Unexpected cardstock bargains

Lots of things make us happy. Sometimes they are big, sometimes they are just trivial. One of the little things that made me really happy yesterday while we were shopping for all sorts of stuff was this unexpected buy: two reams of gorgeous (American as it turned out) textured cardstock at a price of £9.99 per box. 

Why am I blogging about it? Well, I've been on a hunt for a good quality cardstock for a while, and especially for a textured one! And bang! Here it is! On a shop shelf, right in front of me! Could I resist? Of course, not!

I found it at HomeSense store, which is a bit like TkMaxx , it sells the end of line products at discounted prices. The thing is: If they are gone, they are gone. So it's either take it or leave it. 

I really like using a quality heavyweight cardstock for my cards. It adds a lot to a card and the quality of the paper always shows if you decide not to scrimp on your cardstock. A thin floppy paper is never like a proper solid cardstock. The texure of this paper is an extra wow factor which I've always loved in cards.

Each of the reams has 60 loose sheets, each 30 cm x 30 cm. Big format and beautiful colours. I bought PRIMARIES and EARTH TONES :) I'm really pleased with this purchase.

This American Craft (AC) cardstock is bit like Core'dinations cardstock - thick and textured but it doesn't have that hidden underlying extra layer of colour which you reveal by sanding the top. It's just a cardstock in its basic form and you don't have to pay for that extra distress / antigue feature. Perfect for layering, punching, embossing and die cutting.

I love both actually. I've got a big pack of Core'dinations stashed away - The Chocolate Box in which under each colour there's a chocolatey layer of paper to reveal. I do scrimp on this one though! :) Just too nice to use it up too quickly! :))))

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My plans for tonight?

Have a good evening everyone. x x x

The weekend has been gooood

Yes, the weekend has been good. Busy but full of lovely activities and I enjoyed every single minute of it. On Saturday we ventured out in the morning for some shopping including my visit to a very nice craft shop - The Purple Butterfly shop in Daleside Garden Centre. I'm like a kid in a candy shop there and shouldn't be really let in there with my bank card. I always leave with a carrier bag full of goodies. 

Then we were doing this...

We have had three reasons to celebrate - bf's stepmum's birthday from last Thursday, today's Father's Day and the oncoming BIG Birthday of bf's nan (just a brief intro to what's gonna happen in 2 weeks time!) We were lucky with the weather and managed to fit in with our bbq cooking between the fleeting showers. There was food galore and it was so nice to be together and share the meal.

Sunday was more shopping and driving around here and there. Again some more crafty shopping with some card stock bargain at HomeSense in Broughton. I haven't managed to do much crafting in the end (apart from putting a few cross stitches on my little project) over those two busy days but here is what I've been working on for the past few days: crochet flowers! 

Another episode of my crochet self-teaching. I dug out the archival issue of Mollie makes and started working on my first crochet flowers learning to follow and interpret the crocheting instructions. 

Currently working on a layered crochet flower...

Ready flowers went into a glassy storage jar :)

Crocheted flower progress - from the most wonky one to the more improved ones...Still plenty to learn and practise.

I think I'll practise crocheting those flowers a little more next week and then go back to learning the remaining two basic crochet stitches - double treble and triple treble so it will be back to making crochet swatches again :)

On Saturday morning a nice surprise happened to me - Margaret, a friend from facebook kindly offered to buy me this gorgeous Christmas quaker at an online shop in Canada. I received it as a gift and the custom gods spared me paying a tax on it too! So happy! THANK YOU SO MUCH Margaret! x x x

It's a big project but it's full of lovely motifs and surely won't be boring to stitch! I also love the Olde Worldie wording on it. I'm hoping to get started on it this year, before Christmas when I'm done with my Nordic stocking first. It's going to be my first quaker to stitch.

Erika's Knight's book inspired me to reach out for some Earthy natural colours so on Saturday I got myself a few cotton yarns to practise my crochet. 

Finally, something that made me wonder. Not long ago I was a little shocked to find out that this simple 19cm x 19 cm card from WHSmiths with a few coloured letters and literally only 4 embellished 3d foam mounted letters costs as much as £4.99. Just a reflection: if an average card like this costs that much, how much should crafters charge for theirs then?   Unique lovely hand-made cards when plenty of time and effort is spent on cutting, trimming, stamping, embossing and embellishing? £6? £7 to make it fair? And who is going to buy them at this price? Another of those dilemmas: hand-made or mass-made? What do you think? I'd love to hear from you about it.

