Storage

I have been at my 'day job' all day today so haven't had any time to do anything even remotely creative. I have found my sellers to feature on this week's Etsy favourites, but I will add them to the blog tomorrow.

Today I risked Argos on the day of the New Catalogue and bought myself a plastic tower with draws storage thingy. I have spent this evening filling it with art, card making and jewellery making stuff. I have loads of stuff, particularly for the card making. I went through a mad phase of buying paper so I managed to fill a whole draw just with paper! That doesn't include the vast quantities of pre-made card blanks and envelopes. I will definitely have to dedicate some time to make a whole load of one off cards for whichever occasion the paper & embelishments suggest!

I know have all my beads neatly in a draw, with the findings all in one tub, rather than it all muddled together in vast numbers of envelopes.

I am off to bed now and I will see you tomorrow with a seasonal British Summertime themed Etsy Favourites.

Wedding Invites

Well the wedding invites are all done now and sent off and the vast majority of the evening invites are off too, just a few left to check addresses for.

Wedding Invites:

Pocket insert cards made with Ivory linen card, containing the Evening Invite, the Menu and a Reply Card with stamped, addressed envelope included.

The inserts are mounted on Bazzill Basics Textured card and Frosted Gold Pearlescent card. The printing is done on an Epson inkjet printer.

They are held together with Organza ribbon in Purple and Ivory.

The heart motif on the front is embossed in gold from a Wedding Wishes stamp.

They took me a long time to make, but I thoroughly enjoyed doing it and responses from those that have received the invite has been really good, after them getting over the surprise that they are actually all hand made, so that's got to be good!

Evening Invites:

These are simply pockets with the Evening Invites as an insert. They also contain a Reply Card with an addressed envelope, but these weren't stamped.

Specifications are the same as the Wedding Invites.

The were all posted out in Ivory Envelopes.

Wedding Invites

Yes, i'm back again, after 6 months of not adding anything to the blog!! So what's been going on? well, loads actually......

I got my results for my Open University course, Discovering Science, so have also got myself a Certificate in Natural Sciences. I've finished Understanding Cancers, should get results in June I think. I'm more than halfway through my other course Introducing Health Sciences and am doing pretty well with it so far.

I'm getting married in June so am in the middle of organising all that. We moved house back in January.

I have recently changed the title of the blog and will use it to showcase my craft work. I have plans to begin selling some cards this year, so will use the blog to keep everyone informed of what's happening. I haven't been making a lot of cards as I don't have a lot of space here to spread my stuff about but I have a lot of plans for my art and card making. I have also subscribed to a new jewellery magazine that's very good, so there will be jewellery soon as well.

I just looked back at my resolutions for the beginning of 2008 and have to admit to failing dismally with all of them, so 2009 has the same ones! The dog grooming one failed to the point they have recently been to a professional groomer and look absoloutely beautiful. I am getting a bit better at getting up on the mornings though, and just love the feeling of looking back at the day and feeling i've achieved something.

Anyway, the current crafty project is my wedding invites. They are cards with a pocket to hold the evening invite, menu and RSVP card. The photograph is just the one I made to make sure it all worked correctly, so its not printed. Today I have cut out the card I need so I can get started putting them together at the weekend. Here is the sample:

Invite all tied up

Showing the pockets containing the inserts

And showing the individual inserts.

Cards, OU and moving house

As per usual there's loads going on here at the moment. The most exciting is probably that our house is up for sale. We've found a house we really like, but we need to sell ours before the owner will accept an offer on it. So, fingers crossed we can sell ours sooner rather than later.

I am currently working on my End of Course Assignment (ECA) for my OU course, which is fairly complicated and requires a lot of though. It needs to be posted off by the end of next week. I've registered for two level 1 courses, 'Introduction to Health Sciences' and 'Understanding Cancers'. I'm hoping to do 'Practising Science' in the the summer and may do another 10-point course after Chrsitmas, when I will hopefully have some more money! That will either be 'Human Genetics and Health Issues', 'Understanding Human Nutrition', or 'Challenging Obesity'. My course materials have arrived for Intro to Health Sciences so it's hard at the moment to finish my ECA instead of delving into the new coursework.

I have had to miss a couple of card making classes due to me now doing late shifts at work, but have managed to find time to make some at home. Here are two i've done, the first for Aunty Kate, and the second for Grandma. Both were done using stickers, so were cheating a bit, but I was pretty chuffed with them both!

Creativity

I have a desire at the moment to make stuff. There is even a small desire to draw, which I haven't had in ages!

However, the current thing taking my fancy is jewellery. In fact, i've fancied jewellery making since I started peering at the beads in the craft shop. I've bought a couple of books, but they are aimed more at metalwork, which would be great to do but seems to involve massive amounts of tools! I bought a couple of bead work magazines which the projects involve little more than a couple of pairs of pliers and some wire cutters so I think I can stretch to that. They also have space at the craft shop on a jewellery making class. It's on Thursdays so I have to decide whether to do card-making and jewellery making, or just the jewellery making. Think I will do both for a while.

I also really want to be card making and scrap booking, so when the in-laws go home I'm planning on spending some of my free time, at least once a week, on making cards and having a play at the scrap booking. I think I may try and sell a couple of cards on ebay and see how that goes.

It's quite strange, it's like there is a goal - I feel as if i'm looking forward to something but i'm not sure what - like something's about to happen. I can see time in my days to be making cards and jewellery and I can see designs, especially for the cards, forming in my head all the time! It's great and of course I will show anything i['m up to on here.

