Thank you for All your Hard Work and FREE Digi for you!

Hi there,

I just wanted to share this card with you that I made last night for someone to give to a colleague, and I thought I would share something with YOU too!

I LOVE it! I made the topper in Photoshop, I'm amazed how {relatively} easy it was to do! One of the backing papers is from an old book which I picked up from a charity shop, and I distressed it a little more with Old Paper Distress Inks from Ranger. I'm addicted to sewing at the moment, so you would've had to hold me back to keep stitching off this card!

I used a zig zag stitch {with machine set about half way on the zig zag dial, with the stitch length set just below two} with burgundy thread, and then no thread on the straight stitch to create a pricked border. The card just goes through the machine like a dream, it manages to keep really straight!

So, what do I have to share with you? Well, as I said I designed the topper in Photoshop, and you can grab it HERE for use on your cards! I really hope this link works!! There are 8 on the sheet, and I would love to see what you do with them, so please leave a comment to let me see what you come up with! Also let me know if you would like more things like this!

Well, that's all for now, thanks for stopping by!

The End of an Era....

Good Morning,

Well, what do you think? Another new look to celebrate, but also commiserate the end of an era. For you see today is my last day of working exclusively with docrafts. It's been a FANTASTIC time, but it's time to move onto pastures new. There are many reasons for this, most of which are not interesting{!}. It's been a very hard decision for me, but once made, I knew it was the right one.

There are many new and exciting developments for me over the next few weeks, developments which I was hoping to be able to share with you today, but as time seems to move so quickly {is it because I'm getting old?} not all the T's have been crossed and the i's dotted, so I have to wait. I'm so sorry...I can't wait to tell you all!

I will miss dearly many of my colleagues at docrafts, and I would regard many of them as best friends. However of course we will keep in touch, it's just sad to know that I won't see them on a regular basis any more. Onwards and upwards.

 Very soon though, I will have new colleagues to get to know, some of which are already friends, and I'm looking forward to working with them too! There's always a silver lining to every cloud!

I would like to thank you all dearly for all your support, well wishes and friendship, as I regard you as my friends too.

PLEASE NOTE: I WILL still be writing my column in Quick Cards Made Easy! x

A Cushion for Pins...

Happy Bank Holiday Monday!

Well, it's a little miserable today here in the North of North Lincolnshire, but perfect weather for crafting, and watching old movies with a duvet! Lovely! I've just been reminiscing with an old movie, 'Rear Window' by Alfred Hitchcock - a classic!

I just wanted to show you the results of some of my first attempts at sewing. Do you like it - it's a pin cushion! It's not perfect, but it's a start and I really like it! The material is from IKEA {No, I don't actually live there!}. I made it after watching this video here and here, I used a plate as a template for the circle, and the rest is history.

Thanks for stopping by today. Tomorrow I will have news of changes happening in my life, so if you can come by tomorrow, I would love to share them with you!

Let's See Where the Road Takes Me....

Good Morning!

It's a little chilly this morning, but still a great day.

On Tuesday I decided to take myself off on a jaunt around the countryside. I'm very lucky, as living in the North of North Lincolnshire {or to some, South Humberside, but that's a whole different story}I'm actually in the countryside, and also it's nice and flat so no humongous hills to climb!

I took a short drive to Kirmington, as I'd heard from a friend that there was a lovely walk on one of the public footpaths, and I thought I would be able to get some good photographs. In fact I found three or four footpaths, so I'm not exactly sure which one my friend was on about, but still I wasn't disappointed. I took the one that led me into Kirmington village.

This is the 'Marrowebone and Cleaver' - what a great name for a Pub! They serve great food and the welcome is always very warm.

I just love finding things like this! What a little gem. I have no idea what it is, but I love the rustiness and character of it. You would think that living in the country I would come across things like this all the time, but no!

This is the church in Kirnington. What a beautiful sky!

And finally some flowers from the church yard, what a gorgeous sight!

Well, I hope you've enjoyed our stroll around Kirmington as much as I did...I plan to do it more often! x

NO W.O.Y.W.W today :(

I'm sorry there is no What's on your Workdesk Wednesday today. The reason is that my desk is so boring and non changing at the moment, and I really must get on with all the stuff that's been mounting up over the past few days. I hope you will understand.

Only 6 more days until great changes unfold for me...

Hey Birdie!

Hi there!

Just wanted to quickly share a card with you, which I made from a few scraps of paper and a label from a Kaiser Craft stamp set. I loved the colours and the little tree on the label and couldn't bear to throw it away!

I used my sketch challenge layout on the docrafts site {which has now finished, just today} and the background paper is from Pink Petticoat, printed onto white core'dinations cardstock.

I really hope you like it, I loved making it!

Thanks for all your Hard Work, and a Couple of Challenges...

