Top Secret.....

Letraset are bringing out some brand new blending sets - they are made up of existing Promarker colours that will blend together perfectly. I worked on these with their team, so I was ridiculously pleased to see the packaged sets arrive. I have a set of each of the colours, and I will give one away each day for the next few days. These sets are so new, they aren't even available for sale yet, so you would be getting something nobody else has..... Today, you could win the green set - all you have to do is leave a comment under this post. these giveaways are a thank you for all my faithful supporters (click the follow button if you are new and like what you see)

The green set has meadow green, apple, leaf green, bright green, forest green and a blender pen

You need to pop back tomorrow when there will be another post, and leave a comment to win the yellow set, and so on, for the next few days. I will use a random number generator to pick the winners on Friday 25th July. Good luck x 

Pinecones for Craftwork Cards

It's my turn to post on the Craftwork Cards blog today, go HERE to see the post and to see how I made my pine cones, which are nice and flat and won't add bulk (and extra postage costs) to your Christmas cards. I used the brand new papers called Magic of Christmas, which are absolutely lovely. Firstly, I made a tag...............

Then I covered a kraft box that I'd saved when it arrived in the mail, covered it with paper and added a spray of pine cones and one of the lovely vintage looking sentiments....

A quick post today - we have been invited to a barbecue later this afternoon, I have just checked the local weather forecast and it says 'clear' but I'm not risking it, just off to dig out a brolly and a warm sweater....
I'll be back tomorrow with a rather special Letraset giveaway for you, see you then x

Goodbye Tension.....

 Here's a fun idea for a retirement card using punched shapes.......

You could easily turn it into a female card - a ribbon bikini top, and a ribbon turban with a couple of thread ringlets escaping from it. Oh, and a bit of bling! I used a circle punch, stamping up word window punch for the legs, an oval cut with spellbinders, and the glasses are a couple of scallops snipped off a small scalloped circle. I cut the arms freehand

No crafting for me yesterday, I took the day off and had a day out with my sister. We shopped a bit, sat and chatted over coffee a bit, sat and gossiped some more over lunch, then came back home and chatted a bit more in the garden.  As we talk though, it's amazing how human memory differs - you would think that two little girls who went through childhood together would have, roughly, the same memories. Not so. I have very vivid memories of events that my sister has no recollection of, while she remembers events - and people - that make me wonder where on earth I was when all this stuff was going on. How could I forget a woman who we, apparently, thought was a witch? Why do I remember the day we found a dead weasel and insisted on taking it to school for a 'show and tell' - a pretty significant event in my mind, I mean, how many dead weasels have you found in your lifetime? But she can't remember this at all.........although she insists that she can remember coming from my grandmothers house by train to find me in a crib by the side of my mothers bed. She was only three when I was born so this seems a bit remarkable to me - but one thing is for sure, she has now known me longer than any other person on this earth, and we still enjoy a good chat together, even if our memories are a bit fragmented! See you tomorrow x

Hero Arts Mason Jar....and another winner!

 Here's another one made with the same Hero Arts stamp set as my card posted on Monday. It looks simple but in fact took quite a long time to make....  

I cut out the stamped image, stamped some hearts then covered the lot in glossy accents, after a bit of ProMarker shading. The Tim Holtz hearts stencil was used with Wendy Vecchi white embossing paste. I dug out the 'for you' sentiment - I love the script but didn't notice the strange little dashes and dots until it was too late, and I wasn't about to start all over again.....

Now the original winner of the set of twelve promarkers hasn't been in touch, so as promised I did a random draw from all the comments left on the original post and the new winner is

LUCRETIA

For goodness sake get in touch! These pens have been hanging around looking sad for over two weeks now. Email me with your address and they will be on their way

So Max and Milo discovered that their favourite pizza place was closed for refurbishment. ''What does that mean?' asked Milo. 
'It's like when there is an update to an app on the iPod or iPad' explained seven year old Max
My son, who works in the online games industry is so proud of his boy!!!

See you tomorrow x

Clean and Simple

 Here is a CAS card that came from nowhere - I had been using the Hero Arts stamp set for another card, and all of a sudden this little branch jumped out
and here is the result.... 

I used distress inks, then just matted each layer with black,  the sentiment is a old Stampin Up one, and I used my new favourite way of adding some sparkle - a few sequins. Cheap as chips and I think they look really effective...

