Rediscovering my blog!

I can't believe that I haven't blogged at all in the last two years - I don't know where the time goes!! Anyway I decided that I needed to start again as I accidentally lost all my pictures, patterns, photos etc, last summer when my computer was upgraded - I know I should have backed it all up and really thought I had but obviously not and it can't be undone unfortunately!

Papers: Kate Knight paper stack
Stamp: PMA Retail Therapy

Today is as good a time as any as one of my cards has been published in Simply Cards and Papercraft magazine, issue 94 - it's so exciting to see your cards in print! I also won a small prize so that was great too! It was one of three cards entered for their Card Designer of the Year competition. I didn't expect to win such a huge competition but it's nice to see they liked one of my cards enough to print it in a future issue of the magazine. These are the other cards I entered:

Card blank: Little Claire tag card
Stamp: Little Claire Flowerhead

This is one of Little Claire's tag cards and one of my favourite of their stamps Flowerhead, cut into four jigsaw pieces. I also won a small prize for this when Little Claire featured it on their blog in the countdown to Christmas. So now I have a nice new stamp to play with too! The second photo is the back of the card which has a ribbon bow on it. The purple colours of the ribbon matched each other much more closely in real life, but the camera has made one of them look rather blue.

The last card was made using a recently discovered technique of cutting metal flowers from a recycled pop/beer can using a Sizzix Bigz die. I first saw a video on youtube and couldn't wait to get a suitable die to have a go (with grateful thanks to my friend Rozzy for ordering it for me)! I think they will feature a lot on my cards this year and I have saved loads of different cans to experiment with!

Die: Sizzix Bigz Flower Daisies #2
Papers: Dovecraft Winter Wonderland