Unused Die Challenge featuring a card by Guest Designer Michele Coffey

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! It's nearly the weekend again and it should be a hot one here in the UK even though it's a Bank Holiday this Monday (*shock face*).

 One of the things I love about the online crafting community is the ability to make new friends with a common interest and this blog is no exception. Thanks to my crafty nook I've made a very good friend - Michele and we email each other on a regular basis. It is really nice to be able to share things with a crafty pal as my non cyber world doesn't contain many crafty people (there are a few exceptions of course!) so most of my friends don't really get my craft obsession and even my dear husband accuses me of being a craft bore on occasions (but then again he bores me half to death with sports stuff so we're equal  😉). As you may have noticed I have a bit of a crafty obsession with eBay dies at the moment and after going through my stash it sparked a question for Michele - had she ever bought a die and never used it? I have quite a few unopened die sets in my collection but the dies that triggered the question was a set of Chinese Theatre characters which I bought fully knowing I'd probably never use them but wanted because they were so novel (see photo below). The only other time I've been tempted to buy a die set I knew I'd never use was after the USA Presidential Election when a set came out called "Avatar" and turned out not to be characters from the film but profiles of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump - I'm not sure in what circumstance Clinton and Trump dies would be necessary but I wanted them for the novelty factor, if they'd been a bit cheaper they'd probably be in my stash now! It turns out that I wasn't alone so we decided to challenge each other to use an unused die set chosen by the other person.

Chinese Theatre Characters Die Set

We both went through our stash and chose some die sets (I'll freely admit I was too ashamed to share all my unused sets as there were loads of them!) then emailed photos of them to each other. We decided to have a few rules to ensure that the die set remained the main feature of the card. We were allowed to use basic craft supplies (plain card, adhesive, ink for stamping (but not colouring), scissors, die cutting machine etc) and up to five additional items (but as it was our first challenge we wouldn't quibble if we used six) to make the card - for example we could use an additional die set and the set would count as one item regardless of how many dies were in that set, the same applied to colouring mediums (though alcohol pens would be one item but if you then chose to go over it with a sparkle pen then that would be another item out of the five), stamp sets and to speciality papers etc. I chose a weather themed set for Michele to use. Originally we had the deadline of 16th of May to make the card and Michele made hers well in advance of that, unfortunately breaking my toe put a bit of a crimp in my crafting and combined with our computer being difficult (our Windows 10 vanished - we could get on the internet but couldn't upload photos without Windows 10, then trying to fix it ourselves resulted in us getting locked out of our computer - a very costly and frustrating set of events) I didn't manage to get a photo emailed until the 22nd nearly a week after the deadline.

Card designed by Michele Coffey 

In her own words, this is what Michele used to make her challenge card, "I used a white card blank, 2 colours of card plus white(pearl) , an embossing folder & glossy Accents. Oh yes-the graduated colour card on the background-I'm hoping that brings me to my "Five a Day"?!"

I'm sure you'll agree that Michele did a brilliant job - I love the graduated coloured card in the background and the embossing is so deep - I love it! All it needs is a sentiment and it would be the perfect card for someone feeling under the weather. I might have to invest in the die set too! It's a First Editions set called "Weather" (I think!) - see photo below.

First Edition Die Set

Michele chose a Docrafts Xcut die set called 'Bee Keeping' for my challenge and I'll be sharing my card and how I made it in the next blog post. A huge thank you to Michele for allowing me to share the card she made during our challenge. Her card is amazing and we both agreed it was a good challenge to do. We hope to challenge each other again soon and if you've been inspired to use one of your unused die sets that's currently lurking in your crafty stash, please leave a comment below or email a photo of your card so I can add it to this blog (email: craftynook@outlook.live.com). I hope you've enjoyed this post, if you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx

A non card post - useful info in case my computer goes wrong (AGAIN!) with Windows 10

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I seem to be constantly apologising for not posting very often at the moment and this blog is no exception. I am truly sorry for the delay between posts but Windows 10 on our computer went wrong and we couldn't sign in. To compound the problem, trying to fix it made the problem worse and we couldn't actually log into the computer itself which meant we couldn't reset it or anything. We ended up paying £70 to have it fixed but someone on Facebook saw a comment I'd made about how rubbish I thought Windows 10 was and gave me the information listed below. I have saved it onto a new document but then twigged that if Windows 10 messes up again I won't be able to access the folder. Until we locked ourselves out of the computer totally, we did still have internet access plus my blog is one of the few things my phone allows me to access with it's limited internet so I thought I'd add a blog post with the pertinent information just in case - I hope you'll excuse the non crafty post.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS INFORMATION IS USED AT YOUR OWN RISK, PLEASE DO NOT HOLD ME RESPONSIBLE IF YOU TRY IT AND MAKE THINGS WORSE, to be honest I'm only adding it to my blog because that's the one place I know for definite I can access if anything goes wrong again because I can access the posts on my phone (unable to add posts via the phone though).

