunrise in Tuvalu

Beautiful waters to swim in. Princess in Paradise

Water Babies.......