New Year's Resolutions!

Having joined in this weekend's bloghop as organised by Redrottie over on Doctafts, i had a quick look back through my posts from this year to read the lovely comments people have left, and realised i never did get round to copying and pasting my list of new year's resolutions! So here they are, a little late (in the same way that Joseph' birthday / Christmas thank you cards are!!!) bit here nonetheless...

1. Tidy my craft desk and keep it that way, with only my current project (card, notebook, photo frame, candle, etc) left on it and any bits I am still using for the project on my work mat!
2. Post more regularly on the Docrafts forum and make a conscious effort to comment on cards in galleries when I look at them.
3. Use up what I have - piles and piles of paper and every other type of craft stash and not buy any more unless it's essentials (glue, DST, foam pads, card blanks NOTHING ELSE!!!!) until I start making some money from either selling things I have made or selling unused/unwanted stash, clothes, etc on eBay!
4. Make my Christmas cards throughout the year.
5. Actively look for selling opportunities in the local area AND sell at them!
6. Spend less time on the iPad and more time upstairs creating!

So, now for a quick review...

1. Started off well and stayed that way for the first couple of weeks of January but then I started getting lots of supply teaching work and if I was working an afternoon I often had to abandon things half-finished in order to go to work, or would craft downstairs while watching tv (eg cutting and assembling decoupage) and that would all end up piled on the desk too, until such a time as I could use it for a card (there are still some sitting there now!!)
2. Again, until life was taken over by work I was doing well with this one, but in my defence there are also a lot less posts on the forum to read / comment on at the moment!
3. Oops!
4. Ooops!
5. I have been to one sale (sold one card and some car boot-type stuff!), was turned down for another event because they already had someone selling cards, and have 2 more events in June to make contact about, plus my local craft shop is going to sell my cards (with my profits being donated to www.eviesdream.org) and a friend has offered to take a selection into her office and see if they sell so not doing too badly on that front!
6. Once again, until work took over I wasn't doing too badly on this one!

I guess I should now head off upstairs and make some Christmas cards with the tonnes of Christmas stash I still have piled up around the bedroom, then I will be back on track with my resolutions!

Nothing to post for a while!

And the reason for that is this little bundle of mischief!!

Tabitha came to join us almost a fortnight ago after we lost our beautiful Tilly in February half term :-( and she is as much of a little madam as Tilly was!

If you have seen photos of Tilly you will know how scarily similar looking they are but this was not intentional! When I was told there was a grey tabby and White kitten in need of a home I immediately thought of the little one on the Whiskas cat food boxes, but I was wrong!

This little bundle of mischief, plus me working almost full time for he last 5 weeks has left mr with very little time for crafting - or anything else for that matter!

A lovely award

I have been given a lovely award from 2 of my friends, but am not quite sure how to link to it using the Ipad so please bear with me while i give it a try!

Claire is my Stampin Up upline and runs all the fantastic classes I go to on Friday mornings. She also does a quarterly all-day class and is starting a Wednesday evening class to! Any local crafters who are interested in joining one of claire's classes please contact her via her site

http://stampinupscrapper.blogspot.com/

The other award came from Andria who is a forum friend from www.madaboutcards.com/forum

And her amazing work can be found here:

http://iona-rose.blogspot.com/

Thank you to both of you, now I just need to work out how to get the actual award on here!!!

Baby girl

No reason for this one, so no personalisation on it at the moment! Another card made to use up some old stash, lots of bits of plain and patterned pink papers were sitting in my scraps box so I thought I'd use some of them up!

Dydd Santes Dwynwen Hapus!

For all my non-Welsh followers and readers, that's Happy St Dwynwen's Day (welsh equivalent of Valentine's Day) for tomorrow as I may not manage to get on here with Mums and Tots in the afternoon and Daft About Craft evening!

I was teaching Year 2 and 3 today so after we had looked at the story, done some work on the characters and used Google maps to find the setting on Anglesey, we made some cards with woven hearts in the front...

From 2 strips of paper with slits cut in the end to beautiful hearts in a few easy moves (or not so easy in some cases!)

Apologies for the poor quality of the photos...

Mother's Day #1

This is one of the cards I made using the decoupage kit I blogged about last week, from www.thecraftbug.co.uk which I was given at our Daft About Craft night on Wednesday. Sentiment reads 'Mum's Day Off' and personalisation is available if wanted.

Easel card... Something a little different!

For my non-crafting friends and followers, this is an easel card and how it stands up! This particular one is he smallest version I make; they can be made in pretty much any size and shape. Colours, images, sentiments, etc can be specified when ordering. This size is £2 with personalisation if wanted, plus postage costs, other sizes can be made at a price to be discussed depending on the cost of producing them!

Teddy bear, teddy bear

I have this stamp so can make similar cards in any colour with any sentiments, names, etc. I have used it for new baby cards and birthday cards for young children, both boys and girls in the past.

