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In today’s post another free download, designed to take the stress out of the holiday season. All too often our jobs take us far away from dear friends and family and leave little time to get in touch for a good chat. Holiday time gives us the opportunity to get in touch and swap cards and gifts to let those close to us know we still care about them.

The problem is the distance between friends and family mean it is very difficult to choose the perfect gift. You want to choose something they will really love but it seems rude to ask…. Sound familiar? It’s hardly surprising that holiday shopping is so stressful. Well hopefully these downloadable ‘Catch Up Cards’ will help you out.

Download your Catch Up Cards Today

Catch Up Cards

What Are Catch Up Cards

Catch Up Cards look like postcards, there’s an area for your news, but here’s the new part, the other half is for you to add details of your favourite things. The reverse of the card is blank, this allows you to get creative and add your own design, or print a background from a CD. Even better add a photo to the back of the card to truly personalise it. Pop this card in with your usual card you will send to friends and relatives and they will have a much more personal update on your news, and also a bank of ideas to help them choose a gift you will love too.

Remember you are adding favourites like;

• Authors
• Bands/music
• Colours
• Cosmetics/Perfumes
• Shoe size (some people like getting slippers as gifts).

This makes it less like a wish list, more general  ideas.

Spread the Joy

Print an extra card and back it with the ‘Catch Up Card’ descrition and encourage your friends and family to add their details, so you will know what their news is and learn their favorites. Over the years knowing what gifts to choose for people, especially those you haven’t seen for a long time has become more and more of a challenge. If this sounds like you, have a look at the ‘Catch Up Cards’, see if they could work for your family and friends.

It is important to add that I am not a mercenary, I do recognize holidays for their original meaning. Personally I celebrate Christmas and this year will be sharing hand-made gifts, to bring the celebration a more personal touch. Believe me, the presents I’m making took a lot of time and love to create!

It is also important to recognize, that there are many celebrations, from many cultures that involve gift giving and I’m sure these difficulties in knowing what to give people, are a universal issue. The internet is a global space and people from all over the world are reading this. For these reasons, the downloads have been left without reference to an individual celebration. 

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon

Billie

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Today a totally off topic post My other passion in life is my beautiful budgies. We were a flock of five, but it was a bad year, in April poor Blue died, then in June; Sky passed away. Everyone was sad, even the boys (Minty, Harry & Tiny)were depressed for several months. After a while Tiny and Harry became best buds but left out poor Minty.

Had hoped things would settle but after a few weeks of punch ups, then they ignored Minty and all the while, he feeds the swing   Well the good news is, thanks to MIL sending us to the pet shop to get peanuts for the wild birds, we now have a new edition to the feathered family. He is still un-named yet, so feel free to post some nice suggestions for names. Will get a picture of him up tomorrow, as this post is already late!

New budgie is a beautiful turquoise colour with a green tail, very lovely purple cheek patches. Still very timid but just finding his voice and gives the occasional chirp. He’s daft as a brush and keeps diving head first into the seed pot and kicking the seed around. Seed pot mining was just what Minty and Sky used to do….bless.

Freebies on Friday sorry for the late postings, internet is not too great at the moment. Have scheduled friday’s post so it goes up on time.

Best wishes and thanks for reading

Billie

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Today I would like to share  pictures of the two wonderful Lying Presses, that my amazing husband made for me. A lot of my books so far have not featured glued bindings and covers so until recently, I had not needed these kinds of press. Until I bought some bookcloth and tried my hand at case binding that was.

My New Lying Press

I had the MAD idea of making case bound books as Christmas gifts! In case you ever find yourself also thinking this is a good idea…my advice would be to start MUCH earlier than late November! This made drying times much longer as it is now damp and cold in the UK. Make them in the summer when the glue will dry faster (if you live in the UK that is).

The first press is 28cm long and the larger one is 40 cm long. When I am using one of them I put it across the other pair like this;

My new Large Lying press

This makes up for the fact that I don’t have a tub for them. It keeps the work up off the desk. I really couldn’t justify £80 for a commercially made press, for the amount of use they will get. Making them yourself, does also mean you have full control over the size of the press.

I’m so lucky to have a wonderful husband that supports my hobby and who will put such lovely tools together for me.

Thank you to my wonderful husband for taking time out of your hectic schedule, to make these for me. I love them and I love you too.

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon

Billie

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This month The Virtual Crafting Challenge was Lacquers & Glazes. Regular viewers will remember that for this challenge I was playing with Perfect pearls and a selection of Golden products. Here is a video tutorial of my results;  how to create a pearlescent glaze and pearlescent paint.