Good Evening!

I thought I would dabble in a couple of challenges today and I've really loved doing it, as it's made me use colours that I may not have normally used. I've also used products that I've had for ages too but not used, so wins all round!

The challenges I would like to enter are:

Neutrals Color Challenge for Color Inspiration for Card Makers Week in the Moxie Fab World,

and

CPS Card Sketches #218

and here is my card...

I had a bit of a challenge in itself trying to find the papers and cardstock to suit the colours. I hope I've got it about right! I ended up printing a Hero Arts Digi Stamp {Friendship Definition} onto silver plain paper from Pink Petticoat, and I love how it turned out! The woodgrain paper is also from Pink Petticoat. The gorgeous image is from the Ubber talented Christine Dark, and it was a pleasure to colour.

I also used embroidery thread through mini buttons before attaching them to the card. The edges of the cardstock and paper was distressed using Weathered Wood, and Black Soot Distress inks.

These were the Promarker colours I used...the one without a written label is Midnight Blue!

This is the insert for the card. I placed the woodgrain panel into Photosho and after much head scratching, I worked out how to create a white centre in which to plae my sentiment. The fonts are Black Jack and Accord Light.

I truly hope you like the card as much as I did creating it, and I would like to say thank you to both Challenges for providing me with a happy afternoon!

W.O.Y.W.W.102!

Good Morning,

Not long to go now until the PIF for What's on your Workdesk Wednesday, organised by Julia Dunnit over at the Stamping ground. I'm panicking a bit because in order to make my PIF gorgeous, I have to find the electric sanding mouse and manual planer...now that's got you thinking. They're not at my Father in Laws, {or my Uncle, only called my Uncle because he borrowed my Dad's orbital sander 35 years ago...Thanks Peter Kay!} so I'm hoping they're up in the loft - it's such a treck to get up there though, and I don't think I have the energy.

Instead of showing you what's on my desk {okay, I know that's the idea}, as it's very much the same as last week, I thought I would show you what is still a mammoth task ahead of me. I have 117 packs and numerous loose stamps to sort, stamp in my catalogue and file away in CD cases, as I've shown you here. It's a never ending task. I vow that I will buy no more until the job is complete but I just lie to myself. You know how it is.

These are my greeting and sentiments stamps. Yum!...

...and these are my everyday stamps which I need to sub-classify into other sections...

...a closer look at the gorgeousness!...

and these are my Christmas Stamps, which of course get a section all of their own!

Well, that's all for this morning, I hope you don't mind but I'm craving my toast and coffee! Thanks for visiting and having a nosey at my desk - I plan to do the same to yours!!

Some Mothers bake.....I BLOG!

Hi there!

I was messing around in my craft room on Saturday I think, having a tidy and I was looking at my scraps of paper. I had just used a gorgeous piece of paper from one of the mashouive paper pads to cover a tin, and seeing I had a bit left, I thought I would make a card with it straight away. But what would I use for a main image? Whilst pondering, I realised my 'Retro Mama' desk calendar was still on a two week old date, so I decided to put it right. I came across the perfect quote for me, and immediately mounted it onto cardstock, die cut it, blinged it and adorned my card with it! Perfect. It now sits on my desk and when I see it, it makes me laugh. Because it's so true. If only there was another in the pack which says 'Some mothers bake, I craft' my life would be complete!

Hope you like it! Have a great day xx

My New Ink Pad Storage Holder...

Good Afternoon!

Well I was hoping to post yesterday, but as I'm sure most of you will have experienced Blogger had some down time following some problems with corrupt data. Just one of those things, and I'm thankful that everyone worked really hard to get everyone's blog back online. It just shows how much we use and appreciate our blogs!

I wanted to show you my NEW Ink pad storage. Well, it stores about 20% of my total ink pads, but it's very nice. I picked it up from a local charity shop for £2.99 and it was crying out for me to take it home. So I did. It was a boring wood colour when I inheritied it, so I painted it white with about three coats of Acrylic Paint...

Then I thought it deserved some decoration, so I spread out fuschia acrylic paint onto an acrylic block, and used as an ink pad to ink up {or should that be 'paint up'?!} a gorgeous stamp from Stampendous...

I then 'randomly' stamped onto the surface of the wood/acrylic painted surface. Doesn't it look cool, and it's SO easy to do!

You can't really see the paint job on the folllowing photo but you CAN see my lovely inks, all labelled for easy use. I have the inks I use most often in here, sat on my desk.

I hope you enjoyed stopping by and looking at my lovely new ink storage!

W.O.Y.W.W 101

Good Morning!

Well at least I'm not in the hundreds this time. WoW! People get up pretty early to post their WOYWW entries! If you wonder what I'm on about, pop over to Julia's blog at the Stamping ground.

