Goodbye

OK so that's it then, done and dusted. Feels weird that I won't be doing this anymore. Feels like I'm shifting out or something, like this is the last once over before you turn off the light and leave for good.
Anyway thank you to everyone who helped keep this alive.
Our AWESOME contributors who I now call my friends - you guys are so talented and such lovely people, I've thoroughly enjoyed your company.
Our fabulous sponsors, thank you thank you thank you for your support.
And of course our participants - you guys have wowed us with your amazing entries every dare. You certainly made it hard for us to pick winners sometimes.

The blog will still be here for anyone who wants to check back anytime for some inspiration and ideas. There's almost 3 years of work here to inspire you.

Bye for now
lianne

Winners

Hi again, just wanted to announce the winners from the final dare and share their gorgeous work. Thanks for taking part in the final dare, I've loved seeing everyones take on the choices theme.... without further ado....

Lynne

Andrea F aka Mumscrap

Penny

Could you all please email me at vickyandjimmy at gmail.com so i can get your prizes organised

Thanks again!!!

Vicky

The Finale

Hello and welcome to the very last NZ Dare. Its been a wonderful ride and I have enjoyed all of it. I got a huge creative push from the dares and am very thankful that I was asked to become a contributor. I would especially like to thank Lianne, the creative genius behind NZ Dares. All your efforts and time are HUGELY appreciated! Thank you

Without further ado I give you the final dare.

I'd like you to scrap a page about a choice you've made. It could be why you chose to have the lunch you did. Why you chose to marry the person you did. Why you chose to move to where you did. Big or little we make loads of choices every day and they shape who we are.

You have until 12pm on May the 2nd aka (inter)National Scrapbook Day to send us your layouts or add them to the Flickr group. Andrea from SBO has kindly given us a few prizes to give away :)

Heres my page, I chose to do a page about why we choose to vote Green, I think this is an important page for our family scrapbook :)

Donnas
Laras

Trina's

Lianne's - the scan has given Port Waikato two a's for some reason but the scan looks better than the photo I took, so no I didn't make a mistake, the scan just wouldn't line up there because of the scallops I think. Weird.

 

Sharon – this is about the choices I made many years ago that lead to my marriage. Funny what can result from a trip to Disneyland :)

Thank YOU all for playing along with the Dares, we love seeing your interpretations of the dares.

Peace out :)

It's time for NZ Dares to say goodbye

Sadly we must say goodbye. It's time to hang up our dare boots. We have thoroughly enjoyed bringing the dares to you each fortnight over the last couple of years, and it has certainly challenged us (in a good way) coming up with fun and different ideas for you.

It is mainly due to the drop in interest, but also other commitments we all have. So without further adieu our next dare will be the last dare and that will be it. Finito.


We'd love to see some of our old darees participate in this final challenge. Hope you can all join in.


Check out Vickys dare in a few days time.

lianne

Dare 65 - winner

We have drawn a winner and it's...............

KIM

Here's her cool traffic light layout.

Congratulations Kim and thanks to those who participated.

KIM - Can you email me ian.donna@xtra.co.nz for a RAK to be sent to you.

Check back here soon for a further announcement from NZ Dares.

WINNER - Dare number 64

Hi everyone.

Thanks so much for playing along with this fortnights dare. Its been wonderful going through the entries and so hard trying to choose who will be our winner.

This week though I've chosen Kim as our winner. Kim, I loved how you highlighted the child in your photo both by having that part of the photo in colour, and also the bling around that area.

A wonderful LO. Can you please email me at trinamcclune@xtra.co.nz and I'll get a wee rak out to you. I have some delightful papers sitting on my desk that need a new home. I'm sure you'll love them.

And we would love to ask Kiwidee to be our guest blogger. Can you please contact Lianne on the email details below to organise? Thanks.

Look out for the next dare, coming up in about 2 minutes!

Dare 65

Hello! Time for another dare.

This fortnight we're calling it "The Traffic Light Dare!" It's all to do with the meaning of the traffic light colours.

You can scrap based on any one or all 3 of the traffic light signs -

STOP - something you need to QUIT doing

AMBER - things you need to SLOW DOWN with, maybe think about

GREEN - something you need to GO ahead with.

The layout needs to feature the traffic light colour somewhere too.

We have 2 Guest Designers this week.

