I am very excited because Tink Shui Papercrafts as well as just generally Tink Shui has been featured in the newest and hottest webzine – ‘The Dirty South‘

The Dirty South focuses on Music, Fashion and Culture from across the South coast. Everything from Club Nights through to Fashion Shows and Art Exhibitions via Gigs and Theatre.

One of the head honchos (and a friend of mine), Ursula, came over a couple of weeks back for an interview of what we do and to take some pics etc. It was fun to talk about our stuff and show off all the bits I’ve made too and now we have a proper article and it looks and reads fab! I am very pleased and I think you should be heading on down there to go read it!

Ive been pondering lately about my style, my crafting style specifically because I dont feel like I have one. I look on other peoples blog and they have a signiture, a way in which they craft thats unique to them and fits but mine is all sort of mismatched and jumbled. Is this normal? Do you get your style over time? I guess I havnt been crafting for as long as some of you guys in the big blogging world! Any one got any good advice or tips on this? Your experiences etc, did you start off style-less? How long did it take to develop your style and was it a gradual thing or did it come over night?

Thanks for your help!

I forgot to post about my new found skills on Photoshop, I used to hate the thing and not understand what button to press to even crop a photo, but after doing a handful of tutorials I seem to have gained a better understanding of it although I wouldn’t call myself a pro just yet! Below are some of my creations so far, I am very impressed with how far I have progressed though and have enjoyed myself a lot during the process. (It’s also a very useful skill to have when you have a artist mum who needs some random image superimposed onto a building for a commission! haha)

Ok so there’s more than a handful here, I forgot how many I did! I’m not even sure which is my fave but I enjoyed doing the middle one on the last row of the old diary’s as it was very in depth and I got to use my own pics for the Polaroids plus I was more experienced then so I played around with my own textures and pictures to create the image within the tutorial.

I also am particularly fond of the last one as I find it’s always easier to create something when you have a project to do so for this tutorial for a poster layout design I decided to try out my new idea of a Tink Shui craft night (which I, quite cleverly I reckon, named Tinkerin’ Tuesday!) and I really like how it turned out:)

If anyone has any comments or suggestions then let me know, I am all ears:)

Thanks for reading!

Very sorry for the absence, I have no real excuse other than I keep forgetting and what not but I am back on track now and plan to update at least once a week! Quite a bit has happened since I last posted (which I believe was a failed attempt at posting from my Iphone, haha.) One of the main things being the new venture me and my friend Lena are going on.

This consists of us joining forces to create some bespoke and completely hand made cards and other papercrafts using our different set of skills, her amazing photoshop artwork to create individual one of a kind designs and my hands on creation of the final piece. It is quite exciting but we are still in the initial stages at the moment, seeing how we work as a team, getting to know each other styles and the best way to work together as well as collecting all the materials and tools we will need to make this work fantastically.

I have been making a few cards anyway to hone my skills and you can fin some more info on the *new* paper crafts tab at the top and this is also where you will find all the info about us, when we start selling our stuff and offers, deals and promotions. Below I have added some of my most recent designs as they were all for certain people I couldn’t put them up in case those people saw the cards before I gave it to them. (There are more pics on the paper crafts tab too.)

I gots me an iPhone the otther day, I decided I couldnt be bothered to wait for voda to get the iPhone so I switched to orange! Its awesome and I have this handy little app for wordpress which I happen to be using right now:)

Besides that I bought some rather lovely papercraft bits and pieces from whsmiths with my vouchers pictured below (oh yes i can add pics now with the trusty iphone!) gona have a go at some designing with the lovely Maddy when she gets better (get better soooooon!) which will be tres fun!

Anyway just a quick one really to test this here app out and keep u updated til my mac gets fixed:) over and out x
pa href=http://www.tinkshui.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/l_2048_1536_54063695-5467-410A-AD16-EBF955AB0ED0.jpegimg src=http://www.tinkshui.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/l_2048_1536_54063695-5467-410A-AD16-EBF955AB0ED0.jpeg alt= width=300 height=225 class=alignnone size-full wp-image-364 //a/p

I know 2 posts ago I stated that I was back but I’m afraid I very much am not! Days after we got my OH’s charger back, I decided to do a quick update on my comp and it has now decided to die on me:( I have no idea why, it was just a itunes update and now when you turn it on it doesn’t load the dock or my desktop files or my taskbar at the top… Getting a friend to take a look asap but obv since it’s x-mas it’s all a bit inconvenient.

