Last of the happy mail

The ribbon girl strikes again....

I have been looking for little pearl hearts for a while now and they just happened to be in the sale section so this was perfect for me!!

Now to get all the new stuff organised and then it is play time!!

More Happy Mail

Morning all!

This is what I got from DC in my latest delivery.

Everything was on sale too which makes life a little easier.

Cat stamps.

A4 Paper pack for Christmas

...some more paper.

and more paper and toppers...

These stamps and card was from NG Cards.

More house mouse stamps! :D

Blog Overhaul!

I had been using the same blog template since I started up in around 2010 so decided I would go for something simple and let my creations show themselves off!

I hope it looks better and less cluttered and I hope that you all find it better to have a nosey at what I am upto!

Meet my new kitten!

Hello everyone,

 

I'd like you all to meet my new kitten who is 8 weeks old.

His name is Thor and he sleeps on my craft and computer desk....he also seems to enjoy helping me open crafty parcels.

 

He is incredibly cute

 

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The Ribbon Girl

This is my first time ordering from the ribbon girl and I am very happy :)

 

Really good prices and the quality is amazing!!!

 

I might have made another order right after opening this one!

 

My kitten also enjoyed helping me inspect the new items :)

 

 

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First wedding anniversary make.

This was a spurt of the moment request from a friend as a gift for his first wedding anniversary.

Flowers are from Wild Orchid Crafts, paper cut with slice basic elements, peels offs for edging.

 

 

 

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More shinies.

 

I got these from LoTV the other day.

 

I am very pleased with my purchase and the new paper pad is stunning.

 

I fear a new stamp range addiction has started.....

 

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More happy mail!

I just cannot help it......

I caught up with the Inkylicious website and what they have brought out since my craft fair last year and ended up with some new purchases for Christmas.

Oops!!!!

 

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Happy mail!!

Well, I couldn't help myself.....

I got back onto DC and needed up having a catch up through various crafters blogs and sites and I ended up with some purchases falling miraculously into my shopping basket.......on several sites......

Here is my first lot of happy mail.

This was received from NG Cards and she sent with it one of her amazing cards she made!!!

So I ended up with a cute LoTV stamp (I fear a new addiction), a set of sentiment stamps and of course some forever friends...because I am still addicted too colouring them!

I bought the other wee stamp on the right as Incy had sent me one of the same type but a different design and it needed a friend :)

This is the card that Natalie made and i just had to show it off as it is, as always, stunning!!!

I had just been in a car crash so this was the perfect little pick-me-up I needed :)

Lifting the physical and emotional burden.

Well, as some of you will know who follow my blog etc, I decided to do a massive clear out.

To fill those who do not know in: My mother (LizG on DC) passed away in 2011, she was one of the main known people on the forum and her cards were amazing! 

She had so much stuff it was crazy. When she passed I took most of it not wanting to part with it as it was our hobby together. I have moved twice since then and it has been a nightmare due to the craft stash!

I have sold stuff off in droves previously but have kept a hold of a lot of things just out of not wanting to let them go.

Well, this week with finally finishing college and graduating and getting a new job, I decided it was time.

So I started clearing out.

Today was a massive day for me.

Overnight I had gotten 37 orders for things to send out to people and some of the stuff that was going was very hard to let go of, but I would never have used it! 

If I hadn't touched it in almost four years then when was I going too?

Her rock-a-block set, she had her name hand written on them. I hated the damn things but she used them every day and she had written her name on them in her calligraphy handwriting...that was a sentimental thing, but they were purchased, so I let them go.

Paper stock and card stock that I was sifting through, I remembered her buying it when she was with me, remembered her laugh, the way we used to joke and everything in between. Happy but equally heart breaking at the same time.

Her punches....I kept all of the Martha Stewart punches and some basics but I let over 100 punches be sold on. Some of which were her pride and joy, but why should I have just let her pride and joy sit there and get dusty?

