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An Update, Some Musings And A Head To Head Creation
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Hi Everybody!
Those of you who come and visit my blog regularly will know that I’m on the Design Team for Dragons Lair Designs. One of the areas that the design team members, as well as others who like using Dragons Lair Designs item, come together to show our creations and have some fun is the Dragons Lair Designs Fan Group.
Lately we’ve been having a monthly “Head To Head”. For this everybody uses the same item from the Dragons Lair Designs Store and crafts something using it. Some already have the item in their crafting digital library and others take the opportunity to build their digital library up and just buy the item for the head to head challenge. At the end of the month Dragons Lair Designs designer Janette Padley gets “Random” to choose one winner who gets the item for the following month for free to work with for free. Why not come join us in the Fan Group and join in with this, and/or the other, fun things, we are doing.
My creation can be seen towards the end of this post.
MUSINGS:
I hope that none of my crafty friends got caught by the “Sharpie” promotion that was making the rounds of groups on FB yesterday.
Some say it tried to download a virus to their PC when they took part the supposed promotion to give away sets of Sharpie pens, though their anti virus software caught it. The worry will be for those who’s anti virus software didn’t stop it. Not sure whether the page tried to download a virus for everybody or at what stage of the process of taking advantage of the fee pens promotion this virus download was seen to start.
Even if it didn’t download a virus the promotion certainly caused a lot of problems with dozens of people “taking part” in it and allowing the promotion site to post to groups they are a member of with their endorsement. My News Feed was full of it at one stage yesterday. Hopefully it’s all been removed and blocked by now.
I tried to do a quick investigation as soon as I saw the first one appear (there can be a bit of a problem with doing this if you are not careful of course because you could land up going into the very area you are trying to avoid and getting caught – and as careful as I am, and having a background in IT I might still get caught so if you do see anything odd appearing on FB in my name then a comment on whatever my latest blog post is to let me know would be appreciated – but there are a few basic things to look out for).
The first thing I noticed was that the link was not from a Sharpie company website. Not always an indication that a promotion isn’t a proper one of course because some companies use a company to run their promotions for them, and some use one of the services that shorted a long website address to a quick link version, but in this case there was what would be considered a mis-spelling in the name of the site you would be taken to, so a name that appeared as if it could be a site of a company had an extra “e”. Typing the name of the website of the supposed promotion into a search engine, e.g. Google, (not into the address bar of your browser which would take you straight to the site), brought up a link to some interesting facts about the site – it was registered less than a fortnight ago, registered in the USA but by a person living in Pakistan I believe, thought of as not a trusted site, etc., etc.
So of course I didn’t click to go and do whatever was required to join in the promotion. Obviously posting to groups was one requirement. I would assume that as well as this that doing a “Like” on something was required – there usually is this requirement on both real promotions and fake ones, but the “Like”s for fake ones are usually the likeing of some page or group set up specifically by the scammers, and a build up of followers and likers gives the scammers a comodity that can be sold for a lot of money to other scammers. It’s called Like Farming.
If anybody wants to have a better idea of how the scammers, and others who are up to no good, play on ordinary users of the Internet then there are sites to help you out.
KnowTheNet has sections such as How to spot a fake site. There’s a Facebook Page from Hoax-Slayer, as well as their Hoax-Slayer site. There’s a Scams & fraud guides on the Money site. Of course, there are a lot of other sites as well that offer information like this to help Internet users.
BOX:
The kit chosen for the February “Head To Head” is the Watercolour Elements mini kit.
I decided to use it to decorate a small box that I’m going to put a strung glass pearl necklace in.
To start with I took some of the elements into My Craft Studio and resized to my required site, made four of the corners, and layed them out on the A4 working area. I used the software to pick up an area of the flowers to make a swatch of colour in the area I had spare which was about half the working area.
The items were then printed out onto an A4 sheet of 250gsm white cardstock and then cut out.
I used the colour swatch area to tare out three rough circles of cardstock and these were further torn into spirals and used to make the floral roses (You can see my pictorial guide to makeing similar roses in 4. No Tools Paper Flowers 02). I also cut out four strips of 1cm deep to put round the sides of my box from the colour swatch.
I used my Hougie Board to score some 350gsm white cardstock to make a 2cm deep box, cut where necessary and glued it together using some quick grab wet glue. I used the same glue to attach the cut out pieces from the collection on to decorate the box.
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FOR YOUR INFORMATION
Dragons Lair Designs Links
- If you fancy trying out some of Dragons Lair Designs, please do visit the Store to find all sorts of digital goodies for crafting, and the minimum spend is only £2 (you’ll find great digi-stamps and lots more).
- And why not join the “Dragons Lair Designs Fan Group” on Facebook. It’s a small, fun, group where we have lots of different activities which include exclusive challenges, lots of inspiration and giveaways – and there’s a loyalty club for those who take part as well where taking part gets you points, winning gets you more points, and get enough points and you get a voucher to spend in the shop.
- The “Dragons Lair Designs” page on Facebook. We love it when people “Like” us!
- While I’m not a fan of Pinterest and especially people’s habit of posting images, digi-stamps, etc., to the site that they’ve got no rights to, you can follow designer Janette Padley on Pinterest!
- See us on CraftsUPrint
- Dragons Lair Designs Challenge Blog : new challenge every month
- Dragons Lair Designs Inspiration Blog : a showcase/inspiration blog for lots of different crafting made using Dragons Lair Designs.
- Then of course there’s the Dragon Boss Lady’s own blog – Straight From The Craftroom
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Love your gorgeous box.xxx
Beautiful box, love the roses.
Hi this is a beautiful box the roses are stunning. Hugs Jackie
Must admit after reading a report in the paper the other week I’ve stopped going or liking any websites anymore. Love your creation it’s very prettyx
it’s very beautiful Gwyneth.
gr karin
Oh Gwyneth, this is just precious. Love the stunning floral creations on there.
Beautiful box. The depth of those flowers is wonderful. This box would be ideal for many different occasions.
❤️ & hugs
Lisa xxxx
Hi Gwyneth – I enjoyed reading your info on scammers etc and found it quite interesting – thanks for sharing.
I love your box, so pretty and the colours you’ve chosen are beautiful – great project!
xx