By Dezign

Monday, December 1, 2008

It's all about the kids

I've been rather quiet lately because I've been working on my pet charity for the past couple of weeks. Traditionally the last Sunday in November or first Sunday in December (closest to month end) is the Toy Run. It is the world's biggest biker charity event. Bikers in all the major centres get together to donate toys for the underprivelleged for Christmas.

This year has been the biggest ever with 50,000 bikers attending the Johannesburg get together alone. Cape Town had 20,000 bikers. We're probably looking at a total of half a million toys being donated. We also had a blood donation drive. It just gladdens my heart when you see thousand upon thousand bikes with toys all over them travelling down the highway. This year I didn't participate in the mass ride as I was needed at the venue, so I also don't have as many photos as I usually have, but here's a few that I managed to take.

These are my toys I donated and I really loaded this poor guy down.

Some of the bikes

My baby

Even cars

I also have my first CU Overlay on offer for you today. This download contains the overlay as well as the sample paper.

And you can get it here http://www.4shared.com/file/73961942/ff97cd5b/CU_Xmas_Overlay.html?dirPwdVerified=1524a939

Love and hugs

Renée

Thursday, November 27, 2008

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Happy Turkey day to all my readers and especially to those that have become fast friends over the past couple of months. To those travelling to yourloved ones, please be careful. Have a great day, eat lots and be merry.

I'm not going to yak your ears off with a long post today, but Kim has outdone herself again with the most gorgeous kit From Santa with Love. Kim knows when she has a winner, we come up with lots of pages in a short space of time and burn up her inbox with goodies. Plese pop by her site to go and see all the beautiful eye candy already made with this kit.

I've done this LO

And my freebie today is a QP made from goodies in the kit and I've included a mystery fun element. Let's just pretend today is the tenth day of Christmas. LOL

Here's a preview of the page

And you can get it here http://www.4shared.com/file/73397742/f3a90b3a/FSWL_QP.html?dirPwdVerified=1524a939. And I hope you're wearing your boxing gloves tomorrow for the Black Friday sales.

Love and Hugs

Renée

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

KAAAA-RAAAAASSSSHHHHH

It was a dark and stormy night. Lightning crashing, thunder bolts and lashing rain. The kids were all huddled under their duvets, fathers were battening down windows and doors, mothers were making coffee to keep warm. When...... LOL, no I'm not telling campfire stories. This is something that fit with the storm we had last night.

I was wating for my zip folder to upload to 4 shared and decided to go and make some coffee. I wanted to get my blog done before the storm got to us. I could see it approaching in the distance. Next thing there's lightening that lights up the kitchen like daylingt, next pitch darkness and then this horrifically loud bang.

I start feeling my way to the other side of the kitchen to find the flashlight, but I never noticed that my silly cocker spaniel, Venus, has once again dragged her half eaten bowl of food into the middle of the kitchen floor. Yes, you guessed it, I stepped right into pet mince. Now I have to tell you, I HATE anything that goes between my toes. I don't wear slops or sandals that have that thong thingy that goes between the toes. So now I have this mushy stuff oozing between my toes and I start hobbling to the basin, but then I think "You DEFINITELY cannot wash your feet in the washing up basin". But I have to get my foot clean, get some light and see to the dogs that are now going off their heads.

I just plonked myself on my ass in the middle of the kitchen floor and yelled for light. Corné, Rainer and Katia came storming into the kitchen thinking that I hurt myself. Noooooo, I just have gunk in between my toes. LOL.

Found out a bit later that that lightning bolt hit an old tree, felled it right across the road onto the power cables. So we were without power for the rest of the night and they only managed to restore it mid morning. I had to have a cold wash to get to the office and the electric gate's backup battery ran down during the night. So now you know why I'm telling campfire stories. Pass the marshmallows. LOL.

I really wanted to up this QP freebie last night as I'm working n a little surprise, but now we have to share a day late. I used some goodies from Kim's new grab bag, word art from Jazzy and a snowy overlay from Luna. Don't you just love her blog header?

