Monday 12 September 2016

Design Team.....Welcome the new members

Good morning lovely crafters, I hope my post finds you well and full of glitter or paint!
Now, it's that time already when I need to introduce my brand new design team members.  My original plan was to rotate my Design Team after 6 months....but I just couldn't do it.  My design team have been so amazing, I didn't want to loose them.  So instead, the wonderful Crafters Companion have agreed I can have more members!  Hooray.

I'm therefore very very pleased to introduce the brand new team to you.  First of all, please meet the lovely Diane


Brilliant photo Diane, I figure you are going to fit in very well :)

I asked Diane to answer a few questions for me, so we can get to know her better:

I have always crafted, first as a little girl converting boxes for my dolls to live in and spending many rainy afternoons on the original form of scrapbooking (cutting stuff up and sticking it into a large sugar paper album with ridiculous unusable "gloy glue" ...remember the horrible rubber tipped glue we used to have to put up with) to approx 20 years ago when my brother bought me a box of watercolour paints for Christmas. I didn't really know how to paint so I just practiced painting miniature trees. With some birthdays looming, I decided to cut the trees up and make some little cards, then I discovered you could get peel offs to add messages to the cards....
then I discovered you could buy rubber stamps to add messages and images.......soon my little bag of craft stuff turned into a crate of stuff which turned into a desk of stuff .....and now I have a craft 
room room which is still not big enough!! The addiction is now incurable.

Mmmmmm now the tricky questions 

Fave crafts....
Love ALL things papercraft...3d decoupage a slight exception as I am a bit of a maverick with scissors (if you like images with heads/bits/chunks missing I'm your woman for the job) But particularly passionate about economical crafting i.e. recycling, upcycling where possible. Love 
using my craft stuff combined with everyday stuff. (Ha ha ....loved your latest challenge....eggshells!?!) oh and my new fave thing is creative gift wrapping! Giving up on buying lots of different wrapping paper .......this year it's only brown wrapping paper and whatever I 
can do to it with my craft stuff. 

 
Most Rewarding thing ....
Well I do love the pure escapism, totally self indulgent, "just for me" time but even better is sharing crafting. Love seeing the joy and self achievement people have once they have had a go at making something ....if only more people would join the crafty brigade....the world would seriously be a better place! (Perhaps we could sit a few world leaders down with some paper, paint and sticky stuff....although sharp scissors might not be a good idea). 

 
Selling craft stuff....
Yes, used to sell cards at one or two outlets ....my best sellers used to be in a pub!! Landlady kept a basket on the bar, apparently it saved a lot of marriages...equivalent to garage forecourt flowers but hopefully a little bit more thoughtful as I liked to make some of them a bit special. Sadly the most successful sellers on mass were very simple novelty based cards, not so much fun to make, have made special commissions for people but actually always worried that I didn't meet expectations when I was asked for those.Also did a couple of commissions for magazines. 

 
Favourite craft tool....
oh that's mean ... like asking "which one is your favourite child".....If the chips were down, couldn't live without my paper trimmer ....as I said, rubbish with scissors can't cut a straight line for toffee.

Thank you Diane.  Look out for Diane's work soon to be seen on Hochanda.