November meeting is coming up!

Just time to remind you that the November meeting is coming up on November 27.

It's also state election day, so don't forget that in the morning. Oh, and there's one more thing ... It's my birthday! If I can I'll bring a nice cake (that way I can have several birthday cakes). But apart from that, business as usual - we will have time to make, do, talk and chat.

Usual time, usual place. And I think I'm a bit too tired to post much more than that to tempt you, but I'm looking forward to a nice day. See ya there!

Christmas Party is on!

The SERS Christmas party is on again this year. The usual time, and the date will be 11 December. The place will be Cathy's home. Contact me direct if you need to know where that is.

Bring a plate! And we will be Making and Doing in Cathy's well equipped studio, so feel free to finish Christmas cards, or just browse Cathy's amazing book/magazine/art collection.

Giving cards or gifts to each other is nice, but purely a matter of choice, and what you had time for. No stressing out allowed!

Psst ... I'd give a little appreciation to the host though! She'll be washing coffee cups all evening.

I did that collage!

It's club business, sort of, so I'll post it here. Michelle challenged me to make something with her Ephemera Pack. Here it is!

Visit my personal blog to find out more.

October Meeting - rainy day, sunny people

October stamp club happened on a rainy day. So rainy, once we were inside, we didn't want to leave!

Louise made a start on Christmas cards. What's a good word to use? "Celebrate" usually covers it. We discussed Hallowe'en, and what costumes she would be rewarding.















Cathy brought lemons from her tree to give away. They are Meyer lemons.




















Michelle brought a box of stamped/decorated papers, that were surplus in her stash.















Anne worked on background for her Christmas cards - she wanted a blue(ish purple) background, and decided she was too mean to buy new paper, so she painted some! She demonstrated the fact that some kids' paints have SO little pigment in them, they are little more than tints. So that's why we pay the big bucks for the good stuff.









Here's what I made out of Michelle's junk box. Ingrid liked the stamped vellum, and there were two, so she took one home too.
















Beverley came along with heaps of stamps to sell. She's a founder member of SERS - it's been going twelve years!

















Cathy got some new punches - wings and crowns, pretty!












Here's what else Michelle is up to - making Ephemera kits to sell on Etsy. Here's a link. On the left is what SHE made with a kit. Oh yummy!

I took a kit home, natch. With any luck, later today I'll post MY results. It IS raining in Melbourne, after all.








Here's my other result of the day. A Christmas card (see, the bird has a HAT on).
















This was the snack of the day - my home made fruit bread. Want to know how to make it? I already dictated the recipe to Ingrid.

Here goes:

FRUIT BREAD
3 cups bread flour
1/4 tsp dried yeast
1 tsp salt
1 2/3 cup water

Stir all that together , get all the flour wet, and put a loose lid on it. Let it stand for at least 12 hours.

Turn out the sloppy, bubbly dough, and knead it just a little, to get it looking like proper dough. You'll probably add some flour. Then knead in :

1 bunch* sultanas
1 bunch currents
1 bunch cranberries
1 bit** cinnamon
1 bit cardamom
1 bit ground cloves (smaller bit than the other spices, it's strong).

Let that rise, and bake it, inside a casserole dish for the best results, in a hot oven for 30 minutes. Finish it off with 5 minutes with the lid off.

* nice handful
** sort of a spoonful

September 2010 Meeting

Thought I'd forgotten to update the SERS blog? Hah! I just happen to be very busy and important.

We met at the end of September, on Grand Final Day. Or should I say, on ONE of the Grand Final days. Much interest in the football by some stampers, which of course is fine. And it turned out to be a juicy match, from all reports - such fun they replayed it the next week. So SERS members could go to Stamp Club AND see the final!

Lizzie made a special effort to use pastel colours. If you're a bright girl, that takes some doing, but it's good experience.








Other Maria was decorating FABULOUS Christmas books - when closed, the pages form a tree. Every page is lavishly decorated. Oh wow.

I informed Other Maria that she is Other Maria for all SERS purposes. She seemed OK with it.












Maria was doing mosaicky stuff, using colour photocopies she made ages ago of decorative paper she created herself. Nifty idea!















Jenny made her first owls, with her nifty Owl Punch. Oh, and there were blueberry muffins.
















And I tried out a new stamp set - sigh, nice flowers.

August 2010 meeting

Argh, forgot to take photos at stamp club again - no matter. I'm a very creative person, and I expect I shall be able to create a blog post illustrated entirely by items from around the house. You won't even notice.

