Tattered Time Mini-Album Part 4–Wallet Mini-Album for Page 1

I am following Kathy Orta’s excellent 7-part video tutorial on paper bag mini-albums. She is using the Tim Holtz paper stack “Lost and Found” and I am also incorporating papers from this collection into my album, because there are a number of small elements which are just right for tags and mini-albums within the mini-album; they also have a nice vintage feel and many of them fit my time theme.

Today I followed her instructions for making a delightful little wallet-type pouch to go in the side pouch of my first page. I am not going to give all the measurements for this as they are all on the video. This mini-album within an album has so many places for photo mats and journaling, and I will be able to add old photos from my grandfather’s family – these are all scanned into the computer now, so I can print them out whatever size I want. There are some lovely ones! I can’t wait to get them stuck into the album.

These are the elements needed to create the wallet. As you can see, I have made the two folders and matted all the surfaces, as per Kathy’s video.

Most of these papers are from “Lost and Found.” Top left: the pouch assembly for the wallet; top right: distressed memorandum pages (with the Tim Holtz distressing tool and lots of distress ink); bottom left: one of the folders open, and bottom right: the other folder closed. I love this particular paper with all the vintage photos on it, which is very much in keeping with the theme of page 1 (my father’s ancestry).

Here are the tags completed. I love the days of the week and calendar elements, because they fit in with the theme of time.

I departed a bit from Kathy’s instructions here because I haven’t got a punch to make file tabs with. This is on my “to do” list for designing cut files in Inkscape, so I decided instead to use some of the clock faces from “Lost and Found” to act as tag pulls – there are some more on the large journaling mat on page 1. The three tags on the left show the front surface, and the one on the right shows the reverse. There will be journaling on these memorandum pages, and photos on the back.

The next photo shows the two completed folders, with their tags in place. The bottom one has a background paper from “Tattered Time.”

Opening the folders, this is what is revealed inside.

Underneath the tags and the two photo mats I made, you can see the background papers matted onto the inside of the folder, which can also be used for photos or journaling. Turning the tags and photo mats over, you can see the Tim Holtz “Lost and Found” background papers for journaling and photos. I love the subtle colours and the general grungeyness of this collection! You can also see that there are further clock faces on the backs of the tags to line up with those on the front.

Here is the back view of the folders, with their tags showing. Again, more room for photos and/or journaling.

For this next photo, I placed the completed folders into the pouch assembly and propped it up so that you can see how it works. The spare tags are inserted in the other two of the four pockets in the pouch.

I cannot complete the wallet until the arrival of the circle punch that I have on order, but I have cut the black cardstock, ready to make the outside of the wallet.

In the Tim Holtz collection there are some ATC-sized images. I cut out two of these together and folded them to form a tiny photo folder. This is the outside, with room for journaling on the back.

Inside, I shall put two small photos.

I think that will probably be it for page 1 as far as interactive additions are concerned, but it depends how many photos and how much information I decide to add. With the large pockets on the page, there will always be room for more tags if necessary. When all the pages are complete, I shall be adding some embellishments, too, and I’ve got some gorgeous Tim Holtz ones for the front cover. The embellishments will be the icing on the cake!

WOYWW 182–Tattered Time Album

Well, it’s Snoopy Time again! Time to snoop around each other’s work desks and see what we’ve all been up to this week. The lovely Julia of Stamping Ground (see the WOYWW link in my sidebar) does her best to keep us unruly mob in order as we open our inner creative sanctums (or should that be sancta?) to the glare of worldwide publicity, warts and all.

This week I started an exciting new project to join the ranks of my UFOs (Un-Finished Objects) – all of which are progressing slowly together in parallel! It’s a mini album (actually not so mini) made from paper bags and using the DCWV Tattered Time paper stack. I bought this over a year ago and since then it’s lived on the shelf, only to be taken down every now and then to be stroked because it is… Gorrrrrgeous.

This is what I’ve done so far on Page 1.

It’s in honour of my Dad, and the first page is about his ancestors – my great-grandparents and grandparents. For full details and to see some better pictures, please see my most recent blog posts.

Yes, I know… I should be working on the Card Factory. Trouble is, I’d MUCH rather be doing this.