Here's a preview

And you can get it here http://www.4shared.com/file/73057965/16014ebe/Xmas_QP.html?dirPwdVerified=1524a939. I forgot to include the TOU, but it's standard. For Personal Use Only and do not hot link, send anyone over to my blog to snag. Now I have to get of the 'puter, as we have another massive thunderstorm forecast for tonight.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Silly Season

BWAHAHAHA, I embarassed Katia so earlier on. I LOVE Christmas and how the stores are decorated and all the decorations they have for sale, but my absolute favourites are the "toys" that have the little button you push to try them.

I forgot to buy parrot food on Saturday and picked Katia up from college after work and we popped into the shop quickly. While we were standing in the queue I spotted these trees, a Santa, a hat and an angel - all with that little try me button. Well I couldn't resist, I had to start them all. Santa nearly danced right off the shelf and the hat started bouncing around. I stood there gleefully watching all this, while my 18 year old daughter nearly died of shame.

Then someone else came by and did the very same thing, but she forgot to do the tree and hat, so I walked away from the till and told her to try them. Katia has vowed not to go back to the shops with me until the 26th of December. Saturday I'm going to the store that sells all the lights. LOL.

Traditionally we put our tree up on the 16th of December, which is Katia's birthday, and I'm planning a really stunning tree for this year. We don't have live trees, so I'm going to buy the biggest white tree I can find and do it in red (Katia's favourite colour). I'll then do my Christmas table in red with white trim. I can't wait.

Today I have a little ad on to yesterday's kit. A cluster frame made with some of the goodies in the kit. The papers in the preview is part of the main kit. Here's the preview

And you can get it here http://www.4shared.com/file/71912439/18d67390/Sweet_Rosie_Cluster.html?dirPwdVerified=1524a939.

And you'll notice I've designed a new label for my kits. Somehow I managed to delete the old one. See silly season is in full swing.

Have a marvelous day.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Blessings

I really have been a bad blogger lately, but I hope to fix that in the days to come. Today I have quite a lot to share, so grab some refreshment and get ready for a book.

I got 2 awards. One from Jazzy and one from Bonny. The first one is the Kreativ Blogger award, thank you Jazzy, and I have to share 7 things that I love.

1. My children Rainer and Katia. They are my life, my sunshine, my rain, my sustenance.

2. My Mother. She's turning 73 on Christmas Day and she is the busiest woman I know.

3. Corné, my man, my lover, my friend. He grounds me and keeps me out of mishief.

4. Creating beautiful things. Be it scrapbooking, decorating a table or planning a function.

5. My bikes. Riding on the track in a controlled environment and being allowed to be a hooligan or going on a nice sedate road trip. It's the time I let my spirit soar.

6. My friends, the people that accept me as I am and never judge me or try to change me.

7. The digi-scap community

The second is the Sweety Award and I thank Bonny for it. Now I'm supposed to pay these forward to 7 people a piece, but I've decided that today I want to give them both to each and every reader of my blog, those with blogs of their own, but most importantly for those that don't have blogs. These are the people that make it worthwhile to design for. Every visitor to my blog is Kreativ and everyone is a Sweety. Thank you for stopping by, reading what I have to share, collecting what I create and leaving a comment.

It's when America gets ready to celebrate Thanksgiving that I become very reflective and of all the holidays, it's the one I wish South Africans would adopt. But today I'll just give thanks for the many blessings I have received. The internet with all it's bad things have some people that are amazing. They give and share without "knowing" anyone out there.

I met this guy Stefan via a biking forum. He is a South African working in Saudi Arabia. We immediately got to talking as we ride the same bikes and an online friendship was formed. I mentioned that I would love a graphic tablet and pen and YES you guessed it, Stefan a relative stranger gifted me one for my birthday. I cannot tell you how I've cried about this. I got my gift on Friday, a 12 inch slim tablet and it now has place of honour on my desk.