ARRRRGGGHHHH!!!!

There’s that’s a bit better. I got some absolutely amazing presents and had a lovely christmas but since I am sneaking uses of my OH’s comp I don’t have access to any of my photos, tools or bookmarks in order to make and post things on here so please bear with me while I sort out this stupid problem.

Thank you and in the mean time ‘Happy Christmas and have a wonderful New Year!’

x x x

Getting really into paper crafts atm and my lovely friend Maddy of yahyamadeit showed me this fantastic website that has a load of little creations and you just click on them and you get the downloadable template to print and make yourself!:D It’s wonderful, I made this one the other day:

Isn’t is adorable!:D I wana make em all but I’m sure my printer ink wouldn’t like it, haha. I also made a mini DS Lite from here which is cute too but very very fiddley!

It has working hinges too so you can open it up:

Not to mention the teeny tiny Nintendogs catridge that you can actually put into the slot!!:o

I’m sure I will be doing alot more of this paper craft stuff, I would really love to do some scrapbooking but not really sure where to start!

Did you miss me? It’s been over a month but we are finally pretty much settled into our new house, the virgin man only came a couple of weeks ago tho so we have had to use this shitty dongle that died about a week before the internet arrived:( Then when we finally did get the internet, Aaron left his charger in Bristol when he was DJing there and my one happened to pack up at the same time!

So now we have Aaron’s one back from Bristol but mine is dead and until I get payed on the 22nd I won’t be able to afford a new one, playing swapsey when one of our comp’s start to die, lol.

Anyway in respect to crafting I have obviously been trying to get the office up to scratch and bought some new shelves and boxes to put my stuffs in but I have concluded that I still have too much stuff! haha. I have been doing a little bit of crafting tho like this advent calender I made for my OH’s mum as she didn’t have one this year.

She absolutely loved it and text me the next day saying ‘I have turned over the calender today and it is a christmas tree, I love it, thank you so much!’ I will post some more pics of the individual pages at some point too as I am quite impressed with myself, a sort of mixture between digital scrapbooking and normal scrapbooking.

I have also created some little boxes with personal designs on them for xmas presents for my family but I won’t show them just yet as they may read this, I can’t wait to show them though! What I will show you instead is my front room and x-mas tree I put up on the 1st of December like the organised lady I am, haha.

So pretty:) I will hopefully now be able to craft and post a lot more so look out for some exciting new stuffs over xmas and into the new year!

I have a slight obsession with Lego and have a whole bottom draw in my craft area filled with the stuff. I have made some of these 4×4 blocks into awesome colourful earrings which are currently in my Etsy shop if anyone’s interested in buying some.

I thought that today I would research the net for some other crafty Lego projects that inspire me, here are the ones I particularly liked:

1. Lego Sofa
2. 21 Movie Posters in Lego
3. Mini Lego Nintendo
4. 12 Lego Cakes
5. Making a Lego business card
6. Life sized Lego man
7. How to make a Lego gift bag
8. Motorised Lego yarn winder
9. Melted Lego lamp shade

And we can’t post about Lego without referring to the awesome official Lego factory digital designer which is just hours of fun!

I quite enjoy making yummy cakes and always try and take pics of my ‘creations’ so thought I would share these today. I have a ton of cookbooks too and a massive sweet tooth! If anyone has any scrummy recipies then please let me know, I would be more than happy to give it a try and blog about it linking to your site also.

First batch of diddy cakes I made for my friends little boys naming day. We were supposed to bring one cupcake each and then eat someone else’s. Fantastic idea but I got a bit carried away with making the tiny ones. Even had enough batter left over for another big 2 layered cake!

Second batch of diddy cakes made because I had some tiny cake cases left! I wrote KMB and K which stands for Kiss My Bass, my OH’s night/label he runs with some friends here in Portsmouth.

Rocky Road with biscuits and raisins and Blueberry ‘Cheesecake’ made for my last day made for my last day at Priceless Shoes.

Lemon Drizzle Cake with Blueberry topping