Feedback?

I taught the Christmas page at my scrapbooking club last night (design is below on an earlier post) and we had a great turn out of old and new members, it was lovely to have the room buzzing! We took the shop along and had so much new stock I could barely squeeze it all into the car! The kit has now sold out I'm afraid so if you couldn't make it and didn't reserve a kit in advance I'm really sorry :o(

I had a delivery of the fab American Craft Thicker stickers today. I think these are fantastic value for money as well as being a really great dimensional alphabet sticker (only £2.99 for a pack of 80!!). I've got some great new colours including pink, purple, light blue, red, olive green and brown together with the traditional black and white. These stickers come in three different fonts and its no surprise that many people are buying these in bulk! American Crafts products just seem to get better and better - and they are easy to use. I designed the page above earlier in the Summer and have taught it twice now, both time using different AC papers and the results were very different but equally eye-catching. You can find patterned papers, stickers, rub-ons an ribbons from American Crafts on the shop website at www.totalpapercrafts.co.uk

I have to admit that I'm wondering how many people are actually reading what I am posting on here. I know its a new blog so perhaps I really am here all on my own......if you have dropped by to see whats going on then please feel free to say 'hi'. I'd love to hear your feedback both on the blog and on the shop or just leave a message to say hello.

American Crafts

I don't know what it is but I continue to be drawn to American Crafts products!! We had another delivery today of paper and the gorgeous double sided ribbons by the yard (or 0.91m for those of us who live in the metric world!).

I have designed a number of pages for classes over the past few months using papers from American Crafts and I just love them! They are double-sided so I feel like I'm getting more for my money - I can turn my off-cuts over and I have a co-ordinating colour that I can also use! Sarah reckons I've gone all 'modern' all of a sudden - which is a huge shift in style for me!! I think the style of the papers dictate a more modern type of page but I'm still true to my style, check out both of these pages - they still have little secret spaces for journaling (in the pockets above and a little book in the top half of the flower below!!) which is something I love to do!

You can find lots of American Crafts products on the shop site at www.totalpapercrafts.co.uk including patterned papers, ribbons, Thickers stickers and the beautiful Mini Marks rub-ons.

'Blog-only' offer!

I've sent out a fair few emails this week letting people know about this blog and had the idea of running 'blog-only' special offers that only people who read the blog would get to hear about - kind of like a reward for spending some time with me! I thought I'd make the first one a biggee so I'm offering £5 off three Autumn Leaves titles - 'Designing with Type', 'Designing with Stamping' and 'Designing with Paper'. You need to enter the code TP2511 in the comments box when you order to claim this offer.

As its the weekend, I plan to get all my errands done nice and early and then I'm going to out my feet up with a cup of tea and my January issue of Creating Keepsakes. I hardly got the time to read the last issue and I just love curling up with my books and mags!! The kids are away for the weekend and all is quiet (a bit too quiet to be honest but it's not for long!).

Why not join me and pick out a little something from the books and magazines on our site - you can find them at www.totalpapercrafts.co.uk

Have a great weekend!

Away with the Fairies

At the shop we are really fortunate to have a great relationship with a fantastic photo restoration service who do amazing work. I am consistently blown away with the results that these guys produce from photographs that anyone else would consider a lost cause! One of the other services they offer is the 'Fairy Photo'. They take your snapshot and turn it into an enchanting picture of a fairy on your choice of background. I absolutely love these and am having some done of Melissa as Christmas presents for the Grandparents this year. We are offering this service at the shop as well with a choice of four different themes - at £25 they are a great gift idea and you can print them off as many times as you like!

You can order through our online store at www.totalpapercrafts.co.uk

Feeling 'Joyful'

Do you ever have a day when things just seem to go well? I seem to have a fair few of the opposite, like many people I'm sure but today I had a list of stuff to do and it all seemed to just flow. One of the things on my list was to design this double page for my scrapbooking club next week (29th November) and it had me smiling from ear to ear!! The class kit is stuffed with great products from KI Memories including 'Joyful' ribbons, 'Joyful' cardstock stickers and 'Joyful' frosty patterned papers. If you can't make my club, the kits are available - just email me to reserve one (this is a bumper kit for Christmas and is £7.00). These products are also available seperately in the online store if you prefer.

We took delivery today of the gorgeous 'Twinkle Type' glittery chipboard today. I love these boxes of bling - they are not just letters, there are fab frames and shapes together with numbers and punctuation in the box as well. I love the boxes too - really pretty designs that cry out to be the new home for a mini book or album!!

Yesterday's Scrap pads-to-go delivery is already proving a huge hit and today saw the arrival of restock of the 'Maison' and 'Chocolate Neapolitan' pads. I love the gorgeous colours of the Neapolitan pad, rich brown with pink and mint green - yummy!!!

You can find these new products at www.totalpapercrafts.co.uk or email me at karenmcivor@totalpapercrafts.co.uk

Addison & Hannah have arrived!

I am so loving the K&Co Addison and Hannah lines and I don't think I'm the only one! I've already had the chipboard alphas for these, together with the Grand Adhesions flowers and the Stickers-to-go, all of which flew out!! The colours of both of these lines are just gorgeous - slightly shabby but still sophisticated......ooh, I'm going into one!! LOL!

Imagine then just how lovely it was to FINALLY get the delivery of Hannah scrap pads-to-go and the Addison speciality papers-to-go. The scrap pads are amazing value for money as all the papers in the pad are double sided, plus you get die-cuts, stickers and more - in fact over 500 pieces. The speciality paper pack has 24 seets of double sided papers including glittered, flocked, embossed and foiled papers (I love the foiled ones!). We also had some Addison 12" x 12" albums delivered today - these are beautiful and I'm going to have a hard time parting with them!

I thought I'd share the canvas concertina book I designed using Addison papers and Grand Adhesions with you today. This was so quick and easy to make and is one of the few 'projects' that I am absolutely keeping just for myself - selfish I know but I just love it!! :oD

You can find the new Addison and Hannah products at www.totalpapercrafts.co.uk

Well Worn!

'Well Worn' kind of describes how I feel this evening after having two kids off school all day for teacher training! We've been joined by our third now as he had school and the house has returned to its normal level of noise!

I recently designed a page that I taught at my scrapbooking club and absolutely fell in love with the paper line - so much so that we have just taken delivery of a huge box of Paper Loft's 'Well Worn' papers, stickers, file folders and pockets. These papers were so easy to work with and they seem to go with just about every photo I have. I have added an image of the page I taught to give you an idea of just how well these products work together. I used a 'dingbat' to create the cardstock shape - a great way to link your page together and very easy to do!

Here we go!

I thought it was about time I entered the modern age completely and created a blog for both myself and my online store 'Total Papercrafts'. Like my hobby of scrapbooking, my store has become an all-consuming passion and takes up most of my waking hours!!

Rather than send out huge numbers of emails letting people know what was going on, I thought it would be a better idea to put everything in a place where anyone who is interested could go and have a look. I intend to post news, new stock details, competitions, layout ideas and as many other things I can think of on here - as often as I can find the time! Just bear with me while I get into a routine and we'll be fine I'm sure.

I thought I'd start with the page I taught at my club this week which uses the gorgeous paper, rub-ons and die-cut tags from Rouge de Garance. The products took an age to arrive and we had to reschedule this class 3 times but it was so worth it!!

Its Sunday night and all is quiet - the kids are asleep in bed and there is nothing of note on TV, so what better time to get things off and running? Hold on tight - it could be a bumpy ride!

Karen :)