How Does Your Garden Grow?

I wish I could say that mine was blooming with flowers.  Although there are many showing their lovely faces, those darn dandelions are here again and the seeds from the maple trees are taking hold abundantly this year too.  

My thumb isn't that green, unless I've been using some Distress Inks, so I really wish we didn't have this extra challenge this year.  

Anyone know of a good quick fix for these challenges?

Thank you to everyone who sent us emails of encouragement, or dropped into the store to encourage us following the announcement last week. They were so very nice to receive.  What comes next is unclear at the moment, but neither Linda or myself will stop crafting.  I intend to keep blogging and sharing my passion of all things crafty.  We haven't cancelled the date we've reserved for the October Mega Crop Weekend and who knows, we may be able to get together for some card making classes too.  Just keep watching for further news on that front.

We had a great time at our Thursday Technique Class that was finally held last Wednesday.  What a mix-up that was, but still the ladies enjoyed making five cards with tags as the focal point.

Here are a few of them, I'll post the others on our Flickr site in the next few days.

This is a perfect masculine card with the postmark stamp in the background and the bicycle in the foreground. Quick and easy to produce, you could have tags ready to go on a card as needed.

Here we have a card using my much loved distress ink to change the colour of the tag.  Featuring an ever popular Kaiser stamp and punched butterflies, another quick to go card.  

Embossing the  background of  the card before adhering this tag gave some additional interest.  The rose was stamped with two distress ink colours and then the tag itself was punched at the bottom.  Two other colours of lace punching were added above and below the punched lace on the tag to give a pretty layered look.

With Father's day fast coming up have you started thinking of a gift your children can make for their Dad?  I came across this craft recently, but it was simply and image on goggle so I can't link you to it.  

You can see though that with some shrink plastic and by tracing around your child's foot, Dad could have a pretty unique key ring.

Don't forget to punch a hole in the shrink plastic before you heat it in the oven and use a permanent marker such as the Sakura Identipen so that the writing doesn't rub off. 

It could also be a tracing of a child's hand with the words.....

Hold my hand forever.

 

Have you been taking advantage of the sales that we have on at the store at the moment? 

Drop in to see and take advantage of all the savings that are there to be had.

If you're thinking you would like some different storage in your craft room talk to us about the paper storage stacks and peg hooks that we have for sale.  Pegboard is a great way to display your stickers and alphabets to see at a glance what you have. Doesn't need too much space either.

Don't leave it too long until they're all gone.  

There are also some ribbon storage troughs that you may find useful to organise your craft room.

Have you ever tried to cut wavy text on your Silhouette cutting machine?  

Here's a great tutorial on the steps to achieve that.

Maybe you prefer to cut in a circle, there's a link on the same page which takes you to a tutorial for that.

If you have Silhouette sketch pens you can use the same process to actually draw your text with your cutting machine.

I needed an award ribbon the other day for a page I was working on, so found this image doing a Google search.  I then went on to make a cut file from it using the trace and cut feature of the program.  

You can download my cut file here.

This is such a simple way of increasing your cut file library without the cost of buying files.

Have you made any cut files that you may like to share with others?

Let me know and I'll arrange with you to share it through the blog here.

With graduations coming up soon, you may have already begun to plan a special card for someone in your life, have you?  

Here's a great link to some printable greetings for the inside of a card, or even to put on a scrapbook page of the event.

The words can be downloaded as a JPEG file or PDF, whichever you 

choose.

Simple overhand knots ad to the casual look of this earthy necklace or bracelet.

Now that summer's here, you may feel that you'd like to make a new necklace or two.  I came across this from the Bead and Button Magazine and thought how summery it seemed.  With some hemp and a few beads it could easily be made by even the most novice of jewelry makers.

Simple overhand knots add to the casual look of this earthy necklace or bracelet.

Nothing for the needle artists this week, but check back next week, maybe I'll find something for you by them.

Our words for the week were sent to me by my sister.  I think I've used them before, but they suited the experience Linda and I had this week as people got in touch to express their sadness at our news, but to encourage us through our life changes.  

We certainly have found many friends by our side.

Until Later....Happy Crafting

Lilian