Brillante Weblog Premio 2008

I´ve just received this award from Herma. I'm so proud of it! - Thank you for choosing me Herma!

I'm supposed to forward it to seven people. So after giving it some thought - because there are so many fantastic blogs out there - I've chosen Jackie M (from Ireland), Jo (New Zealand) Nancy Dooren (Netherlands), Rein (Germany), Sanny (Netherlands), Sarah (Australia) and Viola (Germany), whose blogs I visit quite often and whose outstanding work is a constant source of inspiration for me! However, I'm sure there are seven more I could add,

so don't be sad if your name wasn't mentioned. If you are in my sidebar links, then it's because I love your blog too.

Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her/him the award itself and then nominate at least seven blogs and inform the nominees about it.

Asian - Make a moo

This week at Make a Moo or Two the theme is Asian. The picture of the girl, which I downloaded from http://graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/ seemed suitable, but I had a really hard time with the background. I wanted it to look Asian and I think the best way would be by stamping something Asian on the moo. However, I have no Asian stamps, so I had to look for my Chinese notebook for help. Yes, I took Chinese (Mandarin) for one semester – one of the most interesting languages I’ve ever tried to learn and no doubt the most difficult. I plan to catch up with it after retiring, when I’m old and grey… ;-)
The characters I wrote on the green moo mean “star very /brilliant shining” (from top to bottom). As far as I can remember, in Chinese the nouns come before the adjectives, just like in Portuguese.
As for the orange moo, I actually did it in a snap. The picture of the lady was given to me by Célia Nunes and it was a part of a flyer announcing the coming of Puccini’s opera “Madame Butterfly” to my hometown. (I’m sorry I don’t know who drew the picture on the flyer.)
The character drawn twice on the tracing paper that I stuck over the beige paper means “I” in Mandarin. (When I was learning Chinese I used to copy the characters with the help of tracing paper to memorize them and be able to draw them flawlessly. For some reason I kept tracing paper sheets.) Yeah, I know I should have drawn something new and more meaningful than ”I” but it would take ages to draw the characters because right now I don’t know any of them by heart. I’ve forgotten the few I knew. They call it selective memory… ;-)

A gift from Patty

I've just received this stunning gift from Patty! The metal ATC is gorgeous! - I love the woman's face and the colours - and the extra moo where patty wrote a note is just adorable too! It is so sweet! I was expecting the ATC but I didn't expect it to come wrapped in such a beautiful package. Unfortunately I was so eager to see the ATC that I forgot to take a photo of the package. So I tried to wrap it up in the same way Patty had to show you how beautiful it was. I'm also very happy about the stamps on the envelope. They're beautiful too and none of them is double, which is great. (For those of you who don't know, I collect postage stamps.)

On a day when I found out that I'll have to take the Strategic Management exam again and I almost lost my car key at the cinema (it fell off my pocket and I had to come back to the room and look for it after the film - "Made of Honor" - was over), receiving this gift really made my day! Many thanks Patty!

Hands -Think Monday think ATC

This is for this week's challenge at TMTA. The theme is hands. I had an old leaftlet from the Ministry of Education with lots of hands (sorry, I don't know who designed it), so I cut out one of the hands and left only the red background. The text I used is from an old test I made for my students years ago. The little red things stamped on the hand that look like flowers are actually closed hands with turned up thumbs (I've used that stamp on the "Men" moo I made some days ago.) The little girl was downloaded from http://graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/ As for the red leather background, well it is one of my handbags turned upside down. :-)

Good news!

Guess what... I've just visited Patty's blog - check it out; she makes stunning artwork - and found out I was the winner of her 300th blog post giveaway. :-) I won a gorgeous ATC! :-) That's really a blogcandy! Thank you Patty!

Hearts - Small World of Inchies

This week's theme at Small World of Inchies is "hearts". I had some scrap paper with golden hearts I had stamped to use in another project and colourful advertising leaflets from Lidl supermarket on my desk begging to be used, so I ended up with hearts wrapped in shopping bags and ready to be taken home. ;-)

Men - Make a moo

Yes, it's the actor Karl Malden. I don't know the name of the other actor, but this is a photocopy from a scene in Hitchcock's "I confess". This moo I made for Make a Moo or Two was supposed to be about Monty Clift (my favourite actor), who was also in the photocopy (he played the role of Father Michael Logan in the film). However, as I started making the moo I realized I didn't need to make it with the five men originally featured in the picture. The title of this moo could be "Always play to win". I was too lazy to stamp the word "always", though. In order to do that I'd need to place every single tiny letter close to another and form the word before stamping it.

