Back to school!

Today it really felt like I needed to go back to school.  I have been wanting to revamp my product images for a while and today was the day I had set aside to tackle it. Lots of web tutorials later and I have redone 3 of my product listings.

Here are some before and after shots. I'd love your feedback!

I do this because...

After a very long wait my new knife blades arrived today. Unfortunately my eldest son got to them before me and had managed to unwrap the big box and open the next level of box to get to the individual packs of blades before being discovered! Fortunately he hadn't managed to open the blister pack so apart from our hearts stopping with fright for a moment everyone is unscathed.

Why so excited about knife blades? Well it seems ridiculously hard to get bulk quantities of the blade for the Xacto swivel knife and has taken serious amounts of web searching to find a supplier.

So this afternoon whilst the boys were safely out the way I decided to replace my decidely blunt knife blade for a new one. I have never changed a swivel knife blade before and couldn't believe the saga it was. Two pairs of pliers, a lot of colourful language and 30mins later I finally managed to replace the blade. My knife is now very, very scratched by the pliers but hopefully it won't be so difficult to unscrew next time I want to change the blade.

As I contemplated the palava it took to change one blade and the fact that I have just bought 150 I must confess to having a moment of "is it really worth it?" It didn't last long as my new blade was soon gliding round curves and helping me cut out crisp detailed bugs (yep still cutting them!).

What really makes it worth it though is that with the help of knives us papercutters can create truly beautiful things which make us and other people smile. Like this clever lady CecilyMaeHandmade who made this:

I couldn't stop smiling when I saw this or the other lovely things in her shop. Happiness is a well executed papercut!

Kit Leffler

On one of my Etsy wanderings today I came across the work of Kit Leffler. I was absolutely fascinated by the collages. Each time you look you see more and more detail. I was particularly taken by the fungus and flies in this piece.

Kit works with Photoshop to create the collages. You can see more work at http://kitleffler.wordpress.com/

Here are a couple more pieces to pique your curiosity.

Sea Urchins in development

bug ball

I took these shots to show the growing number of paper cut bugs living on my light box at the minute.

Valentine's Day

This amazing rose is from Emily Holmes at Love Mimo.

I have chosen it in honour of my lovely husband, who despite being married to a florist and greetings card designer doesn't shake in his boots on Valentines Day. Instead he set out and bought me flowers (which  I received 2 days early!) and a card with flowers on it.  I am a very lucky girl.

There are creepy crawlies in my cupboards!

I have spent the whole day surrounding myself with pictures of creepy crawlies and creating my very own. I'm pleased to say there are now four new bug designs hiding in the cupboard. They aren't ready to come out yet but they are there... waiting.....not long now!