Guest designer today

Morning all...we often have guest designers on here...and this is one we have had every once in a while...Welcome back Anna Parker.

I sent her a sketch a little while ago...this one from Sketchy thursdays....

 and here is what she sent me back!

and here are some close ups...

here is the link to Anna's blog - http://www.mycreations-anna.blogspot.com/... there are some gorgeous pages on there!

And don't forget that everything on the website is 65% off ...so check out the last of the bargains!

Use it up!

Hi everyone! This month I was excited to work with the Basic Grey Picadilly collection, which will be in the shop really soon! One of the things I love about collection packs is the cover sheet with mini pics of all the papers and goodies inside - they are so pretty laid out all together like that. So I got to thinking... there must be something I could do to make use of the front sheet and incorporate it into a project.

I was inspired to cut out the little squares of patterned paper and see where they led me...

After a little bit of playing around I figured out how to make a folded flower using 5 tiny squares of paper. I love how they turned out so thought I would share with you how I created them.

1. Take a mini paper square

2. Fold it diagonally across the centre

3. Fold the 2 sides inwards to meet the centre 'corner' of the triangle. (When you hold it flat it will be square)

4. Where the 2 flaps meet in the middle, fold those pieces back on themselves.

5. Repeat with 4 more squares until you have 5 pieces like this

6. Using a wet glue or strong adhesive, slot the folded pieces together and glue each 'petal' in place to create the flower shape.

7. Cover up the uneven centre with a pretty embellishment

8. Use the finished flowers to embellish your project :)

I hope I've inspired you to find some interesting ways to use things up! I'd love to hear your ideas or see your projects :)

Amanda x

a different kind of...

Morning all....while looking though the boxes at Papermaze i found some of the new Basic Grey Picadilly and some small little reels. Keep an eye out as both of these will be going up on the website very soon!

As soon as i saw them i knew i had to make a card with a difference and this is what i came up with.

i cut a strip of paper to match the length of the reel and it is about 12" long. I rolled the paper round both ends and adhered them with really strong glue. I cut out some of the flowers from some of the other papers to decorate inside. I kept it all flat as it had to be rolled.

I added some pins through the holes at the top...( please excuse my thumb...covered in brown ink!)

I then rolled it up and tied it off with some twine...and some Prima flowers.

Cropping tomorrow...

Tomorrow sees our first crop of 2012! And we're very lucky because the talented Lou has designed this month's kit :) She's used some of the latest BasicGrey papers from Picadilly, as well as a splash of glimmer mist. We'll be at Otley Village Hall from 10am until 5pm if anyone wants to join us!

the best of...

A quick shop update...Vanessa has lots of photos to show you in another post...but i wanted to show you what we have been up to today at the shop.

The walls are done, and the carpet is down...the trays have been washed and put back, so todays job was this....

taking out and sorting out over 500 packs of new cardstock! We have to unwrap them all and put them in colour order!
I took this photo of some of the boxes with new stock in that are mounting up and need to be unpacked..

.rumour has it that is being done next week! i cannot wait! though the shop still looks like this! lol...

as you can see there is no longer a hole in the roof or in the side of the wall...i had no idea before this how much a fire can do...and how long it takes to put everything back to normal!

anyway...onto pretty things...i asked our design team member Lisa to send me her three best layouts that she loved of 2011...and here is what she sent me...

7Gypsies Printer Tray

I adore these 7 Gypsies Printer trays. They are a blank canvas to decorate whatever your style. I chose to fill mine with photos and comments about the best parts of 2011. It is a round up of the year, and I enjoyed doing this so much, and love the result, I may be doing one at the end of every year!

I used the largest section to hold my title and some clustered flowers. I made sure I used my favourite colours and techniques to shoow my scrapbooking style this year too.

All the photos I used were momnchrome to avoid them clashing with the colours of the embellishments.

A couple of the sections I used for journalling on a tag. These were mostly about events I didn't have photos for but were still worth a mention.

To stick the swirls down, I cut around them, keeping them on their backing sheet, and glued parts down with PVA glue which then dried clear. This avoided the swirls that should be 'floating' from sticking to other embelishments.

Hello all.

Morning everyone...the shop is slowly getting back together...carpet being laid...more new products arriving at the door....and we should be open again soon.

But today i wanted to introduce you to our new design team member...please welcome Amanda Jones to our team.

Hi everyone! I'm Amanda and I live in sunny Devon with my big man Tony and little man Lewis,  who’s nine years old. I’ve been playing with paper and glue since I was a little girl, and have been scrapbooking in the format we currently know for more years than I’d care to mention out loud! I love all kinds of papercrafts but scrapbooking is where my heart lies. I have an eclectic style, one day creating a very minimal, graphic project and the next a textured project with layer upon layer of pretty papers and embellishments. It all depends on my mood and the product/photos that  are inspiring me at that moment. My love of creating has blessed me with the opportunity to work for some of my favourite crafting companies both as a designer and teacher. I'm excited to get to spend time here with you on the Papermaze blog!

Here are some of her recent pages that she has made...

Amanda is going to be in charge of our sketches that we are planning to have once a month, as soon as we are up and running again properly....so lots of new inspiration coming! So welcome Amanda to the team and we are excited about what you are going to show us.