Rachel Greig

Workshops | 2012 Stamping Cruise sets sail!

Well folks, today is the day we set sail for the 2012 Australian / South Pacific Stamping Cruise! To say we're excited is an understatement!! The past few weeks have been crazy here in the studio and warehouse, packing boxes, ticking things off our packing list, making sure we have everything we need for the workshops. (I always feel like we'll forget something, even though I've gone over things a thousand times!) But now... we're ready to set sail!

The ship will leave Sydney Harbour today and we'll sail for two days before arriving to our first stop at Isle of Pines, New Caledonia. Throughout the cruise I'll be teaching 6 workshops. I know many of you are wondering what I'll be teaching... so I'll share the projects once we return. Our group consists of 50 ladies, plus partners, friends and children. The stampers will also have 24 hour access to the stamping room, so I'm sure there's going to be some fun nights ahead!

As we leave the harbour I'll be updating on Twitter and Facebook, so be sure to follow me there!

I'm really looking forward to spending the next 12 days out at sea... stamping, snorkelling and swimming! Let the journey begin...

- Rachel

Workshops | Pour l'Amour du Scrap, France

In February I will be teaching workshops at the Pour l'Amour du Scrap show in Lille, France! I will be teaching two different workshops:

I'm so excited to be teaching at the show - I know we have many Darkroom Door followers in Europe so I hope to meet many of you there! Of course I'll be bringing goodies with me to give away during the workshops and every person in the Stamping Techniques class will receive a Darkroom Door Word Block Stamp in their kit! Woo hoo!

If you are interested in attending the show or booking into the workshops, please visit the Pour l'Amour du Scrap website.

You can also follow Pour l'Amour du Scrap on Facebook. Please help spread the word :)

Hope to see you there!

- Rachel

Happy New Year 2012

Happy New Year! For new years eve we went to the local beach to watch the fireworks, have a little picnic and watch the kids run around with their glow sticks and sparklers. It's always a lot of fun and I'm always up for a bit of sparkler photography!!

These shots were fun to make, especially as their glow sticks also created some colourful effects too!

I didn't use a tripod for these shots. These were all just hand held (or sitting down with the camera on my knees for support). Generally the exposures are around 1 second, using a fairly wide aperture (f2) and a high ISO. Of course if you wanted to create less grainy images, you'd shoot with a lower ISO (between 100 - 400) and use a longer shutter speed which would create a different effect again - the sparklers would be more continuous. That's why I love long exposure photography, there's so many options and ways to capture the light. 

We all had so much fun creating different shapes... of course as the night went on, the crazier and more random they became!

Here's to a new year and wonderful times ahead!

- Rachel

Have a cool Yule!

Wishing you all a magical Christmas and holiday season! Thank you so much for checking on this blog thoughout the year! Hope you all enjoy a wonderful day with your precious family and friends.

- Rachel xxx

Papercraft | Christmas Journal 2011

I've started my Christmas Journal for this year... based around both Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas online class and Ali Edwards' December Daily idea. This shows a little of the cover... I'm using a 7 Gypsies album which I've covered in 7 Gypsies tissue, stamped with darkroom door stamps and an old bookplate that I've had in my stash for years just waiting for the right project!

Here's my approach to this journal:

- Gather supplies in my stash that relate to Christmas or December and store together. This year I've emptied a full drawer in one of my Ikea Alex drawers and have filled it with the goodies. (just one drawer, not the whole unit!) This makes it so much easier and quicker to work on the album. I just fossick through papers and all the bits and bobs to find what may be suitable for that day.

- Lots of journaling. I have enough room in this album to do a double page for each day. The plan is to journal on one page, and have a photo on the other. I like to print my photos at a lab, so that does mean I don't get my pages finished every day. I'll go to the lab once a week to get the photos printed and finish the pages then.

- Mix it up between Journal Your Christmas prompts and December Daily activities. The Journal Your Christmas prompts may not be done in order either, I'm just going with the flow for this album, and documenting things as I go.

