A Crafty Tag and Reno Progress Report!

I'm having a "No-Builders" day today - well I am now anyway - the electrician did pop in first thing to do some bits he didn't have time foryesterday, but he was gone by 9am.
Thought I'd stick some progress pics on here now that the rooms are pretty much ready for the new stuff to be fitted when it arrives.
First photo shows the new hallway leading to our bedroom, there'll be room in this bit for a little set of shelves, hooks for dressing gowns etc. Malcolm the Plasterer has made a fabby job of the various arches we've added to take away the harshness of the bits of old outside walls which of course we couldn't remove or the roof would fall in! I love the new doors too, it's funny though, now all the other "new" doors they put on when the extension was originally built really offend me!
These 3 are of the new main bathroom. On the wall to the right of the window in the 1st photo there'll be a fitted unit with 2 sinks. Along the wall on the left of the window (pic2) the bath will go, and in the 3rd pic you can see where the loo and quadrant-shaped shower will be.

It's not easy to get photos of the new ensuite, but these are the best I can manage.
In the left section will be the fittend unit with the loo and sink, then through the new arch is the shower room. Our new shower will go right along that facing wall - it's going to be HUGE.
I'm so looking forward to not having to go downstairs to have a shower in a room with no heating - for goodness sake, who puts an extension on their house these days, puts in a downstairs shower room and doesn't think to put a radiator in there? All I can say is thank goodness the weather has stayed relatively mild while this work is being done!

And so on to this fun and crafty tag from the fabby, wonderfully talented Jo

1. If you could have 100.00 worth of scrapbook paper or assorted embellishments, which would you choose?
Got to be the paper - there's just sooooo much you can do with the stuff

2. If you had to choose between using only stamps or rubons, which would you choose?
Oh crikey. I'm not much use with either. too hard!

3. If you knew how to do both awesome cards and layouts but could only do one for a whole year...which would you do?
Got to be cards. I've dabbled in scrapbooking but not got hooked (yet)

4. Would you rather own a scrapbooking store or have your own scrapping room at home...(can't have both he he he)
I'll have a really well-kitted out craft room please. A store sounds too much like hard work!

5. And last but not least, what is your CURRENT cardmaking or scrapping style....Now this can be tough to nail down!
er.....atm I'm loving making 3d flowers, and adding borders to my cards. I try not to get too carried away though because then I find it hard to make anything else!

Now I need to tag 5 more people...hhhmmmmm, who shall they be?
Ok, how about
Sarah Sylvie Vanessa Kaz Louly

Ribbon-topped Recipe

OK, so I've just spent half an hour searching for some welded and matted-up words I'd just made for a CJ page. Two words went missing, how can that be? I've not moved from my desk in the meantime. I tidied the desk, I checked the bin. I went and made the workmen a cup of tea hoping the words would miraculously reappear while I was gone.

They didn't.
So I had to cut some more.
Fortunately I hadn't closed up the Robo doc so they were still there in the right sizes.
Unfortunately I'd used the last piece of the blue paper to make them.
hmmm, ok, I'm using green on this LO aswell so I'll cut them in green.

I set the robo away - twice as this card is a bit thicker. I take out the carrier sheet and can feel something stuck on the back of it. Yep, the two missing words had somehow got stuck on the shiny back of the carrier sheet. Don't know whether to laugh or cry!

Here's my card for todays Daring Cardmakers Little Extra
it's a Recipe today, and the ingredients are:

4 brads/eyelets
3 circles
2 rectangles
lashings of ribbon for garnishing...

Paper is by Adornit that and the snowflake vards are from Bubbly Funk
And the gorgeous glittery ribbon is from our fabulous sponsor this week Ribbon Oasis

Peace Reigns

Well, at least for today!
No buildymen of any sort here today. The plasterer was here pretty much all day yesterday so none of our lazy Saturday lie-in for us aggghhhh. Still, he got all the plastering finished in what will be the main bathroom and can now move on to the new en suite tomorrow. I can't quite believe how dusty it is while he's here - I thought knocking down the walls would be the dustiest, muckiest bit, but the plaster dust is so fine it gets everywhere, sneaks through the tiniest gaps and just floats in the air until it gets the chance to land, or be breathed in by anyone passing by! My skin feels permanently dusty and I'm growing a dry dusty cough too. I'm also growing a Dust Paranoia I think as I found myself going down to the loo the other night wiping the banisters with one of those "Flash" wet wipe things as I went........
The woman is coming back tomorrow to do the proper measuring up for the new bedroom furniture, the electrician will be back this week to do whatever he needs to do, but I think it'll be the following week before the new "sanitaryware" arrives or the tiler comes - which is the real fun bit.
I've been busy doing a new set of cards for Crafty Templates, but I can't show them on here quite yet. In fact it seems that most of what I've done in the last week or two is stuff I can't show properly so I thought I'd add some more of those sneak peeks from a couple of projects to be going on with