I’ve also started designing some tags in Inkscape, ready for cutting with Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine (see my sidebar for details of this machine). Here’s a screen shot of my first one – a work in progress – a tag with a decorative top, and a matching pouch. I shall also be designing some for the mini-album, and svg cut files and pdfs will eventually make their way onto my Skydrive for free download for whoever wants to use them.

Have a very happy and creative WOYWW, everybody. Not sure if I’ll do any better this week than last week at visiting desks, but we shall see!

Tattered Time Mini-Album Part 2–Preparing the Bags and Beginning the First Page

Having prepared the gussets of the bags in order to form the pages, I painted all the exposed edges with black acrylic paint to cover the brown paper. I initially tried inking them with Black Soot Distress Ink but this did not give a very opaque finish, and the acrylic paint was thicker and blacker, and quite quick to do, too. I used cheap black acrylic from my big pot, rather than posh artist’s stuff!

I have been humming and hah-ing about the hinges for the binding, and decided to fold the extending edges of the bottoms of the bags in half longitudinally to form the hinges, as you can see on the next picture. On her tutorial, Kathy Orta doesn’t do this, but attaches a hinge to the full width of the flap formed by the bottom of the bag in each side, which is simpler. The trouble is, my bags are so nearly square that I didn’t want to take up any of them for hinges, preferring to extend the hinges beyond the width of the page so that I didn’t lose any width. I do lose a vertical pocket on the back of each page, but this doesn’t really matter, because that page is occupied by a full-sized flap hinged from the top, and I can always add a pocket if I want to. (Hope this makes sense…)

I realise that I must allow a lot of space for the thickness of the papers, tags and embellishments. There’s nothing worse in the world of albums than the classic “Pacman mouth” syndrome where the pages don’t lie flat, but appear to be bursting open with all their additions! Sticking down these folded flaps and creating separate hinges from cardstock, each with a “gutter” of 1/4 in. should add sufficient thickness at the spine end to allow for this.

Each hinge piece (5 in all) measures 10 3/16 x 2 1/2 inches (this smaller measurement is 1 1/8 for each side, plus the 1/4 in gutter). The two hinges to attach the assembled album to the insides of the front and back covers are 10 3/16 x 3 1/2 inches – allowing for a 2 1/8 extension onto the covers for added strength. At least, that is the plan so far! (These works in progress of mine tend to develop a will of their own, and often my initial plans go out of the window as various problems arise that I hadn’t foreseen.)

These hinge pieces won’t be added to the pages until I am ready to assemble the album. It will be easier to add the papers and embellishments while the pages can still lie flat.

After touching up any gaps with black acrylic paint, I am now ready for the fun part – beginning to mat the pages and the pockets. The hardest part is deciding what papers to use for what, and I need to plan what will go best with the particular aspect of my Dad’s life that each page is celebrating.

I’ve roughed out what theme I want on each page, and started to choose the papers. I have now matted the basic papers onto the first page, which I have entitled “Ancestry.” This page has two pockets, one along the bottom, and one down the left-hand side, and into these I will place various tags, photo mats and journaling about my grandparents and great-grandparents. The main theme of the page is engineering to reflect my grandfather’s profession.

The background paper is from “Tattered Time,” and the other papers are from the Tim Holtz stacks “Crowded Attic” and “Lost and Found.” I shall be incorporating papers from these collections as they co-ordinate pretty well with the Tattered Time papers, and include more small elements which are useful for embellishing and creating tags etc.

It has taken me a very, very long time to get this far! I think this is going to be a long-term project as it takes so long to choose what to do, and then there’s masses of detail to add. I am enjoying sorting through the papers, which are gorgeous, and thinking about the additions which I shall make.

Tattered Time Mini-Album Part 1–Planning

Yesterday evening I started a very exciting new project – my very first mini-album! This is something I have been planning for such a long time, and although I am in the middle of the Card Factory (which is actually more of a chore than a delight…) I really felt the time had come to make a start. I shall be slotting other things in between, so this will be an ongoing project, like my Fine Art Album and my art journal, and other things that I pick up as the mood takes me.