Those of you who are hoping the markers will be up for grabs again, may be in luck. Still no word from the winner, who was called Lesley Lawton, so if I haven't heard from by the end of today, I will draw another winner from all the comments made on the original post tomorrow. See you then x

July Sale News, and looking for a winner.....

First of all, I must wish all my American friends a very happy 4th - I'll be thinking of you all today, I used to love being in the USA for the 4th July, such a unique American celebration, and such a lot of fun, have a great time whatever you are doing today 


 Here's a link for you - there's a fantastic sale going on over at KatySue designs this week, rock bottom prices, so head over there pronto......



So did I go sale shopping. Silly question, of course I did, they added some really nice stamps and I got some flower soft as well

There has been no work from the winner of the Promarkers, scroll down to see if your name is there. If I haven't heard by next Monday, I will draw another winner from all the comments left 

No card from me today, I have been busy with stuff that I can't show you yet, ho ho ho. All done now apart from the dreaded step by step write-ups, then they can be packed up and sent on their merry way.

I'll be back tomorrow though - see you then x

Retirement Card

 Here's another magazine card, this time a retirement card. I used my favourite Katy Sue designs little pot, shaped out of air dried clay and coloured with ProMarkers, then 'varnished' with glossy accents....

The image is also from a KatySue Designs CD, called Fabulous Fellas, it's full of male themed images, so I thought this card would be good for a fella (fabulous or otherwise!) who plans to spend a lot of time gardening. I chose the background embossing folder because I thought it looked like a garden trellis. I used ProMarkers again to colour the image, and the sentiment was printed onto Safmat then smoothed onto a panel of coloured cardstock. And you are right, the top right hand corner looks a bit bashed around - the cards have to be mailed to the magazine to be photographed in their studio, then they eventually come home to me, sometimes looking a bit worse the wear for their travels!

So yesterday was one of those perfect UK summer days, cloudless skies and pleasantly warm without being scorching and sweatily hot - and what was I doing? Sitting in my cupboard making Christmas projects for a magazine. I can't tell you how odd that seems. Another problem with working so far ahead is that, in the main, the Christmas release papers and stamps haven't hit the shops yet, and as everything you use has to be current and available for readers, that can be a bit of a problem. Thank heavens for Craftwork Cards who released a fabulous Christmas range on Create and Craft TV last week. So even though it was just pleasantly warm, it did get a bit on the sweaty side in the crafty cupboard, but three cards down, one to go. Result! Now on to New Year and Valentines...........

See you tomorrow x

Butterflies and Splashes - and a winner

 Here's a bright and breezy card today - I used Tim Holtz splatter stencil and distress inks, the butterflies are a Martha Stewart punch..... 

I just quite randomly splattered different coloured splashes onto the card, then scribbled the same colours onto white cardstock from which I punched the butterflies. The sentiment is Hero Arts 

Time to pick a winner for the Letraset Promarker set. Thanks to all of you who left comments - and to those who tried and tried on the Letraset site. The site has been down for maintenance over the weekend, perhaps the comment problem will have been resolved by now...

The winner is

LESLEY LAWTON

Congrats, email me with your address and I will get them in the post

We had a fun and fairly exhausting couple of days looking after Max and Milo.
We were amused to hear Max say to his little brother in the car on the way to school 'you are treading on very thin ice young man'
Well, I wonder where he picked that little phrase up!
Then when I went to pick up Milo from an after school club, we got back to the car and I had a parking ticket on the windscreen. Needless to say, I was a bit peeved. I had to explain what a ticket was to Milo, who slipped his little hand into mine and said earnestly 'well, you have to be disponsible Ma....'
Yes Milo, I agree, it wasn't very responsible to think I'd get away with it for five minutes.....

See you tomorrow x

A Butterfly Border

 Here's one I made with a Martha Stewart butterfly stamp, stamped with distress ink and then just a tiny bit of scribbled lime zest Promarker added 

I stamped the butterflies close to the right edge of the card, then cut away around the edges - tip, make sure you don't put the antennae facing outwards, impossible to cut around neatly. It took me three tries before I finally learned that lesson.....

