Rachel Greig

Michael Jackson

I've been shocked and saddened like most of the world over the death of Michael Jackson. I'm a huge fan of his music. Only the day before he died, Stewart and I were talking about our Top Ten songs of all time and we both compiled a list in iTunes. Mine included Billie Jean. (and quite honestly, it could have been any number of Jackson's songs).

When I saw some footage on the TV showing fans placing flowers on his Walk Of Fame Star, I then remembered a photo I took of his star when I was in Hollywood this year. I went to my Lightroom Gallery (where I store all my photos) and noticed NONE of my Hollywood photos were on there. The gallery was missing over 100 photos that I took on that day. Weird. So I then went to the backup DVD's. (I backup my photos each month onto an external drive and onto DVD's). No Hollywood photos on there either. This is when I started to get a little agitated.  I have a pretty fool-proof system when it comes up uploading and storing my photos. This was confusing me, and especially worrying since I don't expect to be walking through Hollywood anytime soon!

The only explanation would be that I never uploaded the photos in the first place. Which could mean they have been deleted from my media cards. But I never delete anything from my cards until I know they have been uploaded and transfered over to backup. So... I went through my media cards. The ones I use the most are two 4 gig cards. I put one in my camera and this was the FIRST photo that showed up:

I couldn't believe it. Not only had I not used that 4 gig card for almost 6 months with the photos sitting there waiting to be uploaded and backed up, but the first photo was Michael Jackson's star. It certainly gave me a little jolt. Any photo from that day could have showed up on my camera, but no, it was the Jackson photo that did. The first photo I ever took in Hollywood that day.

So thanks Michael for the music, the moves, and for reminding me I had photos to deal with! Oh and for the moonwalk - my 8 yr old son Ethan enjoys showing off his moonwalk all around the house now :)

Malaysian Newspaper Article

The Star newspaper in Malaysia have featured Darkroom Door in an article about our recent trip to Kuala Lumpur for the Scrap-N-Crop retreat.

Read an excerpt from the article here!

Beachhouse Boulevard Retreat

Recently I went down to Melbourne to teach at the Beachhouse Boulevard Retreat. It was being held at Bacchus Marsh - in a stone building and area often used for group camps, so it had wonderful communal areas for chatting and relaxing, a couple of log fires to keep the place warm, and a large area for everyone to create their projects in! The whole place had a great ambience about it and the ladies were so much fun to be with! Oh and I can't forget Mick the 'Kitchen B*tch' as he calls himself ;) Too funny.

It was so relaxing waking up to this..

And sitting around here just chatting about everything...

I taught a photography class by the log fire... and it was SO toasty! I certainly had to keep the students motivated so they wouldn't fall asleep from the warmth! We even had the resident cat come and join in for that one.

And here are some of the ladies working on their projects during one of the classes...

I didn't take any other photos during the classes unfortunately. They did amazing work - in my technique classes the students can always choose any Darkroom Door stamps to use in their project, and it's always so much fun to see what they come up with. I think the favourite one this weekend was the Trees stamp set!

Thanks again to Monika for asking me to come along and share my photography and art projects, and to all of the ladies/gent for making the weekend such an enjoyable one!!!!

Doors...

Here's another layout that I completed a while back now and was published in Scrapbooking Memories mag. I've always loved doors (esp ornate ones like this!) and what they represent for me. Hence our business name Darkroom Door.

You can click on the image to see it larger to read the journaling. Do you feel the same? Do you always feel when one door closes another one opens? Would love to hear your thoughts or experiences!

I'm heading down to Melbourne today to teach at the Beachhouse Boulevard retreat. I'm teaching both photography and papercraft classes, so I've got lots of luggage with me! Should be a great weekend :)

Gift Tags and TV Shoot

I have a project in the latest issue of Paper Crafts mag. This issue is dedicated to being eco-friendly and shows many ways you can create, save money and save the planet! My creation is in the 'Using Double Photo-Prints' section, basically aimed at showing ways you can use old prints that you may have laying around from having doubles made of your photos when you first had them processed. I have a box full of 'doubles', so the ideas in this article will be put to good use for me!

As for my idea... well, I created gift tags out of photos. So instead if writing 'To Zoe', I put a photo of her on there instead. Here's the project:

I think this would be a great idea for Christmas too. Imagine all the pressies under the tree with everyone's photo on them! I have some great (funny) photos of my family members, so I think it would be a fun thing to do!

