Wednesday 18 June 2014

Expanding Blog Hop

Last week my lovely Meadow Barn friend Jessie invited me to take part in a blog hop tour. As part of this blog hop I need to answer four questions so that you can to get to know me better and then nominate three fellow bloggers to take part. Apologies that I am late, this post should have gone up on Monday

1. What am I working on?
 
I am currently taking part in the 52 cards challenge and also trying to make a Christmas card for each prompt.  I am seriously behind at the moment, but hoping to get caught up soon!!  I am about to start making a mini book for the next nephew to have an 18th birthday next month - this is something I have done for all my nieces and nephews as it makes a very personal gift to give to them.  I am also turning my mind to September when I have my first fundraiser of the year, the date is now confirmed and several people have already asked my Mum if I will be making Christmas cards so I need to have a healthy stash of those to sell.
 


 
2. How does my work differ from others of the genre?
 
Personally I don't think that it does, I am certainly not one for thinking up new ideas, but I am very good at following instructions and adapting others ideas to fit my own style.  I do prefer very clean crafting, so rarely do messy crafts and I don't like making what I call lumpy pages so I prefer to keep my embellishing quite flat.
 


 
3. Why do I write/create what I do?
 
I just enjoy being crafty, I grew up around a Mum who did loads of sewing & knitting and a Gran who made soft toys, did knitting and crochet.  Even my Dad use to dabble in crafts and having learnt to sew in the army once did beautiful embroidery.  I use to love as a child getting craft sets for Christmas and couldn't wait till Boxing Day to be able to open the set and get crafting.  Once I started my nurse training I had very little time to craft but did the odd bit of knitting (especially when on night duty) and some embroidery.  I started seriously crafting in 1994 when I could barely walk after my back injury.  A friend loaned me some cross stitch patterns and Mr P was dispatched to the nearest craft shop to get me Aida and threads.  Very soon I was making lots of cross stitched cards (I didn't like working on big projects) and then I branched out into rubber stamping as handstitching cards is very time consuming.  In 2004 we did our first cruise and I remember about half way through the trip feeling a bit sad as I realised that all the wonderful photos we had would probably end up in a drawer along with all the thousands of other photos I had taken over the years.  Mr P then said 'why don't you make some albums like your friend Sy does'.  At the time Sy was a Creative Memories rep so she was invited over to do a scrapbooking party and before I knew it I had another crafty hobby.  Most of my time now is taken up with scrapbooking and cardmaking, following an RSI in both wrists I struggle with knitting now and I just don't seem to get the time to sit down with my cross stitch anymore.  I have recently joined a Facebook group to hopefully help me get some of my Works in Progress (WIPs) finished.  So basically I craft because a) I love it and b) I think I am genetically wired to make things.
 
 
4. How does your writing/creating process work?
 
It is mainly challenges that I use as a springboard for my crafting.  I take part in several sketch challenges including Scrapology's monthly sketch challenge, Sue's monthly sketch challenge and My Creative Sketches.  I also love card challenges and regularly take part in those including Beat the Christmas Rush, Penny Black Saturday Challenge and the previously mentioned 52 cards challenge.  I use sketches all the time for inspiration and have several folders of printed sketches especially from Pagemaps.  If working for a challenge I find photos that will work best with the sketch/theme and then choose papers, cardstock and embellishments.  Otherwise I tend to pick the papers first that I want to use and then pick the photos and sketch that will work best with them.  
 
Now I'm supposed to tag three other bloggers to take part, but sadly I have only managed to find one that would like to take part (as this blog hop expands further it is getting hard to find people who haven't already taken part).  So my tagee is the lovely Syreeta from KarmaCraftBlog and owner of Happy Accident Studios.  If you are reading this post and haven't been invited yet to take part and would like to, then please leave me a message and I will then tag you into the end of this post and you can do your blog post next Monday (23rd June). 


4 comments:

  1. Very interesting post. I do like your hexagonal layout :). Thanks for commenting on my blog.

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  2. Very interesting and well written, Karen! I couldn't take part in this because just too busy, with another imminent move and too much stress! Love the personal pressies - I think they're the most meaningful. x

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  3. You've written a lovely post here, with lots of info about you, which I just love.

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  4. First of all, thank you for the Get Well Wishes. Much appreciated :)

    I've been really enjoying the posts from this hop and I had a great read here. I can very much relate to your crafty background with parents who loved to create. It's a great way to grow up, isn't it?

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Thank you so much for taking the time to leave me a comment, I do read all of them and they are really appreciated.

Karen xx

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