Don't you just LOVE wednesday's? Say hello to wednesday  "hello wednesday" It's all downhill from now on to the weekend - yippee!!!

Do you remember our EXCLUSIVE New England Happy Christmas Saddle Stich ribbon with the little heart?  It is here to jog your memory.

It was so popular that we sold out and had to do a re-print in October,  and then it sold out again by the end of November!! Well it got us thinking................ maybe you would like it to say Happy Birthday, maybe you would like it printed on some zesty colours...................

...........................what do you think?

9mm grosgrain ribbon, five different colours all printed with the saddle stitch edging and the little stitched heart, and the best bit - they are EXCLUSIVE to us! Yeah!!!

I am not very good at using patterned paper, but these ribbons seem to go with everything.

You can find the new ribbon HERE. Hope you like it.

Wish me luck, just about to leave for another session of treatment on my thumb, I wonder which bit of my they are going to hurt today!!

Don't you just LOVE wednesday's? Say hello to wednesday  "hello wednesday" It's all downhill from now on to the weekend - yippee!!!

Sometimes they come thick and fast, others are a slow drawn out process - ideas that is!

This card idea came to me like a flash, while Rachie was trying to teach Sydney another version of this rhyme.  Something to do with potatoes and trousers!!

I simply typed the words and printed it out on to white card.  Sewed a few buttons (here) in place with white thread and that was it.  Simple idea, simple to make and simply says it all.

If you would like to use this idea then you can find the artwork here.  Please copy and enjoy.

Well did you enjoy the blog hop?  I think several of us including me were blog hop newbies, yes I did follow the hop myself.  And for once I did not get lost! Thank you to everyone that took part, you will find the winner of the £20.00  voucher and all the candy winners on the challenge blog here.

The winner of our blog hop candy was Victoria - if you can email me at craftyribbons@gmail.com you will have some wonderful ribbons to play with Victoria.

Carol is hosting this new Challenge and the title to her theme is..........Love is Black and Red.  Oooooh Carol Black and Red, not colours I believe I have worked with before, so another new challenge for me.  Well that is what it is all about. 

Black and red, red and black I wandered the ribbon aisle. Ummm velvet for a bit of luxury, grosgrain for added texture and all my love ribbon - perfect.  So I rushed back upstairs with my little hoard and started to play. I like playing!

Well I do not think you can get more black and red then that.  Velvet ribbon can be found here, some 60 colours! The grosgrain is 16mm and you will find lots here, the all my love ribbons we launched yeaterday and are here.  So that is my entry for this new challenge, but you can find the rest of the DT creations by visiting the challenge blog here.

As always there is a prize..............and what a surprise...................Bev's bag is all Black and Red!

Enjoy.

Don't you just LOVE wednesday's? Say hello to wednesday  "hello wednesday" It's all downhill from now on to the weekend - yippee!!!

We had a visit from Janet our local blog follower on Monday.  She brought us a cake decorated with dolly mixtures.  Yum yum all gone Janet, we loved it thank you.  Janet just popped round to make sure we were all ok after last weeks little drama.  While chatting she asked if I was planning on giving any Valentine ideas.  Oooooh, err, ummmm...........not really an answer.  But I got to thinking Monday night, and came up with a few card sketches (does anyone else sketch their ideas?).

This card looks nothing like any of my sketched ideas!!! But I do really like the cleanness of the design, it works for me.

The buttons came from our Hearts Hearts Hearts button box here.  I used six stranded embroidery thread to sew the buttons to the card and then simply tied a knot and fanned out the threads. I used three different sized buttons all in the same colour.  There are lots of different shaped hearts in the button box, in a selection of colours, so you can have a good old play.

The paper is from a collection I bought in France, in a wonderful scrapbooking shop. Tony hates visiting the little village as they have opted to keep the French driving law that cars entering a roundabout or joining a road at a junction have RIGHT OF WAY.

The "all my love" ribbon is a NEW Design and can be found here. I wrapped some more embroidery thread around the card, and used the ribbon to scrunch the threads together with a simple knot.  I adjusted the ribbon a few times until I managed to get the ribbon words in the right place.

The all my love ribbon comes in a small selection of colours, I do like these ones as well..................

Come and join me tomorrow to see what I made with the red ribbon.

