Still determinded

These are not new years resolutions because I don't do those - and I am so fed up of finding Craft challenges that all start with words to that effect, but that is a whole new different moan which I wont bore everyone with here!.

No I am just determined that I will keep updating my blog more often than I have been because if I don't the only one missing out of recording what I have been up to is me, because my memory is not all it used to be.

I am determined to keep up to date with my birthday cards. My mum's birthday is in a few days time, I hope she isnt looking as I want to put this one up for a couple of challenges which end today.

One of the Challenges was for Just Magnolia but I didnt realise they had to be uploaded by 8.00pm. Just as well really then because although its a lovely Tilda, my mum isnt into stamps with no mouths and I had to draw in a smile, so maybe it wouldnt have counted anyway.

The second challenge is for this weeks Sketch Saturday - a difficult sketch which kind of threw me until I thought that maybe it could look like an envelope and then it easily matched the stamp and the idea of lots of birthday cards in the post.


The final place I want to enter this card is for Stamp Something where this week the challenge was to use plenty of glitter, and this card certainly has plenty of that, the paper is from a DCWV 'with glitter' stack Nana's Kitchen but as if it wasnt enough to use background papers encrusted with bling I have also filled all the little triangles in the circular mat with blue pee-wee glitter, and the fronds on the flowers have a dusting of glimmer dust. I dont think it is picked up in the photo, as the evening light in my scraproom is really really bad - another moan I am not going into on here.

Other bits used - Penny Duncan Nestie svg file cut on cricut: roses made from a file from Dan and again cut on the cricut; ribbon I think is American crafts and the sentiment is Stamping Up!

I am determined to keep scrapping - and to that effect I have nearly finished the little book-in-a-tin kit that Martin bought me for Christmas

I am determined that I will keep on sewing - and I did start a new project. I bought some lovely fabric in the Hobbycraft sale, found the online pattern I had saved, and started to make my sewing machine a beautiful and pretty new cover. Only a third of the way through though my sewing machine (which is about 10 years old now, and in my mind very young for a sewing machine) gave up the ghost. No idea what is wrong with it, it just wont power up. Its not worth getting repaired, it only cost £99 all those years ago, and since the last service (shamefully about 5 years ago) cost me £30 I am guessing it will cost more to repair than its face value.

Bottom line, I determined to buy a shiny new machine. I was bought up with a Singer Treadle, and I know Singer machines are built to last. I was talked into buying a Janome but have never been all that happy with it, the guy in the shop told me Singer had been taken over by Janome but I know now he told me blatant lies. After a bit of research I discovered the Singer Confident range, affordable computerised embroidery machines and in my price range. I liked what I saw, and set out to buy one. Err ... who pinched all the sewing machine shops? Where the heck do you buy a Singer sewing machine nowadays? I don't really want to buy online without a test drive, but there are only about 10 shops in the whole of Kent with the authority to sell Singers now, and of the few holding stock only 2 have the one I want and neither of those are withing a 40 mile radius of where I live. In fact the nearest I can find is over 70 miles away!!

Still determined I ventured online, Coopers being the company I remembered as being good, until I discovered tell of the Trading Standards watching them closely for poor service. Oh dear! Then I found that they also have several web sites under different names. Loosing faith, I stopped there, flummoxed because how could I tell which web sites were good and which not? I have not given up though, I am not going to settle for a machine I don't like and I am going to keep on looking for the one I want. Watch this space as I have a ton of fabric on order from ebay, and I definitely am not hand sewing it all!!