Opening Ceremony

The Games got off to a showbizzy tartan start with a song of the Clyde - of iconic Scottish inventions and discoveries, including dancing teacakes!

I wasn't at the Opening Ceremony so the photos are via my TV screen!

The Queen's Baton was flown to the riverside and made its way to Celtic Park.

There was a humungous screen alongside one complete side of the stadium and a rainbow-coloured track, round which the athletes paraded, complete with wee Scottie dugs in front..

The Red Arrows did a fly-past as the Queen and Prince Philip arrived.

All the Commonwealth Nations were greeted with loud enthusiasm and Scotland as the host Team were the final ones to come into the Stadium.

The Baton was brought by relay to the Queen, where there was some difficulty in opening it to remove the Queen's Message for her to read!

Sir Chris Hoy holds the Baton aloft

Fireworks rounded off an exciting evening.

The Duke of Wellington Statue is always humorously behatted with a traffic cone

Clyde at Glasgow Central Station
photo by Jackie

Tatty Teddy helps Craft & Chat at the Glasgow Hospice

Brick by Brick is the Appeal to raise funds to build a new Hospice in Glasgow

As you may know we take voluntary crafting to the Day Centre at The Glasgow Hospice. Asking the patients beforehand if there are any specific cards they would like, we gather together all that is needed to make a complete card, in a cellophane pocket. Then on the day each patient chooses which one they would like to make up. Last time, since it is so close to Easter, we chose Tatty Teddy as the theme, but we use a variety of different styles month by month.

Fold this to make a Collection Box

Collection boxes for the Brick by Brick Appeal come flat-packed ready to assemble, complete with double-sided tape, so any crafter will have no problem putting one together - it's just like origami!

Any card packs that are unused are made up and added to others to sell at Deaf Focus in East Kilbride, to raise funds for a ramp at the Atholl Centre Pitlochry. Deaf Focus is a great place to practice BSL signing.

Atholl Centre Pitlochry

We made a short video to show this.
With Video Captions for the Deaf Community when turned on in Settings.

These are examples of the cards.

Ross Papercraft Show

Ross Papercraft Show Meadowbank Sports Centre Edinburgh

The craft group went adventuring over to Scotland's capital to explore the Ross Papercraft Show. We were well impressed. Free parking, cheap entry, reasonably-priced teas, coffees and snacks - interesting well-stocked stalls with friendly exhibitors, demos - we had fun!

There was more buzz than there had been at the ICHF craft fair in the SECC, so we hope this fair expands to Glasgow! We had conserved our spending so still found things to purchase...no surprise there!

Alice's stash

Ruth's stash

I was entranced to find a small Hougie board - just right for carrying in my craft bag. It has centimetre score measurements on one side and inches on the other. I took green as I just knew that craftywhippet would go for pink! Mc Oyster from Cupar, Fife sold them and we had a great chat with Adrian.

We stocked up on decopatch papers for our next craft night. There was a lot of excitement over new rubber stamp designs and Jeanette went straight home and made a card with them! Hopefully, more details will follow. Lovely wee stencil dies for stringing on ribbon were so cute, how could we resist!

Ribbon Buttons

There were templates from Crafting Buddies for placing gemstones or pearls on - see the blog post coming up soon showing a couple of baby cards I've made.

Pearls

We've also been busy with We R Memory Keepers Candy Box Punch Board and hope to have a new video on YouTube soon. It let us make wonderful cracker-type boxes for little Easter eggs! Loads of other possibilities abound...

Tasty Taster for video

 Have a joyful Easter yourselves.

All Dried Out

First attempts

Jane brought along to the craft group all her moulds and we tried air-dried clay for the first time. The trick is not to handle the clay too much - some of us cottoned-on to the technique faster than others! The frames and large flowers are Martha Stewart moulds, the rose and sunflower are WOW moulds.

Martha Stewart Frame Mould

WOW Rose Mould

There are qualities in the clay, some more pliable than others. They were partly set by the time we finished and craftywhippet loaned me a box to carry them home. Unfortunately, putting the box on its side was not a great idea and a few got broken or bashed. They will gradually harden further over the next few days and then they should be decorated with the likes of Twinkling H2Os, Copic pens or Spray & Sparkle. We will see how they turn out! I've never been handy with clay so if they are usable it will be amazing.

Visit to Hobbycrafts Fair March 2014

It doesn't seem any time at all since Ruth and I were at the Craft Fair in November and here we are in March doing the rounds again! It's a great opportunity to stock up on basics and see what's new.

Alice's

I look forward to practising some Tangles with the help of a book of examples, since I am prone to doodling while on the phone. It's usually treble clefs and cubes - I guess that makes me a musical mathematician LOL - seems appropriate! I also got a cracker boxmaker which looks like it might be fun and useful!

Ruth's

With permission, I filmed rubber stamped cards at Card IO, decopatch at Damselfly, card at Ross Papers and boxmaking at Payper Box. The results of our visit can be seen in a short YouTube video.

We hope to use the Card IO (formerly Tapestry) stamps on acrylic tubes, with the Day Centre patients at the Hospice. A quick tip we were given by the demonstrator is using alcohol-free baby wipes, dried-out, to rub in backgrounds to give an ink-dusted effect. The Inkylicious demonstrator uses a wet paintbrush to drag the colour; also a spray bottle of water pointed upwards drops a fine mist onto the background colours. We both bought the plastic sun and moon stencils to make ink dusting even easier!

Card IO Samples

More Card IO Samples

Demonstrator Hard at Work

Ann of Damselfly was on hand to give us advice on our decopatch technique, which leaves a lot to be desired. Jeanette of our craft group made a neater job, as she took her time. We were glad of the rest.

If only we could Decopatch like this!

Still to come, a demo of boxmaking, with Charmain of Payper Box. That will be a YouTube video on our Craft & Chat Playlist. Jeanette was with us too and helped with extra hands, since it's hard to film and craft without a tripod! This gave us another opportunity to have a seat while we crafted.

But at least our boxes are nearly finished

See you again soon.

Bright, Sunshiney Day

Turned out nice again?

Amazingly enough no snow, but the new year started wet and windy - today it is sunny - oh joy! Happy 2014 crafters.

Some of my favourite places in the UK have been well-washed by the sea in the recent storms. Folk have been posting photos and videos:

Port Bannatyne Isle of Bute

Putting Green Largs

North Bay Scarborough

I've not done any card crafting in the dark gloomy weather but I've been investigating a computer program called CamStudio for filming procedures on my PC, ready for a new YouTube Playlist that I'm interested in starting.

I love the idea of beach huts, little homes by the sea; so one of my Pinterest Boards houses these. Boards are a lot of fun - a great reminder of ideas that capture your attention on the web, as well as promoting your own stuff. One Christmas present of a canvas has been added to my craftystudy wall along with wee beach huts lights to brighten up the days.

Beach Huts Galore

As a true crafter, of course I had a crafty present at Christmas: a hand-held embossing seal for cards and envelopes, etc or to emboss onto certificate seals - I  was able to choose my own text for the seal.

"craftyalice" embossing seal

So, looking forward to brighter crafty days, bye for now!