A Foreign Life

back from the blogging dead

yes, I know I'm a sucky blogger but I really will try harder. No promises though - I'm a notorious procrastinator. In a brief update - we just got back from our trip to Japan, which was great - but totally threw our budget spinning out of control. I've started wading into editing some of the 3000 pics I took. Hopefully I'll have a slideshow up sometime this week. In the meantime here's a link to a slideshow of the peace festival we went to out in Kunlun a while back. Chat soon.

Peace Festival 2007

My Stuff in Action

In the absence of any sort of CT, I have created a couple of layouts with each of my kits. Here they are:

With Cherry Bomb (graphic brush by Michelle Coleman)

With Cherry Bomb

With Turkish Blend:

With Turkish Blend (frame by Nancy Comelab)

With A Hint of Spring (bend action by Jen Caputo)

With A Hint of Spring

With My Mother's Sofa (Bits of History brushes by Nancie Rowe Janitz)

With My Mother's Sofa (Bits of History brushes by Nancie Rowe Janitz)

With I Dropped My Popsicle In The Dirt (graphic brushes by Michelle Coleman, bend action by Jen Caputo)

With I Dropped My Popsicle In The Dirt

With Get Wired: Beaded Stars (frame by Nancy Comelab)
Paper from Terra Firma

Photography attempts

I've been meaning to post these for ages now...but, well, the road to hell and all that. The story behind these pics is that a few weeks ago I was asked my some old colleagues of mine to take pictures while they filmed a documentary on dancers in Taipei. I did point out that I wasn't particularly good at this photography thing, but they just needed somebody to help take extra pics, so off we went.
They were filming all these amazingly athletic people and we spent the day surrounded by people doing all sorts of flipping and twisting thingies that I didn't think were possible but looked very cool nonetheless. Despite my bad photography skills I did get a few pics that were reasonable and it was really fun to watch, since in between the filming the dancers were just hanging out and trying out different stuff. Of course the whole thing left James and I feeling hopelessly physically inadequate, but we managed to console ourselves by going out for a burger afterwards...
I think I'll post these in installments and I'd love some comments from my photographically gifted blog buddies.

And I made this page with Sausan Design's amazing kit - Funky Funky.

Kits, kits, kits...

Well my poor little blog is feeling very neglected over here. But, I still have nothing terribly interesting to report, except that I have been designing quite a bit. Well, when I say designing - it's really just quite a bit of playing around and seeing what looks good. I'm so glad everybody liked the last 2 gifts I gave out and due to popular request and the kind help of Lessien, the links for Firecracker are back up again!

You can get the kit here and here.
And here's another kit I've recently packaged. This was the second kit I ever created, well of the five that I've made! And the lovely girls at Scrapartist are kindly allowing me to share it through their freebie exchange program. So, I guess, in a way, I can say my products are available at Scrapartist - how cool does that sound! LOL. Here's the link for the freebie exchange program.

It will only be up for a month, so be sure to run and grab it. If you do grab either of these kits, please leave me a little note - it always brightens my day! Thanks again to Lessian for your help!

I'm Hooked

Yup, this designing thing is addictive. I'm having a great time and this is my latest kit, My Mother's Sofa. To be honest, my mother never really had a sofa in these colours. But they really reminded me of retro funiture coverings, hence the name. Here's a preview. It's all ready for when my favourite store has a designer call!LOL.

And here's a layout I did with it, also using Nancie Rowe Jantiz's Bits of History brushes from Scrapartist. The little guy is my brother as a baby.

And for anyone who wants it, here is the mini version. Let me know if you grab a link, and if you make anything with it, I'd love to see it!

Links

Movie Woes

So we were really looking forward to re-watching the Lord of the Rings series on our precious few days off, but unbelievably the only copy the video store had was out. They had like 50 DVD's of each one when they first came out! Then, I wanted to watch Lords of Dog Town, which I never saw...but, that was out too. So James got the new James Bond. He says there is nothing else to watch in there. I can't go in and check for myself, because of my little shark phobia - there are lots of covers with pictures of sharks on them. A little psycho I know, but hey, I have a friend who is afraid of toothpaste, next to that, sharks are perfectly reasonable!
So we need to go and watch this James Bond movie, but I just quickly wanted to post my layout for the new weekly POP challenge at Sweet Shoppe Designs. This week we had to reveal our celebrity crush. And here's another 2 I whipped up this evening.

And thanks again for all the great feedback about my CNY kit. I'm working on another one and should be able to post a mini kit on Friday! Keep checking.

New Links

Wow, I'm glad so many of you liked the kit! Here's some new links! And again, please send me links to any pages you do with it. I'd get such a kit out of seeing my stuff in use! Let me know if these expire again and I'll try find another site.

Xie Xie!

Elements
Papers

Oh, and here's two pages I did with it. I used Rhonna Farrers gypsy Monograms in Ribbon Dancing.

Xin Nian Kuaile!

Happy New Year! Today is the first day of the Year of the Pig. We have been waiting for this holiday for ages! For anyone who doesn't live in Asia - Chinese New Year is based on the lunar calendar and begins on the new moon of a new year. This is definitely the biggest Chinese Festival and the celebrations last for 15 days (but we only get a week off). It started last night and will end on Lantern festival. Everybody has also been getting ready for quite a while. it is traditional to clean your house thoroughly before the start of the holiday, people chuck loads of stuff out. when we lived in TaoYuan which is more rural that Taipei, the pavements would be lined with old couches and chairs and stuff.
Everybody gets a haircut before the start of the holiday and the kids all get new clothes. At about 6 o clock last night all the stores closed down and the streets were actually quiet. It is traditional to go to your parent's house for the holiday so Taipei is actually really quiet right now. Families gather together for a big meal to celebrate New Year's Eve. Certain foods are considered to be lucky - like pineapple. People hang up red paper cuttings and lucky messages in their homes and workplaces. Red is also considered to be lucky, since the Nian (year) monster who used to come out and eat everybody at New Year's doesn't like red. loads and loads of firecrackers get set off, and I don't mean one at a time - they go off in strings and it's a long series of explosions that can last up for minutes. These went on all night, needless to say the cats weren't impressed.
The main part of the holiday for the kids is getting their 'hombao' (red envelopes) They get these from their parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and friends of the family. Yup, they really cash in! there's also a little ceremony that they do before the get the envelopes. In the words of Tony (9yearsold) "I have to tell my parents they are good and then they will give me money"
Ah, it's good to see they're not getting to materialistic about it!:)
Lion dancing and dragon dancing is definitely the best part of it for photographers, I'm hoping to get some good pics this week. There are also traditional songs playing in all the shops.
To celebrate Chinese new year, I made a little kit which you can grab if you like. It'd be great if you leave me a note if you take it, and of course, I'd really love to see if you make anything with it. So, please drop me a line! Gongxi Fa Tsai!

Elements
Papers

Some more for Mom and Dad

Here's one with Lauren Reid's Queen of Whatever at OScraps:

Just for my mom to see

Just putting these up for my mom to see, since the DST gallery is down. She checks every week.
This one is with Sausan Design's new mini kit, Little Miss Green at Scrapbookgraphics.

This one of my mom as a baby is with Lynn Grieveson's new Gumdrop baby kit being released at DD today. It's so soft and lovely.

And this is one with Matthew and Lynn Grieveson's Meadow Blue, also up at DD today.