Let me backtrack to the beginning. It was in September 2011, over a year ago, at the Creative Stitches and Hobbycrafts Exhibition, that I saw, and fell in love with, the DCWV “Tattered Time” paper stack and just had to buy it. Ever since then, I have wanted to use it for something but was terrified of messing it up, and every now and then I would get it out and go through it, and stroke it, and put it back on the shelf again! I also did a bit of Youtube research to see what other people did with it, and so the germ of an idea began, to make a mini-album with it, but this has been very much on the back burner since then.

More recently, and particularly since my dad has been deteriorating, I have been thinking about his life, and all the things he did and loved, and looking at the Tattered Time papers again, realised that they expressed so much about him. He has always had a passion for clocks, and has collected and repaired them most of his life. He and I have always been very close, and have shared so much fun over his various interests, and I used to “help” him in the workshop when I was small, watching him work, holding things for him, and learning so much. We shared an interest in typewriters when I began my secretarial course – there are pages relating to this – and of course his major passion for music, which is also represented. These are just a few of the things which will be included in the album.

Since I bought the Tattered Time papers, I have also acquired the Tim Holtz “Lost and Found” and “Crowded Attic” stacks – I have used a few small elements from these, but for the most part, they are intact. There are some elements in these collections which will mix and match quite nicely with the Tattered Time papers.

As I have thought about this, the ideas have been coming in leaps and bounds. Just recently, going through lots of old family photos, I’ve come across so many of Dad in his young days etc. My plan is to make a paper bag album, and to add lots of photos and journaling, and also to make some “mechanical” interactive elements to reflect his love of engineering and all things mechanical.

It’s just my personal opinion, but I have never been a great lover of scrapbooking layouts which incorporate photos and papercrafting – somehow to me the elements don’t mix that well, and if one isn’t careful, it can end up looking rather bitty and messy – there are glorious exceptions, of course, but for the most part it leaves me cold. The Tattered Time papers are so glorious that I really don’t want to cover them up with photos, so my plan is to celebrate the papers, and showcase them to the best of my ability, and to hide the photos and journaling on tags and inserts etc., and make it an interactive experience to look at them.

Over the past few days I’ve been doing some intensive research on Youtube into how to construct these albums, and there are some superb tutorials – also on bindings and closures, and I have now more or less decided on what I want to do. Unfortunately most of these tutorials come from the USA, where they have access to a lot of stuff we just can’t get here in the UK – in particular the bags. I have managed to source some, but of course they are a different size, so I cannot follow the tutorials exactly, as regards measurements, and will have to improvise, but this will make the project that much more my own.

Last year, I made some bag skirts for Christmas gift bags. I ordered several sizes of these bags from Ebay, and the seller made a mistake and sent me far too many. When I contacted him about it, he said it would be more hassle if I sent them back, and told me to keep them, and I have often wondered what I was going to do with them. This evening I decided to use some of the medium sized ones to make this album.

These bags are fairly thick, so I hope they are going to work OK for the album. I had to remove the handles, which are made of twisted paper, and quite attractive, so I thought I would save them, maybe to use as embellishments in other projects.

(They are lying on my new scratch paper – not much on it yet so it looks a bit strange!)

I am not going to give a tutorial on how to make up these bags into an album, because it has already been done very adequately on Youtube. I have decided to follow Kathy Orta’s first-class multi-part Youtube tutorial which she made, using the Tim Holtz “Lost and Found” stack, as she makes full use of the bags and their gussets for an album full of pockets for tags. The first part shows how to deconstruct the bags for the album.

Here are my bags with the gussets prepared:

and showing how the gussets fold up to form pockets.

Most paper bags come with a serrated top edge. In this picture, I am trimming this off, so that the bag measures 11 1/4 in from the bottom, with the gusset folded up. This means the finished dimension of each page will be 11 1/4 in wide and 10 3/16 in high.

I have prepared six bags in this way, which should be sufficient to complete my album.

Watch this space to see how this project progresses. Depending on what else I have to do, and how I am feeling, it may not progress very fast! However, once I get going, there may be no stopping me…

Card for a Teacher

My cousin is a teacher, and her birthday is coming up soon. At the end of last year I started collecting together a few items to make a nice grungey card for her, and then forgot about it! I was intending to make something to go with the faux porcelain sentiment I made, and then remembered about the other stuff, and lo and behold, it goes perfectly! Here is what I have done.