Easter Cards

Here are some photos of the Easter cards I made:

All 5 of them together

And individual photographs. The first two were made using iris folding, using a pattern we were given in card making class and changing the colour ways:



This one is based on a card in a book I have. The purple flowers are brads and it is ribbon wrapped around the Easter egg.

These two are obviously more iris folding. The first one is the one I made in class, hence why it has Happy Easter stamped on it.

I really like iris folding, it's so simple to do and all it requires is paper, sellotape, cardstock and a pattern to follow. It's also fairly quick. These cards took me about half an hour each to make.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter! Especially to those lucky people who have a long weekend off work! I'm not that lucky, but never mind.

I've been fairly tired most of the time over the last two weeks, i've just been doing so many extra hours at work - my pay packet should be nice though.

I made the decision to stop taking commissions and am really pleased, have already had one person email me about one though - why can't people read? I feel like it's a weight off my mind and am really looking forward to not having any more to do - i've got four to finish at the moment.

I am feeling good about mu OU course too. I got 88% in my first TMA and did a second iCMA two nights ago and got all the questions right, only one took two go's, so that is so much better than my first iCMA score of 43%! I'm also on track with the studying too and actually looking forward to starting book 3 - which is a physics subject and i'm not good at physics. I've been spending hours on the OU website deciding what to do next and still don't know.....

I have also been making Easter cards using the iris folding technique. Will take some photos and put them up soon.

Happy New Year!

Ok, I know it's a bit early, but who cares! I've been fairly busy of late hence why I haven't been updating this regularly but now my life is my own again I can start 2008 the way I mean to go on!

I could write a list of resolutions as long as my arm (involving doing more housework and boring rubbish like that!) but I know I won't keep them so I'm going to stick to a few that are either

1. really important, or
2. things I want to do

So... in the really important category we have:

Sort out my Finances (*shudder*). I am fairly bad at managing my money and have managed to have a rather large overdraft and a largeish credit card bill. None of it's really horrendous compared to the debts you hear about on the telly, but it's a lot when you work part time for not much more than the minimum wage!!

So, to overcome this I have made a budget. Every 4 weeks when I get paid I'm going to take out my money for the month in cash so I can see the actual money going down and how much i'm spending, rather than randomly using my debit card for everything. I am going to stop ordering books I don't need from the book club and Amazon (*sob*) and make lunch rather than buy it on the days I work all day. I have also applied for a new Credit Card with 6 months 0% interest on balance transfers so I won't have to pay interest for a while on the the credit card balance.

The Big Plan is, if I can pay all my outgoings out of my wages (which I should be able to) any extra I get from the pet portraits can go in the Savings account, which is looking Very Sad at the moment. Wish me luck!!

And now on to the fun ones:

Learn to knit. I have been wanting to do this for several months now but haven't had the time. I have been inspired by several blogs and websites and have decided I would love to be able to knit some things for myself and other people. As of yet, there is no definite plan on how i'm giong to do this but it is likely going to be self taught from books. (I love books.)

Make more cards. I'm not really sure if this counts as a resolution but I'll add it anyway. I've really been enjoying the card making and am planning on making all my cards from now on. I am also planning on making some for sale using my own dog drawings. I need to get some more money coming in from the drawing front and this seems like a good way to do it - handmade cards, but totally original as they'll have my own artwork. And i've seen some great paper with doggy paw prints down the craft shop!

Do more crafty stuff. How marvelously vague that is! I spend a lot of time wasting time on the internet. This year I'm going to put my time to good use and make some stuff. When my card making course has finished, I'm planning on doing something else - either scrap-booking or jewellery making probably. By next Christmas I want to be able to make all of my Christmas presents!

So, there you have it - my plans for next year. I also have a training course for work to do and would love to find the finances to do an Open University course, but that's definitely only a maybe - depending on time and money. Hope you all have a fantastic start to 2008 and long may it continue!

Cards

As it's card making day today, I thought i'd better get on and show you what I did last week. We made oriental style cards, which aren't really my 'thing' but they were good fun to make and didn't look too bad!

Card #1

This was made with a metal stencil. We used black ink on a little finger stamp pad to do the black bits. We then drew around the clothing and cut it out, then used another stamp to create the pattern. This was then glued on the card. The gold bits are stickers.

Card #2

This card was made using the same techniques as the other one, except the clothing is patterned paper. The purple colour is chalk as I made a mess with the ink and smudged it everywhere! The little rivets holding the card on are great!

This evening we are making Chrsitmas cards.

Card making

I chose a rather stupid time of year to start a blog - I have so much going on I don't have a lot of time to update it!

However, on Tuesday, i'm going to a card making class. I've been thinking about doing card making for a while - i've got a few ideas on incorporating my pet pics into handmade cards but I have to admit feeling a little bit lost when it comes to the huge array of paper and stencils and embossing tools that are available. It was on a whim that I went into the new craft shop in town last Thursday and got offered a cup of tea, so sat down with the cuppa and looked through some cross stitch catalogues and got chatting to the shop owner. She mentioned they were doing classes so I put down my name for a beginners card making one.

I'm really looking forward to it, not just for the card making but also the social side of things, other than work and our friends round the corner I don't really know many people so it will be great to meet some people who are in to crafty things like me. I will let you know how I get on!