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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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.

Have A Gift Christmas

Morning all!

:-)

Another miserable day here in Glasgow!

Here is today's make!

Topper is a Forever Friends stamp inked with Momento ink which was then coloured with Promarkers.

I used Wild Orchid Crafts flowers and fabric flowers as embellishments in the corners with a hint of the DoCrafts golden berries to add some warmth.

I had some of the blue twine which I used instead of ribbon and the sentiment was edge distressed with the tim holtz tool.

Glossy accents was used to cover the candi dots and the edges of the image for decoration!

Forever Friends Christmas.

Good Morning All!

How are we today?

Here is today's make!

The image is a forever friends stamped in Momento ink and coloured with Promarkers.

Coloured twine, mulberry flowers from Wild Orchid Crafts and coloured candi dots.

Enjoy! :)

Birdie Christmas

Good morning everyone!

Cold and wet here in Glasgow today!

Here is today's make!

Vellum and paper stock layered up with coloured twine.

Image and sentiment cut out on cuttlebug and spellbinders nestibilities decorative elements dies.

Image is heat embossed in mirror gold.

Card finished off with Wild Orchid Crafts flowers and fabric flowers from an unknown source!

Snow Lady Christmas

Good morning everyone!!

How are we all today?

I thought I would share my latest creation with you all.

I bought this lovely and adorable stamp from NGCards and I thought that it was about time she was getting used!

The card has been layered with vellum papers and normal paper, embellished with some coloured twine I found lying around one of the embellishment boxes, wild Orchid Crafts flowers and candi dots.

The flowers in the lower left corner are left from Mum's stash and are made of fabric. I have no clue where she got them from!

The image was stamped in Momento ink and coloured with Promarkers.

Not cards but still crafty!

Hi all.

I didn't get the chance to do any paper crafting today, but I manged to get more of these done!

Thought I would try selling them on Facebook to see what would happen and have had a really good outcome so far!!

I only use silver components and glass beads :)

The spiders were more for myself!! :)