Hello my crafty friends, Merry Christmas and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you are all well and ready for Christmas if you celebrate it. I'm nearly ready, we've just got food shopping to do in the morning and I've a couple of presents to wrap for my lovely husband. I broke my little toe on my right foot a few weeks ago which is why I've not added a post for a while (and my mojo is still rather on the thin side, I'm hoping some crafty goodies in the sales will fatten it up in the new year)you might be puzzled why a broken toe would affect my ability to craft and in some ways it hasn't, what's been the challenge has been getting into my craftroom in the first place then trying to elevate the foot as I craft and to be perfectly frank my crudy is too small to comfortably do either. At one point I did grab a couple of crafty items along with my trusty Big Shot machine so I could craft with my leg up and I made 24 double layered Christmas tags for the presents. I did manage to get a couple of hours crafting in my actual crudy and though my mojo is in slow Mo mode I made two birthday cards. One is for my great niece who is one on the 27th and the other is for my youngest nephew who will be eleven on the 29th. The first card is a side folding card featuring a Fuzzy Lemon carasel horse which I embellished with golden hooves and pole, gold stamped flowers and confetti glitter on the saddle, mane and tail. I mounted the horse on black card to make it pop and made my own glitter card by adding a tacky glue to the outer edges on another piece of black card stock and then sprinkled more of the confetti glitter onto the sticky glue. Both black pieces were die cut using a nesting die set from my stash. I covered the front of a pre-made card blank with some funfair paper from Dovecraft, it's from a few years ago and has lots of glittery papers in the stack. I added the layered pieces on the front and added a mini envelope inside so I could add some money to the card. The second card was made using the Whizz Kids collection from Dovecraft - it's one of my favourite collections and I have quite a few of the paper packs, although I'm not a huge fan of decoupage, I do wish I'd picked up the pad when I had the chance as it would has been very useful for this card. I ended up using a couple of the stickers from the sticker pack, a photo frame, a sentiment sticker, a couple of blue buttons and papers from the 6"×6" paperstack. I made my nephew an impossible card with a mini envelope containing money at the back of the main image. This made it very top heavy so I made a folding stand which I attached next to the mini envelope so the main topper stands upright but it all still folds flat. I had to make a bespoke envelope using my envelope punch board which I also used to make the mini envelopes in both projects. I am writing this on my phone which erases all paragraph breaks and won't allow me to add photos within the main body of text so the photos will follow after the writing ends. I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and until next time - keep crafting! Love and crafty hugs, Sarah xxxxxx

Making a list and checking it twice! Mini clipboard for Christmas lists

Hello crafty friends and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you've all had a brilliant weekend, it's been rather quiet here in my crafty nook and I haven't been able to craft as much as I'd like because I managed to strain my right hand side coughing. It feels a lot better than it did when I first did it but it still really hurts to move so I've been taking things easy. I have managed to make a mini Christmas Village themed clipboard to keep all my Christmas lists in one place. I love making lists (and crossing things off) and at this very busy time of the year it makes sense to keep them together. The clipboard didn't take very long to make and is made from a spare piece of mount board which I covered with half a sheet of scrapbook paper taken from the Dovecraft Christmas Village 12"x12" pack. It was stuck down to the board with a combination of red liner tape and glue as I want to use this during the Christmas runup for years to come. I have some mini binder clips on my desk which I usually use to hold things together while glue is drying and I thought I could spare one for this project. I was planning on sticking it to the board using hot glue but realised that the opening and closing action would quickly work the binder clip loose. I decided to add a slit to the board and thread the back of the clip through leaving the lever and front of the binder on the decorated side. I cut a little bit more than I should so covered the excess cut marks with large adhesive gems. I added some smaller gems to the clip then cut some printer paper to 4" wide by 8", stacked them together and added them under the clip. At this point I decided to make a pen loop out of a scrap of paper from the same collection and I added it to the left hand side with some strong glue. I'm left handed which is why the pen is on the 'wrong' side of the clipboard. ********************************************* I hope you like my little project, I absolutely love my prize from Making Cards magazine and have loads more projects whizzing around my head - it's just finding the time and space to make them! If you have any questions or comments please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting! ********************************************* Love and crafty hugs Sarah xx xx

Blog Challenge - yay!

