Yesterday I visited the Springfields outlet shopping centre in Spalding, Lincolnshire and found a proper bargain in one of the shops there. I'm not sure what the name of the shop is but it is situated opposite the 'Whittards' tea & coffee shop, near to the main entrance of the garden centre. The shop sells lots of items that would usually be available in catalogues sent out to schools (ESPO, TTS, NES Arnold etc.). Some of their things are nice and cheap and some of them are pretty expensive but it's the sort of place that you have to have a look in because you never know what they will have. At the moment they have packs of coloured foil paper (50x76cm) at £4 for 5 packs. Each pack contains 25 large sheets so I got 125 sheets for only £4! They have red, green, blue, gold & silver. It is only paper thickness but I have already tried it with an embossing folder and it has worked really well. Definitely worth a trip if you live anywhere nearby!
I also went to Carole's Crafts which is at the Baytree Garden Centre just outside of Spalding in Weston. This shop used to be a Craft Central before they went into liquidation but is now Carole's Crafts. When it was still Craft Central, it was always worth a look as they had new stuff every week but now the stock very rarely changes and whenever I pop in, I seem to be the only person in there. They do have a good selection of core'dinations 12x12 papers stocking a wide range of the colours available including the Tim Holtz range. They also stock things like ribbon, ink pads, glitter, peel-offs etc but nothing that is particularly new or exciting. They do also stock cricut cartridges and can order in ones that are not in stock but these are about double the price of other places such as http://www.craftsulove.co.uk/ website.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Boston, Lincolnshire
I went to the small town of Boston in Lincolnshire yesterday and was plesantly surprised by the craft supplies on offer there. There is a Dunelm fabric shop which sells quite a large range of crafting materials including dovecraft templates & stamps, 12x12 & 8x8 paper stacks, packs of cards & envelopes, a wide selection of crafttime products and also art materials such as acrylics and mount board. The prices were standard but they did seem to have quite a good selection of sale materials too.
I also visited the Oldrids department store in the centre of Boston where on their second floor, they also have a crafting department. They mainly stock the docrafts range and currently have the new christmas offerings such as the 'me to you winter wonderland' & 'at christmas time' ranges. They also have the very nice large 5x7 stamps that are new from docrafts (I was very tempted by the christmas tree one but didn't buy it just yet...). With the docrafts range, they do seem to round up the prices when the docrafts rrp ends in a 5p e.g. the 5x7 stamps retail at £6.95 but are £7 in this store. Not a huge amount, I know, but if you're buying a lot it can make a difference. They also stock a selection of ink pads e.g. distress inks, brillance inks & memento, as well as essentials like promarkers, pearlescent card & peel offs. They also stock a selection of decoupage from different companies and quite a few rubber stamps, both wood mounted & acrylic. I have visited this store before and their craft range changes quite quickly and they always have a selection of sale items including cricut cartridges & the cricut gypsy at the moment.
For such a small place, both of the shops stock a good range and between them cover a lot of different products.
I also visited the Oldrids department store in the centre of Boston where on their second floor, they also have a crafting department. They mainly stock the docrafts range and currently have the new christmas offerings such as the 'me to you winter wonderland' & 'at christmas time' ranges. They also have the very nice large 5x7 stamps that are new from docrafts (I was very tempted by the christmas tree one but didn't buy it just yet...). With the docrafts range, they do seem to round up the prices when the docrafts rrp ends in a 5p e.g. the 5x7 stamps retail at £6.95 but are £7 in this store. Not a huge amount, I know, but if you're buying a lot it can make a difference. They also stock a selection of ink pads e.g. distress inks, brillance inks & memento, as well as essentials like promarkers, pearlescent card & peel offs. They also stock a selection of decoupage from different companies and quite a few rubber stamps, both wood mounted & acrylic. I have visited this store before and their craft range changes quite quickly and they always have a selection of sale items including cricut cartridges & the cricut gypsy at the moment.
For such a small place, both of the shops stock a good range and between them cover a lot of different products.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Take That Scrapbook pages details
The 3 Take That 'Shine' scrapbook pages are a bit of a departure for me as i usually like to go for a very clean simple style. The entire feel of the song as they perfomed it just didn't fit with that style so it was time for me to try something new. I'm glad i did and i am pleased with how it's turned out.
I wanted a really bright coloured floral 12x12 paper to use for the base of the page but couldn't find that paper that was "just right", so in the end i started with a dcwv 12x12 plain sky blue cardstock that has a slight texture to it. To get that mad floral feel, I used my new alcohol inks and (of course) my promarkers to dye some plain white paper flowers into a wide range of colours. I then added some card candi to the centre of each flower in a contrasting colour. I already had a selection of bug themed peel-offs that had come from an old qvc kit and they worked really well too. I used my alcohol inks to add a bit of colour to the butterfly peel-offs and stuck them onto some ironed angelina fibres before cutting them out. The colours and iridescence matched the dancers in the photographs really well. I put the caterpillar peel-off onto some bright pink card as during the song, Mark Owen actually rode on the back of a giant pink caterpillar- it had to be recalled somewhere in the pages!
I'm not usually a big fan of journalling and i know its something that i should do more of and, as it was a new style of scrapbook page for me, now seemed like a good time. I wanted to incorporate the Take That logo in my pages, so I made myself an acetate stencil and then used this as a guide for my journalling shape. It did take quite a lot of careful planning of what to write, but i think the end result was worth it.
As the pages were so well packed with detail i kept the photos quite simple just matting onto a contrast colour card and then attaching to the pages at straight angles to make them stand out against the 'busy' background.
The pages took me ages and as i've now got 57 others to do i can see that the scrapbook isn't going to be completely finished for quite a while!!!
(we'll not mention the million other 'projects' that are in the pipeline too!!!)
I wanted a really bright coloured floral 12x12 paper to use for the base of the page but couldn't find that paper that was "just right", so in the end i started with a dcwv 12x12 plain sky blue cardstock that has a slight texture to it. To get that mad floral feel, I used my new alcohol inks and (of course) my promarkers to dye some plain white paper flowers into a wide range of colours. I then added some card candi to the centre of each flower in a contrasting colour. I already had a selection of bug themed peel-offs that had come from an old qvc kit and they worked really well too. I used my alcohol inks to add a bit of colour to the butterfly peel-offs and stuck them onto some ironed angelina fibres before cutting them out. The colours and iridescence matched the dancers in the photographs really well. I put the caterpillar peel-off onto some bright pink card as during the song, Mark Owen actually rode on the back of a giant pink caterpillar- it had to be recalled somewhere in the pages!
I'm not usually a big fan of journalling and i know its something that i should do more of and, as it was a new style of scrapbook page for me, now seemed like a good time. I wanted to incorporate the Take That logo in my pages, so I made myself an acetate stencil and then used this as a guide for my journalling shape. It did take quite a lot of careful planning of what to write, but i think the end result was worth it.
As the pages were so well packed with detail i kept the photos quite simple just matting onto a contrast colour card and then attaching to the pages at straight angles to make them stand out against the 'busy' background.
The pages took me ages and as i've now got 57 others to do i can see that the scrapbook isn't going to be completely finished for quite a while!!!
(we'll not mention the million other 'projects' that are in the pipeline too!!!)
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