* Hold-and-press or right-click on Start menu, select the Command Prompt (Admin) from menu.
* Within Command Prompt, type the command below:

REG ADD HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\XblAuthManager /v SvcHostSplitDisable /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

and press Enter to execute it.
* Then restart the system to take effects.
If that is still not working, you might need to clear the local stored Xbox identity data
* Open the File Explorer, access the location by coying it and paste into the address bar:
%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.XboxIdentityProvider_cw5n1h2txyewy\AC\TokenBroker
* Delete the Accounts and Cache folders completely, and start Xbox app again to check if you login the app fine.


I will be adding another blog post featuring actual cards in the next couple of days, until then I hope you are all well and looking forward to the weekend (only a couple of weeks until the next Bank Holiday!) Until then, keep crafting.

Crafty hugs and love,

Sarah xxxx

Having a Break...

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you all had a brilliant weekend. It's been a bit longer than I was hoping between blog posts but for a very good reason - I broke my middle toe on my right foot a week ago. You wouldn't think a broken toe would prevent someone from crafting and it sort of hasn't, instead it's made it very difficult to get into my crudy. My craftroom is very small and has lots of stuff in it including a couple of plastic towers which cut the path to my desk to about 8" wide. As a result I have to do a sort of shuffle past the stuff to get to my desk and it is extremely painful to do this with a broken toe. I managed to grab my Sizzix sidekick, a die and a few bits and pieces earlier in the week and took them into the lounge so I could craft with my foot elevated and I actually crafted in the early hours of this morning as I couldn't sleep but I've had to keep things fairly simple and have only managed to die cut things that can fit into my sidekick (more than you'd imagine but not as many as I'd like!) because it's painful to stand for more than a minute or two and my Big Shot is on a pile of plastic containers away from my craft table. I'm trying to rest my foot as much as possible because my sister is getting married next week and I need to be able to walk for that (I've ordered some mock crocs online because the thought of putting the rather nice but tight fitting shoes I'd bought for the wedding gives me the cold sweats! I'm going to bling them up a bit to make them look a bit more festive). I even let my husband do the washing up last Tuesday and I'm a total control freak when it comes to the washing up! He didn't do a bad job of it even if he did use a bath's worth of water to do a sinkful of pots (and he used clean water to soak the recycling - who does that when they are on a meter??) I'm very grateful for his help, it isn't easy for him to do the tasks I take for granted. There isn't really much you can do for broken toes and they don't even require hospital treatment unless it's your big toe or a compound fracture (that's when the bone pokes through the skin - extremely rare for toes) so I've followed the advice on the NHS Direct website and have it taped to the toe next to it and I'm keeping it elevated as much as possible. Most of the bruising and swelling has gone now and it only really hurts if it's touched (apart from a faint ache) the top part of the toe is sort of bent to the right which is rather funny to look at as it's almost as though it's trying to get away from its 'buddy'.

Let's get to some crafting! I made another Catitudes card, this time a birthday card for my Auntie-in-law.

I used another piece of the luscious 6" x 6" DCWV glitter paperstack that I've carefully hoarded for years - I've come to realise that if I don't start using the gorgeous papers I already own, then I'm going to run out of space to put new ones. One of the things I love most about this collection (apart from the sheer gorgeousness of it!) is the fact that the glitter is totally encapsulated and won't rub off no matter what you do to it. I die cut the cat out of Centura Pearl black card and decorated it with AB nail gems as shown (you just need a dab of glue to stick them on) I bought these from eBay and you get a lot of different sizes for the money all neatly stored in a round container about the same size as a needle dispenser (for sewing), it's great because only one section at a time can be opened so you don't risk spilling the whole lot on the floor. The ornate shape that the cat is mounted on was die cut using a Xcut nesting doorplate die set. The next size up from it is a considerable amount larger than this one so I die cut it a second time using the black card and cut it in half so I could shadow mount it behind the white piece. The stamped greeting was made using Versafine Black ink and a stamp from my stash. This is a top folding card and the black matting layer was made using some more of the Centura Pearl black card.