You Will Need

• Golden Fluid Acrylic Paints, colours of your choice
• Golden Acrylic Gazing Medium in Gloss
• Ranger Perfect Pearls, colors of your choice
• Tin Plate for a mixing pallet
• pallet Knife for mixing
• Brush
• Scrap Card

Golden’s Acrylic Glazing Medium extends the open time of the paints and is key when you add the perfect pearls to stop everything drying too fast.

Method

• Select a paint colour that is either transparent or semi transparent, from the Fluid Acrylic paints
• Add a few drops of Glazing Liquid. Mix these together, this creates a glaze, which is nice enough but for extra wow…
• Add a small amount of Perfect Pearl in a coordinating colour to your paint/glaze mix. At first it will seem gritty but keep blending with your pallet knife until it is smooth.

Try this on dark card as well as light. If you don’t have any fluid acrylic paint, you can still make a light paint with the glazing liquid and the Perfect Pearls, this will create a paler lacquer that you can now use on glass, metal and other gloss items.

For suppliers of Golden products check out the pannel at the side of the blog where I have added a link to Golden’s website. Rangers site link, is loctated on the Stamping page, under manufacturers.

It was fun to experiment and I learnt a lot, have fun and don’t be afraid to have a play with your products. Who knows what new techniques you might discover along the way.

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon

Billie

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Just to say thank you to all my regular readers and welcome to new visitors alike, here is an early holiday gift for you.

Calendar page; December 2009

Click on the image to get the full size version. Please feel free to download this image, by left clicking the full size image and choosing ‘Save As’. Open the image in your chosen software, to resize the image to fit your paper. Print it out and tape it to your kitchen wall, handy for all the family to keep up with each others plan’s for the month ahead.

Let me know what you think, hope you like it, it is an image of plants from my garden taken in February this year.

My apologies for not posting yesterday, this is up a day early to make up for it. I aggravated my back, so I’m having to sit still and let it recover again.  I’m going for quality over quantity with the blog Seems a good plan hey?

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon.

Billie

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It’s rapidly approaching the holiday season, a time of giving sharing and enjoying. But for many it is also a stressful time, trying to get everything done on time etc. In the interest of helping you have a less stressful time this year I have created some downloads that I’ll be posting over the next few weeks.

In the first of the series, here is a printable PDF that you can use to make sure you have the details of everyone to hand that you want to send cards or pressies to. Click on the link below to download the Holiday list, then print.  

Holiday List V1

Hope you enjoy these downloads, do tell your friends about this and if you like what you see do leave me a comment.

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon

Billie

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In today’s post I have a plea for help… I have lots of ideas for projects for this blog, that will include PDF’s.  I can create PDF’s no problem, but can anyone tell me how I can include them in a blog post on here?

In the ideal world, I want to be able to have something on here, that people can click and then download the PDF I’ve made. Can anyone tell me if this is possible, within the free blogging services the WordPress have?

For example, I’ve created a nice calendar page for December and would love to include it on here for you all to download. It’s ready to go(ish) I’m going to try to upload an A4 sized image soon and just hope for the best. But if anyone knows the solution for the PDF thing, or has clever family members who they can ask I’d really appreciate it.

New video coming soon

Here’s hoping, many thanks

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon

Billie

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Today I’d like to share some pictures of the Slip Case I made for signatures waiting to be bound into books. Because of limited dexterity, my bookbinding tends to be broken into steps, with varying amounts of time between the steps. It may be several days/weeks between my cutting and folding paper, before they are piereced and sewn.

Here is the case I created

My first Case

Here is a view of the lining of the case

My favorite size to bind in is A7, so my case is a little taller than this. I now have a place where folded papers can live until they are needed for a book. I always mark the corners of my signatures, after they are pierced,  to ensure they remain in the correct orientation for sewing. So my pierced signatures can also happily live in the case until their turn comes round.

Sewn signatures, awaiting covering. Safe in their new case.

The method I used to create this case was featured on Sage Reynold’s channel on You Tube, I’ve put a link to his channel and  the slip case films below. Sage has a wonderful method of working and explains the process from start to finish. The best thing about Sage’s method of working is that he is taking all his measurements directly from the item he is casing, and uses very clever templates for repeated cuts. SOOO much easier and saves a lot of time. The finished box is really sturdy too.

This is my first slip case, and I am very pleased with the result. Thank you Sage for your excellent tuition on You Tube, it is inspiring and your video’s are so helpful and easy to follow.