Some of you during the last Hand-made Monday asked me to post the photos of the finished crochet bowl I blogged about before. Well, I've finished it and you will find it - here. 

Linking up to Hand-made Monday tonight to do some blog hopping and see what others have been up to this week. Thanks for popping by and leaving a comment. Have a good week all! x x

Crocheted bowl

I have finished my little crochet bowl :) yay! It took me only 2 crocheting sessions to complete it and it turned out to very easy :) For someone who crochets table runners, bags and jumpers on a daily basis it's nothing big, just a very basic crochet bowl, for me - it's my first ever crochet project that has been made and finished entirely by myself. So the first step into the crochet world has been taken. I'm in.

The project comes from a book "My first crochet book" for crafty children. No harm in starting with simple crochet projects for kids, is there?

The bowl can be turned out with its rim folding out to the outside...

...or with the rims folding in to the inside... It's just a little thing for storing some jewellery, coins, buttons or shells on your shelf. 

I gave this bowl to my male colleague at work. He says he likes such cosy crocheted makes. Now, I've moved onto another project to practise my crochet skills - I'm working on a storage jar cosy - simple but colourful and striking. I'm also trying my hand at crocheting little cute flowers.

3 cards

Between one crochet project and the other, I decided to take a short break and show you my recent three cards :)

Gorgeous Polish folky papers from GoScrap and butterfly stamps from Ambrosia Bitsy by Basic Grey. I wanted something really cheery and vibrant with colours on this card.

A highly contrastive card with a folky feel ) Martha Stewart's punches - Garden Gate and the Floral Heart punch. 

And finally my first attempt to make a card with a Dala horse. I used a Panduro stamp and coloured the outlines with Promarkers. Didn't have any idea what to do with the flower though! Tried all the arrangements possible and wasn't fully happy with any of them. The flower ended up being glued in eccentric circles. 

Mega-tired today. Off to my bed. Will do some blog visiting tomorrow. Thanks for popping by and leaving a trace behind :) x x x

First steps in the crochet world

This week has been for me all about crochet. I laid out the crochet books around on the table and was studying, studying, studying... Finally, after months or perhaps years of wanting, wishing, dreaming of being able to crochet all those gorgeous projects out there, I started to rehearse my modest knowledge of crochet. I've known very basics from my childhood and I do mean BASICS. This time I'm determined to push this knowledge way ahead. I think I'm a bit of a toddler in a crochet world - shaky on her feet and a bit unsure with the need for some guidance. Crochet is such a lovely technique - relatively easy to master, relaxing and  so feminine and it's always worth to know it, you know, another useful craft skill to add to the array of your crafting skills. It can be a follow-up to your knitting skills as these two like to go side by side sometimes. 

Right at the moment, I'm using some lovely hand books about crocheting including my new book (I blogged about it here) and with trial and error I started re-learning the basic crochet stitches.

After some theory, I started making swatches for each of the crochet stitches. Double crochet was the one I began with. This one was easy to learn and I quickly got the knack of it. It came out dense, pretty even in  its weave and looks quite good, I think. 

Half treble crochet was the next one I practised. The swatch no. 1 came out wonky and uneven. First, the stitches started mysteriously multiply in my rows, then they were disappearing equally enigmatically. Clearly, something was wrong. Re-read. Re-analysed... and discovered I had been wrongly interpreting the instructions. With trial and error I made the 2nd swatch and this one came out much better -  constant in the number of stitches as I had used the stitch markers. 

Treble Crochet was the 3rd step. Easy to master as it's very similar to half treble crochet.  It's longer and gives less dense weave. The crochet volume builds up very quickly with this stitch.

Bored with making swatches I temporarily turned to crocheting in rounds. I started making a simple crochet bowl, whose structure is based on the double crochet only. Yesterday it looked like a small round coaster.

Today I sped up with work and the bowl started to get its shape :)

There will be a yarn colour change coming my way soon. Don't know yet how to do it but with some visual help and practice I should be ok to introduce the new yarn.
More crochet workshops after work next week. I'm really looking forward to it.

Tonight I'm liking up my crocheting adventures to Hand-made Monday blog hop and I'm off to visit some lovely crafty blogs.

New Baby Cross Stitched Card. A very "stitchy" weekend.

