We have added some new card making toppers to the Autumn Dreams range.
The Vintage Style card making toppers are perfect for Mother’s Day and the Gone Fishing ones will go down a treat with all fishing enthusiasts on Father’s day – as well as birthdays.
Each of the card making toppers in the Autumn Dreams range is die cut, enhanced with foil, and comes with 2 free backing cards of the same design.
The first of the Penny Black stamps have arrived and these are all new 2012 stamps. There are 2 cling stamps and 4 clear stamp sets. All the stamps need an acrylic block for mounting.
Of course Penny Black is famous for their lovely and cute designs and this year’s stamps are no exception. The cling stamps are quite large and will make a lovely centrepiece for an A5 or 144 x 144mm card blank.
The sets of clear stamps cover most card making occasions from birthdays to Mother’s Day to Valentine’s day and are so of the moment. They are also excellent value for money as each set has pictorial of stamps in different sizes plus sentiments stamps as well.
Our self adhesive pearls are very popular for card making so when we discovered that this year Woodware had brought out little round self adhesive silver and gold coloured metal gems we were delighted.
There are 125 to a pack – if Madeleine has counted them correctly – and you can use them singly or in a row as the peel off and you just break off what you need and save the rest for future projects.
Here they are.
If you are making your own wedding stationery and are using the silver or gold self adhesive metal hearts as an embellishment why not add a few round metallic gems? These could be used as a little trail from the bottom of the heart embellishment or a few in 2 opposite corners and will add a nice finishing touch to your invitations.
Shop customers know Linda – she’s the little one that needs a ladder to reach the high shelves – and Internet customers will have seen her signature at the bottom of the orders. Linda also makes many lovely cards that appear in our Gallery.
What you may not know is that Linda’s other passion, when she’s not card making, is line dancing. So when those 2 young men came for gems to decorate there shoes, Linda thought she’d have a go a jazzing up her own dancing shoes. Here is the result.
Linda used the Clear Acrylic Stones 2mm, 3mm, and 4mm pack and stuck the gems onto the shoes using Didi Glue Dots. An alternative, and very popular way of using gems to bring a new lease of life to shoes is to stick the gems to only the heel of the shoe. This is a great idea if you have slightly scuffed the heel of a shoe.
So Linda, having jazzed up her dancing shoes didn’t need to buy a new pair. So what did she use her shoe money on? Why, new card making materials, of course.
Before Christmas, when we added the beautiful Kaisercraft flowers to our website we said that the Kaisercraft paper pads were coming soon. The good news is they have arrived and they are absolutely fantastic.
Many paper packs are much of a muchness with similar papers appearing in different pack but the Kaisercraft paper packs are all different so there’s bound to be one to suit your taste or the card making projects that you are working on.
Just take a look at the four Kaisercraft paper packs we have for you.
Each pack of papers is 6.5 x 6.5 inches (approx. 165mm x 165mm) so they can be used on larger cards or die cut to create pretty backgrounds for your embellishments.
Each pack contains a massive 40 sheets of 160 gsm paper making them excellent value for money. In addition to the printed papers each pack contains foiled, flocked, spot varnished, or glitter papers and 4 pages of die cut borders, banners and tags to co-ordinate.
Our card designer, Mary, has made a gorgeous card using the Pink Gelato paper pack and the Kaisercraft flowers.
There will be more details on how Mary made this card in a later blog post.
It may still be the depths of winter and bitterly cold but our card making thoughts are turning to Spring and all the pretty flowers that are associated with that time of the year.
So it’s no surprise that when we saw some gorgeous paper flowers we just had to have them and we have now added four new flower packs: Pinks, Pastels, Spring Blossom, and Bridal. Here is the Spring Blossom pack.
What we particular like about these flower packs is that there is a good range of sizes - large, medium, and small in each pack which means not only that you can use the flowers individually but also create your own blooms by layering them using Didi Glue Dots or a small pretty brad.
Buttons make great embellishments for card making and we have 8 different packs for you to choose from – pink, blue, deep red, pastels, coffee and cream, primary colours, earth colours, and lavender.
Great value at just £1.99 a pack and there are 60gms in each pack – that’s loads of buttons in different shapes and sizes. Here are the pastel ones.
We’ve almost sold out of our first delivery of these buttons but I’m pleased to say that more are on their way to us.
Happy New Year to card makers everywhere.
Well, I must say 2012 started with a big bang and not just from the fireworks in Spain. Lots of customers have made New Year resolutions to start making there Christmas cards early this year and immediately after the New Year we were inundated with requests for Christmas goodies. This year is the first time ever I’ve had to ring suppliers for more Christmas stock in January!
The wedding season is also underway now with more brides (and their mums) making their own wedding stationery than ever before. In these economic times it does make sense to make your own wedding stationery as, not only are the savings considerable, but the bride can tailor the invitations to perfectly match her theme. Even better if you can get mum to do it for you. I’ll try and get some more inspiring cards for wedding on the Gallery in the next few weeks to help with inspiration.
The other thing we’ve noticed at the beginning of 2012 is the number of beginners joining the card making community and I’ve had requests for really simple cards to be added to the Gallery for absolute beginners. On the other hand a lady yesterday told me she’d only been card making for 3 weeks and was already completed hooked and now wanted a Big Shot, rubber stamps and Promarkers so I guess she’s already past the simple stage and moving on to greater designs.
Our new stock for 2012 is starting to arrive and I think this is going to be one of the best years for new card making products. I’ll tell you more about those when we get the boxes unpacked.
We love ribbons and just can’t resist it if we come across a new range of pretty ones. A length of ribbon wrapped around a card or tied into a bow makes a great finishing touch when card making.
Our latest ribbon is organdie with a satin edge and comes in 4 glorious colours – white, blue, lilac, and gold. The ribbon is 10mm wide so is perfect for card making and the satin edge gives a opulent look to this organdie ribbon. Here is the gold.
We find the best way to attach this ribbon is to use 6mm double sided tape. Always take the ribbon right around your card rather than just placing it on the front of your card and cutting it at the top and bottom which runs the risk of fraying. The join in the ribbon on the inside of the card will be hidden by the insert.
We never cease to be amazed. Two young men came into the shop the other week and wanted rhinestones or any similar type gems. They didn’t look like our usual card making customers and it turned out they weren’t – they wanted the rhinestones to stick on their shoes. Well, we at Craftsite are obviously not keeping up to date with fashion because it turns out that young men and women all over the country are sticking gems onto their shoes – and the gems that they bought were the clear acrylic stones box which they thought were cool.
There are over 3,000 gems in these packs – some 4mm, some 3mm, some 2mm but they are very fiddly to pick up, especially the smaller ones, even with tweezers.
So how do you pick up small gems and other tiny embellishments? With a wonderful invention called, appropriately, a Sticky Pick Up Tool.
Shaped like a pen this tool has a sticky end ideal for picking up those awkward embellishments and placing them just where you want – be it on the card you are making or your shoes. Linda, a big Strictly fan, even saw the wardrobe girls using a one on Strictly Come Dancing.
And, if the sticky end should lose it’s stickiness through picking up dust or particles of glitter then simply wash the end with warm water and the stickiness will come back.