Cats - Make a moo

I guess I got a bit carried away... :-) For this week's challenge at Make a Moo or Two I ended up making five cat moos.

Spring - TMTA

Here are my Spring ATCs for this week's challenge at TMTA.

When I think of Spring I always think of yellow and green... I wanted to make a few more ATCs, because Spring is such a wonderful vast theme and besides it is my favourite season, but there wasn't enough time. :-(

The bunny ATC wouldn't be possible without the generosity of Fátima, a lady who also takes drawing classes with me and who gave lots of beautiful little sheets taken from little notebooks that she used to collect. In the 80s and early 90s every girl I knew collected them (I did too.)

Don't tell anyone... - another text moo

I had so much fun making the text moo for this week's challenge at MMT that I decided to make another one. Thanks to Célia Nunes for the university background and for the sweet whispering kitten which made this moo happen.

Dancing shoes ATC

I sent this ATC to Joanne Wardle.

I stamped the background with the border of a flower stamp and used tule and glitter glue for a shining effect.

I realise now that I probably made a mistake when I wrote "dancing shoes". I meant to say "dance shoes", but I guess it's kind of funny to imagine magical shoes that dance on their own instead of normal shoes you wear when you dance.

Book thong for a swap

Bible thong.

I sent one similar to this to Joanne Wardle who always organises great inchie swaps. Unfortunately, when I made hers I still hadn't bought the round beads which I then placed above the angels. My mom is not much of a reader, but when she saw me making this she asked me to make her a similar one...

Bookmarks for a swap - part 2

I crocheted these with Ancora (Coats and Clark) thread yarn no.12. The pattern is the same in both bookmarks, but the rosy-white thread makes it look a bit confusing. To make up for that, I added some beads to the fringe.

Bookmarks for a swap - part 1

I've been making bookmarks for a swap at http://www.bot-swap.com/. I can't wait to know who my swap partners are so that I can personalise the remaining bookmarks. What you can see here is the front and the back of the same bookmark. The beautiful angels stamp is by "Marks of distinction."

Comments are welcome!

Text - make a moo

This week's challenge at Make a moo or two is text. I made this moo with some leftovers of the bird inchies. Thanks for looking!

Bird inchies

I made some of these for Joanne's inchie swap whose theme was birds. As usual, it was great fun making the inchies. Nevertheless, it was hard to decide which ones to send...When I put them together they looked so good that I immediately thought of framing them, which meant that I had to do some extra similar inchies for the swap.

Fashion inchies - Theme Thursday

I wanted to make an ATC on fashion for Think Monday Think ATC a few weeks ago, but I was too busy at the time, so instead I made two fashion inchies for Theme Thursday whose challenge was moos or inchies.

Words - God - inching artists

Last week at inching artists the challenge was to make an inchie including a word or words that were inspirational. I immediately thought of God, but I didn't know where to find a picture that somehow symbolised God. Then I remembered I had a lovely blue paper with tiny stars that had been given to me by a very nice lady called Célia Nunes who attends painting classes with me. I tried to make the inchie in a way that it looks like God is smiling and winking. One of the eyes is closed and the other eye is a heart. I didn't have a red heart eyelet, so I tried to paint the eyelet with a red marker. The result was a bit messy, but then again if you see it as God's heart bleeding out His love for humankind, it makes sense.

I'm so sorry I'm posting this inchie so late, especially because I had made it last weekend, but time just slipped out of my hand like sand these past few days and there were things more important than my crafts that couldn't be postponed...

Spring inchies

I sent some of these spring inchies off to Joanne's spring swap a long while ago, but I ended up forgetting to post a "family picture".

Green and silver - Inching Artists

I wanted very much to take part in this week's challenge at inching artists because the theme (green and silver) sounded like an easy one and inchies are always lots of fun to do. However, due to lack of time, I ended up putting two challenges together, as this inchie will also be part of the set of bird inchies I'm making for this month's inchie swap organised by Joanne.