Calling all Crafters....Coated Card Bargain!!

To Do: find some decent coated card that wont bleed my promarkers!!
ACHIEVED!!!

I went searching the craft forums looking for some recommendations on what type of card to use - the name that kept cropping up was Ryman - so I googled and found the website. This card has been recommeded for Promarkers and Copics, so it cant be bad!! It is coated so enables the pens to blend easier than matt card, which sucks up the ink like a sponge.

Their card is on a 3 for 2 offer this week AND for this week only they are offering free next day delivery on ALL orders!!! This was an offer too good not to take!!! I bought 3 packs of 50 A5 white coated card for £7.98. bargain!! Personally thought I would be less wasteful with the A5, I should be able to get 2 images on each piece so SHOULD end up with less 'scrap' card.

The next day delivery is on all orders completed before 5PM. Wooooo!! thats me!! Cant wait to use it - gonna be weird seeing my digis with white eyes.... so used to seeing the skin tone bleed up into them!! LOL!!

Also - on a non promarker note - I think I may be doing another craft fair!! Its a Christmas Fair, its at the village hall opposite my house! (*shudders* its only August....shouldn't be thinking about christmas yet) My OH brought the poster home yesterday to show me and it says there are still stalls available. will look into the price/day etc... if I do go ahead with it I think I might make some of the matchbox advent calenders! :)

hope you take advantage of the free postage and 3 for 2!!!
Speak soon!xxx

Vintage and Handmade Fair, 10th December 2011

So, I got up stupidly early on Saturday 10th December to make sure I had everything packed. 7.45am I was ready and packed the car and headed to my friend Meryls house. Mel had provided everything for my table to make it look beautiful and had offered to come to the hall and help me set up. When we got there the Hall was set up with about 45 tables downstairs and the rest upstairs. We hunted around in the main room looking for a table with my name on it. Disappointment set in as I realised I was upstairs. We lugged everything up and there was my table, in a room with 6 others. We set my table up and it looked beautiful!! My sister arrived in time to get changed into our 'Pinkys Cards' t-shirts and then the customers started coming in. There was a good trickle of customers for most of the day, but there were also big periods when there was no one apart from us sellers up there!!

(the beautiful Mel - Home Grown Bride, looking very proud of the table!!) 

Apparently our fair was on the same weekend that Woburn and Bletchley had got their handmade fairs on too. On top of that, Milton Keynes had got the Red Bull racing cars down, racing around the city centre, this meant there were a load of roads closed for the racing cars to use.  knowing this now, I understand why the fair was a quiet one!!!

HOWEVER I think that for my 1st fair I did bloody well!! I made nearly £60 and gave out LOADS of business cards!! I even had some interest for wedding stationary!!! so I am very positive from this experience!! I met some lovely people and have the beginnings of hopefully some good friendships.

my favourite part of the fair:

a couple of girls were browsing at my stall and I asked them if they were looking for anything in particular. 1 girl said she was looking for a card for her grandfather. So I chatted with her about what sort of things he likes and after a minute or so she stood up looking disheartened. she said he had some sort of problem where he could only really see the colour yellow clearly. I routed around in the boxes behind my stall and pulled out 2 cards I had made in yellow. her face lit up. It was the same design as the cards she had been looking through, I had done them in all non Christmassy colours but hadn't put them out on display. she gave me a huge grin and told me that it would make her grandfathers Christmas receiving a card he can see clearly. that made me feel so warm and fuzzy inside!!!

I'm looking forward to the next fair, one where i wont have to focus SO much on Christmas cards! My tattoo range went down a storm so will have to look into investing in a few more Bombshell stamps methinks!!!

OK, well that's it for now. will try and blog again before Christmas - have slipped a disc though so I'll have to see how I'm feeling!

Big Love - Speak soon!xxxxx

Prep for the Fair and a Vintage beauty...

Hello!!!

I have been a bit quiet on the blogging front recently - mostly because I have been working my socks off to prepare stock for the Vintage and Handmade Fair I am selling at tomorrow!!!! I have done 100 Christmas cards and am now working towards finishing the non Christmassy cards, I have done 51 so far. This is the 1st craft fair I have ever done and it is safe to say that I am royally poopin myself about it!!! Who knew selling cards would be so scary!!! This is an idea of what the stall is going to look like - 

The fair is at Millmead Hall, Wolverton, Milton Keynes - 10th December, 10am - 4pm. It is going to be an awesome day out, just in time for any Christmas shopping you need to do. There is over 50 stalls including MINE!!!!! Here's a little sneak peek at some of the stuff I'll be selling....

On a non-Christmas fair note....

I took some of my cards into work and a colleague asked if I could do a special card for her daughters 16th birthday. Of course, I said! After listening to what the birthday girl was into I did a quick sketch of the card I had in mind.

I sat down and started on the circle that was going to make the easel part of the card. Quite quickly my design evolved from an easel card into a standard single fold to give the design more space.  I have used a Kraft card base, Tim Holtz Vintage Shabby cardstock and elegant flourish die, some Prima flowers, sticky pearls and some buttons. The numbers are from Tim's Carnivale alphabet that I have triple embossed using silver embossing powder. The pink cardstock was torn into a square, screwed up, flattened out and sanded. I think it creates a lovely vintagey look.

This  is my 1st vintage style card, believe it or not!!! I'm shocked that I have managed to go this long without making one - Vintage is EVERYWHERE atm!!! I think it turned out really well!! I'm super pleased with it and hope the birthday girl will be too.

Would love to know what you think of it!!! please leave a comment!

So that's me done for another post, will write again after the craft fair - hopefully will be taking lots of piccys!!!

Speak soon. Big Love.xxx

Butterflies and BRILLIANT NEWS!!!

I have been meaning to write on my blog for the past few days. Unfortunately there always seems to be something UBER important that needs to be done. This week that thing has been the wedding name cards for a customer order.

THAY ARE FINISHED!! I am pretty happy how they have turned out actually - I went against all my better judgement and did a non standard size place card - main reason for this was the Butterfly punch.

It's a Tonic Studios punch; I lusted after it for months! it is a little expensive for what it is but it is SOOOO pretty!! Although I love this punch SOOOO much it is a bit of a pain in the bum - it doesn't punch very far into the paper. I could have punched the butterflies and then cut them out and restuck them on but I REALLY liked the effect with the butterfly punched in the cardstock and then the card folded down behind it. To have the butterfly central meant the card had to be a bit of a random size but I don't think that matters too much.

I used 3 different sized gems to form the body of the butterfly; navy 5mm, aqua 4mm and clear 3mm. the dark blue card that the names are mounted onto is just stock card I had from hobbycraft.

I wanted to make the Bride and Groom cards a bit different and a bit more special so I added the accent gems onto where the names are printed.

My sister has fallen in love with this design, so as and when she gets married I can go nuts and do all her wedding stationary in this style!!! looking forward to it!!!

On a completely different note, I have some FANTASTIC news - I will be selling my cards at the Vintage and Handmade fair in Wolverton, Milton Keynes... IM SO EXCITED!!!!! this will be my 1st fair ever!!! (and hopefully not my last!)

I'm getting all giddy like a kid at Christmas - have been searching the internet for images and tips of what a good stall should be like. Also been looking into getting some business cards. It finally feels like things are starting to go my way!! about time I reckon! :) so plan for the next 108 days.... get busy making some stock for the fair!!!

Well, i think that might be the OH home from work - so i best go put the dinner on!! :)

Speak Soon.

xxxxx