Wow, it’s been a while since my last update hasn’t it? A lot has been happening in the office recently, including picking the cardmaker of the year, the scrapbooker of the year and the papercrafter of the year from the competitions we ran in Simply Cards & Papercraft, Scrapbook Magazine and Papercraft Essentials. There are so many talented crafters out there that it was so hard to pick winners. We were joined by the popular designers Angie Parkins and Judith Hannington to help us make the big decision of who was going to win just under £2000 worth of craft goodies! Now I can only let you know one of the competition winners as the others haven’t been published yet & I don’t want to ruin the surprise but ………………………… ***drumroll***…………………

The winner of Simply Cards & Papercrafts’ card designer of the year award went to ………………

Diane Ingram from Norwich with her gorgeous creations, shown below!

How gorgeous are her cards? We all loved her style and the nice, bright cheery cards that she made. I hope you all agree with us!!

I want to share some of the other cards with you though as the standard was so high it would be a shame not to include a selection for you to see. If you want to see the winner & all the runner ups in more detail though, get your copy of the latest Simply Cards & Papercraft (issue 66) where there is a big feature on them all!

We also had a visit from Sara Davies, Meg and Claire from Crafter’s Companion yesterday to give us a sneak peak of their product launches for next year. Now, I’m sworn to secrecy but WOW – you guys are in for a treat in early 2010 from them. They have so many lovely new products coming out including something major that I’m getting really excited about. I’m a tease, aren’t I? Sorry!! They then took us for a lovely meal at a gorgeous Italian restaurant in the evening so thank you so much Sara, Meg & Claire, we all had a wonderful evening with you guys!