Are you creating a Christmas Journal for this year? Or have you created one in the past? If so, please leave a link, I'd love to check it out! You can find my Christmas Journal from 2005 here.

Wishing you all a happy December :)

- Rachel

Stamping | Word Block Stamps

Following on from yesterday's post, here are some cards I've created using the new Darkroom Door Word Block stamps!

There's 6 new themes, a nice addition to the 6 existing themes of Word Blocks!

I had a lot of fun with Distress Stains for some of these :) I also used the new Limited Edition Winter Distress Inks for the Smile card below. The colours blend beautifully together!

For more info on all of these cards, head over to the Darkroom Door blog. Hope these have inspired you!

- Rachel

Stamping | Photo Stamp cards

I spent a lot of time on the weekend creating some cards from my new Darkroom Door Photo Stamps that were released this month.

I created these in between setting up the Christmas tree, games of Monopoly, watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, shopping for new sandals...

I made the effort to pack up my mess after finishing each card. I think this is the only reason I created so many cards so quickly in between doing all the things I mentioned above. It was nice to have a clean work area to start fresh with every card. Tim has been telling me to do this for years - finally I listened! And it works - thanks tim :)

If you're looking for more info on how I created these cards and what I used, head on over to the Darkroom Door blog. I also talk about where each photo was taken, in case you are interested.

I'll have more cards to share tomorrow!

- Rachel

Inked mail

Reasons why I love to create and send inked mail:

1. It stands out from the crowd.

2. It's fun to create! One of the things I love about mail art is there are no limits. You don't have to create a masterpiece. Everything can be random so it's the perfect palette to experiment and have a little fun.

3. It's unexpected. We all receive normal mail, bills, junk mail etc. Receiving a little craziness in your mail box puts a smile on your dial!

Stamps used: Correspondence and Mail Art by Darkroom Door.

Gingerbread Martians

Recently I was the lucky winner of a giveaway on the Tiny & Little blog (just by leaving a comment, gotta love that!) My prize was a Gingerbread Martian mix by 'Chef Sonia and You'. If you've been a reader of my blog for a while, you may have noticed that I love cooking with my kids. I don't blog about it a lot, but it's rare that a week goes by without us whipping up some sort of sweet treats. So my kids were over the moon to see this little package turn up in the mail! I mean, come on... who wouldn't love to make gingerbread martians!! We certainly didn't waste any time giving it a go!

The packet came with everything you need (except the wet ingredients) and included the martian cookie cutter. Pretty cool to have this in our stash now for future martians! The packet also had martian eyes ready for us to put on at the end.

I think the hardest part was getting the gingerbread mixture out of the antlers in one piece. We ended up using a skewer to push it out. Worked a treat!

The final verdict? Absolutely delicious! The gingerbread was perfect and the green icing was yummy. Even the eyeballs tasted good! We ate them all pretty quickly, so that's a sure sign it was a winner.

Thanks again to Tiny & Little for the goodies :)

Christmas Sentiments

It's only 6 weeks until Christmas! This will be our first Christmas in our new home, so we've been thinking about where all the decorations will go, where to put the tree, what food we'll prepare, which family members will be joining us and what gifts we will organise. The kids already have their wish lists posted on the fridge. I even listened to a couple of carols today just to see what Christmas music I have and whether I need to find some new ones. I'm looking for some acoustic versions of well known carols, so if you have any recommendations, please leave a comment or email me!

I used the new Darkroom Door Christmas Sentiments stamps for these tags. So simple but looks so good with the red ribbon and kraft paper. They're actually 6" long, so they can go across a full card like this...

I used the Dear Santa Montage images for this card. Love all the vintage Santa images in that collection!

Back in 2005 I participated in Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas online class. My completed journal can be seen here. Since we're in a new home with all new ways of doing things in this house, I'm planning on creating another journal this year. My daughter Zoe is pretty keen to help with it, so it'll be fun to have her input! I'm sure Christmas is going to be here before we know it...

Rachel