Her embellishment folders. Those square papermania ones with trays in them. She had 15 of them. 

I looked through them, having never used anything that was in them, and decided to keep the purple folders and some of the things...that amounted to 2 folders filled. 

Why should it all just be sitting there getting dusty instead of going to happy crafters to put on little girls sparkly birthday cards?

Card blanks...why on earth would someone need over 2000 card blanks of a low quality? It baffles me, but never-the-less, she had them and somehow they did not seem as though they were mine.

There were some things that categorically were never going to be sold;

The Slice machine,

The Cuttlebug,

The pro and aqua markers,

The containers of spellbinders and provocraft folders,

The ink pads,

The 20 ringbinders of stamps,

The Glittergirls boards,

All of the things i had bought since her passing to add to the masses of stuff.

All in, I have sold £500 worth of stash. Cheaply, insanely cheaply, all in all it was worth about  double that second hand, but it is all now in a home that will look after it, use it, laugh while playing with it and it will even make some of the women smile on down days when they are feeling low and they decide to make a card.

I was divided about the flowersoft stuff. It was spread over two containers and I had said to two women who came to my house today to buy loads of things, that they could get a price for that too, luckily the woman said she didn't know anything about it so would leave it.

After they left with their haul, I looked at how much I had sold off in under 48 hours. It was remarkable. Panic set in.

Why was I doing this? Would Mum be mad at me? How would I feel tomorrow?

Well after about five minutes the tears set in. It was fear. Suddenly, the prized belongings of my mothers were in the hands of strangers and not together as a united group of things.

I started packing the Flowersoft stuff away and decided to look through it properly and I am so glad that I did.

As if the emotional ordeal of getting rid of some of this stuff was not enough, I come across a printed out poem my mother had written to her mother who had passed when she was ten. It was dated March 2004, I was 19 and had just left home and our relationship was rocky to say at least! 

It spoke of a mother's love being unconditional and everlasting, how she missed her Mum everyday but then at the end, I broke.

"My daughter is loving....."

She was talking about me, probably sitting up late at night at the computer after surfing the DC forums and wrote this from her heart when we were not in contact and not talking to each other...

I just sobbed.

So, this evening, I sit here with my box of tissues for the tears that have refused to fall for four years since her passing, which are now overflowing.

I feel happy, sad, thankful, grateful, mournful, nostalgic and like finally, the cracks are not being paved over, but dug out and fixed!

I had spent so long clinging onto every little thing I had of hers related to crafting that I didn't realise it was suffocating me. 

It surrounded me in this little blanket of security almost like she was still here, it wouldn't let me grieve.

Crafting will always be a part of my life, I will always keep a lot of it, but letting go of just over one third of it to make it more manageable physically has surprisingly lifted the emotional burden I have been unable to shift for years.

I am sure Mum will be up there smiling (but slightly annoyed that I sold and gave away some hand made embellishments of hers) knowing that my home is less cluttered....physically and emotionally!

I think I can finally call it MY craft stash.

Sorry for my absence!

Hi all you lovely crafty people!

I am so sorry!!

I was so active on the DC forums and all the social networking to do with card making around Christmas and then I vanished!

How I have missed you all!

I have had a lot going on...

I went back to college and I am 2 weeks away from graduating from my HND in Photography (at last) and I have also started a new job in photography working as a studio photographer. Very difficult to get that job straight off!!!!

So, I am also clearing out a lot of craft stuff as I have found it hard to cope with the sheer amount there is!

I do not use a lot of it, so keep an eye on my selling page :)

LOADS more coming up in the next few days to one week.

Some of the stuff still to be added is;

Literally 1000's of sheets of paper and card stock

Literally HUNDREDS of fiskars, martha stewart paper punches (and other brands),

Everything flowersoft related, inlcuding a box filled with every colour they ever did!

and loads more!

Hopefully pesky real life will leave me alone to colour in with my pens at some time shortly!