Mrs Birks Blogs

As I said in my previous post, I was a very lucky girl at Christmas (thank you friends and family). Aside from paper cutting stuff, my husband and I were given afternoon tea for two at The Shard - Aqua Shard to be precise (I think there are other restaurants there).  At £45 per person, it was a very generous gift, so we decided to make the most of it and also booked to go to a show while we were in fancy London Town. Our tea was booked for 5pm - possibly a bit late for a dull Saturday in January but having seen the London skyline during the day at the Sky Garden a few years ago (top recommendation for free things to do in London) I was quite keen to see the Skyline at night. It didn’t disappoint! The lights made London look magical and we had a great view having been sat by the window.  The darkness inside the building meant that you could see out really well, although at times it was difficult to see what was on the table in front of you! Now the lovely people that ...

I was a very lucky girl this year because my Secret Santa bought me a book about Paper Cutting.  I had admired paper cutting at the Norwich Makers Market earlier in the year and somehow my Secret Santa found out - be warned boys and girls, Santa is watching. There is not a lot that I like more than a cheap craft and papercutting has got to be one of the cheapest I've encountered.  All you need is a cutting mat, a scalpel and blades and some nice paper/card.  As a beginner, I know very little about the weights of paper or the different shapes of scalpel blade but my new book by Paper Panda is full of tips and ideas...not to mention designs and templates. Each design in the book is graded with scalpels to give you an idea of its difficulty.  I chose the easiest, then taped the design to my cutting mat and was away. My first few cuts are shown above.  I have since read that it is better not to push out your cuts until later in the process as the paper ...