The elements were taken from a Tim Holtz paper stack that I’ve got – I can’t remember which one it was, but I think it might have been Crowded Attic (or possibly Lost and Found). I laid them out on some background paper from the same stack and stuck them down with Pinflair photo glue, and the sentiment was what I have just made – faux porcelain, embellished with two dull brass coloured brads and adhered with Pinflair gel glue.

Here is the card with its envelope – a plain white one which I distressed with Antique Linen Distress Ink.

Detail of the embellishment, complete with its brads:

I am really pleased how well this goes with the other elements!

Finally, a picture of the card insert I made. I scanned the elements from the front of the card and made a digital layout, adding some other elements and an ink blot for good measure, and recoloured them to be the same. The paper was coloured with Antique Linen and Vintage Photo Distress Inks, and the edges distressed with my distressing tool. I also added some distress inks to the back of the base card to reduce its stark whiteness.

Being a teacher, I thought she might enjoy these vintage school images. She is also a very talented card-maker so I have to pull the stops out every year so she is not disappointed! She’s very discerning, and always appreciates how much work goes into hand-made cards, which is nice to know, because I suspect that many people have no idea, and put about as much value on an individually-made card as they do on a bought card!

Anyway, hope she enjoys a bit of vintage grunge from the King of Grunge!

My Purchases at the Craft Show

After having a day’s rest, I was finally able to unpack my box of goodies from the Craft Show on Thursday. Please see my previous post for details of that, and it will make sense of this post, hopefully!

I mentioned that I got some Really Useful Boxes. These are such a clever invention! Somebody has really thought about this. They are lightweight and strong, transparent (so you can see what’s inside them), many different sizes and shapes, stackable, and have clever locking handles that keep the lids on. They are infinitely versatile and definitely Really Useful! I was delighted to find a stand at the show that had them, and decided to buy a few to start me off. I’ve had a shopping basket open online for them for a couple of weeks but preferred to see them in the flesh first.

I bought 2 long thin ones which are designed for standard rolls of paper.

I am highly delighted to discover that they fit exactly into my old wooden shelving system. If I want to get other boxes, say twice the height and half the length, I know they will fit too. I have separated my rolls of paper into gift wrapping paper, and art paper. So great to have my paper rolls organised at last, and not collapsing all over the place any more!

Then I got 2 smaller, more square-shaped ones, for general storage.

Eventually I want to get rid of this old computer desk as I no longer need it, and it sticks right out into the room. It is piled high, mostly with boxes of mixed media stuff, and I hope one day to get more organised and store this stuff better (more Really Useful Boxes??)

I’ve had my reserve supply of glues and double-sided tapes, foam tape, foam pads, etc. rammed into a cardboard box (like most of the stuff in my somewhat chaotic ARTHaven!) and decided to get a box for those.

At the show, I also bought some more Pinflair gel glue and photo glue as I get through a lot of this, and some more double-sided tape.

The other box, the same size, I bought with 2 organiser trays. One tray goes in the bottom, and the other sits at the top, with a flange around it which rests on top of the box, and the lid holds it in place. This one I have filled with all my Stickles, alcohol inks, Distress Stains, glitters, Rub ’n’ Buff, etc.

I stocked up on quite a few Distress Stains that I was missing, and have yet to put labels on the lids of these.

I bought a few smaller ones for pens, brushes and pencils, which are on the shelf above my main work table, in easy reach.

It will be really nice not to have that heap of stuff in that corner, which kept collapsing every time I tried to reach for anything!

Finally, I bought a really dinky little one to keep Sheba’s accessories in – her spare blades, blade holders, embossing tools, etc.

For some time now I have been following Colouricious on Youtube – they produce high quality videos of workshops and interviews with textile artists, all of which are so inspiring. I was delighted to see that Jamie Malden was at the show with a Colouricious stand, complete with her famous Indian woodblocks for fabric printing, so I treated myself to some! They also print well on paper, I am told.

They are hand carved in Indian hardwood and make a beautiful impression. You can see them on the Colouricious website.

