Tuesday, November 10, 2009

November Club Challenge




Thank-you to everyone who made our 1st Birthday such a celebration. We had lots of entries for our challenge which was to create a birthday card for the Madhatters. Some of you were very inventive and I believe the decision was a difficult one to make. We asked our guest Sharon Burrell to pick the winner this month and she chose this fabulous card. Aisling Sheridan-Pope has made it two for two in the challenges with her great take on the Madhatter himself.

We had many more out standing entries, a few of which are shown here. Thanks again everyone, keep up the good work.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Madhatters 1st Birthday Party

What a great cake!
Sharon demonstrating some stamping techniques
All of the Madhatters enjoying Sharon's demonstration


The Madhatters are 1 year old! Well we had a great party last night with twenty-seven people attending. We even had a newspaper photographer there. As befits a birthday celebration we had cake. It was gorgeous, with our Madhatter in the centre. Sharon arrived with her shop full of lots of crafting goodies and we all enjoyed a little retail therapy. After the demonstrations and birthday cake we had a birthday raffle where everyone won a prize.
It was a lovely night, thanks everyone for coming and for all of the support over the past year, we hope we have many more birthdays ahead.
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Sunday, October 18, 2009

1st Birthday Celebrations!!

As I am sure all of you are aware, it is our First Birthday at the club in November. How time really does fly when you are enjoying yourself!

To celebrate we are having a birthday party on Wednesday 4th November. We would like to see as many of you there as possible.

We have a guest demonstrator Sharon Burrell, who will also be bringing her shop on the night. ( A chance to stock up on all those crafty essentials folks).

There of course will be cake too and a wonderful members raffle where everyone is guaranteed a prize!!!

So for this months challenge we would like all of you to create a 1st Birthday card for the Madhatters Craft Club. Any style, shape or form welcome, it is totally up to you.

So come along and join us!

Winner of October Challenge




This is the winning entry from our last monthly challenge. The card was created by Aisling Sheridan-Pope, one of our newer members. Aisling only took up card making a few short months ago, but as you can see she is a very talented crafter. A deserving winner we are sure you will agree.
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Sunday, September 13, 2009





This is Karen's Halloween 'Bat house'. She put a little light inside to make it glow slightly. See what you can come up with. As you can see it doesn't have to be a card or LO, it can be anything.




Thursday, September 3, 2009

Hi all Madhatters,
We have decided to set a monthly challenge for our members. This is just to get those creative juices flowing! So for our first challenge we would like you to come up with a project of some sort, it can be anything you like, as long as the theme is Halloween. So cards, scrapbook LO's, crochet, cross stitch, anything goes. There will be a small prize for the winner at the next Madhatters Craft Club night 7th October.
The demonstration next month is 'Iris Folding'.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Stamping Ink Types

The most common types of ink are dye or pigment based.
Dye ink can be permanent or non-permanent or permanent only after heat setting.
Dye inks can contain alcohol to speed drying or can be alcohol free.
Scrapbookers and some rubber stamp artists only us dye inks that are labelled acid-free to indicate that they will not damage paper over years.
Ranger inks (Adirondak, Distress, Archival) and Colorbox Chalk ink Pads( available in full size, cat's eyes, pads or petals) are dye ink pads which are quite readily available.
Most pigment ink is generally thick and slow drying on paper. It may never dry on non-porous surfaces like plastic or metal, because it often contains glycerin. This property makes it excellent for using with embossing powders. Versacolour pigment inks are a good brand as they are richer and a little higher quality than some other brands. Colorbox petal are also readily available and are useful for direct to paper techniques.
Some pigment inks which don't contain glycerin, can be heat set on various surfaces including some plastics and vellum. It is generally faster drying and is useful for embossing, however this needs to be done quite quickly.Tsukineko Brilliance is one of these types. They dry naturally on smooth surfaces like vellum or coated paper.
Some inks are solvent based. Stazon is a solvent based ink pad that requires a special cleaner to remove it from stamps. It is completely opaque and dries on smooth surfaces. It has become very popular for stamping on Cd's, microscope slides, glass, metal and acetate. It is not recommended for fabrics.
Dye ink is mostly stored in a cloth covered felt pad. These hold a lot of ink ad rarely need to be re-inked, with the exception of the chalky ink pads.
Pigment ink usually comes in foam pads. These inks need to come in a softer pad to get even coverage on the stamp.
Resist ink is designed to resist dye based ink, so if stamped onto a glossy paper and then dye ink is applied over it, the image that was stamped would resist the ink. There are two brands of resist ink. Both are designed to work on glossy or coated paper and will not provide a resist on standard card stock at all. Ranger Clear Resist Ink resists stronger and sharper than Versamark. It watermarks very similarly to Versamark. The only reason to recommend Versamark over Clear Resist would be for its ability to hold embossing powders. Clear Resist is not wet enough to hold the powders effectively. This is the same reason it makes a better resist.

Friday, July 24, 2009

New Blog

Calling all Madhatters! We have decided to set up this blog to keep you all informed about comings and goings in Madhatter Land. Our next meeting is on Wednesday 5th August in Clonegal. We look forward to seeing everyone there. The demo this month will be on the basics of stamps and stamping and everyone will have a chance to make a little card topper of their own.
Soon we hope to add photos and content from club nights and general information about what is going on in the crafting world at large.