The GD chosen from Dare 63 was Tessah Aihara from Japan. She tells us she's relatively new to scrapping! Tessah, we LOVE your work. Here's what Tessah had to say about the process of her layout:

A birthday always marks a new beginning. For me, its the best time of the year to evaluate yourself as a person, reset your goals if necessary and change bad habits that didn't help you in the past years. And the most important thing for me on my birthday is looking on the brightest side of my life. Turning 27 made me realize the bad and the good things I had for the past 26 years. I had the attitude and bad habits that I stopped doing, I have some parts of me that i have to slow down and keep on my waiting mode and the best part is I have this something or should I say I have this someone that I will want to go on with forever and just stay as it is for the longest time that I could.

Journaling; My Second Birthday with YOU

She also adds that she "also distressed the picture by turning it into a puzzle piece and ink each piece."

Tessah

I also asked the lovely Annette Hanigan from Australia to be my Special Guest Designer. As a fellow Ambassador for Fiskars, I've often admired Annette's artistic approach to her projects and she certainly hasn't disappointed with her contribution to this dare. I love her colourful creation!

Annette

Annette said the dare immediately brought to mind a song from her son's pre-school days which sparked her idea for this layout!

I always love hearing how creative inspiration comes about. This proves, it comes from anywhere!

You'll see from the closeup shots that Annette has used oil pastels which she says were just a cheap dept store purchase. I love the literal inclusion of the traffic light circles too.

Thanks so much for being our Guest designers Tessah and Annette and for providing us all with some colourful inspiration.

As for me, well I've been mulling lots of things over lately and trying to sort out lots of creative ideas I have. I always collect a lot of visual inspiration and am finally going to make an Inspiration Board so it's all in one place, where I can see it together and change it as I find new inspiration. This was the starting point for me...
Donna

I was talking to my 9 year old daughter about my muddled thoughts and in her best school teacher voice, she told me I need to list my ideas and then edit them and work on developing my favourites! LOL. And so that became the focus of my journaling. I decided to make a cardboard 'frame' for my photo and my project will stand on my desk as an affirmation of what I'm going to do! I used subtle touches of green for Go.

Sharon

Last Spring I tried out vege gardening as part of going green. Some success, some failure, lots of lessons :

I hope this dare will inspire you to record something you need to STOP doing, SLOW DOWN and think about, or GO ahead with.

We'd love to see your interpretations!

I will be sending a RAK to the winner.You have until Wed 15th April to get your layouts/projects in.Leave a link in the comments to your LO's on your blog, gallery, or you may use the Flickr group if you like. If necessary you can email your LO to Lianne at RANDLGRAY@xtra.co.nz (no bigger than 100kb

Come back here for more inspiration as the Dare's team add their work.

Rach's

I went with using the colours of red (paint), amber (pp) + green (cs) for my LO. And as well for the journalling I used the words we use when we are at the traffic lights waiting for the lights to turn green with the kids.

READY SET GO

Dare number 64

Hi everyone.
Welcome to another dare.

This fortnight I've decided to follow on from Rach's colour dare by looking at colour (or lack of) in our photos.

Your dare this fortnight is to use both black and white and colour photos in the same LO. If you're only using one photo, then you need to make part of the photo black and white, and part of it colour.

For this dare I've asked a wonderfully inspirational lady from Australia - Shirley Fyfe - to join us as our special guest designer. She has long inspired me with her use of colour, photos and general amazingness (is that a word? LOL) in her LO's that I thought she would be perfect to guest blog with us.
She had created the following LO to share....

And a couple of close ups....

Don't you just LOVE how she has used the main colours from her photos to create the base of her LO. And I especially love how the title's wonkiness makes you really feel like the LO is vrooming! Thanks so much for sharing your delightful work with us Shirley.

We are also lucky to have Erica designing for us this fortnight as well. Check out what she has done to inspire you.....

By putting the colour photo in between two black and white photos and little colour on the LO itself, the colour photo really stands out and the whole design makes for a very striking LO.

And here's my take on the dare... Donna's

Sharon:

Lianne

You have until the 1st April to get your LO's in.

Leave a link in the comments to your LO's on your blog, gallery, or you may use the Flickr group if you like. If necessary you can email your LO to Lianne at RANDLGRAY@xtra.co.nz (no bigger than 100kb).