Remember this?
Well some people kindly awarded me one of these smile buttons and (kathy blushes) I completely forgot to pass it on!
Saffa,
You never fail to amke me smile with your beautiful, inspiring creativity
Jackie
well, you're another Grecophile for a start and that "Two Dares, Wins" pun has had me chortling and smiling ever since you posted it....
Joanne
Who is one of the kindest and most helpful fellow crafters I know - her Craft Robo tutorials are so easy to follow - and that can't fail to make anyone smile!
Beth
Because she may possibly be the worst blogger in the world, but she deserves a smile award for her unfailing sense of humour - all her forum friends would agree, I'm sure!
Caroline
Because her shop is a guaranteed smilefest of tempting stash, so she definitely deserves an award for keeping us happily parting with our cash!

What a week

Not the most fun time I've ever had, that's for sure.
My uncle's death and funeral shook me more than I really expected. You know it's sad and you're going to feel dreadful, but in this case there was something extra I hadn't bargained for, the realisation that this was my last link with the history and heritage of that side of the family, so this has all left me feeling a bit cast adrift. Do you ever have those times when all you want is to curl up in a warm, dark and safe cupboard while you recover some sort of equilibrium?

Add to that the building work going on here, and the fact that they'd planned to do the knocking down wall bit the day we were out, but in fact did it on Wednesday - the day after the funeral when I wasn't exactly feeling at my best. This one guy did all the drilling, knocking down and later the carrying away all of the bricks and stuff to the skip - it was about 6.30 before he left and I was done for.
The people who built the original extension for some bizarre reason decided that a kitchen door wasn't necessary and put an archway there instead. A bad idea at the best of times as even making cheese on toast under the grill sets the smoke alarm off - but when there are walls being knocked down elsewhere in the house - well the dust was everywhere. the floor the surfaces, everything had a pink tinge of brick dust. My poor cappuccino maker looked a right mess!
We went to the local Chinese restaurant for dinner - there was no way I could face cleaning all that up before I could start to cook.
I think that was (hopefully) the worst day of the project - we always knew it would be a bad day, but the timing could have been better.
I'll stop the moaning now and write about the fabby dare the DCM have been doing this week instead - a much nicer subject altogether

We've a special dare this week. Bea from Ribbon Oasis is sponsoring a challenge to use her fabbylicious range of Christmassy ribbons on our cards. So Lucky Us - we all received an envelope full of ribbons to play with and on the DCM blog you'll find the cards we've made (so far!)

So this week we'd love you to join in and make Christmas cards using lots and lots of fabby, yummy ribbon - now that shouldn't be too hard, after all we all love ribbon, don't we?

Don't forget that you can replenish and expand your ribbon supply easily by visiting the Ribbon Oasis website - you'll find so much of the gorgeous twirly stuff there you'll be spoilt for choice - we guarantee it!

Now then, just in case you need a bit more enticement to join in our dare:

Wrap it in Ribbon for Christmas

here's a little sweetener: Bea is giving a ribbonful prize to one lucky darer this week. All you need to do is make a be-ribboned Christmas Card especially for the DCM (no doubling up of challenges this week....), post a link to say where we can see it, or send it by email to daringcardmakers@hotmail.co.uk for the gallery and you'll be in with a chance of winning. Couldn't be easier, could it?

With all the hassles in "real life" I struggled with kicking my mojo into gear this week, but yesterday finally managed, after a few false starts on Wednesday, to come up with these

Actually, I'm not keen on this one - probably because it didn't want to come together without a fight!
Paper is by Adornit
Circles cut by the Craft Robo from plain white card then embossed with the Cuttlebug snowflakes folder

(ooohhhhh they're playing one of my favourite pieces of classical music on the radio - the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana by Mascagni)
Hat is hand cut from some metallic blue card and covered with pieces of silver mesh ribbon and this gorgeous blue satin and organza ribbon that has a silver thread running through it too.
The tree is downloaded for the Robo from the Bosskutz site and covered with Stickles glitter glue.

