A Craft Asylum Card

If you recall, a few months ago I posted that I won a Facebook contest run by Craft Asylum. You can read about it HERE. Well yesterday I finally received my prize. I figured it was coming soon when I saw their shows on Create and Craft.tv. Their goodies are so cute and the colours are fab. I received the Home Sweet Home set and here is the card I made from it today:

Below is a picture of what I received. I got thie 6" x 6" paper pad, the set of embellishments and the stamp set:

Like I said, I love the style and the colours. In my card I started with an orange card blank from my stash. I took one of the papers which was borders and used a few together across the card. I took the pink cardstock that was in the pad and used a Fiskars border punch called "Borders" and added it to the bottom and with 3 of their cute little brads. I added one of the kit's buttons to the heart with some pink embroidery thread tied in it. Then I stamped one of the little house stamps with green Papermania ink and punched it out with a 1" circle punch. I mounted it onto scalloped circle cut from the same pink card from pad. I also stamped the little cloud in silver ink and cut that out. The little sentiment is from one of the sheets of paper. It's just too cute, cute, cute!

Some notes about these Craft Asylum products:
Paper Pad (6" x 6") - Very nice paper, decent quality and the colours are sweet. The papers design are all great. I wanted to use them all. They even included some solid papers in there so you can have matching matting and layers! There are a couple of different sheet that have lots of toppers on them which are so nice to have when in a pinch.  On a scale from 1 to 10, I give these papers a solid 8

Embellishments - This comes with brads in 2 sizes , paper tags, buttons and ribbons. The brads are fab! The tiny ones are my fave but you get lots of the large ones. The quality of them is ok and comparable to Docraft quality. The paper tags are a bit meh. The button selection is good with different colours and sizes. The ribbons...cheap and you don't get a whole heck of a lot of it. Basically you get enough to do ONE card per ribbon and there are only 3 of them...not the greatest quality ribbon either. About par with what you would get as a free sample in a magazine. Overall I give the Embellishments a 7.

Clear Stamps - Ok...I am a stamp challenged person. I LOVE to stamp but my technique leaves much to be desired. So when I chose the solid colour house to stamp I knew there would be a bare patch...NOPE!!!! These stamps were nice and sticky and stuck to my block great. I got a perfect stamp the very first time I used. I usually stamp a practice first on some scrap because my stamping stinks so bad but my practice ones turned out great. I am well pleased with these stamps and can highly recommend them! I give these stamps a big old 10.

I haven't seen the prices they are charging so cannot tell you if their products are good value for money. I do hope they are somewhat in line with other brands such a Papermania. The quality is about the same, maybe a little bit better. So go ahead and have a punt. Grab one of their paper pads and/or stamp sets and have fun.

Happy Crafting!

My First Swap

Happy Thursday All! I'd like to show you what I received. I recently joined my first Swap Group on Facebook and just completed my very first swap ever! The group is UK-Ireland Craft Swaps. Since I am just beginning to get into Altered Art and Crafting, I thought I would start simple by entering a Tag Swap. We were to stamp with Stazon black ink on 10 tags with 10 different stamps and swap with a partner.

My lovely partner was Mandy and here is what she sent me:

She sent me some great stamped images that I know I can use in other projects. It's also customary to send other extra little goodies to add to our stashes. She sent me some really neat die cuts: a huge swirl, doves, teddy bears, hearts, little tulip blossoms and brackets. There were several of each, I didn't count them but I think there are 4 or 5 of each. The last item was a bag of sparkly goodness full of beads, flat backed gems, brads, resin pieces, bottle cap, etc.

I also sent her 10 tags with goodies but I didn't take a photo of them. I sent 5 white tags and 5 kraft card tags with seam binding ribbon that I colourised in 5 different colours. I did 2 in each colour as follows: 2 were spritzed with white pearl homemade glimmer mist, 2 spritzed with dark grey homemade glimmer mist, 2 spritzed with Mr Huey Tan Paint Mist, 2 coloured with Distress Ink in Dusty Rose and the last 2 I colored with Ranger Alcohol Ink in Cloudy Blue. The goodies I sent were a bunch of sheer ribbons in black, gray and white, a smal heart frame, 2 very large black roses from Mulberry Crafts, 4 Vintage images I printed out and coated in matt medium and 2 large panels of really interesting lace I recently bought. Mandy does lots of altered projects so I hope these will come in handy for her.

So I think my first swap was a success. I really enjoyed putting it all together. It was so much fun waiting for my parcel to arrive from Mandy and wondering if she would like what I sent her. I will participating in a few more swaps coming up so I'll be reporting how they go. If you like altered art and altered crafting and live in the UK or Ireland (or anywhere really as there are International swaps as well) then come join us over at UK-Ireland Craft Swaps...we would love to have you join in the fun!

Have a wonderful day and Happy Crafting!!!