Jamie loves to embellish her printed fabrics with machine embroidery. Years ago I tried my hand at free machine embroidery but then got into other things and never really followed it through, but I am keen to try again, so I picked up a few gorgeous shiny rayon and metallic threads at the show, along with a new, slimline embroidery hoop.

Finally, on Stef Francis’ stand, I bought a few things for mixed media art and creative embroidery – she sells amazing silk products, both dyed and undyed, including silk cocoons and silk carrier rods. These latter are formed during the silk spinning process (see my previous blog post for details) and they can be used to create amazing effects in one’s work. I love it when things that would otherwise be considered rubbish and thrown away are turned into something beautiful!

These silk carrier rods are in the bag in the centre, with the cocoons on the right. At the back on the left is a sheet of mulberry bark (bleached – it is a buff colour naturally) which can be teased out – like the rods, it is softer when damp – and dyed, and used for backgrounds and textures, and as a substrate for embroidery.

At the front is a skein of sari ribbon, created from strips of sari fabric from remnants left over in the manufacturing process – mixed fibres, gorgeous rich colours with the odd splash of metallic fibre – no two skeins are alike! Good enough to eat!

I love shopping at craft shows, because you never know what you are going to find, and what ideas are going to inspire you. I always go armed with a list – things to stock up on, like glues, cardstock etc., and I take a list of colours of things that I have got, and what gaps need filling (e.g. Distress Inks) so that over the past few shows, I have now managed to get the complete set of Distress Inks, re-inkers and Distress Stains, which are all bread-and-butter materials which one can’t do without! Last year on one stand was a huge bin full of Stickles, and I bought loads of them in different colours. Most stands have excellent offers, with good reductions when you buy in quantity, and of course, at the shows there is no postage and packing to pay. There are great bargains to be had, with many things being sold at special show prices.

It is also lovely to be able to handle the things “in the flesh” – now that our local craft shop has closed (not that I was able to get to it very often) I have to do nearly all my shopping online, and it is not always easy to judge the quality of things unless you can see them and feel them.

For someone virtually housebound unless my hubby takes me, it is also the most tremendously enjoyable day out for me! I just love mingling with all the “crafty” people, exchanging ideas, chatting, having a good laugh, learning so much from the demonstrators, and just being caught up in the general atmosphere of the show. In my experience, most crafters are friendly and generous with their ideas and their time, and it’s great to spend time with them.

We only have 2 shows a year in Exeter, and it is unlikely that I shall ever make any of the big ones like the NEC or Ally Pally, but I value our local ones so much! Roll on September!!

Sheba has Arrived!

On our way home from my uncle’s funeral, we took a detour to Derby, to collect Sheba, my new Black Cat Cougar cutting machine. We had arranged this beforehand with the wonderful Dawn, who with her business partner Colin, has designed these amazing machines – collecting it in person saved me the carriage and insurance fees even if it did cost us a bit more in petrol. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to meet Dawn in person as she was busy, but we met her husband who had everything arranged ready for us.

I have joined the Black Cat Forum which is full of lovely people who are so friendly and helpful and always encouraging the Cubs (as we newbies are called!) to ask any questions we like. Now that I’ve got the machine I have been able to access the user manual which I am going to print out, as it will make good bed-time reading!

When we got home, my hubby carried Sheba upstairs to my ARTHaven and put her big box on the floor.

Opening up the box, I found her nesting all safe and secure:

where she’s unfortunately got to stay until after Christmas! I’ve got far too much to do to be able to play with her for a while – it’s going to be a steep learning curve discovering all her tricks, and I don’t want to rush it, or fall into the trap of thinking I can complete my Christmas projects using her, because this would only lead to frustration if I don’t know what I’m doing.

I am determined to take it slowly, learning each stage step by step before advancing to the next level, and taking the advice of others on the forum, such as keeping a record of every cut I make initially, so that it will be easy to decide what settings I need for each individual project.

Watch this space over the next few months! Although of course I want to be able to cut paper and card with Sheba, she is capable of so much more. I want to emboss and cut metal, and make 3-D objects such as jewellery and hair ornaments, and some new decorations for my wheelchair! I also want to work with leather – I’ve got a big box of scraps of fine soft leather in lots of colours, which I bought as a cheap job lot at the end of a craft show many years ago from a glove-making stand – I’ve only used a very small amount of this and there’s lots I can do now I can cut different shapes more easily.