Hello crafty friends and welcome to my crafty nook. I hope you are all well and having a great weekend. It's been quite a while since the last blog challenge and so Michele and I thought we should challenge each other for a final time this year. As always this is just for fun and everyone is welcome to join in. Michele had the excellent idea to challenge each other to look at our stamps and dies in new ways and using non Christmas stamps and dies (either or both, it's up to you!) make a Christmas themed card (or more - why not make some batch cards?) We can use an additional five items (Christmas papers, gems, glitter etc) as well as basic craft items (please leave a comment on this blog post if you need more details on any part of this challenge) if you want to make things extra challenging you could try making a Christmas card without ANY Christmas supplies apart from a sentiment. If you don't celebrate Christmas, why not make a winter themed card instead. Now it's the run up to Christmas, I know that us crafters are even busier than usual so the closing date for this challenge is Christmas Eve, I will try to get the completed challenge blog up on or around the 27th December, I don't think I'll be able to post before that date because I will be having family around for Christmas Day and Boxing Day. I'll be prepping veg and sides on Christmas Eve and quite possibly food shopping (what a day to have to conquer your agoraphobia!) So pretty busy until the 27th, I will of course continue to post before then because I have a lot of projects in mind that I'm hoping to share. I look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with and until next time - keep crafting! ************************************************************ Love and crafty hugs - Sarah xx

Crafters who live in glass craftrooms shouldn't throw stones...

Hello crafty friends and welcome to my crafty nook. In my last post I touched upon copyright infringement and how to avoid it when using social media. Wow, talk about timing! I've only found out about what is being called "stampgate" by certain individuals during the last 24 hours but it's something that's been known about for a while. I don't know all the facts so I will not name names but keep things general. One of my favourite crafter's/designers has been accused of copyright infringement, specifically directly copying a photo and having it produced as a stamp, the stamps aren't photo stamps but line drawings and the original photographer wasn't credited for his work or even informed that his images were being used. The designer involved as far as I know exclusively designs for one company and if she is not available to demonstrate her stamp and die range on one of the craft channels then the company will use one of it's own demonstrators in her place. This designer is very much loved by the crafting community and has chosen to absent herself from social media until her position is clarified which considering the viterol and spite that has been written on her Facebook post is probably a good idea and let's face it she's probably been advised to do so by the company that produces and sells her products and by her legal advisors. In no way am I condoning her actions if she has blatantly flatout copied images without consent BUT at this point we don't know and can't know all the facts. As I've previously stated this designer is incredibly popular and is probably under a lot of pressure to produce a set amount of stamp collections every year, I wouldn't be surprised if her employers (I've no idea if she is employed directly by them or just on a freelance basis but for ease I'll just call them her employers)specify a particular theme such as botanical, sports, fantasy or whatever because let's face it crafts like most things in life has fads and trends and many craft companies like to jump on the bandwagon if they don't manage to come up with the current trend. We don't know the full facts at this point and we don't know how this designer goes about her creative process for all we know she might be sent a load of photos etc along with the brief and then has to come up with stamp designs. She might assume the images were uncopyrighted or that it had lapsed. This doesn't excuse the copyright infringement and if it was done deliberately then shame on her. But if you are still reading this ask yourself a few questions - how many times have YOU been guilty of copyright infringement? Don't think you have? Think again sunshine! Have you ever downloaded a photo/image from the internet, printed it out and used on a card or project? Unless you've bought it from an authentic seller or it's copyright free then your guilty of copyright infringement, have you ever turned your old Christmas cards into tags for the following year? Copyright infringement. What about that cute packaging you just had to save and reuse? Again possible copyright infringement. How many times have you gone on Pinterest because you need a card and your crafty mojo has left the building and even if you've not copied it exactly if you haven't credited the originator then that's a possible copyright infringement. Do you add tickets/programs to your scrapbook layouts and then shared it on social media or even just shown it a family member or friend? Technically copyright infringement. How about those paper packs we all love to buy and in my case hoard - have you ever scanned them into your computer and then printed them out? BLATANT copyright infringement! How about stamped images you've scanned and resized? Again blatant copyright infringement yet many crafters do it. Have you ever sold diecuts from the dies you have? I see it all the time on eBay and Amazon and most of the time it's a copyright infringement - if you don't believe me check out the angel policies, most companies allow you to sell a finished card or project but don't allow you to sell the diecuts. Have you ever bought an unbranded die or stamp? There's a fair chance that those are violating copyright somewhere and I'll admit it here I have unbranded dies and stamps in my stash and there's a good chance that makes me guilty of copyright infringement too even though I've not done it intentionally - tbh I try to buy the generic shapes because they aren't copyrighted. Let's face it an original design rarely stays exclusive to one company for long, most craft companies seem to copy each other's designs or are we supposed to believe they all come up with the same idea independent of each other just a bit later? Next we'll be asked to believe that the covermount gifts are really worth what the magazines claim! *Rolls eyes* My point is it's very easy to be guilty of copyright infringement and most if not all of us are guilty of it so let's not rush to condemn someone before we fully know the facts and even when we do know, cut them a bit of slack, it's so easy to judge and condemn others for things we are guilty of too. Afterall crafters who live in glass craftrooms shouldn't throw stones! ***************************************************†****************** Crafty hugs Sarah xx

