Folksy Friday - Christmas Cards

This is my first Folksy Friday for some time! There are lots of talented cardmakers on Folksy. Here are samples from just a few. 
This is from Folk Art Papercuts. I love The Twelve Days of Christmas!

These bright Christmas stockings are from Sprinkles. I love the sparkly glitter touches.

 This brilliant Santa with a robin is from Little Blue Bird.

These wonderful penguins are from a pack of four designs by Christmas Kooki.

Linoking Cards makes beautiful cards using embossed texture and printing.

This beautiful print is from a set of 4 from Pink Shoes Art.

This clever pop up card is lovely, it's from Pop-Up Zoo.

Last but certainly not least is this lovely robin from Rhiannon Thomas.
There are loads more lovely Christmas cards on Folksy, just search handmade to find them :)

Holiday Scavenger Hunt - Fab Prizes!

The Polymer Clay Smooshers are running a brilliant competition, a scavenger hunt.
You need to go to the Smooshers Blog  to get the details.  It's very simple - there is an image in the studios of some of the Smooshers and the more you find the more likely you are to win a prize, and there are several lovely prizes.
You will need to visit the Artfire studios of the Smoosher members, there are links to them all on the left side of the blog.  Then make a note of the shops where you find them, and email your list to the Smooshers.
Have fun and maybe have a look round the studios while you are there :)

My First Artfire Collection

I've just made my first Artfire collection! I have used items chosen from the studios of fellow Polymer Clay Smooshers.  Artfire has Guilds, groups we can join who support one another, chat on forums and promote one another.  There is also a blog, Polymer Clay Smooshers.
Here is my collection.  You can go and view the collection on Artfire, where you can rate it and/or add comments, and from there you can click on any of the items to go and see the artist's studio. 
 

These Are a Few of my Favourite Things

Curated By: averilpam

ArtFire.com

Unique Gifts

Eek - Too Many Blogs?

I've just got back from my trip to the USA to visit my daughter and family.  My body isn't back on UK time yet and I haven't ventured out of the house. The garden desperately needs tidying but as my living room floor is still cluttered with the contents of my suitcases I guess it will have to wait! I'm very fatigued so I'm not pushing myself to do very much.
This morning a friend sent me a link to an interesting new website. I decided to save it into my bloglist but when I tried to do this I was told I can only save 300 blogs and I already had that many on my list!
So I set about deleting some.  I've worked my way through the list (with a couple of teabreaks) and stopped following any that haven't been updated in 4 months or longer.  There were quite a lot of them. There are quite a few more that haven't been updated for 3 months but I've left them for next time in case they get updated in the meantime.
I know I follow more blogs than people follow me (I don't have 300 followers!) but if by chance you own one of the blogs I've unfollowed, I'm sorry!
It's certainly a lesson to me to keep my blog updated. Now I'm home I'll try hard to blog more often and hopefully be interesting enough to keep my followers...  and thank you to everyone who visits, I really appreciate you.

Artfire Collection

I have managed to get a few more items listed in my new Artfire shop. You can shop right here on my blog!  One of the features of Artfire is the collections.  They are a little like the treasuries on Etsy for those who know Etsy. Unfortunately Folksy doesn't have that facility (maybe in the future...)
I have been very fortunate in the short time that I've had my Artfire studio to have had items featured in several lovely collections.
This is the most recent, it's full of gorgeous blue items and my polymer clay pendant necklace is included. I'm very grateful to the curators of this and the other collections I've been included in. (You may have seen them posted on my Facebook page)
 

The Many Hues of Blues

Curated By: BewitchingDre...

ArtFire.com

Unique Gifts

jigsaw Puzzle Cutters

For some time now I have wanted to make polymer clay pendants and earrings in the shape of jigsaw puzzle pieces. I have tried in vain to find cutters and I knew I could not do them freehand.
By chance I read a question on an Artfire forum from someone looking for the Artfire studio that sold cookie cutters.  
I found Cookie Cutter Guy  -  a brilliant shop that makes custom cookie cutters.  I emailed Sandy who made me 2 cutters, a small one and a really small one!  They are perfect, I'm so pleased with them, and here are photos of my first attempts.  I couldn't wait to share the results. These aren't perfect and I want to define the texture with inks - but first I have to buy some inks.  Once I perfect the technique you will see them listed in my Artfire and Folksy shops. 

 

My new shop

Well first of all,  if you are on Facebook you may have seen that I'm in the USA right now!  I'm visiting my daughter, son in law and gorgeous grandchildren.  I'll be here for 5 weeks, which will fly by I know but I intend to enjoy every last second.  I'll be posting from time to time to let you know how I'm getting on.  I'll be taking lots of photos of course so watch this space, also my Facebook page.
Some of you may also have seen the buzz around Facebook and on Etsy about the deal on Artfire to get a pro shop over there for just $5.95 (that's less than £4) per month.  I decided it was worth a try so I signed up and it's just been activated.
I started by transferring a few items over from my Folksy shop (which is in holiday mode while I'm away. I plan to get busy making beads and some jewellery in a day or two when I've recovered from the journey to get here.
The basic free Artfire account allows you to list unlimited items, you get a shop with a banner but can't rearrange your shop, have featured items or categories.  Once you go pro you get a lot of tools to help you sell.  I'm excited to get categories which we are waiting for on Folksy.  I can also set up a shopfront on Facebook (again eagerly anticipated soon on Folksy) which I will do soon.
For now I've put a small shop front on this blog which you can see just to the right of this post! You can shop directly from here!