WHAT A DIFFERENCE SUNSHINE MAKES

Hi everyone

Writing this rather later than usual, but this gorgeous weather makes me feel very cheerful and not at all worried about being behind.  Isn't it incredible what a little bit of sunshine can do for us?  Lots more enthusiasm, get up and go, stop putting things off - roll on spring and summer.

As always a busy week and I need to check back through my diary to see what I have been doing.  I have taken to writing as much as possible in my diary or notebook as it is so easy to forget everything I have done or need to do.  Rather like tying a knot in my hankie (not the same with tissues though) and forgetting what the knot represents.

A busy week for orders.  I finished off the Titanic/Railway set one mentioned last week, and am currently finishing off an order for a Mother's Day card:

I have some more decoupage roses to add, wording and the insert and some trimming to complete. The plan is to finish this one today as I have two others to complete by tomorrow morning.

In addition to Mother's Day, I also had an order for Evening Invitation Acceptance cards.  The brief was fairly open with the only request of the main colouring to be light green.  I have checked with my customer and they are happy for me to display an example here:

The base is a 4" square card, with a pale green sheet added to the front.  On top of this I have added a white frame around a similar green sheet on which I have printed the required information.  Simple, effective and my client is very pleased with their order.

As my 'weekend' post appears to be getting later and later, I will make this a very short  one, but please drop in on the Handmade Monday bloggers to see what they have been doing over the last week.

I will be back next Sunday - hopefully on time.  Milly will be blogging tomorrow with news of the kittens I am currently fostering.

Enjoy the week everyone

Jill

PLANNING, PLANNING AND EVEN MORE PLANNING

Hello everyone

A very Happy New Year to you.

Already one week into the New Year - the days seem to whizz by so fast.

No new makes this time around - I have taken some time off to work on various other things.

I am in the process of finalising six card-making workshops: two for Valentine's Day, two for Mother's Day and two for Easter.  The sessions will be two hours long, the first one will run 1.00 pm - 3.00 pm and the second, 6.30 pm - 8.30 pm on the same day, will be a repeat of the afternoon's session.  I had originally thought of having workshops for just basic card-making for all/any occasions, but think a themed one to begin with will be easier to run and provide materials for.  My cake-making friend is managing the refreshments and we are also offering homemade bread and soup mini-lunches and suppers.  Once everything is confirmed, I will add details on my blog and website, but I can let you know the sessions will take place in Chilworth, Surrey.

No New Year's resolutions for me this year.  I rarely stick to them so by not making any I avoid the disappointment.  However, I do have plans (they are not resolutions, are they?).  My aim is to be more structured and organised in my working life.  I am a terrible time-waster and am amazed at how much time I can waste on the Internet - doubt I am alone in that though.  This year I will make proper 'To-Do' lists on paper, not the mental ones I have relied on and conveniently lost, and I will stick to them and ensure everything gets completed - eventually.

Just a mini post today, but don't forget to visit the other blogs taking part in this week's Handmade Monday.  I am looking forward to reading about the plans everyone has for 2013 - exciting times.

My Friday Guest Blogger spot returns at the end of January, so please get in touch with me if you would like 'book' a spot.  Our new kitten, Milly, will also be back towards the end of January with her Wednesday blog post - this coincides with my return to kitten fostering, so Milly will have plenty to write about.

'See' you next weekend.

Jill

MAKING, BLOGGING, BUYING AND READING - NOT ALL AT THE SAME TIME

Hi everyone

I managed to let Valentine's Day pass me by on the card-making front - a very bad admission for a card-maker, but I am determined to ensure I have plenty of Mother's Day cards to display on my wall at Bourne Mill and also at my first event of this year (details on the right hand side of my blog).  Here is a pic of one I am currently working on - not necessarily to everyone's taste, but I do like unusual cards.  This one is made almost completely of bronze mirror card: I punched large flower shapes, folded the petals, stuck them to another sheet of mirror card and then using glue, added lines to the centre of each petal to join in the middle and sprinkled black glitter over them.  Where it was needed, I added green stalks to the flowers and also added a gorgeous orange/brown vase to hold the flowers.  I like it because even though it is nearly all one colour, the different shapes make the flowers stand out.  The photograph isn't great - still getting to grips with the light tent, but I hope you like the card.

I bought a glass shelving unit on Ebay over the weekend - this is to compliment other glass units (desk, table, shelves, etc) we have in our study/workroom.  When arranging the collect this unit, the lady I bought it from mentioned that she couldn't do a particular time/date because of her spinning class.  I thought, excellent, a fellow crafter - I didn't realise classes were held locally for this particular art.  Er, clearly I am spending too long amidst craft stuff, because when we met she put me right about it being an exercise activity not a crafting activity.