The inside of the card is covered with a pretty Prima paper, which of course shows when the card is closed. A few dotted gems and a Hero Arts sentiment, and I was done

Summer in Venice 3

Here's the third card I made with the stamp - now you can scroll down and tell me which card is your favourite... for this one I made a pretty label, more of that later

and this one is the only one I coloured, with ProMarkers,  I used very neutral tones, to me she looks like the type of lady who would always wear soft restrained colours and look totally fabulous. I would dress like this every day if I could, but washing the kitchen floor and getting inky would make me look a bit silly - I can imagine the look on the postman's face if I answered the door in this get-up! I was imagining her going to a fabulous Venetian wedding, or maybe to a rendezvous with her lover.....sigh. There's quite a lot of embossing on the base card, not showing up very well in the photo

I was playing around with punches to make some pretty sentiment labels.....

I just cut strips of cardstock, and inserted one end into one of those corner Martha Stewart punches.....

This strip was a bit wider, but not a problem....

I just snipped off the corner, following the curve.....

an ended up with this. I did use a regular long punch on a couple of them, it works just fine as long as you turn the punch over and position the card very exactly before punching - the one on todays card was made with a long punch, you can see the little notches on the ends, but I quite like that look

That's it for today, I'll be back home tomorrow, probably with a couple of Max and Milo tales to tell, see you then x

Summer in Venice 2

 Here's Summer in Venice 2 - that sounds a bit like the sequel to a film from the Cannes Film Festival! Not at all, just a card made with the same Penny Black stamp as yesterday.......

For this one, I made a background by sponging a panel with distress inks, blending the lines together, then I just stamped the image over that. I love this effect. The sentiment is a stamp by Katysue Designs, and I coloured some white seam binding from The Ribbon Girl with the same distress inks for a bow. The broken line background stamp is by Hero Arts, and the taupe background paper is from the Tea Dance collection by Craftwork Cards

Thanks for all the good wishes about my tooth (or rather, my late lamented tooth and the trouble it caused). I am finally feeling fine again now. 

I'll be back tomorrow with my last elegant lady x

Venice in Summer....

I found this unused Penny Black stamp called Ventian Summer in my drawer, once stamped, I was in love, so expect a couple of cards this week using this, hopefully all looking a bit different. I used papers from Craftwork Cards Paper Floristry and Tea Dance for this one....

and the stamp has very little colouring. I just shaded the buildings a tiny bit with grey and added a slash of red lipstick and a wash of colour on the water. Her clothes were paper pieced. I love how elegant she looks

We are off to London to do a couple of days baby sitting - Max and Milo will be in school, so apart from the mad morning rush and the chaos of after school, it should be a quiet sort of visit

You will have seen my post about the Letraset design team call, if you love colouring, I urge you to have a try, they are a lovely company to work with

See you tomorrow with another elegant lady x

Design Team Call

EXCITING OPPORTUNITY

We are looking for new design team members for the Letraset blog. We are looking for colouring skills to inspire others, so if you love colouring this is your dream team!

We require that you have an active blog, and are prepared to do two projects a month for the blog. We would like these to be in the form of a step by step colouring photo tutorial, and a finished card or project with the coloured image. If you prefer to do a video tutorial, that would be great. Go HERE and HERE to see examples of the type of posts we would like to see. You must be able to photograph the projects well, and write your posts in a professional manner.

In return, Letraset will provide you with the products needed to make your posts – these may include ProMarkers, Flexmarkers, Aquamarkers, limited edition sets and products such as Safmat. You will also be given a Letraset product to give away on your blog each month

Please send your application to Jaccomien Klap at research@letraset.com, attaching three samples of your work, a brief biography, any other design teams you may be on, a link to your blog and tell us why you would love to join us. Applicants don't have to reside in the UK, overseas applications are welcome as well. Closing date for applications is the 31st July 2014

Hydrangea for Letraset

It's my turn to post on the Letraset blog today, here's a peek at what I have been doing for them....

and here is a peek at what you can win this week by leaving a comment on here and on the Letraset blog - go HERE to see my post and leave a comment. Please, please remember that for these Letraset giveaways, you need to comment on both blogs, they are so generous giving these prizes to Going Buggy followers, it's only fair that we send them some traffic - edited to say that there seems to be a problem with the comments on the Letraset site, so the winner will be picked from comments under THIS post