Here's the blueberry (and banana and walnut) muffins we enjoyed.












There was lots of "popping candy" chocolate around - it's fun giving popping candy to people who haven't tried it!

















The new Stampin' Up catalogue was there for the first time. Some people were like "wow", while others were like "meh". Very eclectic club we have.

There is an awesome owl punch in it. That's it for my shameless plugs.













Some people were using this cool owl stamp - it's from "Victoria's Secret", which of course is the range of stamps by Vicki of Paper Squared in Mornington. I'm not sure who brought it, but I'm prepared to point at either Margaret or Jenny.

That is a cool stamp. It just is.












This is an ATC I made and brought along. I used walnut ink on it. We discussed walnut ink. Apparently it's made from (wait for it) walnuts!
















I showed Maria my Envelope stuff (you can read about it on my own blog). We looked at her collection of business envelopes from around the world (seriously, you think I'm weird...), and brainstormed a bit. HOW GOOD would it look if you photocopied and enlarged these patterns, then painted them?

And if you think, not very good, well that's fine too. As I say, it's a very eclectic club.







CB asked me about the Polished Stone technique, and also about resist techniques. We did some resist right there, with a pretty fern stamp she had. After all, I couldn't r...* I couldn't say no to a polite request.

I promised to be ready to show off Polished Stone next month. And I have had a practice, just look. For extra points, I did Polished Stone and resist together. Thank you.






And this is the sum total of what I actually made at stamp club myself. A start for a nice little ATC. What does it need? An owl stamp, probably.













* see, I avoided a pun. Thank you.

July Meeting - new friends!

A very full and busy day at SERS today - it was fun!

Jan popped in for a look, and CB came and stayed all afternoon. She brought mini Oreos (wow!).

Maria made mosaics with this funky patterned paper. A strange coincidence, I had brought the very same stuff (which I'd prepared in the morning - here's my proof). See what it is now? Cool, huh?





Cathy was printing up a bag with her fabulous stamps and paints. Here's a link to some of her other fabric work. It's awesome!















Michelle made it (she often doesn't) and brought the news that she's back in the engineering business (and hubby is being the house dad). So that's fabulous! She has set up a Mixed Media web site (here's a link) for all lovers of getting painty to play on. It has ads and stuff, because she's an enterprising chookie hoping to make it part of the family's income stream. But you can take it from me that it comes from a lady who just wants to share the love of making things! She also has this personal blog.

Here's on of her journal pages - it's a response to a challenge by Green Pepper Press - those a fun to do! Watch out, the GPP blog has music, so don't be reading it at the office!








Louise made these pretty flowers, part of a small card she was making. She "ruined" it during the afternoon, and then carefully redeemed it.










I made this card with my new Roses stamps set - oh my, what fun!

That's a very worn out French-English dictionary page as the background. It probably needs some lace or something.

The highlight of the day for me, though, was giving Nan the new set of stamps she'd bought through me, and showing her some samples I'd downloaded from the internet onto my iPad. She browsed and browsed, then asked for another turn, and browsed some more. It was the perfect tool for the job. I think Apple needs to know what a cool craft tool the iPad is!








There were blueberry muffins. And tons of other people came too - I think we had about 15 in the room!

See you same time next month, ladies!

June Meeting - squeezing into the cozy room

Goodbye Margaret! One of our long time members said farewell today - she's leaving to take up residence in sunny Queensland. We celebrated with hugs, cards, and cupcakes! Banana cakes, too - I thought it was appropriate.







We had a huge turnout - well of course we did, this was the one day of the year we have to yield the Big Room to the patchworkers who have their annual shindig. So it was crowded but we all managed to fit in.














It's school holidays now, and that leads to a bit more kid presence - we had grown-up Christie with Ingrid, polite James with Lizzie, and effervescent Siobhan with Gail. A DS and an iPad kept the younger two pretty amused.









I happily demonstrated how FAAABulous an iPad is for storing photos of artwork you've nabbed from web sites and enjoy referring to. Gail showed off a very portable photo printer - that's neat!

Here's Cathy with ... ummm ... something she made.









And Siobhan took a pretty, girly, stamp set, and made it evil...

May 2010 Meeting - almost an empty house!

Well, after last month's full house, I was expecting a bouncing turnout - but with this and that, the turnout was a record low! I think we dipped to six once before, but today it was five (then two more dropped it, so briefly it was seven).

