Changing face of crafting

Yesterday I spent most of the day sorting through a decade of craft magazines. I needed more space and decided to only keep the mags with quilling in seeing as thats what I do most of the time.
When I first started buying craft magazines, here in the UK, in about 1988, there was really only one, called Popular Crafts. It was a magazine that was for all crafts and there were loads of crafts in it, from decoupage to thatching the roof of your cottage. I came across knitting, crocheting, tatting, painting, porcelain dolls, mohair teddy bears, dolls houses, making jewellery... Actually, just about any craft you can think of except making greetings cards.

In about 1990 two other magazines became available Crafts Beautiful and Practical Crafts, and it stayed that way with just three magazines until about 3 years ago when tons of new magazines became available, these are all card magazines and basically they are pretty boring in my opinion.
They all have the same thing, how to make cards as quick as you can, only occasionally do they have something that will appeal to the more advanced card maker and then there is still nothing for the advanced crafter. Even Crafts Beautiful has gone the card making way and Practical Crafts has now changed its name to Practical Crafts and Card Making. I will be so glad when the card making obsession is over and we can get back to having the 'proper' crafts back.

Thankfully quilling will always be on the negative side of popular, people think its too difficult, too time consuming, too fiddly. Only the artists who do it know that it's all those things, but the finished object and the contentment of rolling strips of paper hugely outweighs those niggling feelings.

Printer saved!

This is another card from the card kits on my website, the dragonfly wings are stuck to acetate so they actually flap.

I eventually got my printer sorted out, thanks to my wonderful John, what would I do without him! We depend too much on computers, oh for a substantial fountain pen, some lovely blue black ink and a sheet of thick cream paper....

#4 son is taking part in the summer performance at his school. He is Cardinal Biggles in their interpretation of Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch. Will let you know how it went on Saturday.

Medallion cards

This card is made from one of the kits on the website www.thepapertreasurecompany.com It was very simple to make and looks much better in real life. Medallions are layered onto acetate and they certainly do sparkle when the light hits them.

Yesterday was spent getting a new hard drive installed in my laptop. It suddenly died on Sunday night, thankfully after I had finished loading tons of peeloffs onto the website. Now of course I can't seem to get the printer installed properly, which means I can't load other products on the site. I have spent all morning trying to do this and am about to scream and throw the whole lot through the windows!