My TV shoot yesterday went well (I think!! I'm obviously yet to see the final production of it. I know I'll cringe at myself, but hey, I do that every day anyway!!!!). We shot it at the Erina Scrapbook Store, and a huge thanks to Odette for coming in on her day off to let us do the shoot! Here's Tony (the cameraman):

As you can see I drove him crazy... ;) He's a funny guy! We did three projects which will show in 3 different episodes of Scrap It TV. First show airs on Foxtel on the How To Channel on Thursday August 6th at 7.30pm.

Funny Boy & Funny Girl

It has been a while since I've shared any scrapbook layouts here... but I have a few I'm going to share over the next few days. Here's a couple of layouts I did of the kids a while ago:

Funny Boy was inspired by a layout I saw in CK once. I can't remember whose layout it was, but it had a full 8x12 photo and a different style title and journaling, but the general 'sketch' is the same. I did mine with four 6x4 photos.
Other supplies used: 7gypsies stickers (on the left), Making Memories chipboard letters & number stickers, Basic Grey paper.

Supplies used: Paper: Cosmo Cricket (I love this range of Cosmo Cricket paper - one of my faves!), Rub ons: 7gypsies (black), Doodlebug (small white), Making Memories (large white), Flowers: Green Tara (big), Prima (small), MgGill Label punch.

I have a TV shoot with Foxtel Scrap It TV this morning... yikes!! I'm so not used to being in front of the camera. Much prefer being behind the camera as you know!!! Will let you know how it goes.

Hope you all have a wonderful Sunday!

Family Matters

My family have been involved in some great things lately... and of course I'm so proud and excited for them that I wanted to share with you all...

My older brother Darrell has made it to the big screen! He worked as an extra on the latest Wolverine film along with many of his colleagues/mates from the RAAF. Here's a shot from the beach scene. Darrell in the middle of the group, looking down (next to the guy with his mouth open). I've not yet seen the movie, but Darrell says don't blink or you'll miss him, as the beach scenes happen while the opening credits are running. I just think it's great that he was a part of it, and from the stories he has told me, I think Darrell had a great time filming it.

My sis-in-law Frances designed the intro for a website called KidsXpress, an organisation dedicated to helping children express themselves through various stages of their lives. Check it out, it's uplifting and inspiring. My brother Pete did the music. It's so fun seeing what Pete & Fran do with their creativity. The skies the limit for those two :)

Malaysia Retreat

I'm back from Kuala Lumpur, Malasyia where I taught an art retreat for Scrap-N-Crop. I'll have some photos to share of KL soon, but in the meantime, you can check out some photos from the retreat on the Darkroom Door blog here.

Off to Malaysia

Stew & I are heading off to Malaysia tomorrow... (more about that on the Darkroom Door blog). It's been a crazy week trying to get everything ready, so I'll be glad to finally jump on the plane and just relax for a few hours (at least until I get there!!)

We'll be gone for a week... I'm planning on giving the camera a good work out, so expect some images when I return. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this image to hopefully bring some serenity into your day :) We had a family picnic here with the kids a few weeks ago. Just south of Sydney in the Royal National Park. So beautiful there!

Have a great week!

Rach

Indy Adventures

We've had school holidays for the past 2.5 weeks, so that means it's been a busy and lively household - even more so than usual! Ethan had his 8th birthday just after Easter, celebrated by a trip to the cinema to see Monsters V's Aliens, followed by cake and homemade pizza. As usual, the house was decorated with balloons, streamers and banners. We have Zoë's 5th birthday in less than 2 weeks now, so we're all looking forward to more birthday fun!

The holidays have also been filled with games of UNO, making spaceships out of Lego, lots of bike rides, making homemade choc chip cookies, chocolate slice, Anzac Biscuits on Anzac Day, and yesterday we made 40 mini cupcakes. And I wonder why I'm only just fitting into my clothes - hahahahaha!!!

We've been following the Lego A Day blog and on the weekend Ethan wanted us to create some of our own. Here's the results (all captioned by Ethan):

Caption: Come on dude, you can do it, you can do it!

Caption: Indy walking slowly through the jungle.

Caption: Hey, I think there's someone behind me...

Caption: Hey - you think you're faster than me, huh?

Caption: Indy thinks that he is Spiderman...

Caption: sometimes it just gets a little too windy around here!

The kids went back to school today and I'm back to work without little helpers. While it's nice to get back into a routine again, I think we'd all love to just keep playing with the Lego!!