You can also draw with any pen, but a special pen holder is needed for this. I was not able to get all the accessories I shall eventually want (such as the engraving tool), and anyway, there’s plenty to learn and get to grips with in the meantime, until finances allow me to get the rest. So far, in addition to the basic kit which consists of the normal mat and standard blade, I’ve got a “click” blade housing (something like the one on the Cricut), a blade for cutting thicker media, and the embossing tools and mat, so lots to play with! Also included is a small pen holder which allows you to use a ball-point refill – I think my gel pens should work fine with this for the moment.

I just hope this sleek black kitty will be content to remain in her box for a while and not get jealous of Jiminy Cricut as I continue to use him to complete my Christmas projects!! (He has been told that his days are numbered.)

This is a new adventure for 2012. I’m really excited!!

When we arrived home, I found a parcel of goodies that I’d ordered had arrived:

I decided after all to get the Tim Holtz seasonal distress inks as I need them for the bag skirts I’m making, and I also ordered a couple of distress stains that I was missing. At the bottom of the box is a stack of distress core’dinations papers which are just gorgeous, and then some Tack’n Peel which is a sort of sticky film that you can put on an acrylic block and then use it either to adhere unmounted rubber stamps or anything else you want to stamp with. Finally, the box on top was a free gift, a Martha Stewart embossing kit. There are a couple of small pots of embossing powder, an embossing ink pad (I now have 3… I wonder if I can manage to keep this one clean???) a very nice acrylic block and a sheet of clear stamps, several of which I think will be quite useful.

I’m hoping to be able to make my next bag skirt tomorrow and will be able to use some of these materials. Today I’ve felt pretty wiped out after all our adventures, but this evening I’ve designed the next bag skirt using some ideas of Penny Duncan’s, and also some Tim-inspired shapes! Hopefully once I get going it won’t take too long.

Then it’s present wrapping time again… Is anyone else as far behind as I am??

WOYWW 125

Thanks again, Julia, for hosting our wonderful blog hop where we all go round spying out each other’s workdesks to see how messy and creative we are being! For anyone new to this, click on the WOYWW icon in my sidebar which will take you to Julia’s blog where you can join in the fun.

I haven’t done too much this week as I haven’t felt up to it – away from my workdesk I’ve been learning loads on Youtube about mixed media techniques and am itching to start again! Also, a friend has asked me to convert some cut files she bought, into pdfs – she hadn’t realised what they were when she bought them and doesn’t have a cutting machine. They are alphabet letters to create a word book that her mum wants to make. After getting some excellent advice from Penny Duncan (thanks Penny!!) on the software to use, I have now started on these, so she should be getting them soon. This is something I can do on the laptop with my feet up. It’s given me the idea of designing my own word book pages, but that’s on the back burner for now.

So… to my workdesk. I have made a start on the stash of birthday cards I’ve decided to give my mum for Christmas. She is 90, and doesn’t really want any more “things” as presents, and it’s getting increasingly difficult to think of anything to give her! Earlier this year she asked me if I’d make some birthday cards for her to give people, and I balked at the idea because I’m not keen to get too stuck into card making, preferring to branch out into more adventurous areas these days!! Anyway, thinking about it, I thought it would be a good Christmas present for her – I am making them all the same size, and I will make a nice box to put them in. I’m making her a dozen, and while I’m at it, I’ve decided to replenish my own somewhat depleted stash – after all, nearly all the birthdays in our family and friends occur in the first half of the year, starting on 1st January, so I’d like to make a start!

It’s a bit of a mess, but on the brown table on the left, you can see a stack of papers that I’m using – there are Core’dinations of various colours and sizes, a couple of Tim Holtz paper stashes, and various different scrapbooking papers. On my workdesk itself you can see my Cuttlebug, and some cards in progress. The dark brown one I am quite pleased with so far – I’ve chosen various bits of Tim Holtz papers to do with vintage school, as both my aunt and my cousin have been/are teachers – there’s a times table, an attendance certificate, a dictionary entry and an old fashioned ruler, which I am going to collage onto the dark background. The ones on the left are just at the stage of having chosen some card to mat and layer, and the one on the right has got a piece of Core’dinations paper embossed with a Tim Holtz Texture Fades folder, rubbed down and inked with Distress Inks, and certain parts highlighted with a white marker and Glossy Accents. So far it’s all a bit samey so I’m going to add something (don’t know what!) to give a bit more impact.

