Little Crafter, Big Field

Well, I don't know about you but the weather up in North Wales has been glorious - save for this morning when it clouded over but I blame dad getting the cover off the BBQ for that one. I've just spent the whole week hiking in the Lake District but before I went off on my hols, I (finally) got myself a stall at a local event.

Now I'm not saying I've reached that point where I was a big fish in a little pond (because I know for a fact that I have most definitely not) but I was certainly well out of my depth as I soon realised.

The event in question was the Abergele Carnival and because I worked in a cafe in the town before heading off to university, I knew about it and on more than one occasion had been down to the park to wander around and grab an ice cream after work. So I thought it would be a great chance to sell my cards: a local event, the possibility of bumping into people I knew, the weather promised to be good, I had my newly found confidence from New Directions with regards to networking and talking to people. I thought it was going to be a good day.

Oh how wrong was I.

It turns out that I still have a heck of a lot to learn about fairs and especially outdoor ones. I was just too small. I blended into the background and no one really looked twice. My location was slightly unfortunate although I though being placed next to the pageant "arena" (or whatever you want to call it), lots of people would be coming past later in the afternoon, including the carnival queens themselves. However, theatre group to the left of me, children's charity to the right (as the song goes sort of goes), I was nearly invisible - especially next to the big Spongebob Square Pants and Piglet cuddly toys.

My biggest problem in terms of presence was that while my table and display was practically the same as Victoria Baths II, a field is much bigger than a swimming baths or a village hall. I am literally too small to be outdoors for now at least. I have a long way to go before I attempt an event of that size again. Next year? We'll see. I'm definitely not ruling it out just yet.

CAS-ual Friday

CAS-ual Fridays

Time for blog entry 2 of 2. This weeks CAS-ual Fridays challenge was to create a card featuring things in the sky. I chose to stick to a summer theme and straight away I thought about the ELO song, Mr Blue Sky. To me, that is the ultimate summer tune and I decided I wanted that to feature on my card.

I used a bright blue card blank and left it plain, only adding the message and a single cloud with the sun peeping out from behind it. I used white texture card for the cloud and added some dimension with blue coloured pencils. This was attached to the blank with foam pads. The sun was done in a similar way, yellow card and shaded with yellow and orange pencils. I glued this instead of using foam pads.

For the sentiment, I knew I wanted a loopy font, so I went onto word and flicked through until I found it. After typing out the message, I was able to copy it directly onto the card with black pen.


Hopefully Mr Blue Sky will make his appearance at some point. It's meant to be August!

CAS-ual Fridays

CAS-ual Fridays

Yes, it's that time of the week again. Already. My summer is  flying by far to quickly; the first CAS-ual Fridays challenge I did was the day before I left Manchester for the summer!

Anyway, this week's challenge was to create a card using strips of colour or pattern. 

I took my inspiration from the great British weather we are having at the moment(!) I kid you not, it had been raining constantly today. It's JULY. Probably doesn't help that we are currently watching le Tour and seeing all that sunny sunny weather. Rant over.

I had hoped that it would turn out slightly better than it has, now that it's completely finished it looks alright. I used strips of blue(ish) paper and card to create the rain on a grey card blank (if only the rain over here was that colourful *sigh*). I then wanted a really bold colour for the umbrella and details so I chose to used various shades of pink and red. I finished off with pen detail, a peel-off message, and a strip of ribbon.

The butterfly (probably as confused as the rest of us about the rain) was a bit of an after thought. I had recently gotten my hands on some shrink plastic shapes (thank you Papercraft Inspirations!) and I was giving them a go today. I used ProMarkers to colour in the butterfly and watched fascinated as it shrunk before my eyes in the oven. I may be using more of these in the future, if only to watch them shrink!

It seemed to fit well with the whole British Summer theme anyway. Hope you like it!