All the ribbon - and just how cute is that snowman ribbon? - is of course from Ribbon Oasis

I like this one better, though even here it took a bit of persuading to work. Originally it was going to have tags saying Celebrate Christmas - I got as far as making the words and utting them on the Robo but then I got a bit stuck!

Anyway, eventually I gave up on the "celebrate" and just used the ingle word, cut in blue metallic card, mounted on plain white then gold glitter card. I simply tied some of Bea's gorgeous blue organza ribbon with stars and trees on it around the "tag" in a simple bow to show the ribbon off at it's best. I echoed the stars on the ribbon along the edges of the piece of blue card - I have no idea where I got thsi from, which is a shame as it's absolutely beautiful, it is a lovely colour and has a soft shimmery pearlescent finish - much nice irl than on the photo.

So those are my Wrap it in Ribbon for Christmas cards using some of Bea's yummy scrummy ribbons. You really do need to check out what's on offer at Ribbon Oasis
I'm always very happy to spend a happy hour (or two!) going through all the pages of ribbons there are to ooh and ahh over on there. take my advice - find a spare hour and make yourself a coffee, then enjoy a good old browse around Bea's Ribbonfest of a store!

It's a Sketchy Little Extra

I'm a bit late posting this but yesterday was a sad and difficult day.

Today is going to be a headache - or at the very least cause me to have one!
The plan for yesterday had been to knock through the old external wall to make the archway from the bit of our new en suite with the loo and basin in to the bit where our lovely new ginormous shower will be, but for some reason it's now going to be today.

Yesterday we were out most of the day of course. Today I'm not. And the hammering started just after 8am. I'm now waiting for the drilling to start - it's going to be very noisy and very mucky around here today. I have loads to do but I think it'll be a case of doing a few essentials then escaping to town for shopping and cappuccino - maybe I'll even stay our for lunch.
Anyway, it was Daring Cardmakers LE day yesterday, so here's the task and my card.

We're letting Santa's Little Helper have a rest for a couple of weeks, but you can still make a Christmas card for this one if you like. It's ages since we gave you a sketch to play with so that's what we've got for you this time
You can use the sketch any way you like, just as long as we can still see it in there somewhere - so stretch it or shrink it or do whatever else you can to make use of it.

I've used squares of striped paper I can't remember the name of (will update later).
circles of gold paper with sparkle in it
stamps are from several of the little Hampton Arts stamp sets from Bubbly Funk
gold embossing powder
colouring pencils
Cats Eye Chalk Ink - the lime green one (wished I hadn't now though)
gold pen
Please have a go and see what you come up with for this one - there are a couple more ideas on the DCM blog which we hope will help inspire you.

Above all, have fun!

Round Up

It's been a few days since I blogged so I thought a bit of a round up was in order. The builders started work on the renovations last Thursday so there's loads of dust, mess and noise to deal with. The roofer came on Saturday to move the velux windows - thank goodness the weather was nice and dry while there were holes in the roof! I don't usually get up early on Saturday mornings so their 8am start was a bit of a shock to the system! Today the electricians are here doing the first fix aswell asregular "buildymen" and I think they've all brought their big noisy toys out to play, maybe they are having a contest - at times it surely sounds that way! ("it'll be nice when it's finished, it'll be nice when it's finished, it'll be nice when it's finished")

My dad's big brother; my lovely Uncle John died last week, and I'm feeling very sad at the moment. Although we didn't have much to do with them when we were growing up because we lived so far apart, I grew very fond of him in later years. He was especially interested in the research I did for our family history and was a great source of information and stories, if I mentioned anything about the family he'd go ferreting about in his papers - and in his memory, then ring me up to tell me what he'd found. I think he got a lot of pleasure from helping me with this and the shared interest certainly made us closer - for which I'm very grateful. Funeral is tomorrow, I think it's going to be a very tough day.

This is the sympathy card I made to send to my cousins, it's very simple and a variation of one I made a couple of months back.