As you can see I don't think much has changed since last week! my phone is still there {although it comes everywhere with me, it has been moved since last Wednesday!} but I do have some new additions to the table! There is the gorgeous Creative Spaces Magazine which arrived yesterday accompanied by a chorus or Angels singing. It's simply gorgeous and I will spend many an hour stroking the delicious pages, wishing the craft rooms, complete with Glitter Stations and Die cutting areas were ALL mine. NOt a cheap mag, when you consider the postage from the US of A, but worth it for the drooling levels.

I also got the sewing book last week, and I'm buying wool jumpers and fabric like it's going out of fashion {maybe it is}. When I get a spare millisecond I will; be making bags and will have more than Posh spice by the time I'm finished.

Underneath the magazine, there is my to do list, which seems to fill up by the hour, but I love that feeling of crossing something off, and I seem to get more done this way too. The candles in the voitive holders are creamy caramel and smell scrumptious!

That's all from me for WOYWW. see you soon!

I've posed a little question...

Please scroll down for recent posts!

...to the right hand side of my blog, and hope you will take a second or two to answer. Thanks so much! x

With Sympathy

Good Morning Everyone!

I just wanted to quickly share the card that I made on Wednesday night and which preceded the photo you now see on my WOYWW 100 post. I made this Sympathy card for someone to give their friend, and although this is a card I don't particularly like making for obvious reasons I enjoyed making it as it has a feeling of sereneness about it. I LOVE this patterned paper from Pink Petticoat -it's called Grannie's Wallpaper and this particular shade is Stone. I've printed it onto white core'dinations cardstock to give a textured finish to the pattern.

Supplies: Stamps: Stampendous Agapanthus Cluster, Woodware Salutations clear stamps; Ink: Clearsnap Vivid ink in Brown; Cardstock: Coredinations in White and Brownie. Embellishments: American Crafts Ribbon solid gold grossgrain 5/8th", Anita's wide organza ribbon in white; Papermania Adhesive Stones in burnt gold; Tools: EK success punch photo labels punch;

I really hope you like it!

I'll be posting a tutorial of how I did my wall decal over the next couple of days, so keep checking back! there will also be an offer of blog candy very soon too! Thanks for stopping by and see you soon x

W.O.Y.W.W 100!

Good Morning!

Well, let's just pretend it's Wednesday, shall we?! I did take this photo this morning, but it was left exactly as I left it on Wednesday night, so Im taking the executive decision that it counts into WOYWW. If you haven't heard or joined in with WOYWW, why not visit Julia Dunnit's Blog and see what all the rage is about. Soon it will be two years since Julia started WOYWW, and there's a PIF on week 104, I'll definitely be joining in. Visit her blog for more details.

My desk is a little more interesting than last week's photo, which you can see here. I was working on a Sympathy card last night which I will be posting later, and I think the pink petticoat paper {by my crop-a-dile}is perfect for such a card. There's also the stamped image I used {top right} and the tag punch from EK Success which I used to cut out the greeting. Can you see the blue electrical tape by the punch? I use that ALL the time for sticking down ribbon etc on the underside of my projects, as you can't see it, it's cheap and very strong. The obligatory cup of coffee is strong arming it's way into the picture too. The flowers are {just about} holding out, but will soon be with the florist in the sky I think. I also bought the DREAM word a couple of days ago from TK Maxx, I love it!

Can you also spot the white flowers at the left? I was inspired by someone's WOYWW flowers which I saw last week {I'm really sorry, I looked at so many blogs I can't remember which one it was!} and I was inspired to have a go at what they were doing {Please, if it was YOU, or you know who it was can you let me know so I can credit them?}. They are from Primark as a bracelet, and they were using alcohol inks to colour them and they looked STUNNING! I don't know what I'll do with them yet, but I can't wait to have a play!

Well, that's all for this week! Thanks for visiting, and I look forward to visiting your desk some time soon! x

Storing Clear and Unmounted Stamps...Answering a Question

Good Morning!
I had planned to do this post on Saturday, but you know how things are what with a Bank Holiday weekend!



I had a comment on my post here about the way I store my rubber and clear stamps in CD cases, as the person had heard that there is something in the CD plastic that can deteriorate the cling in both ezymount and the polymer. I had heard this also, so I decided to do a little research, both on the internet and of my own.

I made this video{which I would love your comments on, and you can also subscribe to the Clare Curd Crafts! Channel on You Tube, lots of videos to come! } so you can see the results of my own research, but I also mention that I have found some links with more information. You can find these here and here.

So, there you have it. I wanted to do this so that you were all fully informed as to all the information out there about whether storing stamps in CD cases is a safe idea. From what I've discovered I'm still happy to leave my stamps as they are, and I'd love to know your thoughts!