I REALLY want to be doing something else!!! – but I’m quite enjoying doing it really.

Not on my desk, but I was just going upstairs and spotted this through the landing window.

I love tortoiseshell butterflies! At this time of the year they tend to come in the house and look for somewhere to spend the winter. This one was sunning himself on the wall, idly flapping his wings open and shut. I zoomed in on him on maximum zoom (18x) with the camera resting against the window. Hope he survives the winter!

I got my camera back from being repaired last week, and it’s great! My wonderful hubby lent me his last week which was a tremendous help, but it’s really good to have mine back again, complete with a huuuuge new SD card so I can do lots of videos as well as photos if I’m out and about!

Creative Stitches and Hobbycrafts Exhibition, 2011

My lovely hubby took me over to Exeter yesterday for the annual Creative Stitches and Hobbycrafts Exhibition. This is a general craft show with lots of different crafts being featured, but still lots of opportunity to stock up on the mixed media and papercrafting supplies, and to watch demos etc. He left me there, and spent the day with his brother, and did some shopping of his own, which he was pleased with.

It was a very special day for me, because I met up with my friend Wendy for the first time! We’ve been following each other’s blogs and emailing each other, and being on forums together, for ages now, and when she told me she would be down here on holiday, we agreed to meet up at the show. What fun we had! We looked at a lot of things together, and then went our separate ways, bumping into each other every now and again. On one occasion she came up to me with an absolutely beautiful card she’d just made, when she attended one of the workshops. I hope she’s going to blog about that!

Here are some of the photos I took of the day. On one stand, someone was demonstrating the Spellbinders Grand Calibur machine, and I was amazed by the fine detail on some of the samples – flowers and swirls, some cut in vellum and layered. So pretty and delicate, and so intricate!

Glitter time!! I was sad that the Glitter Man wasn’t there this time – on my first visit to this show last year, he was there in his pirate’s cave with his treasure chests full of the biggest quantity of glitter that I’ve ever seen! The display this year was impressive, though.

It’s a real pity that photos don’t pick up the amazing glitteriness of glitter!

I found a wonderful stand with loads of Tim Holtz stuff on it, run by a delightful man who really knew his stuff – he didn’t just sell the stuff, but also used it. He had made a big display board showing all the colours of the Distress Stains. He’d taken a tag for each colour, and stamped one of Tim’s background text stamps on it, and coloured it with the respective Distress stain, and then mounted a dress form from Tim’s die, which was distressed with a matching Distress Ink. Finally, he’d added a row of small roses along the bottom of each dress form shape. It was a beautiful display which we were all admiring (wish I’d thought of photographing it), and he told us it had taken him 3 weeks to do, and 4 bottles of wine! He also told us he knew Tim quite well, and what a lovely man he is, very unassuming and humble, and it appeared that he really didn’t know what all the fuss was about – he just got on with doing what he is so good at! His success certainly hasn’t gone to his head. He recommended that if any of us ever got the chance to go on a course with him, we should. That was very nice to hear, I thought.

I’ve been thinking of getting some Distress Stains for a while, and was hoping to get a good deal at the show, which I did. If you bought 12, you got 3 free ones! I also chose two more that I wanted. I didn’t see any point in buying them all, because some of the colours are very similar, so I got a representative selection.

There was an Inkylicious stand at the show, and they were selling the Ink Dusters. I told the man on the stand that I’d done the first Youtube video on them, and he was very pleased – he said they’d been too busy to set up the website on them yet, but hopefully it would happen soon. He said he’d look on Youtube, and also on my blog, which was nice. I mentioned to several other customers how good they were, and how they’d revolutionised my ink blending.