Having a house full of builders has been a good excuse to hide in the study with the doors firmly shut - it doesn't stop all the dust and dirt but it helps a bit, and of course it means I can lock myself away and try and get some crafting done. I've a lot to do this week and the days are already getting booked up so I only hope I can get through the list. I've done my pages for one of the cjs I've got on the go atm, need to think what to do for the other one now. We have another special dare coming up for the DCM on Friday - you'll need to ait and see for that though.
I've done my LE card for Tuesday already as I'll need to be organised tomorrow.

My first cards for Leo's fab Crafty Templates website are done and one of them is shown on the Crafty Templates Blog along with fab cards from Mat and Louise using more of Leo's wonderful templates - they were all Christmas ones this time and we had lovely Daisy Bucket Winter Wishes papers to use, plus lots of matching ribbons from Ribbon Oasis. Here are the cards I've made so far, though the templates are so much fun that I think I'll be making some more cards with them (just as soon as I get some "play" time). What is really exciting about the templates is that there's often a choice as to whether you can use them for a shaped card or to make your own version as a topper type thingie (tech term!) You know, I'm sure there was something else I had to show, but I can't think what it might have been so maybe I just imagined it! maybe I was going to show some "before" photos of the building work...
Here we are on the landing, our bedroom is down that passage to the left - we're having the bedroom door moved so that most of the hallway is inside our room rather than outside it. The photo on the right shows that they've already knocked out a bit of wall, moved the door and built in the framework for where the new door will be.

Please note - we did not choose the ghastly vomit inducing yellow paint!

The door you can see on the right of the 2nd photo leads into the bathroom. Which looked like this till last week:

It's a huge room so we're having it split into two to make an en suite and a main bathroom. The new dividing wall will run from just right of the door on the first pic to the outside wall. The beam bit in the photo is the old external wall so makes life a bit tricky - we're going to take as much of that away as possible and make archways in both new rooms to camoflage it a bit. The new bigger bathroom will be where the bath/loo/shower are in the photo - there will be 2 sinks where the bath is, a new loo and corner shower in the same places as now, the new bath will go along the new dividing wall.
In our en suite, the shower will be huge - it'll fill that space between the new wall (by the door) and the all where that great big mirror and sinks are at the moment. The loo and basin will be in the bit you can't see in these photos.
Please note - nor did we choose the ghastly wall tiles either

This is the bedroom - the purple bit in the corner we discovered behind the old built in cupboard - the door to the ensuite will be here, the cupboard will form part of the new room - the loo and sink will be in that section. We've had to move the velux window into the new room as they wouldn't let us have another rooflight. The 2nd pic is the room taken from the old cupboard. The door is the one that's moving along the hall, there will be an archway in it's place and our lovely new fitted wardrobes will go along that wall.

I will bore you with more photos another time, but that's all for now!

DCM First Anniversary Dare

The group of friends who got together to form the Daring Cardmakers back in October 2006 has developed and grown into a huge circle of crafting and blogging friends who come together from all over the world to share their inspiration and their talents so enthusiastically, and are always so supportive of each other's cardmaking.

In honour of all of you who've helped make this blog so successful, and such a friendly place to "play" we've decided to revisit our very first dare for this our first anniversary, but with a twist.

The subject is, as in our original dare "friends", but this time the title is
CIRCLE of FRIENDS
and we'd like you to incorporate at least one circle into your card.
It would make it a very special occasion if for this dare you'd make a card just for the DCM rather than doubling up with other challenges.

Please join in and celebrate our first anniversary with us, without all of you - our wonderful extended "Team of Darers" and of course all those who've joined us as Guest Designers over the last year it wouldn't be half as much fun.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DARING CARDMAKERS ALL

I used my Making Memories eyelet tool to cut all the litle cirlces, there are three different sized heads - I knew they'c come in useful one day!

I stuck a piece of pink vellum on the inside to show through the holes.
The flowers are cut from various papers including:
3 Bugs in a Rug
Daisy Bucket
Me & My Big Ideas

Other Supplies:
Cats Eye chalk Inks
Glossy Accents
Stickles Glitter Glue
Bazzill Bling card


It's been an amzing year. I'm sure my cardmaking has improved and I'm certainly doing a lot more "serious" crafting than Iused to!
I absolutely love being part of the DCM and yet again want to thank Jane for her fab idea and for all her hard work making it happen. A lot has changed over the year but one thing remains the same - the DCM started off as a great circle of friends who made cards, and we still are - it's just that the circle has grown so much BIGGER!