I have made a second card but I will share it with you another day - just in case I don't manage to do much crafting. As always if you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx

A couple of Get Well soon cards and an Afternoon Tea themed card (Updated)

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you've all had a brilliant week and have something wonderful planned for this weekend - it's another bank holiday here in the UK so it's bound to rain at some point lol. We had snow earlier in the week (25th) but luckily it didn't stay for long. My lovely cat Jinx celebrated his 16th birthday on the 27th which makes him 80 in cat years!!! Although he spends a lot of his time asleep, he does have the odd mad moment when he dashes around the flat like a kitten. I made him a card featuring a black diecut cat from the Catitudes range at Crafter's Companion because he's a gorgeous black cat with green eyes (not as common as you'd think as a lot of cats have yellow or orange eyes rather than green) and I added layers of green card to match his eyes and some DCWV glitter card. The cat die is available direct from Crafter's Companion https://www.crafterscompanion.co.uk/collections/catitudes/catitudes-metal-dies.html.

I didn't notice the fingermark on the green foiled card when I took the photo so please ignore.

Our downstairs neighbour (we live on the first floor of a block of four flats) has been taken into hospital for surgery and I made him a get well card from my mum and one from the two of us. The first card is probably my favourite as it's kind of quirky and I like the idea of plasters smiling. The plaster (or band-aid as they are called in some countries) was stamped 3 times onto kraft card using a stamp by Unity stamps - the smiley faces cames from an Avery Elle stamp set called "We go together like..." and has all sorts of small images like slices of toast and glasses of milk and cookies - the small face is separate so you can add them to the different images. I've had this stamp set for a while, I think it was from CraftStash.co.uk and in all honesty the excitement on finding a cheap(ish) Avery Elle stamp set blinded me to the fact that is just not something I'll use very often which is why it's languished in my stash since I bought it. The face is tiny but very deep which made it a challenge to stamp it without it wobbling probably not helped by the fact that my acrylic block was far too large for it. I fussy cut the plasters out as I don't have a die to go with it. The stitched panel was diecut out using a stitched rectangle die from eBay and I cut it out of Centura Pearl hint of silver white card. I layered this on top of a piece of the glitter DCWV card that I used on the 16th birthday card. The card is smaller than one of my usual card at only 3" x 4.25".

The second card was made using a stamp set that came free with Creative Stamping magazine a few months ago and I added some diecut clouds above the umbrella in grey card stock. The cloud die was from a nesting set of three from eBay and only cost about £1.39 or similar. I used a smaller stitched rectangle to die cut the sentiment and added the panel onto the wide layer as shown. I made a card blank using the same grey card stock as the clouds and sentiment and added the finished panel to it with tape runner.

My final card isn't for any particular occasion but because I'd bought some afternoon tea themed die from (you guessed it!) eBay and I wanted to try them out. These dies cost me £2.83 and while it's true they take anywhere from a couple of weeks up to three months to arrive, eBay dies from China etc are amazing value. This was really brought home to me when I saw the exact same dies on the products page of Diecutting Essentials magazine for a staggering price of £12.99!!! A mark up of over a tenner is quite frankly criminal in my opinion, even if the 'branded' dies are in packaging and on a small piece of magnetic shim. I freely admit I like to keep my dies etc in the original packaging just so I don't have to waste my time re-labelling something that's already been done (this is why Tatty Twinkle stamps vex me - they aren't the cheapest of stamps yet never have any 'proper' packaging or labels so I have to add my own so I know what I'm using for blog posts etc) but for something as cheap as the eBay dies and stamps, I don't mind adding them to a magnetic shim (you can buy an A4 sized one from ECAP and cut it to the right size - I usually cut it into quarters so have four sheets to mount my dies onto for only £1!) or add a card behind the stamps so I can see them clearly because just knowing they are from eBay is enough information - it's not much point listing the seller/price as these details change all the time as newer stock becomes available - plus the stamps and dies from eBay don't come with an invoice or anything so it's hard to work out who the seller is especially as I've already said, they can take quite a while to arrive. Anyway enough whinging about Rip Off Craft companies (notice I haven't actually named and shamed them but maybe I should - let me know if you want to know.) I added decoration to the cup and teapot though in actual fact I think a tall pot like this one would usually hold coffee instead of tea - I inherited my Grandma's coffee service (not sure why she had one as both my grandparents were tea drinkers) and the coffee pot is tall and thin like this one. Teapots tend to be short and squat so the tea leaves can circulate properly but I don't suppose anyone would mind the difference on a card (apart from pedantic peeps like me!). Again this is a smaller than usual card but I rather like the unusual size. The brown spotted background paper came from my scraps so I've no idea of the brand - I did add a bit of blended black ink to the edges to draw the eye in to the scene. I made an envelope using my EPB from WRMK and a sheet of Dovecraft paper. I should point out that there is a matching knife to the fork added to the inside of the card but I dropped the diecut and couldn't find it again. I also added some AB gems to the tiered cake stand, cup and teapot - they are actually nail art gems (need to use glue with them) and I bought them from eBay.