Have fun! Can't wait to see what you come up with.

Dare 63 winner!!

Thanks to the girls that played along.

We loved all your colourful LO's.

This weeks winner was Raewyn with the use of one of my favourite colours....... orange!!

Congrats Raewyn + can you send me your address please (shore.break@farmside.co.nz) so I can post out a little colourful rak to you.

Unfortunatley I'm unable to up load Raewyns LO at the moment but as soon as we can I'll put it up.

And we would LOVE Tessah to be our next guest dter for dare 65.

Check out Tessah's beautiful LO.

Tessah you can email Lianne at RANDLGRAY@xtra.co.nz for the details.

Thanks to those that played along + be on the lookout for the next dare later today.
join in........you know you want to be challenged to scrap those lastest photos or maybe its to play with some new products or maybe just use up some of that stash!!

Dare 62 - Winners

Sue is the lucky winner of a Lauren Bavin CD this week for her beautiful layout. I remember doing the same thing myself. 

Our Guest Designer for dare 64 will be Erica who did a terrific page on starting a new life in a new country:

Watch out for the next dare coming up tonight!

Dare 63

Hi everyone

so we have apparently moved into the Autumn season...........one that I do love as its full of warm days, cooler nights + gorgeous colours.

So with these thoughts I have been inspired to create a dare for you all using colour.

Its everywhere, we have our favourites, we wear it, we eat it + we create by it whether its a paper creation or maybe a room you are decorating at home.

So I would love to see your take on what colour means to you. Maybe you want to scrap with your favourite colour, create a LO using a photo of favourite coloured shoes or room at home.........you get the idea.

And for this dare I have asked a special guest designer Gigi Kennedy.
Gigi lives in the US, with her husband + 3 lovely kids. She is currently on the Tarisota + Kenner Road design teams.

Gigi's creations have a lovely fresh feel to them + she has this amazing talent to whip up such inspiring canvas's using awesome quotes.

This is what GiGi said about her LO

I actually created this layout for claudine hellmuth's new book "the scrapbooker's creativity kit". My assignment & challenge was to create a project using the colors blue & purple with the "theme" of play. So for me, the entire jumping off point for this layout was color. It is definitely fun creating designs based on color.

Thanks Gigi for joining in on the fun!
As well we are lucky to have our regular guest spot + this time round we have Sue with her gorgeous LO.

This is what Sue had to say about her LO.

“i've been told many times that when it comes to scrapbooking - i'm 'good with colour'. purple's one of my favourite colours and i think the sepia tone of this photo lent itself well to the double-sided brown paper. As for the subject? My second youngest daughter is not only a gorgeous photographic subject, she spends a good deal of her time deep in thought!”
Rach.
With mine I went with the rainbow. I seem to tend to sway to the brighter colours when I scrap + in my everyday I seem to wear brights against my black whether it be my shoes, a cardi or my handbag.
And Vicky's.

We are really influenced by the natural world in our house, especially when we think about the colours we use in our home, sticking with mainly greens, browns and blues. The tones I have used in this layout also relate themselves well to Arlos soft, laid back personality. Donna

I was inspired by the gorgeous rainbows we see from our place. Sadly, have never found that pot of gold yet... Lesley - I was inspired by this photo with the bright yellow and orange dominating. Colours symbollic of fun and playfulness.

Sharon – well my favourite colour is black – but I included a few others on the layout just for fun:

Lianne - I am always in awe of the colours in flowers. They are always so perfect and rich. The bright yellow in these flowers in the photo inspired me to create this bright and colourful LO.

can't wait to see your colouful world + I'm putting together some colourful goodness for the winner of this dare. :)

You have until the 18th of March to get your LO's in.

Leave a link in the comments to your LO's on your blog, gallery, or you may use the Flickr group if you like. If necessary you can email your LO to Lianne at RANDLGRAY@xtra.co.nz (no bigger than 100kb).

Dare 62

I don’t know where the time went but believe it or not, it is time for our next dare. As it is still close to the beginning of the year and school has just gone back, I was thinking about

new beginnings

and so that is the theme for this week’s dare.

Our guest designer Sarah made a beautiful page celebrating her new nephew. Isn’t he gorgeous!

 

My layout showcased a photo from my youngest son’s first day at school:

Lara’s layout shows her son’s first fishing and the possible beginning of a new passion:

Lianne’s layout focuses on some life changes including a new job.

Vickys layout is about her sons first day at kindy.

Rach's LO is about her daughter just learning to walking.

I have asked Lauren Bavin, a designer at digitalscrapbookplace.com to be our special guest this week and she has kindly agreed to donate a CD containing five of her digital kits to use for a prize draw. Here is her page:

We are looking forward to seeing your new beginnings!

Leave a link in the comments to your LO's on your blog, gallery, or you may use the Flickr group if you like. If necessary you can email your LO to Lianne at RANDLGRAY@xtra.co.nz (no bigger than 100kb).

Dare # 61 winners

Here are the entries for our first dare of 2009.

Firstly my favourite this week was this cool LO by Sue Bull about returning to the workforce after 20 years. Sue we'd love you to be our guest designer for Dare # 63. If you could email me I'll let you know the details if you're keen.

Next is Ericas LO about learning to delegate, LOL, yes a few of us need to learn that lesson I think.

And poor Sarah learnt a hard lesson by the look of it. OMG Sarah, lucky you were wearing a helmet.

I did a draw for a RAK and congratulations ERICA, you won. Email me your address and I'll send something out to you.

Watch out tomorrow night for another very cool dare and a SPECIAL GUEST DESIGNER you should be familiar with; and our Guest Designer favourite from Dare # 60 Sarah Punnett.

Hello everybody - we're back

Welcome back. It's time for the first dare of 2009.

Dare # 61

So what did you learn in 2008. Anything? You must have learnt something.

Were you like Lesley and Sharon and learnt more about something they love to do. Or were you like Trina, Lara and our guest designer Corinne and learnt you need to slow down, live life and listen to your heart. Vicky learnt lots of things, check out her gorgeous Art Journal card. I learnt that as I'm getting older I just need to have fun and enjoy life.

So Dare # 61 is

'what did you learn in 2008'

it can be a thing you learnt, studied etc or like me to just live, laugh and love life.

Lianne Corinne (our guest designer)

Lesley

Trina

Lara

Vicky

Sharon

Donna - "I need to better manage my time"

Rach - to let those small things in life go that we make mountains out of mole hills.

We're having a couple of changes on NZ Dares this year. We won't be having sponsors anymore unless someone really would like to sponsor a dare, we certainly won't say no. We'd really appreciate it in fact.

What we will be doing is having a special guest designer for each dare, someone specially asked by the person setting the dare.

AND we'll still have our guest designer favourite from a previous dare.

AND we might have the occasional RAK

So for my dare, because we only just thought of having SPECIAL guest designers I don't have one for my dare but I will be doing a draw of all the entries for a RAK.

So come on show us what you learnt in 2008, we'd love to know.

Leave a link in the comments to your LO's on your blog, gallery, or you may use the Flickr group if you like. If necessary you can email your LO to Lianne at RANDLGRAY@xtra.co.nz (no bigger than 100kb).

2008 Final Winner - Dare # 60

The winner to receive that awesome prize from Random Kits and Pieces is:

Tracey Dye

Here is her cute layout

Tracey could you please email me with your details to pass on to Niella for your prize.

And Lara's favourite to be Guest Designer for Dare # 62 is:

Sarah Punnett

with this gorgeous layout.

Sarah could you please email randlgray@xtra.co.nz for the details.

Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the NZ Dare team. See you back here on Friday Feb 6th with a new dare for 2009.

Dare #60

Hello Daring persons...
There can be heaps of warm fuzzy moments at this time of year (amidst the busyness)...saying thank you to your child's teacher, decorating a tree, watching a nativity play, singing Christmas Carols, eating cake...

So my dare to you is to get warm & fuzzy...the only requirement is to use some fuzzy texture on your page - like felt, velvet flocking, or something else soft to touch. You can choose to put some warm fuzzy feelings in there if you like too :-) maybe you could use this dare for a thank you gift for someone special...you just have to use some fuzzy texture!

Our sponsor for this dare is Niella & Bee from Random Kits & Pieces and the winner of this dare will receive a $20 voucher to be spent in their online store....but wait, there's more, Niella is also adding in a pack of 3 fat quarters that she was saving for next years kits - so you'll get what no one else has yet! I have used some of their bits in my layout below!

