Last of the New England
08/11/2011
I had planned on sharing the last few pictures of the New England Challenge last week, but with no Wi-Fi at the hotel, it was rather difficult!
These delightful treasures are made by Tina, I think Tina has really captured the New England theme in her card designs. What do you think?
This cranberry red card is such a perfect match to the ribbons, so clever the way Tina has used the parcel ribbon as inspiration for her embellishment.
This card was on display at the NEC over the weekend, and yes I think it sold a few button boxes! It is a super special card Tina.
Your hand stitching has always amazed me Tina, it looks so realistic. This card could be used for a birthday or Valentines NOT just for christmas!
Super, super cool, I love it. The little spotty pot is rather cheeky Tina, looks wicked.
How cute is that? Just think what could be inside..................
Thank you Tina for your wonderful creations, I hope you had a fun time playing. I have just uploaded all the challenge goodies to a Facebook Album and you can view them HERE.
I got myself into a little bit of a pickle last night and ended up at A&E in Dorchester. I was rather tired but fancied a bit a crafting, there was not very much on telly, so thought a bit of sewing would be good. I always sit on the sofa with my legs curled up under me, as I moved position to get comfy my scissors embedded themselves 2 inches into my right heal. I am ok but rather sore and I feel rather stupid, I have a few stitches and a bandaged foot. I have been told to rest the leg, no standing for 7 days, ummmmm I go to Paris in in 6 days and have to stand up for 12 hours a day. Oh what fun!!! I never knew crafting could be so painful.
Take care
Woooweee.....
07/11/2011
How can we thank everyone that came to see us at the NEC over the weekend - you blew our socks off!!!
Not only did Tony and I break an all time daily total on Saturday, but we also broke the record for the largest UK show EVER. Remember we have been exhibiting at shows for 16 years and so during these current tough times, not even in our wildest dreams did we expect to be so busy. Thankfully Rachie, Bev and the team had loaded the van with a mega amount of stock, so we only ran out of some ribbons during Sunday. Maybe they knew something?!
We met such wonderful people and had a delightful time, it was fun and enjoyable. It was fantastic to speak to so many of our customers and blog followers, and to hear your stories. It was great to see so many cake visitors, and thank you for coming specially from the Cake show to find us. All the projects were carefully scrutinised and photographed. Although I do think Wilkinsons should give me some commision for sending so many people to their stores for the felt hearts I certainly hit the spot with that Hello wednesday project HERE.
When Rachie saw the state of the ribbon units this morning, well........, sorry but her comment is unprintable!! She and the girls could not believe it, Bev even asked "What had I done with the ribbons?" Ummmmm Sold them! They have been busy restocking for Paris, which we leave for on Sunday.
I only managed to catch up with the Friday FREEBIE comments this morning. Our hotel had no mobile signal and they do not offer wi-fi, so I was a bit in limbo all weekend. Thanks for all your super messages. Mollie did the honours of picking from the Bingo bag this week.
The winner is number 34 = Joanne Edwards
Ooh another show, I can only imagine the goodies that the lucky visitors will get to browse!! 
Hope it goes (or is going to be accurate) very well indeed for you x
Thank you Joanne, it did! If you send me an email to craftyribbons@gmail.com I will let you have all the details for your voucher, I am sure you will have a little wishlist already.
That's me done for tonight I am pooped!! I have some super Challenge goodies to share with you this week, they were hand delivered to the stand, I have had to put them under lock and key - Rachie has fallen head over heals in love with one of the cards. To be honest I am not sure any of the creations would be left in the box if I left it on the work table overnight!!!
Friday FREEBIE - 42
04/11/2011
Another Friday, wow this year has gone really fast. I just can not believe that we are back at the NEC at Hobbycrafts again!
As it IS the first Friday of the month then it must be voucher Friday.
A £20 voucher up for grabs for just leaving us a comment, that's not bad is it.
Thanks to every blogger and customer that has come to visit us on our stand, it is great to speak to you all.
Have a fantastic weekend.
If you are unable to leave a comment due to our spam filters, please email it to craftyribbons@gmail.com and we will add it for you.
All the comments go into our "Bingo" bag and we draw a random number(s) on Monday.
Please check back to see if you have won, it is up to you to claim your prize - we do not contact you.
Hello wednesday - button love
02/11/2011
Don't you just LOVE wednesday's? Say hello to wednesday "hello wednesday" It's all downhill from now on to the weekend - yippee!!!
As you are aware I am always on the look out for items that I can use for projects and ideas. One of my favourite stores for this is Wilkinsons, I made a quick trip to Poole last week, so just HAD to take a look at Wilkinsons new Christmas bits. I do not believe they had their full display out, and to be honest I was rather disappointed as there was very little I thought I could use. But my star buy were some felt hearts, and look what I made...............
......some button love!! Mine are very festive in red and green and the merry Christmas ribbons, but they would also be awesome for Valentines.
I simply stuck buttons on with PVA glue, I used the Christmas Button Box HERE and had a good old play. I just added buttons one at a time until the felt heart was covered.
