No Ebay Excitement Today...

... just a warning.

I don't sell much on Ebay, just now and then, but this week, as I've already blogged about, I put up my saxophone for sale and as you will all have read it sold yesterday. Great I hear you all say. Well, yes and it genuinely has sold but then something awful, and pretty scary happened.

Yesterday, before the bid had ended, I then get an email from someone, all 'looking' like it was sent out via the Ebay mail system, saying (ignore their obviously terrible English, but even that didn't make me suspicious as the level of peoples English nowadays is appalling at best):

"I am interested to buy your unit but I saw the same picture and description at another seller and I am not able to figure out who is the real seller."

They then gave a link to this other item which, stupidly now, I clicked on and was taken to the page where this item was supposed to be. Then, like usually happens on Ebay, the screen came up with the normal looking screen you expect to see where you enter your id and password. Once I had entered this it came up with another perfectly expected/looking page saying that the item had been removed. So, I think, oh well, they (the guy who sent me the confused email) must have complained to Ebay and the item has been removed, fine, no need to worry myself. I go off on my day merrily as usual but no. OMG. The whole thing was a scam, including the 'confused' email and my Ebay identity has been compromised.

Not only did he get access to my Ebay, including my name, address, phone number, although thankfully not bank details as I don't have any on Ebay, but he then proceeded to email 3 of my unsuccessful bidders offering them a second chance at buying the sax as it supposedly didn't sell. He asked them to email him at a different, presumably his own, email address, where I'm assuming the intention was to ask for payment, all under my identity, and quite obviously steal from them as there was no saxophone to sell as I had sold it.

I feel so stupid to be duped in such a way. The thing is it all looked really authentic, you can really only tell with little tiny details and only then if you know what to look out for. In this case the link I clicked on quite clearly wasn't to an Ebay site. I've been emailing Ebay but grrrr... they just only ever seem to send out automated emails in response!

Luckily I was still able to access my Ebay, he didn't change my password which could have been a possibility and locked me out completely, so I've now changed my password and each time I've made sure that the address that appears at the top of the page is the right one.

Anyway, just thought I'd let you all know so you can be forewarned. Although, hopefully, you are all more likely not to be as thick as me!!!

The whole thing has left an awful taste in my mouth and I really feel as if I've been violated. I mean he knows where I live, my phone number... Richard is trying to assure me that it probably is just some spotty nosed kid, high on coke and pizza, showing off for his mates as if he had really wanted to do some damage he would have changed my Ebay password. But I still feel creeped out by the whole thing.

The Excitement That Is Ebay

I'm selling something. On Ebay, obviously (hence the title of this post!). For information purposes (and the nosey amongst you) I finally decided that, as I hadn't even got it out of it's case for over 4 years, it was time to sell my saxophone. A hard decision but if it hasn't seen the light of day for over 4 years it's money being wasted, I may as well sell it and spend it on scrapping stuff! I'm right aren't I?

Anyway, back to topic. I find Ebay really exciting (sad, I know) and get a real buzz out of logging on and seeing if there have been any bids, how many people are watching my item and so on. Currently I have received 8 bids (yay!) and no fewer than 39 people are watching (even bigger yay!) so hopefully it will sell and at a reasonable price. It hasn't reached the reserve price I set for it yet but with that many people interested it hopefully won't be long before it does. OK, off to see if there any more bids...

Oh, and I have some LOs to post which I will try and get around to in the next couple of days.

*19 hours to go: 9 bids, 42 people watching...
*15 hours to go: 13 bids, 44 people watching and my reserve price met & raised!
*6 hours to go: Situation static...
*5 hours to go: No change...
*4 hours to go: Getting bored now...
*3 hours to go: Blah...blah...blah...
*2 hours to go: Falling asleep...
*1 hours to go: Comatose...
*0 hours to go: Sold! 14 bids and £70 over my reserve price = result.

Hit Refresh... Again!

OK, you will all have to hit the refresh button again as I've changed the blog header/site. It was just too darned bright! I liked the zing of it and the colour combo but it was really 'in your face' and that's just not me so I've gone for a soft, subtle Spring look.

What do you think?

New Blog Header

About time too I hear you say.

I know, I know, the page is a 'little' on the bright side but hey, I felt like bright! It's been beautiful this week, typical gorgeous spring days. Crisp, bright blue skies, a slight chill in the air. Beautiful. So beautiful it deserves a bright new header. That and the fact I've been putting off posting anything in the hope that it would spur me on to actually create one.

I've had a go this time at playing with digi brushes and really like the effect you can get with them. These are a set of japanese ones (downloaded free from somewhere...).

OK, now I've got a new header there is no excuse for me not to post so hopefully I'll get my blogging swing back. That and I will have a lot more time now as I've now stopped work - Yay!

Later.