Baby boy card

Using the same image as the baby girl cards, and DCWV's Nanna's Nursery baby boy paper stack. Image coloured with Promarkers and metallic Promarkers.

Finally I have time to upload some new cards!

As the title says, I have spent this morning photographing my cards and am now ready to upload them :-)
So I will start with 3 in 1... 3 cards, all different, all made using the same new baby stamped image from Lili of the Valley. Everything else is random stash from my paper and ribbon drawers!

I have been a very busy crafter these last few days and have a huge pile of cards to photograph and add, just need the time to do it! Quite a few of them are quick-makes (except for leaving the silicone glue to dry!) using large decoupage images...a very kind donation from the lovely Della at www.thecraftbug.co.uk on Wednesday evening! I spent last night assembling the decoupage and some time this afternoon making them into cards. This was after a Stampin' Up class with Claire where I collected my information pack to order my Stampin' Up Demonstrator Starter Kit. Whether I decide to actually go into being a demonstrator and running classes, workshops, etc will be something for me to think about but at the moment I am very excited to be getting my hands on a gorgeous pile of stash for an amazing bargain price and a discount on future purchases! If anyone reading / following my blog would like to buy Stampin' Up items but doesn't have / know a local demo please get in touch and I can direct you to Claire! :-)

Work, work, work!

That's all i've done for the last week! As much as I love being in school and the money is great, I miss my little monkey and all the mummy and baby things we do each week, and I also have no time for crafting :-( Daft About Craft night at www.thecraftbug.co.uk was the first time I have managed to make any cards for a week! DH is out tonight so if Joseph goes to bed at a decent time I may manage to get some made tonight!!!

New cards!

I was just about to upload a baby boy card, 3 baby girl cards and 2 birthday cards... Went upstairs to photograph them and my little darling woke up from his sleep! Typical! Will be back later hopefully!

Catriona's 1st birthday card

A card for Joseph's friend Catriona whose 1st birthday party we went to yesterday. The card is made using an assortment of yellow papers and ribbon from my stash and a stamped image from an LOTV stamp. A similar card can be made in any colour and personalised with any name to order for £2 (plus postage if not local).

That's better!

My lovely husband does have his uses after all! His suggestion of taking the plastic cover off my iPad (only left on to protect the screen from Joseph's sticky fingers!) has made a huge improvement to the quality of my photos! I'll get all this technical stuff worked out one of these days!!!

Still testing!

Another test, this time using my daylight lamp as well!

Christening card

Just testing how well my iPad camera photos work (or not) with the blogger app! If this works it will save me SO much time!

Well, it worked! Photo is not the best quality but then it was only taken on a piece of card on the bed! Next job will be to get out Christmas present number 2 which my wonderful husband bought me... A display box for photographing my cards in, hmmmm....wonder if Joseph will stay asleep long enough for me to get it out before we go to his friend's birthday party this afternoon???

Selling stash!

Just in case any of my visitors are interested, I am selling some stamps and ink pads on eBay, seller name LauraNat. Most finish tomorrow (Saturday) night, some finish on Sunday. At the moment someone is getting a bargain TILDA stamp! SORRY I WROTE THIS ON FRIDAY NIGHT BUT IT DIDN'T UPLOAD! AUCTIONS ENDING TONIGHT AND TOMORROW NIGHT!!

Hooray!

Ok, so I can now blog from my iPad so I have no excuse for not keeping this up to date, especially as I am hoping to be expanding Cards by Laura into a small business this year, and hopefully branching out into a few thing other than cards and invitations! All still in the planning stage at the moment but I have been busy creating over the last few days so just need to take some photos tomorrow (using my new photography box thing Anders got me for Christmas, which requires Anders taking Joseph out for an hour or 2 so I can have a bit of a play! One of my other Christmas presents (from my parents) was an Ottlite daylight lamp...it's amazing! I can craft at any time of day or night and still get my colours to match without annoying yellow tinge the usual light has making me think things match when they don't! I have saved my new years resolutions on a forum I am on so am going to find that and copy and paste them onto my blog so all my followers can check up on how I'm doing! But first I am off to do some more creating (having suddenly had a flash of inspiration that I don't always have to listen to music while I'm up there - I can have a DVD on in the background as we have a TV and DVD player up there, just no TV signal, not sure why this didn't occur to me months ago!?!) and watch the end of the Coronation Street Romanian Holiday DVD my MIL lent me sometime last year(!) while my little monkey (who celebrated his first birthday on December 23rd!) is asleep! Back later with some resolutions and hopefully a photo or 2 ready for the weekend bloghop (a resolution I forgot to include on my first list, I think I may have made too many now!)

Testing, testing!

I'm really hoping this is going to work so am keeping it short and sweet as it is just a test post!