They were an amazing price at £1.50 for 4 hearts, they only come in red and green and they only had a few boxes........so I bought the lot!!! Well you never know.... I only wish they had felt trees or stars, maybe I will have to take another trip to Poole next week.
We are all ready to go, Rachie and her little team of helpers had the stand bursting with stock and loaded onto the van by mid afternoon yesterday. I only heard the van back doors open on a few occasions as little "forgotten" items were popped in!!
Where are we going?
Please come and say "hi"!
Halloween party
31/10/2011
We had a Halloween party for the little guys after school today. But Rachie forgot to bring Mollies witches costume, so we dressed her up as a mummie. The poor thing had no idea what we were doing but she bravely let, Syd, Sam and myself wrap her in loo roll!
With a witch a skeleton and a mummie running around loose in the warehouse, I had to trap them behind bars to pick this weeks Friday FREEBIE winner.
What a gruesome lot, but they did pick a number from the "Bingo" bag.
Number 11 = Julie
Hope everyone has a lovely weekend. We have no plans other than taking our new kittens to the vet's to be vaccinated.
Congratulations Julie you get a bunch of the NEW Snow tree ribbons, all we need is your address please to craftyribbons@gmail.com. We hope your kittens got on fine at the vets.
Mega thanks to everyone that left us a comment, sorry we have no idea what went wrong with the auto notificcation emails. Fingers crossed they work tonight.
Have a great Halloween evening. Did you see the PINK moon on Saturday evening!!
Friday FREEBIE emails
28/10/2011
It would appear that not everyone received their automatic email to notify you there was a NEW posting.
No idea why! But if you are looking for the Friday FREEBIE please click HERE
Friday FREEBIE - 41
28/10/2011
I have been sitting here at the computer for a while now, just staring at the screen. I think I must have the Friday blues, my mind has gone blank and my fingers seemed to be unable to type.
O.K. I disappeared for a coffee and I am back, and raring to go!! As it is Friday it must be FREEBIE time. What little delight shall I offer my dedicated followers. As our blog is not run using blogger we are unable to have a follower list, which is rather a shame. We have followers on our Challenge blog (here) and we had a very excited Karen yesterday. Mandy picked a random follower to give a ribbon prize to, Karen picked the contemporary Bev's bag. Which was wonderful as she had only just received our mailing about Bev's bags and had not decided which one to buy!! I sent it to you yesterday Karen so with luck, it should be arriving on your doorstep this morning!! So why not become a follower of the Challenge Blog, you never know YOU could be the next random winner!
Lost my train of thought, oh yes Friday FREEBIE Prize, well we did Bev's bags last week.........................so..........................how about......................some of these little beauties..................
..........these new ribbons are going really well - but do not worry, Rachie has made sure we will have stock for Hobbycrafts at the N.E.C. in Birmingham next week. Anyone coming?
For a chance to win some of these new treasures just leave us a comment and we will pick a winner on Monday.
The sun is out today so I am hoping I can get a little bit of photography done. Yes we had some NEW ribbons delivered in the week, and I would love to be able to share them soon.
All the Top Five Challenge ribbons were posted out yesterday, so fingers crossed you will have your fab five christmas ribbons to play with this weekend. Any ideas what you are going to make? I still have a few creations to share from the New England Challenge and these are from Lucy.
Lucy this knocked me out when I opened the box - it is awesome. I love drift wood and am always dragging Tony to the beach for a bit of beach combing. He is never that impressed as he really dislikes sand!!
A very simple elegant card Lucy, great bow.
I really like this card, it shouts CHRISTMAS to me!
I had never thought of mixing our Bling Eyelash with the New England ribbons Lucy, but the colour match is perfect. Well done you.
I believe I have one or two parcels still to open from this Challenge, i will get these photographed and share them with you next week. Thanks for the inspiration Lucy, I do hope you had fun playing.
We hope you have an awesome weekend, and lots planned. Tony and I have been invited to a Halloween party, all I have to do now is try to persuade Tony to dress up!!! To be honest I think I would have a better chance of turning the moon PINK.
Challenge Blog - Bingo
27/10/2011
It's time for a NEW Challenge over on our challenge blog (here) and when the DT girls said we should do a Bingo Challenge I was completly flummoxed! Ok - I know what the game of Bingo is, ( I used to play it with my Nan), and I know we use a bingo bag for all our Friday Freebie numbers, BUT how can that be a challenge. Anyway, I shouted help and the girls came to my rescue.............
....this is the Bingo board and you have to select a line of three to make your creation..................ooooooh that's NEW to me (I get the feeling they are trying to push me out of my comfort zone!). Glitter - nope haven't any, ditto flowers although I could make some, embossing - rather on the scary side, lace - only have one and I used that on the last challenge.
Maybe I should look at it from the other side, what can I do. Ribbon (loads and loads of it!), I like the idea of hand made embellishments and I am sure I can find some gems.
That's my line Handmade embellishment, ribbon and gems. Do you want to see what I made, (believe it or not I am rather a nervous crafter) never thinking my creations are very good, so I always show the girls in the warehouse first. If I get a good reaction, I share with you all...................if not................back to the drawing board.