I have met amazing people like Kim, Bunny and Jazzy through blogs and forums and these people share their talent with me on a daily basis. Jazzy has 2 new sets of word art in store. One that I adore, all about scrapbooking, that is cute and funny and so tongue in cheek and the other designed specifically for Thanksgiving and when I saw the preview, the word "Blessing" popped right out at me and gave direction for my post today. Swing by Jazzy's store and get these absolutely deliteful packs of word art.

Another lady that I'm blessed to "know" is Kristine, a whacky, crazy, beautiful designer that is just as impossible as I am. Kristine loves life and embraces it wholeheartedly. You are an inspiration my friend and when I have no mojo, there's nothing better than yakking to all te Dork Dancing Wenches. Kristine also has 2 new kits in store. The first - Rawhide - is the cutest little boy kit.

The second is Winter Wonderland, a colaboration between herself and Carjazzi Scraps. Swing by her store and check out this absolutely gorgeous blue kit.

I have been stretching myself designing and trying new things. My freebie kit I have for you today is for the DSO Color Challenge. When I saw the colours I thought back to an absolutely beautiful paper Bonny designed with a rose that was part of the kit she created for Kim's 19th Wedding Anniversary. I went mad when I saw that paper and I printed off a copy to use as gift paper.

I created this kit thinking back to that paper and I call it Sweet Rosie. It has a few elements that I created totally from scratch. I love vintage and very realistic elements, so this has some vintage rose papers, some old laces and even a ceramic hat with roses. I hope you like it. Here's a preview

And I've got 3 download links for you.

Papers 1 http://www.4shared.com/file/71704278/2d31edac/Sweet_Rosie_Paper_1.html?dirPwdVerified=1524a939

Papers 2 http://www.4shared.com/file/71707935/290c141a/Sweet_Rosie_Paper_2.html?dirPwdVerified=1524a939

Elements http://www.4shared.com/file/71701021/1dc08511/Sweet_Rosie.html?dirPwdVerified=1524a939

Remember to count your blessings.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Link Correction

Hi all

Seems I duplicated the one paper link. This is the correct link. Once I'm home I'll fix the post.

http://www.4shared.com/file/69608466/a9d0afbc/RB_Gratitude_Papers.html?dirPwdVerified=1524a939

A Very Special Birthday

IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY, IT'S YOUR VERY SPECIAL DAY DEAR KIM!!!

Well I can now let the cat out the bag. A few weeks ago the entire CT team decided to do a bit of a colab kit for your birthday. We knew we had to jump in early and get it done before your birthday week started, so we've been sitting on the top secret files for a while now. We had this idea and Kristine was kind enough to giv us a colour swatch and from then on the goodies just started to flow.

We called this kit Gratitude. It's to firstly wish you a very happy birthday, but also to thank you for

1. Being the wonderful person that you are.

2. For bringing laughter into our lives.

3. For your generosity.

4. For inspiring us with your beautiful kits.

5. For sharing your knowledge.

6. For being a mentor.

7. For your sensitivity

BUT MOST OF ALL WE WANTED TO MAKE YOU CRY!!!! LOL. Kimmy, have a wonderful birthday. You are so special in so many ways and this is our way of showing you what you mean to each and every one of us.

We were each only going to do a few elements and papers, but with this being a special kit for a very special person it sort of got out of hand and on top of all 4 shared's NSD woes we are adding this humungous kit with all sorts of beautiful goodies from flowers, frames, ribbons, papers, bragbook pages and several sets of alphas.

To my fellow CT members, thanks ladies, you all RAWK big time. A special thanks to Beth for the beautiful bragbook pages and to Silvia for the previews. She took the one job we all probably hate the most and created works of art out of the previews.

We also have some LO's of the team and yes, that is Jazzy sitting on a statue's lap LOL. We're definitely a BAD INFLUENCE on her. I think the girls were quite worried with what I was going to come up with as I asked them if they wanted to be on the "good" girl page or on the "bad" girl page LOL. Kim, we love you so much and it's such an honour and privelege being on your team.

So without much further ado, here's the links to my kit and I'm also hosting Kimberley Rae's bit until I can influence her into getting her own blog up!!! Get to it Kimberley, I got hold of Jazzy's wet noodle and I'm high on power. LOL