My Crafting Life: Cards with a Difference

It is with great pleasure that I am hosting my first guest blog post on my blog. I thought it would be a great idea to hear from other crafters, and today I have a post from Tanya Miller whose business is Cards with a Difference.

I am 40 something and been married for 14 years and live in Chorley, Lancashire.

My love for crafting started from an early age, so my mum tells me, where I used to spend many hours cutting up catalogues and making scrapbooks of things.  I was always happy if I had a pair of safety scissors in my hand!!  

I have tried many crafts over the years including cross stitch and knitting but card making has always been in the background and has always piqued my interest. 

My life changed quite dramatically five years ago after being ill for a while, when I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia.  I had always been really active - worked full time, taught aerobics, ran half marathons, did ballroom and latin dancing - but that had to stop once a diagnosis had been made as the stress on my body was too much.  My life may have changed but it has not ended and I am a positive person and try not to let my condition get the better of me even though I have pain and tiredness.

Card making and other crafts then took over my life and after making cards for family and friends it was mentioned to me that I should try and sell them so I made some stock and then did a few local craft fairs, some of which were successful and others which weren't. After a while I started selling online on a handmade/craft website before finally deciding to go it alone and open my own website in October 2011.

The orders came in steadily and also I had interest from a few shops in Lancashire and beyond who were interested in stocking my cards. 

I love making cards and hope that my love of an attention to detail shows within all my creations.  I like stamping and colouring images with Promarkers and Spectrum Noirs and I also love decoupage too.  I take orders for bespoke creations too and a gallery of my recent creations can be seen on my website and also on my Facebook page.

I recently started making wedding stationery after receiving a request for some samples and these can be seen on my website too.

I have many different kinds of cards and also bookmarks for sale on my website, some featuring my own artwork including Zentangle and Encaustic Wax paintings and also in the New Year I am hoping to have a gift section on my website with handknitted items and wooden items which will be handpainted and embellished, to name a couple, which will make my website a one-stop shop for a gift and a card.

I do have an Etsy shop open which is full of my handmade cards. 

Part of Tanya's craft room

I work full time and every bit of my spare time, housework permitting, is spent in my lovely craft room which is painted a delicious shade of pink and has at the heart of it a beautiful desk with a perspex top and sliding storage which houses the majority of my crafting items.  I like to work in an organised room and sometimes have many projects on the go at the same time to organisation is the key and so I have plenty of baskets on my desk with all the projects organised in them. 

For now I am working on lots of Christmas card orders and also a special order I am doing in collaboration with a friend who is soon to open a handmade jewellery website.  

Things are looking really good for the future in the world of Cards With A Difference.  

I have added in lots of links so you can browse the Cards with a Difference website or follow them on Facebook. Thank you Tanya.

Love Mrs Jones x 

If you make handmade products and would like to be featured in My Crafting Life series, please email me at mrsjonesjewellery@btinternet.com.