I hope you've enjoyed my cards - I certainly enjoyed making them. Feel free to CASE any of the designs but please link your makes to this blog (or mention where you got the idea from.). As always if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx

A couple of cards to share

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you all had a wonderful Easter Sunday and if you are blessed enough to have a day off today, are having a wonderful time today too. We had my mum over for a roast chicken dinner and it was fantastic. (Hope that doesn't sound too boastful!) My lovely hubby even prepped some of the veg which made things a bit less stressful for me - once I'd left the room that is! As you may know my husband is severely sight impaired - he's been blind in his left eye since birth and his right eye has very little sight as a result of scar tissue - and the stubborn so-and-so refused to use a veg peeler and insisted on using a small kitchen knife to peel the carrots and potatoes. My hands were itching to take the knife off him and do it myself not only because I was dreadfully worried he'd cut himself but because he was wasting so much of the veg that he had to peel an entire 2kg bag of potatoes just so we'd have enough for mash and roast potatoes (if I'd done it myself or if he'd used a peeler we could have used half the amount!) In the end I went into another room and wasted veg (and oddly squarish potatoes which were 'interesting') aside he did a good job and I was able to prep the cauliflower and get the chicken in the oven so it worked out okay.

Another thing I managed to do was make a very quick Easter card for my mum because Chris and I have been on a bit of a Game of Thrones bender the last few days and we've been watching series 6 together, two episodes at a time (*sobs* we've finished it now!) which really ate into my crafting time so I hadn't made any cards apart from the very first Easter Egg hunt card I shared a few posts ago. Although neither of us go to church anymore I wanted to make my mum a faith based card so came up with the following card.

I am a huge fan of eBay dies from China and this ornate cross was one of my earlier buys. It die cut through the gold mirror card perfectly even though I was using my Sizzix Sidekick which is past it's best and not designed for thin dies. I stuck it down on a piece of purple card and cut around it. I got an C6 sized piece of white card and ran it through my Big Shot machine in an embossing folder called Bubble Explosion from Crafter's Companion. I adhered the cross to the embossed card using plenty of tape runner (normally I'd use wet glue or red liner tape but I couldn't find any and I was in a hurry.) and stamped a Happy Easter sentiment from one of the stamps that came with Creative Stamping magazine during the past few months on a non-embossed area of the card. I then added this panel to a pre-scored card blank from Dovecraft.

The second card is my favourite. Men's cards are always a challenge for me so I'm very pleased with how this one turned out. The motorbike die for this card came from eBay (are you noticing a pattern) and embosses the card stock as well as cutting it out. I die cut it three times out of silver mirror card, metallic red card and black card. I kept the red die cut shape in one piece (though some inner parts did fall out and got lost) and added parts of the silver and black to the top of it as shown so that the wheels and the chrome areas were the right colour - it's probably not all that accurate as I'm not all that familiar with motorbike design but I thought it looked pretty cool. The crash helmet was diecut out of the same metallic red card as the motorbike and I used one of the dies from the Icons die set from Mr Mister collection from DoCrafts, the map paper also came from the same collection. The Route 66 sign was made using a die from the same collection but is actually a Best Dad shield die. I cut it out using the die out of black card and carefully removed the Best Dad words so only the thin black border remained. I traced around the die itself onto white card and carefully cut it out. I added the black border onto the white shield shape with glue and once it had dried added a thick line using a black marker across the top as shown and wrote out ROUTE and US. I coloured in two die cut sixes from my stash with the same pen and added them to the shield. I found a thin strip of Kraft card in my scraps and cut it to the right length to use as a pole for the sign. I made a double Z fold card using Kraft card (see my Easter Egg card post for details on how to make one or check YouTube for a tutorial) and decorated as shown. The stamped Happy Birthday was yet another eBay buy from China. I made the envelope using my WRMK envelope punch board and decorated it before sticking it together  using some stamps from my stash - the tire marks stamp is a roller stamp which doesn't have a brand and only cost 29p quite a few years ago, it's actually the first time I've used and I'm really glad I didn't purge it at some point as I really love the effect. Once it was decorated I stuck the sides etc with tape runner.