Ooooh I am very excited today...........Our NEW Challenge Blog (here) kicks off with it's first Challenge.

and I have been busy making my card.  The trouble was I had so many ribbons to choose from, I struggled,

traditional or contemporary.............

in the end I went for this

Traditional with a contemporary twist...

(I have confessed to the DT girls that I cannot colour and do not own a rubber stamp!)

I used 3 ribbons, the first is the white opal with the red edge, this sparkles in the light - here.
The second is our very own Happy Christmas embossed velvet - here.
and finally the wonderful red poinsettia - here 

Yes the poinsettia is made from nothing but ribbon, here is a side view.

All I have done is backed the ribbon onto card and cut out. Tutorial here.
There are some half poinsettias on the ribbon,
perfect for building up a full flower.

Do pop over to the NEW Challenge blog to see what all the fab DT girls have made with ribbon.

Cards and goodies from our 007 Secret Challengers!

We all hope you have a spooky day...

The Crafty Ribbon Team

Oh I have had a wonderful time playing with ribbons this weekend.  I finally caught the cold/flu/virus/bug thing that everyone in the warehouse has had, so it was perfect just to sit back feeling sorry for myself and indulge in my pleasure of ribbon. More of that later, first we have the Friday FREEBIE winner.  I managed to get an action shoot of the number being picked by Mollie.

The Friday FREEBIE winner is.....

....Number 9 Craftykitten

Craftykitten wrote - "Yummy, piles of pink prettiness to play with how cool would that be!!  Good luck with your wall, lets hope you find loads of yumminess for more Friday Freebies!!
Hugs
Dawn x"

Congratulations Dawn, we hope you will be "Tickled Pink" with your prize, please do leave a comment and send us your address to craftyribbons@gmail.com. Thank you for all the other wonderful comments, Rachie and I did not make it all the way through the WALL! All you could hear were "Oooohs" and "Arrrrrhs" as we opened a new box. We will be back on WALL duty later in the week. 

We all LOVE Ribbon (I don't think that is in question!) and I LOVE Flowers, so I have combined my two LOVES - Ribbon Flowers. Every day this week I am going to show you how to make a different ribbon flower, a bloom a day!

Shaggy Ribbon Flower

This Shaggy Ribbon Flower looks great and is really easy (I Promise) to make, this side view shows you how shaggy it is!

It is a while since my last tutorial, but here goes.  (Apologies for the state of my thumb, I had an accident on Friday with one of the boxes from the WALL.)

1.  Gather all your bits together.  You will need a needle and strong thread, a small button (the spotty ones can be found HERE).  The ribbon I used is a 22cm length of 40mm Grosgrain (HERE), but you can use any ribbon width, just change the length that you use.

2.  My grosgrain ribbon had wired edges, so I just eased back the ribbon to find the end of the wire, then pulled it out. Repeat for the other side.

3.  Thread the needle with strong sewing thread, you have to pull the thread really tight, so test the thread first to make sure it will not break, put a knot at the end of the thread.  Fold the ribbon in half width-wise and sew along the top edge, do not make your stitches too small, about 8-9mm and the same distance from stitch to stitch. 

4.  Continue sewing along the length of the ribbon.

5.  Once all sewn, it should look like this, remove the needle and open up the ribbon to remove the gathers.

6.  Snip the ribbon about 1cm apart, do not go all the way to the sewn line.  Continue snipping all the way along the length of ribbon.

7.  Gather up the ribbon, pull it really tight and knot the thread to hold the gathers in place.  Make a second knot to be safe.

8.  Your ribbon may have already started to fray, if not rub it between your thumb and fingers.  This will loosen the fibres where it has been snipped.

9.  Sew the button to cover the hole in the centre of the flower.

Finished Shaggy Ribbon Flower.

I enjoyed making that, I now have a collection in different colours.  You do not have to use grosgrain ribbon, have a play with other types.  The more open weave the ribbon is the better "Shaggy" effect it will give.

Hope you will join me for tomorrows workshop, you will need a candle! 

Although I make lots of cards, normally for Ali to display at her exhibitions, this was the first time I had made cards in "bulk".  Mollie is being christened on Sunday and so to my craft room I headed. 

Ali printed the ribbon for me, and I selected the netting and the lace edged ribbon (one of Ali's new summer ribbons) from the warehouse and had a play.  I had to make 60 cards so I wanted the design to be very simple.  I am a collector of the "Me to You" teddies and have over 200!! and Mollie has 4, so the centre flower fitted the bill.

