Addicted to scallops

Oooh, I love scallops. With bacon, with peas, with black pudding or as a ceviche.....

And this post is nothing to do with that kind of scallops!

This week's challenge at Less is More is to use scallops while at Addicted to Stamps it is a colour challenge - Regal Rose, Sahara Sand and Tempting Turquoise.

I've used a Spellbinders die to cut a scalloped square - the card is actually a deep turquoise but my husband and I have both tried in various light conditions and no matter what we do it comes out much more blue than it really is, so you'll need to trust me on that! The pink card, too,is a much closer match to the stamped image in real life. The stamp is from a Docrafts V&A collection sheet that has been sitting in my stash for a couple of years and had never seen a drop of ink before.

I'm playing along at

Less  is More - Lucky Dip :  Use Scallops

Addicted to Stamps and More - #38 Addicted to colours

Bundle of Joy

This week's challenge at CD Sundays is "Bundle of Joy"

I don't really make much in the way of New Baby cards, so apart from the rubberstamps I bought when my granddaughters came along, I  didn't think I'd find anything suitable. There are a couple of designs on the Best of La Pashe 2012, but I know lots of us have that CD and thought somebody else is bound to use those images - and probably be far more creative than me with them!

Then I remembered my Hot Of The Press CD "5,400 Tags and Art" which has  artwork from lots of their past collections - and yes, it had page after page of baby designs on it. One of them even included the words "Bundle of Joy"!

I'm afraid the photo is rather overexposed - you can always tell when my husband is working away from home, I'm a terrible photographer! And I had a senior moment - having made little envelopes for the proud parents to keep a lock of hair and hospital wristband in, I stuck them down with the flap side facing the card so they can't be opened!

Less is more 112- Use Beads

This week it's a recipe challenge at Less is More,  with the theme "Use beads".

Now I don't have very many beads, apart from a few very old ones that my grandmother gave me to play with as a child, which I still keep in the tin she gave them to me in. The tin originally contained her favourite peppermint creams and must be around 60 years old.

Some of the beads are from her old necklaces, the others from the bead-trimmed milk jug covers that she used to keep the flies off the milk in the larder - the edges had loops around them with heavy beads to weight the cover down and keep it in place. And these are the ones I've used today, because they happened to be a perfect colour to go with my Broken China Distress Inkpad.

The image I have used is a Kanban stamp, which I've stamped with distress ink and then used a water brush to slightly blend the colour of the sea, the sky and the bands of the lighthouse. I threaded the beads onto matching embroidery thread and have held them in place with a dab of glue. They remind me a little of a seaside storm warning signal.

 

I'm joining in with

Less is More 112 - Use Beads

Kanban Crafts Challenge #1 - Anything Goes

 



Make your Mark

I've been shopping! My self imposed spending ban, which lasted almost a year, fell to pieces when I recently won £250 worth of vouchers to spend at The Range. Somebody helpfully suggested that since I win the vouchers, spending them doesn't count as breaking the ban - unfortunately  my ban was more of a space saving exercise than a money saving one, and my recent shopping sprees (and I've still not used up all the vouchers) have already filled what little space I'd freed up during the ban. Yes, I know The Range sell things other than craft stuff, but I seem to always get a trolly that has a homing device that leads it straight into the craft department..... that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Never mind, I'm having fun! One of my latest purchases is a Fiskars Continuous Stamp Wheel and a couple of stamps for it. It's like a 21st century  version of the Rollagraph, designed to stamp a long, unbroken image, and I had my first play with it today. I found it a bit fiddly to get the stamp on and off the wheel, especially when it is covered in ink, but I've changed my clothes and scrubbed my arms to the elbows now..... apart from that, I'm very pleased with it.

Another purchase was a  set of Docrafts markers in pastel shades. These are to replace my old, dried up Marvys, but the jury's still out on them. Do they not blend  as well as Marvys, or have I used Promarkers so much recently that anything else seems to blend poorly by comparison?

Anyway, here's a quick card I made using my new purchases, and I'm popping into this weeks Addicted to Stamps Challenge #37 which is Make Your Mark.

Wonderful Wings

I was delighted to see that this week's challenge at CD Sundays  is "Wonderful wings" as it has given me a good excuse to use my very favourite theme - DRAGONFLIES. I love dragonflies, especially in crafting. I'd hate to have to add up how many dragonfly themed rubberstamps I own!

But I knew I wouldn't be stamping this week, as some of my favourite dragonfly images are on the Design House "Water's Edge" CD. This is a sister CD to the Meadow's Edge one I used a few weeks ago, that a lot of you said you'd never heard of. I think the artwork on them is truly gorgeous!

