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.

Punching and Boxing

We R Craft & Chat

One of my purchases at the recent craft fair was a We R Memory Keepers Candy Box Punch Board - and what a well-designed piece of equipment that turned out to be! The demonstrator had only learned to use it the previous day and I really did only need one demo to know how to use it, as the video we made shows. Even with Ruth's hand problems, the punching was not difficult.

Just in time for Easter we made little crackers filled with chocolate eggs: cardboard, decorated with Easter strips, peel-off borders, name labels and a cheepy chick. You saw a photo in a previous post, and here's another, the rest are in the video.

Candy Box

The crackers are ideal for Birthdays, Easter, Christmas and even Wedding favours, depending on the pattern of card used. At the Ross show, too late, we got egg-decorated cardboard, doing away with the need for all the extra decorating. Imagine for wedding favours, lovely pearlised card, perhaps embossed, for little crackers like the pink birthday one shown in our video!

In the pink

I was so pleased with the punch board, that I added Pillow Box and Gift Bag as well, from Joanna Sheen; then Ruth also bought the Candy Box and the Gift Boxes boards. Well, she is known as the box queen!

Happy box-making, whichever way you make them, with or without boards. Here's how we did it.

Boxing Clever at Hobbycrafts

This is the box we made

As promised, here is an off-the-cuff video I took of us joining in a demo of box-making at the craft fair, now uploaded to YouTube. Charmain of Payper Box led us through the process, using flexible embossing powder and removable double-sided tape. Jeanette from our craft group was on hand to do a lot of the work, also videoing sections as I did a little bit of the crafting, while Ruth did nothing! It was a laugh for us anyway and I hope you enjoy watching.

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!

Tatty Teddy Looks in on us Crafting

When we made our Easter Cards Tatty Teddy video, afterwards Tatty Teddy looked in on us to see how our crafting was going. As you know if you have watched the video, it wasn't one of my better days, having forgotten to check the remote control battery and then discovering a spare...in my video camera case of course! I had also made a purchase on eBay which hadn't yet arrived - so it will be seen in another video, coming up soon, we hope.

Anyway, TT joined in our Craft & Chat outtake video, as we dissolved in giggles as usual. Hope it gives you a wee laugh.

Tatty Teddy Family

Tatty Teddy Easter

We got on with our filming yesterday, having prepared all week with waterfall, stepper cards, and digital cards from Spring Chic CD-rom. Now to film the introduction and ending...
Guess what? I forgot to check the battery for the remote control! However, that only required one of us to get off our seat and manually start/stop the video camera. Giggling together as usual, afterwards my brain suddenly kicked into gear and remembered I had a spare battery, where? In the camera case, of course. So we just filmed a little extra bit for the end of the video. We hope you enjoy Tatty Teddy Easter and look forward to your comments. What will we film next?

Here are some of the cards we made:

Tatty Teddy Easter sample card for Hospice

Tatty Teddy Easter card packs for assembling at Hospice

Tatty Teddy Baby Dedication card

Tatty Teddy Easter Waterfall cards

Tatty Teddy Spring Chic Digital cards

Tatty Teddy Easter mini Gatefold card

Tatty Teddy Engagement card

Tatty Teddy Ruby 40th Anniversary Stepper card

Tatty Teddy Birthday card for a crafter