Back with the eggcrafting ladies again, as at previous shows:

This time I caught them in the act – eating chocolate cake!! They were very happy to see me and remembered me from the past 2 shows. They know how I love to photograph the eggs, and publish their beautiful work around the world on my blog! They were happy to oblige, again, and showed me the salient points of some of the new creations on the table. There was a mixture of old and new designs – it’s such an intricate craft that they cannot hope to make a completely new display for every show.

I just love the little pink umbrella over the ducks by their pond! And here is one of several beautiful eggs.

This had to be the star of the display – the Royal Wedding Egg.

The lady on the right in the photo above made it, and she lifted it down for me so I could see and photograph it better. She had dressed all the figures herself, and made the carriage axles, and even made all the horses’ harnesses herself too. This piece was just stunning – out of this world. Here are some detailed shots.

I then went on to the sugarcrafting stand, and I must say they’d excelled themselves this year! The flowers were so realistic that I could hardly believe they were made of icing. The focal piece was a wedding cake decorated in rainbow colours, which amazingly had been done by a lady in her seventies. The intricacy of the work was incredible.

At the entrance to the show, there was a display of this wonderful wedding cake.

I wouldn’t even know how to begin to do such a thing!!

Today I unpacked my lovely box of goodies. Each time I go to a show, they allow me to put my box in the office, and when I buy things, I can leave them there, as it’s hard to carry a lot of stuff around. My box was only just big enough! I stocked up on various things like glue and plain white cardstock. You were given a polywallet to fill as full as you could, which cost a set amount. I bought 2 white packs of 300 gsm (about 60 sheets in each), really cheap.

Here’s a picture of most of what I bought – I haven’t put it all out.

L-R, back-front: a Martha Stewart Circle Cutter (more later), some feathers, some Claudine Helmuth sticky-backed canvas (haven’t tried that yet, but love the effects you can get with it), some gold and silver mirror board, some gold and silver foil (and a small roll of copper), a DCWV paper stack “Tattered Time” which is soooo gorgeous that I probably won’t be able to bring myself to use it!! and some more Glossy Accents. Front row: a few rubber stamps, replacement Cricut blades, some really gorgeous embellishments which I shall also be able to use to make moulds out of, lots of regular Pinflair, and Pinflair photo glue, some Spray and Sparkle which Wendy recommended, some of the Distress Stains, some glitter (fabby colours! – only I wished I’d waited before buying them, because the loose glitter was cheaper), some fine paintbrushes and a sepia pen, some embossing powders and some wire (and other beading bits and pieces not on the photos).

These are my new Tim Holtz Distress Stains. Today I made the labels for the lids so that I could easily identify them in the box I’ve chosen for them.

This is my new Martha Stewart Circle Cutter. I saw one of these online the other day and thought what a good idea they were. You can cut circles ranging from 1 in diameter to 5 1/2 in, in very small increments, which means you can also cut very thin rings. The central transparent disc fits in a groove in the white ring, and rotates in a ball race. You put the blade into the hole of your choice (they are all marked) and holding the ring, simply rotate the disc, and the blade cuts the paper underneath.

Last year, when I got my ARTHaven set up, I was thinking of buying one of those Making Memories rotating tool caddies, but they were too expensive, and so I decided to make my own. I was going to get a small lazy susan base, and mount some vertical cylinders onto it, to take my various sized tools, but I never got round to it, partly because I couldn’t find a suitable lazy susan base. Last month, at our village fete, I found a small fabric caddy, brand new, going for a song, so I bought it and have been using that.

This afternoon, when I had opened my Circle Cutter, I was wondering where I was going to store it, and I was idly turning the disc in my hands and noticing the ball race it was running in, and I got a brainwave. Here is my small lazy susan base! I popped my fabric caddy on top, and hey presto, killed two birds with one stone – got a rotating caddy, and also found a convenient place to store the Circle Cutter!!! That sort of thing gives me a very good feeling!

Finally, here are the papier mache boxes I bought for altering. The first one is rectangular, and came filled with 24 small round boxes, very cheap!

The other large box is square, and I also bought several smaller ones in different shapes – a round one, two ovals, and some heart-shaped ones. Lots of scope for altering!

Sorry this has been such a long post this time, but I think you’ll agree I’ve had a good time! I am so enjoying my new purchases, and finding homes for them in my ARTHaven. I need more storage space!!