I have a set of twelve ProMarkers to giveaway. This set is called the Manga expansion pack and contains some of my favourite and most used colours. Poppy, Henna, Sandstone, Honeycomb, Saffron, Olive Green, Soft Green, Cool Aqua, Marine Blue, Putty, Cool Grey 2, Cool Crey 4, and a blender pen

I will draw a winner from all those who have left their names on both blogs next Thursday. See you tomorrow x

Paper Floristry for Craftwork Cards

It's my turn to post on the Craftwork Cards blog today, I've been busy playing with the Paper Floristry 2 kit that was a recent pick of the day on Create and Craft and Ideal World TV here in the UK

Go HERE to see the other cards I made

It's a very brief post from me today, I am still suffering from my visit to the dentist last Saturday - it seems I have an infection now. That explains not sleeping for the past four days then..............sigh

It's my turn to post over on Letraset tomorrow, and you know what that means! See you then x

Moldable Plastic - who knew.....

I was sent this really intriguing product to review. As regular visitors will know, I have been having fun with air dried clay and moulds lately, so I was interested to see how this would compare

Firstly, it's easy and rather a lot of fun to use, you just drop some of the little white pellets into a bowl of very hot water, leave it for a couple of minutes....

The plastic granules turn clear and merge together....

Lift the pliable lump of molten plastic out of the water with a spoon or tongs, and start tearing bits off to put into the rubber moulds (which I forgot to photograph). The plastic sets very quickly and turns an opaque milky white, it takes seconds to dry. If the ball of plastic starts to set, just plunge it back into the hot water to make it pliable again...

I wanted to see what colouring mediums would work, for these butterfly key rings I used ProMarkers, and coated them with Stickles glitter glue...

 Then I moulded some of my favourite little garden pots using moulds by KatySue Designs, and coloured these with some acrylic paints, glimmer sprays, gilding wax. You will see the edges of a couple of the pots on the top look a bit bashed around - that was my fault for not pressing the material fully into the moulds, but I didn't recast them because I quite the way they look like chipped stone.....

I had to turn one of them into a card, using Martha Stewart punches for the leaves and flowers...

So after playing around with it, I can give a very positive review for the following reasons:

The material is easy to mould, and is incredibly lightweight, always a plus in these days of expensive postal charges. Each of the little pots doesn't weigh any more than an acrylic button - much lighter than the same pots done in air dry clay

It's very durable, the clay can break quite easily, if you drop them on the floor for instance, they don't survive, but this material doesn't break or chip which must be a good thing if you are sending projects by Royal Mail!

The whole process took a lot less time than with the clay, which of course has to dry slowly. You can have your embellishments in seconds with this material

I liked the way the pots looked when painted with acrylic paints, shimmer mists and gilding wax. All these paints adhered well to the surface, and I was able to add shading and highlights. I wasn't so keen on the look I got with the ProMarkers. 

 I reckon one pot would last a long long time, a little goes a very long way,  Another plus is that any unused material Is just popped back into the container to be re-melted the next time.

Great product for crafting your own embellishments when  moulds and texture plates etc are all the rage at the moment - check out Katy Sue Designs, they mail worldwide, and in the USA, Michaels has a great range of rubber moulds by Martha Stewart

I have a few more ideas - I plan to colour the actual water that the plastic is melted in to see if it absorbs the colour as the granules melt - I feel like a mad scientist trying out all these ideas. I also fancy rolling out a square with a rolling pin onto a craft mat and trying to emboss it, or pressing a stamp into it to take the impression....I'll let you know when I get on with these ideas. It would make great pendants, I wonder if I could use alcohol inks when the plastic was still warm...........playtime!

Read all about it HERE

and buy it HERE Amazon

Hope you've enjoyed reading this review, there's always something new for us crafters to play with! See you tomorrow x

Sissix Stamps and Dies.....and a winner

I forgot I had this die and matching stamp by Sissix, time for an outing......

I was going to keep it to  totally black and white, but at the last minute wrapped some red twine to sit behind the butterfly, and dotted some red gems and sequins around, the sequins are clear, they have caught a reflection and look green in the photo. The die cut sentiment is by Memory Box - I split the sentiment for this card and used just the punched out letters for the word birthday - I'm all for getting value for money from a die!

