Peterborough- Colemans, Hobbycraft & Sir Stampalot

I went to Peterborough for a bit of Christmas shopping last weekend and, of course, visited some craft shops whilst I was there!

Colemans stationers have a shop in Peterborough city centre and they have a decent selection of crafting items including docrafts ranges, painting products, rubber stamps etc. Worth a look if you're there but not really worth a special journey.

I then went to visit the Sir Stampalot store which is located out of the city in the Werrington business park area. I have visited the store quite a few times but recently have been disappointed by the stock they have. It almost looks like the shop is not actually open when you visit, but if you buzz, they will let you in. I have bought from their website before and have received very good service so, if I was you, I'd spend my time browsing their website and ordering that way rather than making a special visit to the shop.

I also went to Hobbycraft that has recently opened at the Peterborough Garden Park, just outside the city. It is a large store and has a good selection of different crafting products, as Hobbycrafts do. There were no particular bargains there this time but when I visited after Christmas last year, I managed to pick up beautiful bright coloured A4 envelopes for 10p each of 15 for £1 which was a pretty amazing bargain, so I will definitely be visiting again after the weekend!!!

My Chemical Romance & Green Day photo albums

I go to lots of gigs/concerts and take millions of photos!!! As I don't always want to properly scrapbook them all, I have started to make some shaped chipboard mini albums to put my photos into without too much effort being needed!

I usually use my cricut to cut myself a template and then use 8x8 chipboard, bought from the NEC, and plain A4 card to make up the album pages. The rings also came from the NEC and work out at something daft like 25p each. I have seen similar albums online for around £10 but they only hold a small number of photos, and they are not as good (even if I do say so myself!!!)

This 'My Chemical Romance' album is a simple octagonal shape with each side curved inwards to give the spiders web effect and then 'stardust stickles' glitter glue for the web detail. The large spider decoration was cut from thin card using the cricut 'Indie Art' cartridge and then embossed with silver embossing powder to give it a slightly distressed look. This was then simply glued to the chipboard cover.

This album is for my photos of 'Green Day' and was even simpler to make than the MCR one above. I again used my cricut 'Indie Art' cartridge to create a template and cut out the 2 chipboard covers and about 40 pages for the inside of the album. The covers were then coloured using a Tim Holtz distress ink (stormy sky) applied directly to the chipboard. The eyes and nose of the skull were cut from spare chipboard, inked to match the base, and then also inked with a 'platinum planet' brilliance inkpad and then attached with some Anita's pva glue.

SIMPLE!!!