A Year in Crafting - April

Hello everyone! Well I'm almost on time with this post, unlike my previous year in crafting post which should have been in January and I didn't get started till March doh!

So....April, what's happened? First let's recap on the subjects I shared last month and find out how April factored in.



Design Teams

Nothing new here, I'm still with Whimsy Stamps, Deep Ocean Craft and The Ribbon Girl and very happy, I have lots of time to craft and lots of freedom with how I craft so the mojo is still running pretty high currently. One small change is that The Ribbon Girl have started to stock Design Papers. Some of the papers they are stocking are from Maja and Pion, which I'm very happy about since as you must have guessed by now I LOVE their papers. But I've also been introduced to Lemoncraft papers and oh my, expect to see more makes with these papers in the future, because they are both beautiful and the quality makes them a joy to work with.

Animals and CAS

I'm continuing to explore my new found love for these. I really enjoy colouring animals in unusual colours, it makes me happy, don't worry though, I shan't be going around dying any animals pink or lilac in real life, your pets are safe lol!
I'm also really enjoying developing my CAS style (though CAS will NEVER replace my love of embellished cards), and have made 4 different ones just in April. They are also VERY useful when you are pushed for time or want something that's a little easier and cheaper to post.


Tutorials

I plan to continue these. That being said I only managed to get one made for April, though it was a full on tutorial and not just a colouring one. I do have some more colouring tutorials filmed, I just haven't found the time to edit or upload yet, partly because I had a lot of requests for commissioned cards this month (something I don't normally do a lot of), and editing and uploading are both time consuming and to be frank quite tedious (the fun part is the creation!). Also our internet, as I have mentioned before, is painfully slow as we are so far from the exchange. We are due to get improved internet in May and hopefully this will help a little, though it will never be super fast! So I will try and get some more uploaded in May.

Teaching

For those of you who don't already know, I am going to be teaching at my first craft retreat in September. For those of you who missed the news, this is going to be at Whimsy Stamps' 1st Annual Craft Retreat in Orlando. I am SO looking forward to it and mega excited and also very busy trying to plan what projects I am going to teach there.

So I would like to ask you all a favour, if you were attending a craft retreat at which I was teaching, what would be the thing you would most like to learn from me (if anything)?

Feedback will be so useful to me, so if you can, please leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts on this.

I have also been giving a lot of thought to teaching classes or a workshop perhaps in this country. I would be quite interested in doing this, especially if I could get another teacher or so who might be interested to join me, so who knows, anything could happen!


So what else?

Well I have been dabbling a little more in cards without stamped images, I'm really enjoying these at the moment. I love pretty papers and sometimes it's sooooo hard to cover these up with an image, omitting the image does mean you can showcase the papers a bit better.  Also sometimes it can be difficult to find just the right image, particularly for things like wedding/anniversary and congratulation cards. I find them to generally be a bit quicker to make in the main too, which can be a bonus when you need to come up with a card in a hurry! The only downside? Yet again I cannot make them work for a male card, males cards are still something I struggle with, though tackling animals and CAS should make that a little less painful in the main.

Also I had several of my cards published in Whimsy's online magazine and one even made the cover, that was super exciting!

So there you are, that's April in a nutshell....albeit a rather large nutshell.  Thank you so much for taking the time to read and share my journey with me.

Take care and happy crafting! :) xx