Got a day off tomorrow to get a few things ready for Sunday.

Rachie

This is going to be a long posting, I have lots of wonderful goodies to show you from our Ribbon Challenge # 4 - "Spring Time" 

I had great pleasure in taking "Spring Time" to Paris last week.  I decided to hang the cards on a washing line with the old fashioned dollie pegs.  We had no idea what the pegs were called in French (we got told it was "chevilles" but that means ankle!!!  I will never be able to speak French), but the ladies loved them - very English. 

Amanda made this wonderful wall hanging for us, it is a work of art.  Every letter has been cut out and a different ribbon has been put behind, dragonflies and flowers decorate each letter.  Sadly it did not arrive in time for Paris, she wanted to deliver it in person, but thought her hubby wouldn't stand for a trip to Paris!!

Amanda also made these two cards, great idea for the little butterfly charm.

Beryl made the 4 cards above, they are so different from each other.  We would like to send congratulations to Beryl as a new grand daughter arrived over the weekend.

Bev (yes our Bev) made these two cards - they are her first EVER cards!!  She was so worried about making them, but they are delightful, she has since raided my craft room as she has no supplies!

Carol made these two charming cards.  She kindly sent me a list of items she used to make the cards, so that I could become familiar with the stamps - great idea, thank you. Messey Rabbit Gardener is the top one and Planting some love is the one above.  Question "What are Nesties?"  Do I need them?

Cath made these fun cards above. Cath is Linda's daughter, she was home from uni and wanted to join in the challenge - her first one. Great start hope to see many more. Wicked Easter egg.

We think Dorothy had fun making this selection of goodies, the horse shoe with the ribbon case is a fab idea.  The frogs are brillant, although we do not do well in France with frogs - I wonder why!

I love the little "pins" that Jan uses on her cards, they are so very different. What great use of the ribbon road!

Leigh was not happy - I bought her some French peel offs, she thought they would be perfect for this challenge but she could not find them (until the day after she posted these cards!!)  I have some new French rub ons for her.  She is busy planning her sons wedding, so I am sure she will not need them for a while.

Marjorie what a great idea using the ribbon as a pot - love the colours.

Natalie the bunny card is so scrummy, and I just love the glazed effect you put on top of your images.

These cards were made by Sue, this was her first challenge and we hope she will join in with many more.

This Sue is part of our Crafty Team.  I asked Sue to cut 14 sets of "Spring Time" to send out, she lost count (that's what she said!) and cut 16. As punishment (I am a hard boss) I gave a set to her and Bev to join in on the challenge.

Tina made these cards above, she used one of the pictures from our blog for the top card, the colours are wonderful.  Tina also made us a tag album, I have never seen one of these it is wicked.

This is the front, she left the tags blank so that we could fill them in. All the pictures are from our blog.

This album was sat on our demo table in Paris, it caused such a stir as they had never seen anything like it. Well... trying to explain how to make it in English would be hard enough but in French!!  We had to remove it from display on Saturday - we could not cope!!

Once again another splendid couple of cards from Tracey and Paul.  So fresh and fun.

Wilma certainly hit the spot with her "Springtime in Paris", they all wanted the Eiffel tower stamp!!

Thank you all so much for the time and effort you put into your delightful creations.  It is amazing how over the 4 challenges the use of ribbon has changed.  Ribbon is always thought of as a "finishing" touch, added as a bow or a little trim, BUT it is quite apparent that now the ribbon is the main element on the card, and then the card is designed around it.

Happy Birthday Rachie - honest it is Rachies birthday today, not an April's fools joke!!

Poor Rachie has had to suffer, throughout our childhood we used to play some terrible jokes on her.  Sending happy birthday dear brother cards, putting her presents in the rubbish bin!  For her 18th, I gave her a large loaf of bread - it was a nice one, it came from Waitrose!!! I had cut a hole in the bottom and taken all the centre out to make room for her present, a camera.  I am always nice in the end!?

I made a lovely card for her today. I would like to point out that Rachie is mad about "Cows"!!!!

I even had the happy birthday ribbon specially printed for her - oh, and several hundred mtrs extra!!

As always my cards are made from ribbon.  I wrapped her prezzie up in white tissue paper and used the cow print ribbon to tie it up - it looked rather good.

Happy Birthday Rachie, hope you like all your goodies - have a great day.