Virtual Blog Hop!

The lovely Tanya, one of my beautiful friends from Oklahoma, has asked me to take part in a virtual blog hop, so here I am! I think the idea is to share what we have all been doing recently, so that we can share, be inspired by, and admire the work and creative processes of other people who we might not otherwise have "met". That's a great idea, isn't it?

Here's a little bit about me and what I've been working on lately.

1) What am I working on?
Andy, the Rector of our parish, asked me to make 50-odd stars for the church to give out to the school children and their teachers. Each has a quotation about spirituality, which needed printing in exactly the right place on the card, which I then die-cut and matted onto a bigger die-cut star. A punched silver star was then stuck on and a hole punched through for silver ribbon to be tied so that the stars can be hung up.

I made something similar in hearts, for a recent church wedding fayre, and they were very popular. Here they are before I tied the silver ribbon on. Andy wanted to add essential oil to the ribbons, and the first ribbon I got turned out not to be absorbent at all - oops. I had to get some more, and then there wasn't enough so I had to raid my stash.

I am also scrapbooking as usual, but with a slightly simpler style than I normally do:

This one was made for National Scrapbooking Day at our monthly Bristol Scrappers crop. Usually I bring home a handful of half-finished pages and never finish them, but I actually finished this one.

And here are a couple of my latest cards, one experimenting with a new embossing folder that I got for Christmas, and the other a design lifted from Pinterest, but I did come up with the greeting myself:

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
Well I don't know. That makes what I do sound pretty posh and professional, and I'm only a hobby crafter. I make cards for family and friends and the choir, so I'm constantly on the look-out for ideas for designs. My scrap-book pages are mostly in response to challenges, either sketches, lifts or technique challenges, so they are different every time because I'll try most things once.

3) Why do I write/create what I do?
I love playing with colour. I love being creative and using what tools and materials I have to design new things. I love giving my cards away, strangely enough.

I quite like blogging about it all too, because I can organise my rambling thoughts into (also rambling but not quite as random!) words and clarify things in my own head. I like showing off what I've done - don't we all?

4) How does your writing/creating process work?
That's a tough one. I have to start with a need: I mean someone's birthday coming up, or a challenge to enter.

For a card, I think about what the recipient is interested in. I try hard to steer away from those generic old cars and golf for the men, although they can be so difficult. Then I find a challenge that fits the bill and looks fun, and go from there. And thinking about it, I use the same principle for LOs, trying to keep to the subject matter. I love challenges.


Next I will pass you on to Georgina, fellow Scrap-Whisperer, line-dancer and friend, who I met in 2008 through an American scrapbooking site while I was living in Singapore. It turned out that she works for the same company I used to work for, and lives not 6 miles from where I went to school. How freaky can you get? Haha!

Georgina will post on Monday June 16th, so please go and check out her blog. See if you can work out how many cats she has?

Thanks for the inspiration to write, Tanya. I'm going to enjoy going back through everybody's blogs and joining the dots!