Links

Sage Reynolds on You Tube.

Sage Reynold’s Tutorials for Creating a Slip Case

• Slip Case Part One
• Slip Case Part Two
• Slip Case Part Three
• Slip Case Part Four

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon

Billie

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In October 2009, I ordered a 1038 Guillotine. For anyone considering one of these tools, here is my review of how I get on with the 1038.

Ideal 1038 Guillotine

Brand: Ideal

Model Number: 1038

Reason for Purchase

To cut book board for bookbinding. Due to dexterity problems I needed a tool to help me.

Build Quality

Excellent, this is a serious tool made by a serious company, no wobbly blades or wonky cuts. The base is metal and the measuring gauge along the bottom edge has metric and imperial measurements on. There is a stop guide that screws to it to align your paper/ card to. If you ever find that the stop guide needs adjusting, if it ever goes out of square, then, with the aid of an allen key, that is possible. The blade is very solid and is re-sharpenable. The blade has a guard that rises and falls with it, to help keep you away from the business end of the cutting blade. This is a superb machine.

Value for Money:

Excellent. I realise this is a considered purchase. For anyone making a lot of books or needing to cut a lot of board quickly and easily this is well worth the investment. Buy Once and buy right! This is a precision machine and worthy of its price tag. A good solid workhorse for the smaller bindery, that simply hasn’t the room for a huge board sheer.

Ease of Use:

Very Easy. I have limited dexterity but was able to adjust the stop gauge easily, as the screw button that secures it to the guide, is a good size and ribbed. The protective guard keeps you safe from the blade. The blade is very solid but also very smooth. Even with my poor dexterity, I was able to operate the machine with ease. Matt board is very easy and book board is only a little harder. DH with ‘normal’ dexterity, cut through the book board easily. I could only manage a few cuts on book board, but that was down to my limited hand strength and in no way a poor reflection of the machine. It was perfect for the job.

Would I buy It Again?

Definitely!!!!

If you are a demonstrator/teacher and need to cut lots of boards for your classes this machine will save you so much time. If you have limited dexterity, it will make cutting board possible (or a lot less hard work for your long-suffering partner who cuts it for you now ;) ) If you work in a small space and just don’t have room for those huge board shears, this is the perfect solution. The 1038 has a cutting length of 385 mm, so it sits nicely on my worktop. If I had the extra space and cash, I would have liked a larger model; the 1071 will handle A3 boards, which would have been nice.

I would highly recommend the 1038 to any serious binder who wants a quality tool. To anyone who currently struggles to cut book board with a knife and ruler. It is perfect for those making boxes from boards.  The blade leaves two smooth, clean, perfectly cut edges, to glue together. I love this machine, it does everything I need it to and it does it well. What more could you ask for from a tool.

Cons

I try to give unbiased reviews, but this tool has seriously impressed me, so I don’t have any cons for this machine.

The only thing I struggle with a little, is cutting narrow strips using the roll in/out guide on the right of the blade. But I think this is just down to practise rather than being a negative issue with the tool itself. Cutting off slivers of card to square up cardstock when I have enough board to meet the guide on the right is no problem.

Links

Ideal: Here is a link to the manufacturer of this guillotine. Type 1038 into the search box for details about this particular machine. 

Bear in mind that this review is personal opintion, based on my own situation and how I got on with this machine. I do not represent the company Ideal, nor do I work for them in any way. If you have any questions, I will be happy to try and answer them. For more technical information, please use the link above to review the manufacturers details of the machine or to contact the manufacturers directly.

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon.

Billie

Welcome Back

Today I would like to share a birthday card I made for a friend using Clarity stamps.

Birthday Card featuring Clarity Stamps

Inside the Birthday card

Ingredients

Stamps; Clarity: Ornate Corner; CLN C24-E, Ornate corner small; CLN C224-C

Card, White Linen, White hammered, Purple cardstock

Inks: Ranger Pigment ink; Eggplant and Denim

Ribbon; Organza

A change from my usual grunge style, this time I went for less is more and elegant. I know the person this is going to is a big fan of Clarity stamps, so I hope she will like this card.

Links

If you like these stamps do check out Barbara Grey’s website, she is the creator of Clarity Stamps. They are amazing, with these corner stamps you can make a wide selection of designs from borders, main motifs as well as corners. Lots of designs from a single stamp. As well as creating these stamps Barbara has also produced several DVDs that show you many techniques for how to get the best from them.

Clarity Stamps

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon

Billie