I love reading, I just cannot go anywhere or be anywhere without a book to read.  I have piles of books I am reading my way through that friends and neighbours have passed on to me, plus I have a Kindle (so brilliant and so tempting to keep downloading books).  However, I tend not to buy lots of craft books, as I feel the Internet can provide me with such a lot of good information, advice, etc plus I am running out of space for books.  Last week I received a belated (but very welcome) birthday pressie from a friend: Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Crafts.  What a fabulous book - so many beautiful and different things to make - I already have post-it notes on lots of pages.  Watch this space, as some of the makes are bound to find their way into my blog (as well as my soon to be published website).

I have a great guest blogger on Friday, fingers crossed a fellow Handmade Monday crafter who is - as we speak - penning next week's topic, a couple more people who have said 'I could write about.....' - so I am going to encourage them to do just that.  If you have a craft-related topic you are happy to write about and share with others, please do get on touch.  This is a great opportunity to gain extra visitors to both your blog and your website.

Enjoy the rest of the week everyone - don't forget to check out the guest blog post on Friday.

Jill

THE CARDS ARE ON THE TABLE

Hello everyone

Well, not on the table rather they are in a magazine, but 'the cards are in the magazine' didn't have the same ring to it as my chosen post title and there is a reason for the title.  In October 2011 the Popular Crafts magazine featured my Blog in one of the regular blog reviews.  As I am sure you read in the post when I mentioned this, I was very pleased and excited to see my Blog 'in print'.  Shortly after the magazine was published, Katherine Jewitt (the Editor) contacted me to ask if I would be interested in reviewing a card-making kit.  Even better was that the version recommended for me to 'test drive' was about cats!  A double whammy and as you can imagine I said yes very quickly.

The pack arrived not long before we were due to go on holiday in November and I knew that I would have problems completing it before then, so I took it with me.  Along with holiday gear went laptop, camera, cables, paper, crafting kit and the kitchen sink.  Once or twice while Richard was out climbing the million and one steps in and around Valletta, I was back at the apartment drawing and colouring while sitting on the balcony sipping something nice and fizzy.  Who had the better deal?  Me - those steps were many and steep.

Despite creating greetings cards, I haven't actually drawn anything for many, many years and this review required me to do that.  Initially I had some pretty strange shapes to the cats I drew and did think I would have been better taking photographs of Jazz and Daisy that I could have drawn from.  After some trial runs, I managed to get two cat-shape outlines onto card and off I went with the fun bit of drawing the patterns in and colouring - oh boy colouring-in is such fun and made me feel about 5 again.  OK, I know that is a looong time ago, but I can just about remember it and know it was great fun.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and was very, very pleased when I had completed the project - particularly as we had a few hiccups with the Wifi in the apartment and I had visions of whizzing around Malta try to find an Internet cafe from which to send my final pictures.  The magazine is due out at the end of this week and apart from my review it is packed with lots of other great projects and articles, and I am really honoured to be in such great crafting company.  I really recommend you buy a copy of the magazine and once it has been published, I will put a couple of pics in my next blog - have you ever seen red, orange, green, yellow and blue cats?  Well, you are in for a treat.

I have been working on my new ranges this week, as well as building my website - takes a long while as have to photograph everything I make, change the size, make other alternations and ensure it looks good on the site, add information, and also think about the various pages that require setting up.  The hardest part so far has been the About Me page - I am sure this is the same for all website designers.  Too much detail about the things I do might not be interesting, but then again too little may make the site uninteresting.  Progress is slow but sure - although it has taken me absolute ages to get to this stage, I am still working slowly as I want to ensure the website is good when it first goes live.  No 'going live' date decided up on yet.

One of the areas I want to move into are card-making workshops and I prepared some handouts which I distributed at events prior to Christmas.  I have two people who want to sign up but really will need more to make it worth while and enjoyable for everyone involved.  If you know of anyone who wants to spend a fun couple of hours creating cards in or around the Guildford area, please ask them to get in touch with me.  With Valentine's Day and Mother's Day fast approaching, now is a good time to start making cards. I hope to have a Stampin Up demonstrator taking part as well.

It's Handmade Monday and for the second week running I don't have anything to actually 'show' as my makes this week have been for my website, and not yet ready for posting on my Blog.  Plus, having had a painful left arm for a couple of weeks, I went to the doc's and discovered it was the return of the tennis elbow that I had suffered from not so long ago!  It hadn't occurred to me that it had come back again, but it's very painful and the only consolation is that it is in my left arm and I am right-handed.  Rest, medication and some pain-relieving gel prescribed - the first one is very hard to manage though.  However, I am taking part in Handmade Monday this week as it is a great way to find out what other crafters are doing, so why not join me in checking out the other contributors' blogs and read what they have been up to during last week.  Believe me, you will see some pretty amazing work and read some great posts.

Have a great week - I will be back on Wednesday.

Jill