Trimcraft Christmas Village Bookatrix Easel card with floating snowflakes

Hello my crafty friends and welcome to my crafty nook! Wow it's been quite a while since my last blog post, it's taken me far longer than expected to get my crudy sorted after the electrics inspection - as it turned out the electrician took one look at what was left and decided it wasn't necessary to inspect every socket which I wish I'd known before half emptying it - still it gave me a good excuse to go through my stash and prune it down, I filled three massive bags with things for my youngest nieces which they loved. If I'm honest it hasn't made any difference, I'm still struggling to find homes for everything. *************************************** I have managed to do a bit of crafting amongst the chaos, there's been a couple of faux Bookatrix cards on YouTube well I say faux some of the Tubers have called the cards plain old Bookatrix cards but the fact of the matter is, Bookatrix is the copyrighted name of a Keepsake embossing board and calling a card a Bookatrix without using the actual board is a copyright infringement. I'm not going to name names but I did inform the first person to let them know after checking with the inventors of the boards (or at least one of them Kathy Mills, one half of the Glitter Girls) and they changed the title of their video to Bookatrix style card - apparently they were doing the video after numerous requests and didn't know anything about it and thought that Bookatrix was just the name of an open book style card. Bookatrix boards and cards have been around for a very long time but it doesn't hurt to do a bit of research if you are going to blog/vlog/put on any social media about a card style if you're not sure about it's origins - the worst thing you can do is to take credit for someone else's idea. It's fine to tweak a card fold etc and put it out there but you should always try to credit where you originally saw the idea. Obviously after a card fold/style has been in the public domain for a while it's next to impossible to credit the originator unless like in this case a copyrighted product came out first. ********************************************* Anyway I'm off my soapbox now so it's time to share the details of my card. I used my Bookatrix embossing board to make three open book pages in decreasing order, the outer pages were made using some holographic card from my stash. The other pages were made using Trimcraft Dovecraft's Christmas Village 12"x12" papers and I decorated the inner pages with die cut holographic snowflakes using dies from my stash on the left page and a decoupage scene taken from the 8"x8" decoupage pad from the same Christmas Village collection. I made the Bookatrix card into an easel card by folding an A4 sheet of card in half and then folding one of the halfs in half again. I added panels of paper to the bottom of the easel then stuck the Bookatrix down to the folded half (I think most people know how an easel card works). I trimmed around the bottom of the stuck down Bookatrix so that the bottom of the easel mechanism matched the edge of the card. I added some diecut snowflakes to strips of acetate using Dovecraft glue (very strong once it dries but takes a while on slick surfaces) and added them to the top right of the card so they appear to float. I added a pre-made sentiment from the Christmas Village collection onto the stopper and that completed the card. I need to make an extra large box for it but that's something I can do another day. ************************************** As usual I am writing this on my phone and it removes all my paragraphs (and sometimes changes words AFTER I've previewed it!!) I'm trying something new this time and have added rows of asterisks after each paragraph so hopefully you'll be able to see where new paragraphs start. Sorry it's been so long between posts, I should be adding a new blog challenge later this week and hopefully I'll get into a new routine soon. As always if you have any questions or comments please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting! ********************************************* Love and crafty hugs, Sarah xxxxxx

A tiny card share.

