…is so funny in a rich mans world! And I’m going to finally have some once I start my *new* job!:) I’m very excited and happy that I am going to be doing something I like (admin) and getting money that I can spend on me for once (starting salary 14k). Yay!

In other news I have actually been quite busy and I have made something, it is a little tissue case by verypurpleperson it is sooooo incredibly simple and easy, I did it in just under half an hour and that was with some faffing from me picking out materials. Very cute and a good handy little pouch to have in your bag when your out instead of that ugly plastic packaging.

I have also been on a mini craft day out (cut short only because I had an interview for above mentioned job) with my good friend and partner in crime of Tink Shui Paper crafts,  Maddy. Went to a few crafty shops, couldn’t find any black thread though weirdly to finish of my Nes controller cross stitch I started months and months ago! She also bought me a few prezzies too, yay!

First we have some cute little tiny pegs, secondly is those little origami stars that I see sometimes and ever quite worked out how to do them but now I have 100 to make, yay! And lastly is some gorgeous ribbon to add to our card making collection. Thank you Maddy!!!:D

And last but not least I have been having a massive re-arrange and sort out of my craft room because I just wasn’t feeling motivated to do anything anymore and I reliased that maybe if my desk was over by the window and not in the dark dingy corner that might help and what about if all my crafty things are all in one place to find. So that’s what I did and now I want to be in here all day, in fact I am in here and might well stay here all day:)

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 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

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!

In case anyone was wondering or particularly nosy here are some pics of my lovely new house I will be moving into on the 2nd of November:

1. Cute little low maintenance garden
2. Dining area, we will be able to sit and eat at the table for once
3. The nicest kitchen ever! Favorite bit of the house for me
4. A non skanky bathroom, tiny but perfectly formed
5. view of front window in the lounge
6. view of fireplace in the lounge
7. Bedroom that can fit out king size bed
8. Second bedroom but we are making it the office
9. stairs to be carpeted

The stats are 2 bed mid terrace house, GCH, DG, kitchen with gas hob, electric oven, fridge freezer and washing machine, central location to shops, town and railway, £650pcm and shingled garden with outdoor table and chairs, bbq and shed included. It’s not massive but it’s perfect for us. I am very excited but also a bit disheartened and demotivated that I have to live in my current mouldy, rat and pest ridden, waterlogged hole in the ceiling, flat for 2 more weeks before we move, hopefully it will go fast.

Hi my name is Jody and I’m addicted to bootsales…

Seriously! I went last sunday again and I’m probably going to go next sunday too because my OH’s mum is going to be selling some bits. Especially since I’m not an early riser, this is odd for me to want to drag myself out of my bed on my day off at some ridiculous time in the morning to effectively look at others peoples junk.. but it’s so addictive! Anyone else a Boot sale junkie? Infact those of you in the US do you even know what a Boot sale is? I’ve heard you don’t have them over there.

Anyway last sunday I got some £50 brand new Dorothy Perkin shoes for £4! Plus my OH’s mum bought em for me (we met her and her husband there to look around) so I didn’t actually pay a pretty penny for them:D The women selling them said she’s always so busy that she buys stuff, doesn’t try it on then get’s home to find out it doesn’t fit and because she’s so busy she doesn’t have time to take em back so she sells it all dirt cheap at the bootsale, crazy lady. (can you see why it’s so addictve?)

For anyone wondering wht they look like:

There more silver than in this pic but you get the gist.

I have loads of projects I want to do atm but I am doing a ton of overtime to actually pay for the move end of this month, also why I’m busy, so I don’t have as much time as I would like and when I do, I’m too tired and really I should be thinking about packing up all my stuff ready for moving. I hate packing, I like unpacking but not packing it up:(

Yesterday I got up at a respectable time and joined my friend and her mum (who were both up at 5am!) to help out with their boot sale and also have a nose around other peoples stuff. It was a lovely day, everyone was very inquisitive and a lot more involved than the previous boot sale I tried to sell my junk at, and my friend achieved a very modest 40 quid for her unwanted goods.

An even better result was that I had quite a decent haul myself, I hadn’t set out to buy anything since I’m moving in a month and I don’t really have the money to spent on random things but I thought if something caught my eye I’d consider it, but I’d only buy it if it was cheap and most definitely worth it!

After all the mandatory glass ware, kids toys and run down old appliances I happened upon my first find:

Sitting on top of a pile of books was this brand new book on my favorite subject, and hopefully the subject I will be studying at Uni in a years time, CRIME! It didn’t even look like it had been read and only a tiny 50p!! Bargain, to be honest I would of been quite happy to just bring that back but I had only got through a quarter of the stalls.

Onwards and upwards, this time with my friend in tow having a break from her stall, I then spotted an even better Crime lovers find:

There were actually even more crime books in another box but these were a nice neat set and all in almost immaculate condition. You could tell they had been read but the previous owners had obviously kept them very well. Now guess how much all 7 of these almost new books cost?? Go on guess….

£2.50!!

That’s like 35p a book! They were originally selling for 50p each but I said if I get all 7 will you do me a deal (Haggling is the best bit of a boot sale) and naturally she obliged, thank you lady, you made me very happy:)

At this point I didn’t think it could get any better to be honest, I had 8 books for a total of 3 quid and a few months of reading entertainment. This was until I found my best bargain hunt style find and probably the most exciting to all my crafty readers.

How gorgeous is that?! A vintage suitcase complete with squeaky old lock and canvas interior. I have seen so many projects around the internet on turning one of these into a display of some sorts using the inside space. My mum was also in an exhibition where the artists had to create a ’suitcase’ and the things all of them came up with were magical! Here is my mums excerpt on her site and click here to see what she made.

The Magical Box of Curation is an artwork created as part of ArC 2008. Commissioned by Firstsite and Colchester Consortium 7 artists who worked within the consortium schools were asked to work together on an artwork which will act as a learning resource for schools in addition to being an object of art. It was decided that each of us would create a ‘suitcase’.

I can’t find the site with all the artworks on but I will ask my mum and post it on here soon. If anyone knows of any good tutorials or have done something similar then I would love to see them.

As for the price of this amazing vintage find, the sticker on it said £6 but I initially didn’t buy it, just looked, so when I came back he said I could have it for a fiver. There were loads more in different sizes, I would of loved to fill them all with amazing tiny things or something and display them in my new new house.

Well I am back from my rents and things have just been so hectic! I have had minimal time since I got back to do any blogging let alone crafting! I had a viewing for a prospective new house the morn of the day after I came back, I then later started my new job and then I had my counseling session and then another viewing. Today I have had to sort out the stupid Tesco card issue I had and then book some more viewings followed by work and now I am back and can finally sit and relax, which is annoying because I want to craft but I don’t think I have the energy right now, 2 days of hectic-ness!

Anyway I’m sorry to let all my Cadette’s down:( Feel really bad but I will take this opertunity to have a look around all your blogs to see what you’ve done in my absense:) Hope everyone is craft happy!