Crafty Competition Plus 15% Off All Orders Over £25!

It's time to get your entry in for the 2010 Crafty Computer Paper Competition. Simply enter by sending us details of creations you have made using any of our products.
This year we have broadened the competition and it is open to all standards from Beginner or Intermediate to Advanced in the following 4 categories:

PAPERCRAFTS
DECALS
FABRICS
MINIATURE WORLD

Each category will have a prize:

£100 voucher & a bottle of bubbly for 1st prize
£50 voucher runners-up prize
£25 voucher for the best of the rest

We must have all entries by the 31st October 2010, you can either send in a good quality high res photo of your projects via email, or you can send them to us by post. We will then photograph your entry and return them to you.

To help you create some fantastic new entries for our 2010 Crafty Competition, we are offering you a 15% discount on all orders over £25 for the duration of the competition.  Simply enter CC10 into the coupon code box in our shopping basket to claim your discount.
For full details visit:
http://www.craftycomputerpaper.co.uk/pages.asp?purl=comp2010

Competition results for download and graphics competition

We organised a small competition this year for any projects which were created using any of our downloadable graphics and graphics CDs. We had a great response to the competition and we have now posted the results on the site. The winnner was Lynne Neil who made a lovely card using the poppy graphics and decoupage techniques. Runners up were Emy Buxton with her cup cake card, May Brechany which a lovely card showing a vintage lady and the dutch backing papers. Our last runner up was Susan Skipper who made this large card using backing papers and a vintage image from the vintage graphics CD. There were other entries we had to show and they were awarded a highly commended award. Although we were sent many greetings card designs we did have a fabulous entry from Richard Dimmock who made some very original projects creating scenes using many of our downloadable graphics. We have only shown one photo on the website but there were other projects created by Richard. They took many hours to achieve and we thought they were fabulous.  We hope you enjoy looking at the entrants. We always hold a big competition every summer which is open to all standards and covers all the products we sell, we will be announcing the begining of this competition in June 2010 and entrants usually have to be in by the end of August.

Happy New Year to you all

Dear All
Happy New Year, we hope you have managed to dig your way out of the snow. It is all slush with us at the moment, lots of slush is more dangerous than ice! We can't believe that we have had snow on the ground from mid December.

Do please have a look at our many special offers on the site at the moment.
We have the following offers:

Dry Rub off decal paper was £14.99 now £10.99
Laser water-slide decal paper was £18.50 now £13.99
Magic decal paper was £14.95 now £10.99
Laser tattoo paper was £14.99 now £10.99
Inkjet tattoo paper was £14.99 now £10.99
T-shirt blanks were £6.20 now £3.50
Pabric Adhesive sticker paper was £6.99 now £5.50
Pabric soft sew was £6.99 now £5.99
Window cling/sticker paper was £7.99 now £6.99

To see these products in more detail please visit the special offers page below
http://www.craftycomputerpaper.co.uk/productlist.asp?catid=252&RootCatID=252

We will be adding some new exciting fabric and papers very soon. We will email you as soon as they arrive.

Thank you
Crafty Computer Paper Team

Video showing how to use the new Window sticker/cling

If you want to have a look at the video we made showing how to make the new window stickers, here it is from our Facebook page. We have posted a post about the Window sticker/cling before this one. Please have a look to find out more.

Crafty Computer Paper office photos

I thought I would add some photos of our office so you can see what Crafty Computer Paper is all about. I will get round to making a video showing all the staff in action and of course the office dogs Pops and Lulu.

This is a photo showing the customer services desks.

This the main packing office.

This is the meeting area of the office

This is where Julie the assistant manager works

This is my office where I am writing this from.

Sorry these photos are a bit dark but it will give you an idea of how the office is laid out. I will take some photos of the outside because we are situated in beautiful Northumberland countryside. It is just too cold to go out and take some photos at the momet.

Hope you enjoy them

New window sticker/cling

One thing that sounds easy but isn't is making good inside window stickers. The reason is because the inkjet printer does not produce white ink. You would think that you could just buy some clear normal window cling and then print any images onto it and then stick it on the window. This doesn't work at all well because if the image has white or light coloured areas this will just print out clear and not show the colours. Also with normal window cling you have to print the image in reverse if you want it to show through the window or you have to stick the sticker on the outside of the window. The only way clear window cling works is if you use dark colours or black lettering. It is very difficult to make a white window sticker because you have to attach the white print out on the outside of the window and you can't create a sticker which can be viewed from the outside.
We have sourced a great new window sticker/cling which makes white or clear window stickers which can be viewed from the inside of the window. The paper we sell isn't a printer paper, and it is effectively a sticker that is applied to any kind of paper or card. You print out what you like using your inkjet or laser printer or you could use a drawing or a painting instead, the sticker does not have to be produced using a printer at all. The window sticker paper is an adhesive sheet which is attached to the front of the print you want to show on the window. The trick here is how to make the front surface of the picture sticky so it can be attached to the inside of the window. Once you have applied the adhesive sheet to the paper, you are left with quite a thick sheet, it looks a little like a laminating sheet. If you make stickers for schools or charities then you can make them and sell them at this state. The next stage is the clever bit, there is a very thin film on top of the adhesive sheet, you will need to use a craft knife or a sharp nail to find this film. Find the edge and then pull off completley, to reveal a sticky surface to the print out. You then just attach it to the inside of the window. What is also great is that you can take if off again and reposition without leaving any resisdue. Leave the sticker for as long as you like and take it off and you wouldn't know it had been there. Like some window clings you have to apply a little bit of moisture to get them to stick again, our paper keeps it stick very well so you won't have this problem either.

Some pre-made stickers can be very expensive to buy but now you can make very professional looking stickers quickly and easily. We think they would be great for schools and charites, showing off artwork or selling stickers for cars. You can also make temporay stickers to advertise an event on the inside of a car window. Shops can use them to enhance their windows with decorations for christmas or advertising promotions. The uses are endless, watch the video on the site to see how easy they are the make.

We apoligise to Viv Cash

I have been meaning to do this for ages but we have to apoligise to Viv Cash who very kindly sent us in the most beautiful project for the Crafty Competition 2009. We have contacted her and apoligised but we felt we had to tell you what happened and apoligise to her publicly.
We had all her projects in a bag in the back of the car, Charlotte took them to the photographic studio to take photos of the work to add to the website. She then put them back in the car for the weekend to take back to the office on Monday. Over the weekend her husband filled the car with rubbish to take to the tip and threw away everything from the back of the car, including Viv's lovely work plus a great deal of Charlotte's finished cards (2 weeks of work) at the same time. It was awful and we felt so bad this had happened because we know how much work went into making these projects.
Viv used the cotton inkjet fabric sheets to make and embroider a beautiful cover using her own designs and embellishing further with beads etc. She also made a lovely pin cushion. The only saving grace was we had taken the photos of the work and we wanted to show them on this post.
Sorry Viv this happened! We did send her a goodie bag of fabrics to make up for her loss and we look forward to seeing what she made with these fabrics. Viv is a very old customer of ours which made it even worse and I hope she has fogiven us!!