Race For Life 2012

Please sponser me for this years Race For Life in aid of Cancer Research UK. The page also details my recent health stuggles and why you should donate to this amazing cause.

Clairs Cardmaking And Scrapbooking

I have set up a new blog which I will be spending abit more time on at the minute but I will still be keeping this blog active too. The new blog is solely to do with cardmaking and scrapbooking. I feel that I need to keep my crafting seperate from my general chit chat. From time to time I will cross link through here to the new blog but I will be keeping my rantings on music, the internet, My 50, postsecret, tv etc on this blog only. Thank you for your support and please feel free to visit my new blog site if you feel it may interest you. www.lexon5.blogspot.co.uk Please spead the news as I am always looking for new viewers for both sites. x

Halloween Fun

I am amazed at how quickly i have got my halloween scrapbooking done considering the party wasnt until saturday night. I think the reason is because i have tried to be alittle more organised this time. The night before i gathered to gether all sorts of halloween and autumn elements and put them all together on my craft table. When i had made space that is. This way i already new which pages i needed to use - as i tried to use the 12x12 halloween papers as i can not use them for anything else - and had matching elements with it. as well as themed elements i had black, orange, purple and green tags, ribons, brads etc incase i decided to us them.

What you might not believe if that the bright bold halloween party page of the pumpkin carving is actually the reverse of the calm natural looking pumpkin fun page. it seemed a shame to waste the other side and the orange already matched the pumpkin theme. It did however effect some of my choices for embellishments as i could not add brads or write directly onto the page.

Please check out my halloween pages on www.docrafts.com/lexon5

Halloween Party 2010



I had a fantastic time last night at our halloween party. We decided to invite fans and friends round to our house for alittle celebration. Our normal routine for halloween is turn all the lights off and watch films upstairs ignoring the knocks on the door from kids wanting to stuff their faces with sweets. This year I wanted something different. Was it because I was in a party mood, wanted to be the   hostess, wanted to socialise with friends and get merry? No, it was because id bought a crapload of halloween and autumn craft stuff and needed to use it up so i could buy more craft stuff. And I wanted a rocking party.  



The Pumpkin



The Guests





My Stampin Up Stash

My order for Stampin Up finally arrived!! Apparently they have backlogs at the moment and also a misspelling of my postcode did not help but it got here in the end. It was well packaged and had an order form with everyones individual names on which made it easier for me to sort out as I was that busy trying to work out what I should buy on the night that I didnt have a clue what goodies the other girls had got. I bagged everyones up straight away and set off with my delivery service as I knew everyone was eager to start playing with them. I felt alittle bit like santa at christmas. I was amazed by how many stamps I had bought as id not realised. Its all product numbers to me and id forgotten what id ordered.

One thing that I was disappointed with one is that the wooden stamps are self assembly. I dont like wooden stamps anyway and use clear stamps normally but the particular sets I liked didnt have the option and only came in wooden. To find that before I could use them I had to spend time and sit down and stick the images to the front and the actual stamp to the back I wasnt pleased with. Im very limited in time so by the time I had put them together and found storage for them in my room I didnt have anytime to play with them. I think that for the price that you pay for them they should be ready to use. Also it has meant that the image on the front that you look at is not inline with the actual stamp behind so is even harder to use than a normal wooden stamp. Also I dont think i attached the stamps straight so I will have 'fun' using them as it will be hard to get them square. I contacted the demonstator and she responded to say that it is so you can trim the image closer if you wish before putting it on the block or so you can mount it on cling mount if you prefer clear stamping. Unfortuately I dont have time to cut aroud each stamp so they have been stuck on as they are and there was no mention of how you would us the stamps with acrylic blocks so they are now firmly attatched to wooden blocks. I will have to see how I go but worry that it will not make the best out of my stamping. Will update you on it later on.

Dog scrapbooking from a catlover

I am very pleased that this week I have been able to scrapbook the pictures of my two dogs that I had when I was younger. Although I am a catlover and dogs seem to hate me, me and my mum gave dog owning a try twice when I was younger. Unfortunatley both weres unsuccessful and we had to give them away to new homes but I enjoyed them while we had them.


Judy was a house destroyer and very quickly turned from the cute floppy eared pup to a pointy eared fox who loved nothing more than chewing on wires and tearing down walls. Assuming bordom was her reason for been destructive, and not that she was evil, we felt she needed someone who was in more to entertain her and gave her a new home.

Our second dog Blue was lovely but we soon found that this border collie cross must of been cross with a great dane or a giant. My most recent post on my scrapbooking gallery shows me and him together. (www.docrafts.com search lexon5)  Amazingly he is only a pup on these pictures. The was very tall and had very long legs with massive paws on the end. Although much loved he was very difficult to walk due to his size and my lack of strength and we felt that we werent able to give him enough excercise for his size. Begrudgingly we had to give him back so I have scrapbooked my photos of him as a lasting memory.
 
I am still ongoing with my cat scrapbooking and hope to get some more pages done in the next few weeks. Keep checking in to see how i go. Check my docrafts gallery for what I have already posted on there too.

Docrafts Focus Group

Weary and jetlagged I arrived at the secret location (well, no one told my satnav where it was) just hours after getting off the plane. I was greeted by Nicci, Becky and Kerry-Jane from the Docrafts team and asked to take a seat. I was joined by I think 10 other local crafters and we started to look at different possible product ranges that Docrafts were considering using in the near future.

They had mock ups so the images were flat but the girls explained to us were shimmer, shine and other elements would be. There was a new fairy range that had mixed reviews. They weren't your typical cutesy ones which is good if you want to broaden your appeal as often when I've done my fairy cards they are only really any good for children. These fairies looked to be in their late teens themselves and had a variety of poses. The colours were nice - blue and purple - but they were darker than you would maybe expect for that theme.

Posh Pets was the next theme which I loved. It was a mixture of regal dogs and cats - proud poodles and posh Persians. They realised that often you are a cat OR dog lover and so had a good mixture and considered selling the stamps individually as for such as myself I would only want the cat stamps to scrapbook with. It was however argued that you craft for other people so you could do a dog lover a birthday card extra. I was very impressed with the quality of the image but found the backing papers colours to be quite pale. Paler than I'd expect for such a regal array of animals.

Again working on the animal theme they had a safari range which was lovely. Although I have a lot of similar products this one stood out. I liked that it wasn't specifically aimed at young children but it wasn't that grown up that it was no longer cute. They had hit that happy medium where you could use it for any age range or gender. I especially liked the backing papers. Many of mine are that busy with pattern that you don't want to put anything over it or that plain that it doesn't colour coordinate enough with it. Again I thought they'd hit the mark with this.

Although that was the fun part the main part was them trying to find out if they, and particularly the Creativity magazine was doing the best it could for its readers. We discussed price, packaging, content, regularity, features, availability. Does it need to be exclusive to craft stores or should you be able to nip to the supermarket and get it with your local shop? Is there too much 'other craft' and should it stick to just paper crafting? Should they provide 'sister' publications? Are free papers something that the market wants?

We also touched a little on the website. It became clear that this is a hot topic especially with the launch of the Creativity Club and the restyling of the website. Unfortunately time did not account for this and they stated that they would do future focus groups based on the website. I think that this is definitely needed and think that it would be nice if they could ask the same people back to discuss this issue so that they can get a full overview of what readers want.

I had a fantastic night, learnt a lot and made some new friends. I would love to be involved in something like that again as you do feel closer to the product and a lot of the Docrafts aim is to get a loyal network. If anyone is ever asked to be a part of this process I would definitely take up the opportunity to have your say.