***Edited to add: If you can't see the new look page (you know who you are!) just try hitting the refresh button and it should all become brighter!!!***

They've Arrived

My 2 new Cricut cartridges that is. Fabulous Finds and Going Places. Who knows, perhaps I'll find myself going to fabulous places, LOL.

OK. Off to have a play and see what I can do with them.

The Birthday Crop

So, last weekend was the PaperArts birthday crop, held over 2 days. Friday from 10am to 10pm and Saturday 10am to 5pm.

To be honest by the time Friday rolled around I was so NOT in the mood for scrapping and it took quite an effort to get myself out of the house and enroute to the village of Brimscombe (home of PaperArts). I had a lot of work on last week and absolutely no time to get myself organised for the crop. It took all my energies just to get to grips with pulling my own classes together let alone think about what I was actually going to scrap over the weekend. To give you some idea of how busy/bad last week was I didn't take any photos for Shimelle's class until Thursday and I finally got around to uploading them Thursday night, around 11pm-ish! Quite clearly I wasn't going to be going to the crop armed with those on Friday morning...

And Friday didn't start too well either. I woke up at around 7am to the realisation that I hadn't done the class instructions for the class I missed teaching at the end of January (the one where I had laryngitis - hmmmm, that sounds like an episode title from Friends). Fiona had, albeit very gently, nagged me about this earlier in the week but I just hadn't had time to do it. And as I didn't feel that I could in all good conscience go off to the crop without putting something together 7am Friday morning found me at the pc trying to type up instructions. The problem though is that it wasn't a basic class and I knew that I would have to do a step by step set of instructions with accompanying step by step photos. Which in theory sounds simple right? No. It would have been if I had still got some of the supplies left! Cue me ripping my layout apart trying to retrospectively record/demonstrate how I had put it together in the first place - not good! To say I wasn't in the best of moods by the time I had finished and then realised it was 9:30am, the crop starts at 10am and I have yet to have a shower, pack my scrapping stuff up (and here you need to imagine that my stuff has been spread to all 4 corners of the room in my attempt to find stuff to complete the retrospective class instructions!) and I have no idea of what photos I'm going to need/take.

To wrap this up quickly, because by now even I'm bored with my typing, I arrived, somehow, miraculously at around 10:45am, feeling not a little grumpy and wishing I could have a quiet day at home. But I forgot about the power of the people, the people at PaperArts. I can count on these great friends to make quick work of a 'blah' mood - I defy anyone not to have a good time with friends such as these, not to mention gorgeous Krispy Kreme doughnuts, a couple of Shimelle's famous cupcakes thrown into the mix and fish and chips! Yum. By the time Saturday rolled around I was well in the right frame of mind.

As for the classes, I can't speak for my own and what people thought of them (people will say all the right things to your face - LOL) but I can say that I loved Shim's. I have yet to finish either one of them but that's the nature of a scrapbooking weekend when you are not only teaching 2 classes but also have the lovely pleasure of completing 2 layouts for other people as a raffle prize (although not sure if getting me was more of the consolation prize???).

Friday I taught my acetate book class and once people got over their initial shock/horror I think they enjoyed it. I must make a special mention of Cherry, whose take on the class, with her New York brown bag book, was absolutely gorgeous and I love, love, love the bags she used. FAB! I can't post any pictures of this as yet as it is due to appear in an upcoming issue of Scrapbook Inspirations but once it's been published I will scan and post it.

On Saturday I taught a class on beading. Quite an old technique but one that hasn't been used in quite a while and you know the saying, what goes around, comes around. To be honest the layouts are not my usual style (if I have a style) but I thought it would be something a little bit different - and it had the added bonus of keeping all those rowdy scrappers quiet (you know who you are!!! LOL). We used the gorgeous My Minds Eye, Bohemia range of papers and the Queen & Co, Beadifuls and I completed 2 class samples. The first was a little more simple and the second a little more complicated. I am by no means a beader but the beauty of this class is that you can keep it as simple or make it as complicated as you'd like:

Hair

I forgot to say that I've had my hair cut - again! Another one of my radical cuts that I immediately after wish I hadn't had, especially as when the children all troop home they invariably walk through the door with mock looks of horror on their faces and announce "you look like a tom-boy, I suppose we'll get used to it!" and other such moral-boosting words of comfort.

I can understand some of their reservations though as currently my hair is on a journey. It hasn't reached it's destination yet but had to arrive at it's current stop before it can move on...  Although I was then muchly encouraged by the number of really positive comments on Sunday as I walked in to church - I had the thumbs up from quite a few people and even some of the men noticed AND made all the right sorts of noises too.

Tomorrow I'm having the hairdresser around again to inject some much needed colour. I always feel like a need a little bit of this at around this time of the year.

I should probably then update my photo (along with a new blog header - Christmas is over already!)... so watch this space.