I hope you like my latest makes - I had a lot of fun making them and the motorbike card was very time consuming but worth the time, whereas the Easter card was a lot quicker but still quite a nice card. As always if you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places.

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx

Happy Easter Everyone!

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! There's not a lot of crafting going on in my crafty nook today just a whole lot of cooking so I wanted to pop in and wish all my lovely blog readers a very Happy Easter!

Love and Easter hugs,

Sarah 

Oh, Baby.

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you are all well and had a good weekend. It's not long until Easter - have you made all your Easter cards yet? I've still all but one to make but I'm planning on keeping them simple so hopefully they won't take me long to make. Our family has been blessed with a new arrival - a beautiful baby girl was born on the 8th April 2017 to the Cornish part of our family. I've made a new baby card to send as soon as I have an address. I got some sweet little stamps off eBay yesterday so I decided to team them with some baby dies also from eBay to make a 6" square card.

Aren't these sweet images??? I'm a bit leery about buying stamps from eBay as the first lot I ordered were faulty but these stamps stamp beautifully. They are very small less than an inch square for the most part but are very cute. I coloured them in using a mixture of Flexmarkers for the main image and some fine point markers (can't remember the brand) for the small details in the background just because it's hard to colour in something that small using a Flexmarker - even a regular Promarker would be too large for the tiny hearts and stars that appear in the backgrounds. I fussy cut around each image after I coloured it in leaving a small white border as some of the images poke outside of the line borders and it looked better with a border than without. I punched out 8 1" squares using a Woodware square punch out of pink heart paper from my stash and stuck the cutout images onto the squares with tape runner. I made a 6" square card blank by cutting a 12" x 12" piece of Bazzill Vanilla cardstock  in half and scoring it at 6". I cut a piece of DCWV Glimmer card from a 6" x 6" paperpack that I've been hoarding for years (lol) to 5.5" square and added it to the front of my card blank. I cut a piece of paper decorated with glittered paws taken from Dovecraft's Bazoo by Helz Cuppleditch (this collection came out about 5 years ago or more but there are still some paperpacks floating about out there - they are perfect for baby cards) to 5" x 5" and then cut a piece of funky foam slightly smaller and stuck it to the back of the paw paper with double sided tape. I added this panel to the glitter paper panel using Tombow Mono adhesive as wet glue is advisable when sticking anything to a glittered card. I added the 1" square panels as shown using tape runner and die cut a baby bottle and a rattle using the scrap of glimmer paper that was left over after cutting out the first mat. I added these to the card using more Tombow Mono adhesive. The card lacked something so I added faux stitching around the toppers using a white gel pen and then added black faux stitches using a .7mm Promarker fineliner pen to the paw paper and the card blank which tied the card together. I added dots of black glaze pen to the bears eyes and noses to make them raised and shiny. I added a strip of the paws paper to the inside of the card and did some more faux stitches in black above it. I stamped a sentiment from a We R Memory Keeper's baby stamp set (it's a mini stamp set featuring this sentiment and a pair of baby footprints - so cute!) I made an envelope using my WRMK Envelope punch board and stamped some bunting on the front and on the flap as shown. I coloured these in pink using a coloured pencil.

I think this is one of my favourite baby cards I've made, the images are really cute and because they are so small you can use all of them without the card looking too fussy. At some point I'll probably use these stamps to make a waterfall card as they are the perfect size for one. The stamp set only cost £1.59 and took just under a month to arrive from China. The dies were from a set of 8 dies in total (4 baby related items and 4 cute insects) and cost £2.39, again they took nearly a month to arrive. I won the DCWV papers quite a few years ago so the glittery layer and die cut embellishments were either free or very little cost and the Bazoo papers were from ECAP and have been in my stash for at least 3 years so again cost very little. My biggest expense for this card was probably the Bazzill Vanilla card which cost 90p a sheet and I used half of it so all in all this was a really economical make 😄

I hope you like my latest make, as always if you have any questions then please leave them in the usual places. I'm not sure if I'll be adding another post before Easter as I've got a few things planned so I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter - and that you get lots of Easter eggs!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx