Live A Beautiful Life

 

I've got another layout today which I made a couple of months ago and haven't shared here yet. I have been lucky enough to work with a lovely and super talented crafter and now it seems photographer Shirley Hampshire Towan! Shirley needed a baby to practice her photography and I just happened to have a 12 week old niece who was growing way too fast for my liking.

 

So Shirley was nice enough to photograph her. And look at one of the results below! Isn't that photo amazing? I didn't want it to get lost in all the flowers and papers like most photos do these days. We seem to like putting tiny photos on a big page and not vice versa.

 

 

 

As usual this photo of my layout does no justice to the photo and layout in person, but hopefully you get the idea :)

 

I'll be back tomorrow to share a Steampunk Canvas. Thanks for stopping by!

 

Cassandra Bright

Happy Mothers Day! And some layouts to share!

Everybody knows my Labradors are my life!

So today I am sharing a few layouts I have done with my labs on them. Firstly below is a layout with the gorgeous Graphic 45 Raining Cats and Dogs Collection! I have to say this collection is the BEST animal collection I have ever seen!

 

Yes, we have all seen the cutesy same old papers with cartoon fire hydrants on them and plain old paw print papers. But honestly it was about time someone gave us animal lovers some real paper with real substance to scrap our beloved animals. And if anyone was going to deliver that it was always going to be Graphic 45!

 

 

You may have also noticed that Kaisercraft came out with a pet collection of papers too called Furry Friends! I really liked this range as the colours were nice and neutral. Unlike a pet range they brought out quite a few years ago that was purples and blues. It just wasn't nice back then lol. But I am loving this range because it is so versatile.

 

 

 

A Kaisercraft Collection I must have missed last year was Bow and Arrows. It is now a deleted line of Kaisercrafts. But is it gorgeous with its feathers, arrows and gentle colour palette. Again a very versatile collection.

 

That's it for today, but thanks for taking the time to stop by!

Happy Mother's Day!

 

Cassandra Bright

 

 

Mixed Media Canvas

A few months ago Kaisercraft brought out a New Collection called 'Shine Bright'!

 

I loved this collection for three reasons.

 

1. Being that the colour yellow reminds me of my beloved dog Missy Precious. And this collection has a lot of yellow!

2. It has the words 'You are my sunshine' printed on some items. I always called Missy Precious my little ray of sunshine and I would sing 'You are my sunshine my only sunshine ..... " to her when she wasn't well. I also got the first line of that song tattooed on my inner wrist and forearm when she passed away, right next to her paw tattoo.

3. It is called 'Shine Bright' and my last name is Bright lol!

 

So as you can see it was a match made in heaven!

 

 

So I made a sort of Mixed Media Explosion Canvas with a very bad picture of Missy Precious and myself. Unfortunately I never got many pictures of us together so I used what I had.

 

I cut open the canvas and glued another framed canvas to the rear of the orginal to make a shadow box.

 

These two photos give you a better idea of the dimension of the project.

 

Ow and here is a photo of the tattoo mentioned earlier :)

 

 

 

Thanks so much for visiting!

Enjoy your weekend :)

 

Cassandra Bright

 

 



Unshared Scrapping

 

I've been neglecting my blog this year haven't I?

I must admit it is easier to use and update my facebook page Cassandra Bright - Mixed Media Artist/Teacher on a regular basis. But it also hasn't helped that when we moved house last year, we went from living in a area with fast broadband internet to a area with plain of crappy internet speed, which means uploading pictures is a nightmare lol. I am not a person of patience when it comes to technology that is for sure!

Anyway here are a few pages I still had not shared here on my blog.

 

 

This layout above is of my gorgeous niece Esma when she was little. She is now 3 years old!

 

This layout above is of my beloved Missy Precious who is in heaven xo

 

And this layout above is of my precious niece Viola who is only 7 months old. She was born the day before my birthday! So I am very excited to have someone to basically share my birthday with from now on.

 

Thank you for taking the time to look at my pages. I'll be sharing some more projects I have worked on tomorrow :)

 

Cassandra Bright

 



Old Yella

 

I was lucky enough to attend the brilliant Scrapbooking with the Stars Scrapbooking Retreat at Phillip Island in mid November! The gorgeous Karen Shady and Stacey Apps did an amazing job organizing such a wonderful event and I already have my name down for next years retreat!

 

At this retreat I was hoping to get some of my mojo back. I wasn't putting too much pressure on myself though. I ended up scrapping 4 layouts so I was pretty happy with that. My first and my favourite layout of the weekend was one featuring my now heavens angel Missy Precious. She was a gold Labrador so I wanted to use yellow and gold all over the page. I still had heaps of old My Mind's Eye Lost and Found papers I had been saving for a special occasion so that help.

 

I used Matte Medium to adhere some Prima Art Ingredients - Glass Beads in Butter and Mica Flakes in Gold around the edges of some gorgeous Prima flowers and accessories. I also added some gold sequins. BTW I think I have a sequin addiction??

 

Anyway one of Missy Preicous' many nicknames was 'Old Yella'. And because this was a gold/yellow page I thought to myself well I can't finish the page until I find someone who has a chipboard cutting machine to do me a custom Old Yella title. In comes Miss Karen Shady to save the day! She introduces me to Dusty Attic owner Jenn who is at the retreat and the gorgeous Jenn is kind enough to spend time with me choosing a font and size and positioning of a custom chipboard title for my page!

 

I was so gobsmacked I nearly cried! This was a major major highlight of my weekend and I still sincerely thank Jenn from Dusty Attic for taking the time to do this for me. When they arrived in the mail I was thrilled. So the other day I sat down and inked the title in Walnut Stain and then added Dimensional Magic and I thought, I'll just add a sprinkling of gold glass glitter. Well, um hmmm I think I got a bit carried away and added too much glitter but what the heck!

 

I absolutely love it!

This page was a very emotional for me. It took me a long time to finally get it started but once I was started I didn't want the layout to be finished.

 

I couldn't miss my Old Yella more, but I tell you looking at this everyday sure does help.

Once more THANK YOU to Karen Shady and Jenn from Dusty Attic, your generosity was much appreciated :)

 



You Are My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine....

As you may have read in my last post it has been a terribly hectic year for hubby and I. We finished renovations on our home and then put it on the market to sell. Well it sold in 13 days! And then we had a settlement period of 35 days. So as you can imagine things have been non stop as we packed and moved items.

 However, 9 days before the settlement of our house the absolute sunshine of my life, my doggy soul mate, my everything had a seizure/fit of some kind which she didn't recover from and had to be put to sleep. She was only 12.5 years old.

( This is one of my favourite pictures of Missy Precious)

That was on Monday 21st of July. So in my last week before moving house fully I was busy organising her cremation and inviting a small amount of family and friends to come to her viewing and a lunch to celebrate Missy Precious' life.

We have moved house and are now slowly settling in. Unfortunately I still don't have a studio to create in but remain hopeful it will be very soon. And last Saturday I went back to work for the first time since she passed and it was hard. It was only a short shift to ease me back in. And on Sunday morning whilst getting ready for work I had a complete breakdown and couldn't stop crying for 1.5hours and had to call work to let them know I wouldn't be in. So it has been a hard long journey, but I am trying.

Thank you to everyone who has been kind enough to leave me message on my fb page etc regarding the loss of my beautiful loyal Labrador, they are appreciated more then you could ever know. But right now I am learning a 'new' kind of normal without her and I hope to start creating again soon.

Missy Precious exactly 1 week before she passed away (July 14th)

Missy Precious living the life on our bed the night before her seizure/fit.

 

Missy Precious

R.I.P

17th November 2001

-

21st July 2014

Lack of posts = House Selling!

My sincere apologies for the lack of posts on this poor neglected blog lately!

After years and years of dusty, dirty, annoying, noisy house renovations we decided to sell our house. It finally went on the market on Monday 9th June after a HUGE weekend of touch up and too much cleaning to mention! And we had our second open for inspection this morning much to the disgust of my precious Labradors lol. They don't like their dog beds being packed up all the time and water bowls put away for photos and inspections etc lol.

Here are some of the before (8 years ago when we purchased) and after photo's.

 

Front Yard Before's

 

Front Yard After's

 

 

Entrance looking into loungeroom before

 

 

Entrance looking into loungeroom after

 

Inside loungeroom looking to entrance and dining before

 

 

Inside loungeroom looking to entrance and dining/kitchen after

 

Kitchen before's

 

 

Kitchen After

 

 

Kitchen looking to dining and hallway before

  

Kitchen looking to dining and hallway after

 

 

Laundry before

 

Laundry after

 

Bathroom before's

 

Bathroom after

 

Bedroom 2 before

 

Bedroom 2 After

 

Main bedroom before

 

Main bedroom after

 

Bedroom 3 before

 

Bedroom 3 after

 

Backyard before

 

Backyard after

 

 

Entertainment bunker/pit before

 

 

Entertainment bunker/pit after

I still can't believe hubby and I did all this by ourselves. We were nuts! What were we thinking lol. I still can't believe that it has turned out as gorgeous as it has. What a talented husband I have!

So as you can see this is what has been distracting me from my art. And although it will be sad to sell this house we have basically rebuilt, it will be dam exciting to have a new Art Studio! I can't wait to be able to play with the design and set up, so much fun! All good things come to those who wait!

Thanks so much for stopping by and hopefully I can share some art soon.

Cassandra Bright