This weekend has been all about cross stitching. Woohoo! Finally, I have finished my cross stitched teddy  and mounted it on a card. I was backstitching it all afternoon yesterday and today I've washed it, ironed it and mounted on the card and embellished the whole thing :) Quite elaborate piece of work considering how many hours have gone into stitching the teddy itself plus how much time I spent today pondering on the card layout and choosing the right stamps! :) Pink gingham paper was a must! - I just love gingham patterns. Cross stitched cards are the most time-consuming types of cards but they are so unique and special in this way. Not bad ;) Pleased with the results.

The card will go to my colleague, who recently has had a baby - gorgeous ginger-haired Millie May. Hope she likes it. 

The cross stitch design comes from Cute Cross Stitch magazine, a newbie on the press market, issue no.1, Spring 2013. The stamps I used to make a tag: Nordic Baby from The Waltzing Mouse Stamps and the punched lacy heart border was made using Martha Stewart punch Heart Border. 

Still on the cross stitch frontline, yesterday a new issue of subscribed Cross Stitcher arrived through the post and since I just loved their added freebie, I started stitching it immediately :) These 3 supa cute retro / folksy flowers are sooooo my style! They will make a set of 3 cross stitched notelets. 

I'm really enjoying stitching them right now!

Speaking of the cute flowers, I have been sooo over the moon when I managed to get hold of these 2 gorgeous sets of stamps:

In a way they are very special for me. These are the stamps by Basic Grey from 2009 - series: Ambrosia Bitsy Bohemia stamps. Very difficult to buy now as they are the retired products. I spotted them being reserved and then bought by someone else in a 2nd hand craft market group on facebook (doh!) and since I'm always on the lookout for the craft products with a unique folky feel, I knew I had to find a set like this for myself too. I scoured the whole internet looking for them and finally some persistent search on ebay made my dream come true :)))) there was one seller in Germany who was still selling them and now I can enjoy card making with these beautiful designs. How lucky I was! My favourites among these sets are naturally the  gorgeous folky butterfly, 2 birds on the branches and a folky medallion with a butterfly inside (two separate stamps).

To finish off with this stampaholic confession, I'm linking up tonight at Hand-made Harbour to do some blog hopping. Hope all you have had a good weekend and enjoyed the last two sunny days. x x

Knitting and Crochet books

Hi all. Hope you are all ok and enjoying sunny Friday :) We've had a gorgeous sunny day (finally!) over here in Flintshire.

There have been two books I've been eyeing on Amazon for a while and finally here they are! At my place!  In my hands! :) These are Crochet Workshop by Erika Knight and Circular Knitting by Margaret Radcliffe.

Below, a few photos for you to have a peek. Both are beautifully published with lots of gorgeous photographs inside. Crochet Workshop features some lovely natural beige tone yarns and the projects look very appealing (I'm salivating whenever I open this book!). The book is targeted mostly at beginners (me in this case) but an advanced person will surely find something for themselves. There are nice explanations and pictures on how to master your crochet basics. Very appealing and tempting overall.

Some luscious photos <3

There are both verbal descriptions as well as the crochet symbol charts. Whichever you prefer. I really need to study those crochet charts. At the moment they are all mystery to me.

A couple of exemplary projects. I just love these slippers!

Or... how about a kindle / notebook cover?

I'm so eager to start on this one!

The other book, Circular Knitting Workshop is a very thorough and decent compendium on circular knitting techniques. Rich with information and explanatory photographs. 

The book is divided into 2 main parts - introduction to circular knitting in a form of a workshop and the projects for you to practise.  It guides you from the simplest knitted forms to the gradually more advanced ones.

The explanations are really good, the photos are clear and well taken.

There are technical details and specifications for each of the projects - I really like this feature. The layout and the material is presented in a modern and attractive way.

Ever dreamt of being able to knit a shawl like this? I have!

There is also technique evaluation and comparison - another bonus.

Love the books and very pleased with the purchase. I just love possessing all sorts of craft bibles and compendia embracing the whole knowlege. All in one place. A big crafty pill :) It is my big dream to be able to crochet all sorts of projects as there are so many tempting ones out there. As for knitting, my target would be to be able to knit some Nordic socks, hats and mitten as well as shawls and wrist warmers (for a start). Long way ahead but hopefully with these great resources I'll be motivated to explore a bit deeper the yarn world.

On the cross stitch frontline - still stitching the poor pink teddy for a card. It just needs some backstitch and mounting it on a card. Almost there!

Have a good weekend! Thanks for stopping by and leaving a little note behind :)  x x x