And finally, a Great big thank you to those lovely people who've nominated me for a smile award - much appreciated and I'll be passing this on really soon

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

I googled for the words of this carol and found loads of variations - so instead of writing the song on here I'm going to add this funny little poem that I found instead!

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree
You’re shedding on the carpet

Through summer sun and winter snow
O Christmas tree, you always grow

But put you in the living room
And pretty soon we need a broom

attributed to Owen Sanity

Anyway, for Santa's Little Extra Helper no2 from the Daring Cardmakers the theme is Christmas Trees and here are a few that I've made in the last couple of days



Some are variations on my favourite card of last year, made with scraps of Christmas papers stuck on strips of card which are then cut into triangles for the trees.

The others are made with some sei papers I've just discovered lurking in the bag marked "Christmas Papers". I cut the trees with the template I downloaded a couple of weeks back from the Bosskuts site.

It's Getting Closer Every Day!

If all goes according to plan the builders will arrive sometime during this week to start the alterations to our bedroom and to split the ginormous bathroom into two. There's to be a bit of wall and doorway moving/altering/building and we also have to have both the current rooflights moved, so keep your fingers crossed that the weather stays dry while we have holes in the roof, please!
I know it's going to be chaos and mess and I'll probably not enjoy the next few weeks very much, but eventually it will be all lovely....won't it?
Yesterday chose the finish/style for the bedroom furniture so that as soon as the alterations are done we can get the fitters to come and do the wardrobes etc. While the builders are here the electrician will do all the new lighting, switches and sockets as all these will need to be moved from where they are now. Hubby has been having lots of fun drawing up plans of where he wants them all to be - he likes doing stuff like that - and it's just as well, because if it were down to me the electrician would say "where do you want these sockets to be?" and I'd stand there, shrug my shoulders, scratch my head and say "er.....I dunno really...."
We'll have to get the room painted before the new furniture comes, and we'll need to arrange for the new carpets to be fitted too.
I'm looking forward to having an ensuite bathroom again - maybe I wouldn't have missed it so much if bathroom here hadn't been so hideous. but it'll be nice to have the convenience (pardon the pun) again! Oh and the shower in there is going to be HUGE! We've been planning the new bathroom stuff for so long I can hardly believe it's actually going to happen now!
Will it all be done by Christmas? I'm trying not to think about it!

The crafty mojo has gone missing for the last few days, I hope it'll be back soon because CJs have been landing on the doormat, quite apart from the stack of cards I need to make and that "C" thing I need to get organised for. I can at least put the photos of the little plaque I made for fellow DCM-er Gillian's birthday last week. I really enjoyed making this. I love adding extra little bits and bobs to this sort of piece - it's often knowing when to stop that's the hard bit!
I used those wonderful We Are Memory Keepers Vintage Brass papers (yes, again!), it's such a fab range of plains and patterns, with loads of stripes, paisley, and flowery designs to play with. I added lots of other stuff including beads, Primas, chipboard, ribbon, brads etc. Did some UTEE and glittery embossing, and plenty of inking and Glossy Accent-ing.
I had such a ball making this!

Where the Wild Things Are

Incredibly, next week is our first anniversary, but for the last dare of our first year it's my turn again to set the challenge for The Daring Cardmakers. I wasn't sure what the Team would make of this one, but check out the DCM blog and see what they came up with - Thanks Girls, you're all Fantastic! Now I can't wait to see what all our fabby "Team Darers" make of this one, I reckon there'll be a few aaaggghhhs and then the ideas will start to flow!

The theme is ANIMAL and you can use anything that's animal inspired - not those diddy little ones like bugs, birds and butterflies (though you can include them in your design of course) but what I'd really like to see is bigger, wilder, more fabulous or fantastic creatures.