And did that bother us? Not really! I had a bucket full (literally) of swaps from a recent convention I'd been to, and did a full show and tell. And we had time to admire them properly!

And I had made some buttermilk scones, with cranberries and walnuts - yummo...

Then Nan and I amused ourselves making flowers - we'd both seen a demonstration a few weeks ago, and were dying to make more. Here's mine (and of course, I forgot the camera, so all photos were taken at home). Here's the secret to our success - punch eight scallop circles out of vellum (the lighter weight works best), brad them together, and crumple from the top layer down, then spread out.

Next month is Margaret's last time with us - they are off to their retirement destination, for fun in the sun, and just a little more craft than perhaps her husband anticipates. Yes, she has craft shop addresses. So we'd better give her a nice send off, eh?

The drop-ins were Lizzie and Maria, who'd been at the Dandenong Ranges Open Studios - a special event where lots of artists studios all have an open day at once. They were buzzed and exhausted - but Maria showed me that baby book she'd been altering - a gift for a new twin mum - and it was AWESOME!

Oh, and if I'd had more time, this is what I would have been tinkering with - a very old (1997) stamp set from Stampin' Up, which has just entered my stamping museum. Umm, I mean, collection. I stamped it up a bit between stamp club and dinner.

Maria, Nan, Ingrid and Margaret, it was lovely to have you at my table today!

April Meeting - a full house!

We had a super April meeting - it was a lovely sunny day (... when we arrived, and cold and drizzly when we left, so it was definitely Melbourne). There were 16 people at the busiest - that's a full room!

Chris' friend Ingrid came for the first time, with real watercolours. Lizzie borrowed some pretty stamps from Jenny. Helen and I collaborated on our bird punches, with the result being several new goodies we weren't expecting to make. Margaret was selling off some surplus stamping stuff, and very pleased that her backlog was mostly gone. Maria was doing something amazing with an old board book (but I didn't get back for a good goggle), and Cathy had been playing with ice resin. Nan's on her feet again.

And I forgot my camera, so here's a shot from the little phone camera, just to prove what fun we were having.

There were little banana muffins. Mini muffins seem to help you stamp.

Our March 2010 meeting - with real calligraphy!

Oops, left this one a bit late. I got home from Stamp Club, and dear Jeff was upgrading my computer, so I didn't manage the "update the blog immediately" like I usually do.

Cathy had just had a visit from Annette Husband of the Northern Territory, who has been making awesome things lately. She showed Cathy a pretty necklace and earrings. And gave them to her! So we got to see them first hand. Oh wow!





Anne thought we should make a card for a friend who was needing a cheerup, so she organised Jenny to make a card, and Cathy to write a beautiful message inside. Round of applause for Anne, for not just saying "somebody ought to...".


Young James got dragged along with mum Lizzie, but kept himself busy with excellent drawing, while Lizzie and Debra had fun makin' stuff.

The snacks of the day were home made olive and feta bread, and Roast Almond Picnic bars (the small ones), so we certainly ate well. And here's the bread recipe. Well, not that one, but kind of. Jim Lahey, the baker responsible for the recipe, used to be a sculptor, so he's welcome at our club in spirit!

See you again in April. It'll be a long weekend (Sunday is ANZAC Day, and Monday is the holiday). Yes, we will still be meeting as usual!

February Meeting - I got flowers!

When you do a voluntary job for a long time, it's nice to get a thank you. Not that looking after SERS is a very difficult task, but I do have to arrange one day a month around being there first, and leaving last. And I bake too.

Some time, when I wasn't watching, Cathy organised a thank you for me, and it arrived today. A bouquet of flowers! And since we are a papercraft based club, they were paper flowers! And since we all do different stuff, they were all different! JUST SO AWESOME!

Here's the flower Cathy made - using a liquid "stained glass" stuff - the kind of thing kids make window decorations out of. Dip the wire frame in, the go away and don't touch it while it sets.


Then there's the one Louise made - fantasy film, wire, and ironing. She added a butterfly!










There's the one Maria made - out of map pages and supermarket catalogues! Love it.










Margaret made these Origami hydrangeas - very effective in a bunch like this.










And Chris used decorative paper to make this - the basic shape she cut was (wait for it, it's good) just ordinary circles! With snips, and lots of curling. Whoa!

There are more to show, but my camera conked out! Might take a few more photos in the light tomorrow.

Apart from that, we had a lovely meeting. Made stuff. Mucked around. Made a mess. Nan made it, and was in way better form, so that's great to hear!