Sonya has been playing with this dare and here is her warm & fuzzy page perfect for this time of year:



Vicky has been creating with some velvet ribbon and using her warm & fuzzy sentiments about her boys:

Monique has made a felt wall hanging/frame for a photo of one of her boys...she has a couple more to make now :-)

I (Lara) used some felt alpha and some white felt circles...as well as some items from the sponsor of this dare - the strawberry paper bag, blue spotty fabric, the peg and some of the buttons too!

I also created a digi layout that uses some felt for that warm fuzzy feeling:

Sharon finally scrapped last year's Christmas morning photos!!

Lianne - felt and pom pom trim, fuzzy brads, pipecleaner branch with cute owl buttons I got from our sponsor Niella of Random Kits and Pieces, and fabric and a warm fuzzy photo.

Happy warm & fuzzy daring everyone, check back as there may be some more inspiration uploaded from the team.

The deadline for this dare is a little earlier than usual...Monday the 22nd of December with a winner announced on Tuesday 23rd.

You need leave a link in the comments of this post to your layout on a blog or on the flickr group or a comment to say if you have emailed it to Lianne (RANDLGRAY@xtra.co.nz) ...or it might get lost.... Just leave a comment to say it's done & where it is please.

After this the dares will be taking a holiday too, with a new dare on Feb 6th 2009!

A big Woo-hoot to....

... Sonya, Corrine and Erica who took up the challenge of the Haiku dare...well done ladies you rock getting such gorgeous layouts created at this super busy time of the year!

Sonya

Corrine

Erica
Thank you ladies!!

And the winner of the awesome organising101 workshop from Aby at Simplify101.... Sonya it's you!! Hope you pick up lots of useful tips for being super organized!!!....(and please pass them on to me heh, heh!!)

and Corrine we would love, love, love it if you would join us in the New Year and be our first NZ Dares Guest Designer for 2009....please email Lianne at RANDLGRAY@xtra.co.nz for further details.

Well everybody we have one further dare up our sleeves for the year before we take a wee break over the holidays....be sure to come by tomorrow night and see what Lara will be daring you to scrap!

Cheers
Meek!

Dare #59

Hello fellow darers!!

Well the weather is gradually warming up and we are able to get out and enjoy the outdoors more at last!

For this dare lets be inspired by Mother Nature....create a layout using a photo with a nature theme....the photo must have no people in it....your layout must also include a Haiku poem which can be composed by you or somebody else

Here is a little background info on Haiku poetry...

Haiku is a Japanese verse form that relies on brevity and simplicity to convey its message. It is usually three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, and frequently includes natural images or themes. It is believed to have been first written in the seventeenth century and is based on a Zen Buddhist philosophy of simplicity and the idea of perfection that excludes the extraneous.

This simple form of poetry goes really well with beautiful images of nature so I am looking forward to what you put together! Just pop haiku into google and you will find plenty of inspiration or visit your the poetry section at the library.

We have great prize for this dare...perfect for this time of the year when we feel a little snowed under by the clutter and chaos around us lol!

Our Sponsor for dare #59 is Aby Garvey from Simplify101. Be sure to check out the website here Simplify 101 is all about helping you create real and lasting change in your life by getting more organized! There is a great range of workshops to suit your needs and an awesome ezine newsletter that you can subscribe to here

Aby is very generously giving the lucky winner of Dare #59 a free Organizing 101 workshop which kicks off on January 13th...just in time to help you with your New Years resolution of being more organized!

Our Guest Designer for this dare is Donna Brisbois...love this Donna, that picture makes me wish I was right there! thanks so much for taking up the dare!

My layout...the haiku reads....

Birds and bees flying

soft blades of grass on my feet

new flowers blooming.

Lianne's layout...the haiku reads...

Alone on his perch
The seagull rests tired wings
Living in freedom

Sharon's layout

Donna's haiku reads:

There's a special place

Where the mountain meets the sea

The place I was born

Lara's Layout

Happy daring everybody...there will be more layouts added by the NZ dare team during the week so do check back...

Deadline for this dare is Wednesday December 10th.

Leave a link in the comments to your LO's on your blog, gallery, or you may use the Flickr group if you like. If necessary you can email your LO to Lianne at RANDLGRAY@xtra.co.nz (no bigger than 100kb).

Meek.