So you could maybe use animal die cuts, animal prints on paper or fabric, or maybe animal words or phrases "grrrrr get down tiger"!!!!
You could invent your own wild and wonderful beasties,
or go back in time for dinosaurs,
or into the world of mythology for all sorts of incredible creatures.
How about a card in the shape of a tiger, elephant or monkey? Now, there's a challenge for you....
I'd love you to all go really wild over this one and have loads of beastly fun

When I taught in a Nursery School one of the kids' favourite picture books was "Where the Wild Things Are" a wonderfully illustrated story by Maurice Sendak - hence the title of this dare.
I went with one of my all time favourite greetings card puns for my card

I cut the little hippo using my Robo and the ewes are the QK lamb, with a bit of c-bug embossing for texture.
The birdy is chipboard from Bubbly Funk Shop (fab range of chipboard shapes available there!).
Spotty paper is 3 Bugs in a rug and a bit of something from a recent SA kit
Zebra print card is from my stash - I think it might have come from The Early Learning Centre originally.
Feathers, flower petals and brads from stash
The wording is hand written - I think I just about got away with it though!

Please join in with the challenge, I'd love to see what you come up with. If you leave a message on the DCM blog we'll be sure to come and see what you've made. Even if you don't have a blog there's no problem, if you send your photos to daringcardmakers@hotmail.co.uk they'll be popped onto our wonderful gallery - which, incidentally has recently been updated with lots of new photos.

Coffee and Waffle

I've had a "loose end tying" day.
I finished a couple of cards, put inserts in a few more, wrote some out ready to send.
Sorted what seemed a mountain of stuff that needed posting - why does it take so long just to get things into envelopes, sealed, addressed and ready to send? Eventually had a carrier bagful of post to take to the box. Quite a few things that have been waiting till the current round of strikes was over and a couple of birthday cards I'm sending early in the hope that they get there before the next strike starts. This is all such a pain in the bum. Waiting for new stash and cuttlebug dies to finally get here isn't helping my humour either!

It's been a beautiful Autumn day here so at least going to the post box with all the mail was a pleasant walk - here's the view from my desk atm
I thought I'd do a quick catch up of some of the cards I've been making over the last few days.
A rather late wedding congratulations card, late because we kept forgetting to go and buy the vouchers for the wedding present!
This is a commissioned card, for a retirement, I got it pretty much finished, then over-inked it so had to make a few alterations, so it took much longer than it should, ah well, these things happen, eh?
And lastly some "Thank You" cards for birthday presents. I forgot to take photos of the first batch I made, the basic idea was the same, but whereas these are quite "subdued" the first lot were more colourful and had more flowery stuff added! I eally like using the Cuttlebug embossing folders like this. Might have a go at something similar for Christmas cards too
Got a few other bits and bobs and sneakies but I'll save them for another time, I think.

Santa's Little Extra Helper no 1

This week the Daring Cardmakers are starting off a series of Little Extras to help us get some Christmas cards made, as yes, it IS coming.... We've called it "Santa's Little Extra Helper".
We'll take a break for something else we've got planned at the end of this month, but then we'll return to help with those Christmas cards.

Here's the first Christmas Little Extra

Christmas Words

We'd like you to use Christmassy words on your card, not just in the sentiment but for this challenge the word/s should form the main focus of your card - like in Rhi's "In a Word" dare of a couple of weeks ago
So, ychipboard or wordy paper could be used for instance or check the link to Rhi's dare and of course the relevant links list for even more ideas.

I've used three of the papers from the English Paper Company's Festive Fun set,
shiny pink metallic eyelets,
silver thread
a few seed beads
and some inking of course

The paper is a much nicer blue than it looks here, but when I tweaked the colours in PSP to get the blue right, well the pink bits turned blue too!

been shopping!

I was soooooo disappointed on Saturday. A new Hobbycraft shop opened nearby and we went for a look on Saturday, but try as I might I could find nothing I wanted to buy. I've never been to one of these shops before and I haven't missed much have I?
I couldn't believe how little cardmaking/scrapbooking/papercrafts stuff there was tbh. Well, ok there were plenty of peeloffs and "thin" paper but nothing much else. It's handy to know that there's somewhere fairly near to buy basic sewing stuff and that sort of thing but they do seem to fall into the "Jack of all trades, master of none" - I couldn't even find decent craft kits to put away for the nieces and nephews for Christmas, most of what they had was cheap tat.

Today I've been out to meet fellow DCM-er Lythan for lunch. Her newly-embarked on course takes her to Cambridge every now and then and with her meeting being mid afternoon it was a good excuse for a hastily arranged lunch and craft shopping session.

Much more success was had on the shopping front so I'm a happier bunny today. I bought the "Flowers" set of Cuttlebug embossing dies, a new Cats Eye chalk ink "queue" for the collection, some versamark cubes, some big brads, some more of those gorgeous Hampton Arts mini sets of stamps and another bottle of stickles (very pretty - "fruit punch").
We did have to retrieve all that lot from the bin when the carrier bag they were in fell off the shelf while I was washing my hands.....what a numpty I am!

For those of you waiting for paper packs - Sarah, Tracie, Cathy and Janice, they are ready to go but I'm waiting till Thursday to post them as by then the strikes should be over. Some people said they'd send SAEs but I haven't received then yet, I'll wait a few more days then if they've not come, I'll check my "reserve" list!

Paper Giveaway Draw

Remember this?
Well I've done the draw for the stack I kept for a Blog Candy lucky dip. Has anybody got a more British phrase we folks over here could use for this btw?
The winner is Cathy but there's no "live" blog to leave a message on, I'll try the email addy instead. If you do read this Cathy, please email me and let me know who and where to send your paper to - when this dratted strike is over, that is!

Thanks everyone who joined in - I'll know what to do when I have another clear out, now!

The Postal Service. A Strike A Rant and a Postcard

OK, so is there a postal strike or not?
Hubby says he saw people closing up post boxes yesterday afternoon, but the postie has just knocked at the door with a package and some other stuff. hmmmm
A couple of SAEs arrived yesterday, but I'll hold on to the paper packs till the mail is back to what passes for nromal in the RM - Sarah, Janice & Tracie - they are all ready to go as soon as.
I've still got 3 stacks here waiting for the SAEs to arrive.

While on the subject of the Royal Mail, can I just have a little rant. Recently I received a card in the post saying I need to go and collect an item which had underpaid postage on it. I duly went to the sorting office to find the offending article was a handmade card which had one ordinary sized brad (ie not one of the big fat ones) on it. The sender had put a regular first class stamp on the envelope. The Postal service said it was too fat and should have had a "fat" letter stamp on it. I had to pay the 6p underpaid plus an extra £1 to get the card - just for one measly little brad. Am I the only one who thinks this is is disgraceful and way over the top?
I'm starting to think it's just a money-making scam by the Royal Mail and tbh I'm really quite angry about it all.
So fellow cardmakers - think very carefully about the cards you're making for the coming Christmas season and remember that the new postage system has been carefully designed to make just one tiny brad - or maybe even a little bit of chipboard will take a card into the "fat" category.

Rant over!

This week Jane set the DCM dare and wanted us to make a postcard instead of a "normal" card. Not an easy one this, especially in a busy week. I didn't think I'd get one done at all, but late yesterday afternoon I came up with this. I didn't have much time, so I decided that I could go with a grungy effect that makes it look as if it's already gone through the mail!
Paper, black & cream card from an old SA Kit
Doodling - started off using a template also from SA kit, but found that gel ink doesn't work so well with these so ended up doing them freehand
Cuttlebug present die
Lots of inking and some gold Krylon pen work,
The whole thing was Versamarked and UTEEd a couple of times



I'm busy working through a card order and this one is the most urgent. It's for a customer to give to her hubby to celebarte the birth of their 2nd child. An unusual commission, but once she'd sent me a photo it started to fall into place. The ribbon comes undone and inside the flap is a photo of the proud father and his new son. I quite like this hidden photo idea so I think I'll use it again - it's sort of the opposite of scrapbook hidden journalling!

This is the card I've made to send to them both. Now, if I can get the retirement card, the anniversary card and emigration card made before the PO people go back to work I can send them all off together! Yeah, right!

Tidy? Moi? You've got to be Joking!

Firstly, I want to let you know that the SAEs are arriving and I'm filling them up and getting them back in the post asap. Now I think there's a postal strike scheduled to begin tomorrow, so if there's a delay in the envelopes arriving here, or in the filled ones getting sent out to you, then that'll be why, sorry, but it's not my fault!

I am feeling rather guilty and embarrassed because some visitors to my blog have seen my cute new prima drawers, and read about my paper clear out and have expressed admiration for my tidiness.
Well, I'm sorry, but this couldn't be further from how things really are so here's the truth of my craft area as it looks right at this moment.
So, what have I been doing in amongst my crafty mess?
A new Circle Journal has just started over at Bubbly Funk and the books are off on their 9 month journey around the country. Here's the front cover and my LO:
And finally for now, here's a few glimpses of something I've made for a little gift. I'll show it properly in a week or so.