Good morning everyone,

Well today is the first day of my new and shiny blog.

You may be coming over from my old blog Little Pear Tree, which sadly became neglected when I really started focusing on my little business 🙁 This was partially due to the lack of time to blog and more importantly because I had nothing exciting and really crafty to blog about!!

I was super busy with creating new products and dealing with lovely customers, that I stopped colouring, stopped ‘playing’ with all my crafty goods and became all about the business.

But this is a new year and a new me and as my website was launched a month ago, it has given me a new platform to start a fresh new blog.

I have realised that I need to craft for my sanity lol, how many of you can relate? In fact I started crafting originally for my sanity, so it seems madness to stop!

I need to start doing the really fun things again and more importantly I loved sharing what I did and how I did it, with others 🙂

I also never get in front of the camera (hands up if your the same), but I was lucky enough at a recent trade show to meet Mr. Tim Holtz and get a photo snapped with him, I shared it on social media (unheard of for me!!) and was overwhelmed by peoples kind and heart warming comments about my insecurities (thank you, if you were one of those people). It certainly made me realise, I am perhaps harder on myself than I need to be and that I just need to start enjoying things not worrying about them!

So to continue with the braveness and new me, my main picture is the very one shared on social media of me and Tim Holtz. The other pictures are a few snapped whilst he was hard at ‘work’.

He was such a lovely guy and so passionate about his products and what he does, a true inspiration.

Ever wondered why he always uses tags? He said he feels that if he creates on bigger pieces of card stock, that he has to ‘make’ something and so feels restricted, but that on a tag he doesn’t have that same feeling attached and so feels he can just be creative and experiment, as its ‘just a tag’. He explained that this was why things like the UPO sheets come in smaller sizes, to encourage people to create freely. His inks etc also get released initially in sets, as he doesn’t want people to get home with say one alcohol ink, drip it on some paper, think ‘Oh is that it’ and put it away and never use it again. He wants people to be forced to experiment, to take two or three inks and drip them on each other, blend them together and truly create, so that’s why his products come in sets at the start.

I managed to get a little video of him demoing his UPO sheets with alcohol inks and comparing it against cardstock, you can view it HERE on you tube or below.

I’ll be back in a few days to share some piccies from an Andy Skinner workshop that I attended at the same trade show and to share some piccies of what I made (tutorial to follow).

I hope you will become a follower of my new blog as I intend to share lots of tutorials, freebies and hints and tips. Thank you if you have taken the time to read and see you soon 🙂

Hugs

Sam

x