The flowers are my handmade embellishments, I sewed the flowers first using seam binding ribbon. I punched out the flower shape and made a hole in the centre then pushed the sewn flower through it. The gems were a problem, I could not find any. So in the end I raided Sydney's craft drawer!!! I always give her the little free packets you get on the craft magazines and I finally found the three little silver flower gems. I had not planned on using silver so I then did some faux stitching with a silver pen around the card and on the flowers.
Although I had used ribbon to make my flowers, I thought I still needed to use it again for the third item of the bingo challenge. Not seen this ribbon on our website? Yes you have.....it's seam binding......but I have printed on it using my ink jet printer. How cool is that! (Don't worry I will show you a little later.)
When I put all my card together I thought it looked a bit............well............plain. So I added a few extra faux stitched flowers. After the scariness had gone away I had so much fun making this card, why don't you come and join in with the challenge (here). We have a super prize this week, no NOT Ribbon, we have a sponsor - Mulberry Crafts
MulberryCraftsUK online shop is a Home-Based business run by Bev . At the moment we are focussing on providing miniature flowers made from genuine mulberry paper for crafts use - although we have a small selection of non -paper crafts too. Why mulberry paper? Because they are robust, realistic, look and last longer than ordinary paper and it provides a sustainable income for people in the cottage industry. In due course we will be introducing more of other craft materials which is not related to mulberry paper. Website - mulberrycraftsuk.co.uk
Bev has given a extra super collection of flowers for a prize. Ooooh I would like some of those.
For a chance to win, just join in with our challenge on our
Crafty Ribbons Challenge Blog.The DT have created some awesome cards to give you a little bit of inspiration, so go and have some fun!
Back to the "Print your own Ribbon"
Print your design onto paper or thin card.
Put double sided tape over the printing. Peel off the backing paper and place the seam binding ribbon over your design and stick to the paper. feed this back into your printer and print the same design again.
Carefully lift the seam binding ribbon away from the sticky paper.
That is it!!! Just think what you can do - ribbon to match your backing paper, ribbon to match your borders. The only down side is you can only print the length of A4 paper, but I am sure that will not stop you.
Nearly forgot you can find our seam binding HERE.
Hello wednesday - all about sewing
26/10/2011
Don't you just LOVE wednesday's? Say hello to wednesday "hello wednesday" It's all downhill from now on to the weekend - yippee!!!
A few weeks back I was asked by the wonderful Debbie from the Crafty Pad if I could use some of her sewing images with our ribbons and buttons. Ooooh that sounds fun, but I can not make cards so how about a little wallhanging?
I got to use my mod podge!!!
I cut strips from an old sewing pattern and covered my board with mod podge (oh it was like being a child again). I then layered the sewing pattern onto the board, overlapping and adding more mod podge where needed. Once it was covered I just flipped all the ends of the sewing pattern over to the back of the board and left it overnight to dry.
Next day the fun really started, play time. The theme for the challenge was "sewing", the images Debbie had sent me were all sewing related, so I printed a few out and layered them onto the board. I got a feel of what I wanted to do, I kept it all simple with a "pink" theme and went for it!!
The tape measure ribbon was a must, and a few buttons of course. I wanted to use Debbies Stitch Happy badge as the focal point of the wall hanging, so quickly turned it into a rosette style badge using 25mm pink gingham.
I cut a selection of ribbons into little squares with pinking shears to look like fabric.
I have never been asked to make something for another blog before, so I took this as a real honour. Thank you Debbie and all at The Crafty Pad for asking me.
The Crafty Pad are running a two week competition, so why not join in with the fun, you can read all about it here. Nearly forgot there are prizes.......
........this little lot from us AND some of Debbies images.
Have fun and get sewing!
Pouring with rain
24/10/2011
Gosh have we had some rain this afternoon, thankfully we had our warehouse gutters cleared from leaves last week. Good bit of thinking there Tony!
Even though it is half term we have had no little visitors, Sydney and Sam are way at their grand parents and little Mollie was off sick with a cold. Poor bunny, I saw her yesterday and she kept saying her nose was running away!!!
Rachie pulled the short straw and picked this weeks Friday FREEBIE winner.
Oooops - we got into a fit of giggles and did not realise that we should have picked two numbers from the "Bingo" Bag.....sorry.
So I will triple Rachies number to give us the second prize winning number. Got that! I hope so.
Number 11 = Mary
Hello All,
It would have to be the traditional Bevs bag for me.
Love the new grograin ribbons. Thanks for all the card ideas.
Have a great weekend,
Mary x
Number 33 = Frances
Ooooh it would have to be the traditional bag for me. I just love red and green at christmas.The snowmen are so cute as well. Here's hoping.
It looks like we have picked two traditional girls, all we need are your addresses please to craftyribbons@gmail.com Many thanks to everyone that left super comments and we hope you all had great weekends.
Glad to read you are liking my ghosts, I have had a suddern spurt at crafting in the last week, so more goodies to show you than normal.
Have a great evening and i will be back tomorrow. We hope Mollie feels better soon and that Bev enjoys the pleasure of watching the telly without the kiddies tonight!
my basket