Hello my crafty friends. Sorry it's been nearly a month since my last post, my crudy is in an awful state still and I can't really craft in there so I've just not bothered to make anything. I even resorted to a card from my stash for one neice's birthday and I used a printed topper for my other niece who's birthday was yesterday. I'm going to share this second card with you today.i added the printed topper onto some trends Centura Pearl card from Crafter's Companion. I added this to a square card blank and went around the outside of it with Dovecraft's star confetti glitter glue. If you've not come across Dovecraft's confetti glue you should keep an eye out for it as it's a rather unique product. It comes in a selection of colours and shaped confetti, the one I used on this project was iridescent glitter and silver stars but others ones in my stash include red glitter and hearts or silver glitter and mixed snowflakes. It's a bit tricky to use as most glitter glues are (unless you are just highlighting an area) because it doesn't go on smoothly, the bottles have wide mouths which act like a spatula but it's still a messy job to get the confetti in an evenly spaced layer. I finished the card by adding CC clear shimmer pen over the balloons. It's not my best card but at least I haven't resorted to buying one lol. I'm writing this up on my phone so the photos will follow after the text and the paragraphs will run into one (do not ask me why it does that!) Hopefully it won't be as long between blog posts. As always if you have any questions or comments please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting! Love and crafty hugs, Sarah xx

I won a prize!

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you have had a good week - isn't it crazy that it's October already, it doesn't seem like five minutes since August began. Things have been busy here in my crafty nook with a lot of the dreaded housework being done (and redone several times!) and my crudy has been half emptied ready for yet another inspection being done which makes it 9 in the past 12 months though I am including the work resulting from one of the inspections as it caused a lot of disruption and stress. Hopefully this one and the one in two weeks will be the last of them for a while and we can get back to normality. As annoying as this all is there will be a positive outcome out of it, as about half of my stash is now in the lounge I'm planning on giving my crudy a thoroughly good clean then I'm going to go through my stash to see what I can donate or pass out to my young nieces. I know for a start that I have a Care Bears stamp kit unused in my stash that I'm sure my nieces would love to play with, I think I have a couple of others in my stash too along with a sticker maker which I've never used (in a huge box which takes up a considerable amount of room!) The more stuff I can rehome will have mean I have more room for new stuff! Which is a good thing because I have an Every Craft's A Pound order coming Friday - I should point out that a number of items are either Christmas presents or to be put away for next Easter (ooh aren't I organised!) Even with the presents to take into account I'm still going to need to make some room for my new goodies. Some new goodies I got recently was a lovely envelope of yumminess from Making Cards & Papercraft magazine - they recently had a question on their Facebook page and the best answers will be printed in their magazine, my answer was chosen as the best one (FYI, in the private message the answer was described as being informative and insightful *proud face*) my prize is a huge selection of items from Dovecraft's Christmas Village collection including papers is in 12"x12" and 6"x6", a decoupage stack, felt embellishments, stamps and matching dies and even gold coloured bells. I felt very inspired by the collection and it came at just the right time too because I wanted to make something using Trimcraft products so I could apply for the DT callout which closed on the 30th September. I made an acetate easel shaker card using the 6"x6" papers and one of the cute images from the decoupage pack and added some chunky gold glitter to make it into a shaker card. My second project using the collection was a set of 4 mini Christmas crackers, they don't have snaps in them because the ones I have were much too long so I added a couple of the bells to each one with some Baker's twine from my stash. I'm writing this on my phone so apologies for any typos that happen after the fact (some times words change for no reason) and for the fact there isn't any paragraphs - my phone likes to eat them! As always if you have any questions or comments please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting! Crafty hugs, Sarah xx xx