Cleaning off the desk

I spent a little time over the weekend actually finishing off some of the stamping that I had started and for one reason or the other had put aside.

Two reasons to do this occasionally.

1. It gives you a clean area to work in.

2. It also gives you some cards to add to your collection so you've got some to choose from when you need to.

I've been doing quite a few floral ones lately and mostly they're C&S, clean and simple.

New card & clearance stamps

Its funny how to use a stamp quite a bit and then another one comes along and takes your fancy so the first one gets moved to the back of the drawer and forgotten.

When I was pricing the clearance stock to go to the markets I came across the Hero Arts Engraved Flower stamp (1 only left) and thought to myself, I haven't used mine for ages maybe I should get it out again.

And so I did. Here's the finished card:

I stamped and heat embossed the image in black and then using a black fine point marker (waterproof)extended the stem to the bottom of the card.

Then I used water colour pencils to colour the in flower and stem. If you find that the black gets lost as I did in the centre use your fine point marker again and go over the image.

I stamped the wording and using double sided tape attached the ribbon. 

The remaining Hero Arts and Darkroom Door clearance stamps have been moved to the Bargain Bin so have a browse and see if there's any that you've been wanting. 

New laser paper cuts have arrived as well and are priced at 60 cents each.

Five different designs to choose from.

Time to organise

I don't know about you but I have a large (ok huge) pile of sheets of paper that I've ripped out of magazines or information sheets that are sitting in a heap in my craft room waiting for me to do something with them.

So after doing a bit of a tidy up in my craft room I decided that I had to go through that pile and first decide which ones I wanted to keep and then how to store them so that it would be easy to get to and therefore use.

The idea I came up was to first organise them into groups and these are the ones I've gone with.

1. Tips , Techniques and Product Information

2. Colour Combinations

3. People, Suppliers and Websites

4. Project Ideas (off the page)

5. Papercraft (things to make)

So now how to store them?

I could have bought some lidded storage containers but I didn't want to ruffle through them everytime looking for something.

Display books? Just slip the info into a sleeve. What about all the little bits of paper? They don't have that many pages.

Anyway what I did was go out and buy 5 Art Journals. If you look around with the Back to School catalogues you can pick them up cheaper than normal. The reason I chose art journals is that they have thicker pages so it will take gluing and inks etc if you want to work out colours in them.

The ones I bought have a plastic cover and I thought I would colour them up and maybe add some stamping. I've brushed on some gesso to give the paint/inks something to cling to and I'll show you what they turn out like. It may not work so they may end up with a decorated sheet of paper stuck to the front cover.

 I was merrily gluing in some pages in the Tips-Techniques & Product Info when I came across 3 pages I had torn out of a magazine. Hmm they has information on both sides, what to do.

Front of art journal (looking pretty dull at the moment)

Trim up and glue in the first page (if it doesn't have info on the back).

Trim down your magazine page and slide into a plastic sleeve.

Cut off the top of the sleeve along the magazine edge and fold over the side with the holes to along the page edge and crease with your thumb nail or bone scorer.

I added two peices of wide double sided tape down the edge of the folded over side.

Take off the top layer on the tape and stick into the art journal. I made it so that the "holey" folded over side was next to the spiral as I think it will sit better but it mightn't make any difference.

Now you can open it out and see the other side of the page. I should have taken a photo of that sorry.

Oh and forgive the quality of the photos, I should have put it on a darker background.

Anyway I've been madly gluing things into my art journals/information books which has made me feel all organised and happy with myself. Plus I get to go through my magazines and any that only have a few ideas in them get to be torn apart and the excess thrown away.

I just need to keep it up and then use them as a resource book for when I hit a wall. You know what I mean, the curse of the blank piece of cardstock.

How do you store your bits of paper?

Hero Arts New stock

I received in a parcel of new stamps from Hero Arts and have been busy photographing and adding them to the website. There's still more to come but this is a nice bundle to be drooling over.

To see the whole range visit the Look Whats New category on the Lorna Blue Studio website.

Don't forget when you sign in as a member you get a 10% discount.

Special Time $27

Members price $24.30

Congrats $27.00

Members $24.30

Greeting $22.00

Members $19.80

Dot Flower Pattern $22.00

Members $19.80

Journal De Voyage $22.00

Members $19.80

A card made using the Journal De Voyage stamp set.

Untitled Word Shadow $22.00

Members $19.80

A card made using the Untitled Word Shadow stamp set.

Some ideas from the Hero Arts catalogue for the Exotic Decor stamp set from last year.

Exotic Decor Now $15

I only have 1 left and its in the Bargain Bin on the website.

Hero Arts are having a Blog Hop this week and you get the chance to win some stamps as well as see their design team using the new range of stamps. 

Go to the right hand column and click on the Hero Arts Blog and don't forget to leave a comment on each blog. 

Bargain Bin updates

Thanks to everyone who came along on Sunday to the markets and said Hi.

If that was your first time we usually have almost double the stalls that were there but the January school holidays and hot weather kept a few away.

Anyway I've now moved the clearance stamps into The Bargain Bin so if you didn't get a chance to have a look on the weekend whatever I have left is now listed there.

Engraved Flower - 1 in stock

Was $16.50 now $10

The words are from Messages 3 - 1 in stock 

Was $19.95 Now $12.00

Large Flower - 1 in stock

Was $16.50 Now $10.00

Butterflies - 1 in stock

Was $19.95 Now $12.00

Stencil Art - 1 in stock

Was $31.90 Now $18.00

Huge discounts on stamps this weekend

Well before you know it Christmas is over and the relaxing break is gone. Back to work.....

Darkroom Door have sent out an email saying that they are changing the packaging of their stamp sets. You know the ones in the tin?

In future they will come in a plastic DVD style case. A bit thinner to store and the name of the stamp set will be on the side as well so you don't have to go all the way through them to grab the one you want.

Oh that would be nice to have all new style packaging for my white Darkroom Door display box.

What to do with the old ones?

Get rid of them. Quickly.

Here's the deal.

I want them gone and I don't particularly want to go in and put everyone in The Bargain Bin on the website.

The PCYC markets are back this Sunday for the first one of the year.

I will be selling all the Darkroom Door tinned sets out at $15.

Yes I said $15.

Thats half price.

I hope you have some Christmas money left.

To make it even more interesting the Hero Arts catalogue is due this week (they promised me and they have one day left).

So I'm clearing the old Hero Arts stamp sets at..........yes you guessed it $15.

Some their cling stamps will be marked down as well.

I'll also add some other heavily discounted stock to the clearance table.

I won't have EFTPOS so its cash only sorry.

Most of these I only have 1 in stock so don't miss out.

Give yourself a New Year present.

Go on......you deserve it.

See you Sunday.