I Just Couldn't Help Myself!

Today I shopped - I just couldn't help myself honest! I haven't really shopped for any craft stuff in ages, at least not real craft shopping - you know the kind where you don't think too much about the money side until you get to the till. I have far too much stash to simply keep buying it because I THINK I need it. These days I am far more selective and try to buy what I know I will use (even if it takes me a while to get around to it).

Well I stopped in at one craft store on my way home from work and made a reasonably small purchase and then went on to the other craft store where I made an even bigger purchase. While I was drooling over new Martha Stewart punches Amanda had managed to get in and trying to decide which ONE I might have to settle for she reminded me I was doing the Thetford show this weekend which meant I was makin some money.

That did it - that tipped me over the edge (that and a discount) - I caved. BUT look what I got in the end!

I just love this paper from K & Co. I bought extra sheets that I used on a page of my mum recently and then since it was 10 sheets for £4 or £5 (havin a bad memory day today) I decided to have 10 and bought 3 sheets of this fabulous floral - love the colours, love the design.

I settled for 3 MS border punches because now that Amanda stocks them I can use them in my demos and I am luvin these punches. I just can't seem to put them down for 5 minutes right now. Can you believe I loaned 3 to a friend but then had to ask for them right back I was missin em so much!

I picked up more tape - I swear you'd think I eat the darn stuff! Finally I picked up a new floral nestability set which was actually the set I wanted when I purchased a different floral set a while back.

I can't help feelin' spoilt right now since I now have a whole bunch of MS punches - so many they can fill a basket all on their own - and I might just store them seperate from my regular punches but on top of that I got mom's e-mail this morning saying she had just popped another one in the post to me. WAIT till you see the one that's coming, it's the best one yet! I owe mom BIG TIME.

As if that wasn't enough craft overload Amanda gave me some fab new peel offs to play with for the show. I had soooo much fun with this earlier in the year and I'm thrilled they've come out with new designs finally.

It might be a bit hard to pick out the paisley design from this shot but not the circles and dots. While purple and lilac ranks up there with my least favourite colours I don't actually mind when teamed with black and white. I picked out a few pieces of cardstock to co-ordinate and tonight I managed to create one simple card.

I used a nestability square template to draw a square in black pen making sure I left enough space for a black peel off text from my stash. Next I added the main circles to look like flowers and penned the stems. I added the leaves by using peel offs from the paisley set. I added a bit of fun with some peel off dots in different sizes along with pen dots, cut and embossed the square with the next size up die and then matted and layered my block.

I left one side wider and used a MS punch. I thought the simple scallop with graduated dots reinforced the 'dotty' theme and then cos it's me I added stapled ribbons to finish. This might be a very basic card but it's fun, funky and DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY YOU'D GET FROM JUST ONE SHEET? TONS! That's how many.

Anyhow it's my creative starting point and I don't think it's too bad a start. I guess if I'm honest I often put in a lot of hours for the money I make at my crafting so I shouldn't feel bad if some of it gets spent on me once in a while huh?

Oh and Amanda gave me a couple of pink paper bags so I might sneak a HK gift bag in somewhere before the weekend.