The photos don't really do it justice (my husband wasn't at work so I couldn't get him to take the photos for me on his super duper camera!) but the topper is an angled pyramid and I've added subtle glitter highlights to the dragonfly wings. Everything used on the card is from the CD.

The First Day of Spring

Today is the equinox, the day when we have exactly the same amount of darkness as light. And it should herald the start of spring - lambs gambolling in the fields, bunnies hopping around the countryside, gentle sunshine warming banks of daffodils and  birds building their nests.

Instead, here in the UK, we have damp, gloomy weather, predictions of snow and bitter cold, and George Osborne delivering what threatens to be an austerity budget. Hardly a day to warm the heart!

However I've decided to bring a breath of spring to my crafting today. The challenge this week at Less Is More is Frame It! while this month's Emergency Crafters challenge is Mad as a March Hare so  I've used a stamp of boxing hare silhouettes  which I think was free on Craft Stamper magazine  and framed it  with a slide mount covered in pretty spring coloured paper.

 

I'm playing along at

 

Less is More week 111 - Frame it!

 

Emergency Crafters March - Mad as a March Hare

Goodbye Google Reader

2013 seems to be the year of goodbyes. First there was Loquax, at least in its original form (although the forums are now going from strength to strength), then there was Twit Cleaner, and now we are to wave goodbye to Google reader. As from June 1st, it will no longer exist - and that means if you follow any blogs with Google Friends Connect you will no longer be able to read them through Google Reader. I don't know about you, but my morning treat has always been to sit down with a cup of tea and read through the blogs I follow. As there are almost 400 of them, related to my various hobbies and friends, visiting each one separately to see if anything new had been posted would take all day so it was great to have all the new posts collected in one place for me.

Even if you don't read blogs that way, you may be a blogger who has lots of followers through Google Friends Connect and be worried by the news. Do those followers read your blog through Google Reader? Will Google's next step be to discontinue GFC? Will we bloggers lose all our followers and friends?

Not to worry, there ARE alternatives out there. Until quite recently the best known was Networked Blogs. I've always offered the option of following that way, but to be honest I've never personally found following blogs myself with it to be all that satisfactory, I can't find my way around and I seem to see old posts from some blogs and none at all from others. If you are better at handling it than I am, it might be the best alternative for you as it is popular and well established, but I was looking for something I'd be happy to use every day, and Networked Blogs didn't tick my boxes.

Next I looked at Yahoo's RSS feed. To allow people to follow this way, you need to add Blogger's "Subscription Links" gadget (which offers a couple of other options I've never heard of.... maybe I'll research them one day) and then people can read your posts on their Yahoo home page. As a blogger, it's easy to get people to follow you that way, but as a reader it can be quite cumbersome. I follow half a dozen blogs this way and any more would squeeze out all the photos of cute kittens clutter the page up too much.

Finally I took a look at Bloglovin'. I wasn't optimistic - for some reason I thought it was the exclusive territory of beauty bloggers. But I couldn't have been more wrong and oh my goodness it is SOOOOOO easy to use!

First of all you need to register with them, using the link above, then you are given the option of importing all the blogs you follow with Google reader. Just sit back and wait for a few minutes and there they are. What's more, you get the option of having a daily email with all the new posts from the blogs you follow, so you can have your morning browse without ever straying from the comfort of your inbox. How good is that? And they even have an app for iPhone or IPad so you can read them on your way to work.

As a blogger, you can register your blog with them to get people to follow you that way. Register as above, go to the profile button at the top right and choose "My Blog" then click on the blue "Claim Blog" button and paste in the URL of your blog. You will be given a small piece of HTML code to add to your blog and then the job is done, And once you've claimed your blog, you will get a helpful email with tips and ideas.

I moved all the blogs I follow over to Bloglovin' and registered both the blogs I write with it. The whole thing, from starting registration to completing the work on both blogs, took less than 15 minutes.

so........

If you are a blogger I hope my research above has helped you to decide how you are going to let your followers keep on reading your posts.

If you are one of my followers I strongly suggest following me with one of the above methods - or of course by email, so that all my blog posts land in your inbox where you can choose to save the ones that you think you may want to refer back to.

I'm going to post this on both Grape Vine and Onions and Paper in the hope that it may be of help to my friends and followers in both places.

One reader is going to miss Google reader so much he's written a song about it....


A Goodbye Song for Google Reader by Hit Reach