I have had a pretty miserable sort of weekend, we were supposed to be going down to see family in London, but a trip to the dentist stopped that. I won't go into details, but broken off molar/extraction/gum sutures is probably enough to give you all the shivers. 
Ouch, ouch and ouch again. Before I go and feel sorry for myself, on to the winner of the ProMarker 12 set. This time, the random name drawn was

LISA - Ella's Designs

who said

 Ella's Design said...

So glad you had a wonderful time in Disneyland, Enfys and I bet the children loved it too!
Love the sneak peek, I'm off to the Letraset blog to have a proper look and be leave a comment! Thanks for sharing and for the chance to win some more Letraset goodies! Lisa x

Congrats Lisa, email me with your address and they will be on their way 

See you tomorrow when I have a review of a fascinating new product to share with you x

Pansy Card for magazine...

Here's a retirement card made for Papercraft Inspirations magazine, it's one of four I have on a retirement theme in this month's issue - on sale now

The pansies were made with Sissix dies, I cut the aperture in a 5 x 7 card with a nestability die 

/

Quite happy with the way that turned out....

I get a lot of emails about blogging. Lots of folk would like to start a blog but are afraid to because they think that advanced computer skills are needed. Not so, I am living proof of that. I can only talk about my own experiences, but here are a few of the things I've learned along the way. The type of blog you have depends on what you want out of it - if you want an online diary which outlines your crafting journey/holidays/life, then you can burble away to your hearts content and limit the people who can read your blog to the chosen few, who you can invite as readers. If you want to share your stuff with as many people as possible, then you need to keep your blog updated regularly and put yourself out there - start taking part in some of the many challenges, gradually, and to your delight, people will return your visits and even leave you comments

1. Blogger is easy. I have to use Wordpress for different design team posts, and can't get on with it at all. Probably user incompetence, but if, like me, you aren't that computer savvy, go for blogger. If you choose blogger, open it with Google Chrome, blogger is a Google platform and the two work well together. You can download both for free

2. You can set up a basic blog using standard layout templates, and add a few gadgets and gizmos to it. Just a tip, make your blog as easy to read as possible, and remember that the more gadgets you have, the longer it will take to load, and people aren't going to hang around for ages, they click on to the next blog. This is especially true of music. What may bring back wonderful memories to you of a romantic and blissful honeymoon evening, may remind others of the blazing row they had with their other half when he/she got paralytic at Grandmas birthday party and disappeared for a long walk around the garden with your second cousin.......people would click that little red X faster than you can blink. Safer to do without music, it doesn't always soothe the soul in my experience

3. If you get inspiration from somewhere, put a link to that site, and try to link or name products that you use as well. If you don't, you will get emails and questions about where you bought stuff, it's easier to put it on when you write the post

4. If you want to get fancy, there are loads of people out there who will help you design a blog. Mine was done by Sarah, her link is right at the bottom of this blog, and her prices were very reasonable. Before I used Sarah, I made a blog header myself, I think they were hopping frogs, I can't quite remember now, but it was fun to do

5. Be careful what you call it. What seems quirky and funny, or clever or witty may not be such a good idea when people are saying 'I visited a blog which I loved, but can't remember what the heck it was called. Take my 'Going Buggy'. I chose that off the top of my head because in those days I was very active on the Cricut message board (in its glory days). When you made a certain number of posts, under your name appeared 'Going Buggy' or something else (anyone remember any of the other names?). So as I was 'Going Buggy' on the message board, I pinched it for my blog. However, to register it as a web address I had to put Going-Buggy, and if you miss out that vital little hyphen between the words, up pops a blog called 'For God's Sake'. which is pretty much what I am thinking every time it happens!

6. Don't expect to make any money out of it. Although I work the equivalent of a full time job in crafting/blogging, I don't make any money (I spend quite a lot though!).   I get lots of free products, and I do get paid for magazine commissions If you want to do it, do it for fun, and hobby blogging  is fun. I have made some great friends, and get quite anxious if I don't see a familiar name popping up for a while....I certainly don't regret starting this blog, I occasionally look back, and since I put a lot of little anecdotes in about the children or something that happened on my travels, I remember things that I would otherwise have forgotten. So it's like my diary, which I am happy to share

I hope this helps anyone thinking of taking the plunge, jump in and enjoy, and let me know so that I can link to your new blog here, and come and see you, bringing some of my friends with me. Put the kettle on!