A Crafty Blog Hop

Hello Crafters,

today I am participating in the Crafty Blog hop. I was nominated by wonderfully talented Sonja of The Art of Stamping. She creates lovely cards and especially her colouring always awes me. Please don't forget to check out her blog!

Now, to the questions:



What are you working on?

Craft wise I always have something to prepare for my design team work for Challenge up your Life. Right now I have the next Challenge to prepare, but after that I have the next  two challenges prepared, so I am pretty relaxed about that.
I am also still busy using all the new supplies that arrived during the Easter holidays from Simon says Stamp.  I love what I chose and also that I still haven't used it all yet. It'll  be a long time until I can order from Simon's again, so I'll drag out the joy as long as I can.


Soon I'll have to  get started on my girls' Birthday party in June. I know, there's still time, but I like to start early. There's always something that gets in the way...


What I am mostly focusing on right now is the re-organisation my craft space - again. I don't have a dedicated craft room, but our living room is huge. Therefore my girls and I use half of it as craft room and office - the office bit being squashed in a corner. That way we have plenty of space for crafting, but with a definite lack of wall space. And desk space.

As our crafty area is always a bit messy, I wanted to separate the two areas of my living room a bit more, and bought us a new big Ikea shelf (Kallax). By now I have set it up (all alone, I am proud of that) and am busy re-organising everything to fit the new arrangement. Which resulted in several days of total mess, because I was pulling apart just about everything, trying to figure out what should go were.

I also got a small shelf (Ikea Moppe) for my alcohol markers, which makes me pretty happy, just because it looks so nice with all the colours. I also swatched out my Distress ink pads, so they now all show the colour they are on all four sides as well as the bottom.


Here's a little view of it, and I'll try to show some more pictures when I am all done.

All that has prevented me crafting a lot during the past week, which is really such a pity. But the desk was simply too full of stuff I was trying to sort... I do hope I'll get it all done soon, so I'll be back with more cards.





How does your work differ from others in your genre?
I actually don't consider myself all that special, I don't think I have a recognisable style (yet), but like to try out new techniques and ideas.
When I first started card making, I tried out different styles, but very soon I realised, that I usually gravitate towards clean and simple cards. I do  love other styles as well, e.g. shabby chic, but I just can't do them.

Why do you create what you do?
When my girls where little, I started  scrap booking, because I wanted to use all the pictures I took, and create cool memories. But the reality of having twins got me pretty quick, as soon as they started crawl and grab everything the camera moved to higher places and the number of pictures taken was therefore dramatically reduced. So was the time I had to do anything creative, so I quit scrap booking without great success, even though it was so much fun.
Years later, I discovered card making as a hobby, that provided the same kind of fun, but without the need for archival material, nice photos in the right size and the pressure that everything needs to be good enough to be kept in my album...

I spent days watching Kristina's videos, created a few cards for certain occasions and was lost forever...

Now I do what I do, because it just makes me feel good.



How does your creative process work?
I take my inspiration from wherever I find it. That can be a challenge to use a certain technique or a card I have seen somewhere. I love the card making community for that, there are so many talented crafters out there and everyone is so encouraging and seems to be happy to share their ideas.
Then with a vague idea in mind, I look at my supplies, other challenges, whatever else inspires me and decide what I want to do / use. This way I often combine two or three challenges.
The outcome is very often very different from my original idea, but that's how it works for me. 

So, with all the questions answered, I'd like to nominate my fellow Design Team member Manu  of A Breeze of Creativity & Joy who makes amazing cards. Please don't forget to check out her blog! I am already very curious what she'll have to say.  


And just because I don't want to let you go without a card, I'll show you another one I created with my Dylusion spray mists and the Deep Sea stamp set...

Have a great week
Ela