One year ago today at 10:30am on Wednesday September 8th, 2010 I finished the last cigarette of my life. I am determined to make that statement last anyway and am very proud to reach the first year anniversary

As if to remind me how sick I was constantly before I stopped smoking, I have had a quite unrelenting cold/flu/virus or whatever it was LOL I had laryngitis for several days and lost my voice, fluid in my ear (which is still bugging me heh LOL) as well as all the other assorted symptoms. I am on the mend now though thank goodness.

I do look back on the last 6 months or so before I quit and think maybe I was lucky to stop when I did....I had one chest infection after another, many times getting very close to pneumonia and was on antibiotics more often then not. I can quite honestly say that with the exception of this last illness and some funky times when I first quit I have never felt healthier in my life.

Though I put on 10 kilos after quitting...trading addictive smoking with addictive eating lol I am now working on losing the weight while having a wonderful time reconnecting and growing with my mother...I have managed to start shifting the excess weight with a 3 kilo loss. Slow and steady wins the race lol I even have a light tan on my face! And I couldn't even BUY a tan for my wedding day LOL seriously, I went and had one of those full body nakie tan spray things and all I got were blotches haha

The best thing after my own health and all that...is that I seem to have started off a chain reaction in my family. My brother was inspired by the fact that I actually managed to quit, neither he nor I thought I would LOL and he stopped about 5 months after me....followed by my cousin Scott, then my cousin Kirsten so I am quadrupally (is that even a word? LOL) proud.

For each day I am blessed to stay smoke free, my wish is for other smokers to free themselves of the trap.

Happy scrapping, tagging, creating and blessed be

I apologise in advance as this is going to be quite a long post. I previously posted about another designer using my items in her kits without permission (Re The More Piracy Issue) and after all was said and done I thought it was finished. How wrong I was.

Two days ago she popped into my mind and I decided to take another look at her blog. The first thing I saw was her newest freebie posted with some elements that looked VERY familiar (http://craftyscraps.blogspot.com/2011/08/cute-freebie-and-blog-contest-news.html). Here is the preview incase the post is taken down:

Since she says in the post that this is an older freebie, I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt under the assumption she didn't realise this contained my elements and sent her the following email:

From: Lissa
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 4:00 PM
To: Michelle McCoy
Subject: Freebie On Your Blog

Hi Michelle,

The newest freebie you have on your blog (http://craftyscraps.blogspot.com/2011/08/cute-freebie-and-blog-contest-news.html), since you have posted it is an older one I will go on the assumption that you were unaware it contains some of my items as we had previously sorted this issue.

The little flowers with the hearts in the center are from my Color Psychology kit.
The stamp frame is cut from my Something Funky kit.
The string is from my Grumblebum kit.

I modified those three items myself, and in the case of the frame I made it from scratch and would appreciate the removal of them from your freebie please.

Thanx
Lissa

I got a reply back fairly quickly:

From: Michelle McCoy
To: 'Lissa'
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2011 10:18 AM
Subject: RE: Freebie On Your Blog

Hi Lissa,

I suppose you would think this cause the stuff is similar….But because of the incident last time, I have wrote down where or how I made everything for every kit I make now….
The flower, that is so easy to duplicate…lol….was Julia Fiahlo’s CU Flower Kit here… http://www.juliafialho.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=35&products_id=770
And the heart in the middle is from my FREE CU Bead Pack here… http://pub17.bravenet.com/forum/static/show.php?usernum=1413822734&frmid=7113&msgid=851598&cmd=show
The frame originally had 3 stamped squares and it was from Gunhilde…
and the string is from another one of Julia Fiahlo Kits…I took off the bow at the end of it though…. http://www.juliafialho.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=4&products_id=689
I don’t have anymore pieces of your stuff, I got rid of it all…If the stuff looks like yours it’s by complete coincidence this time…I mentioned to you before that that’s not the type of person I am…and am starting to feel like I am being watched/stalked by you now….and it’s kind of uncomfortable…I have proof of everything I make now for this purpose…there is too many things out there that look the same now a days…even some of the things I have made, look the same as something someone else has made..But that’s the fact of life in this business….I do apologize for whatever reason…But I didn’t steal anything of yours…

Sincerely,
Michelle

Checking these links she sent me, I could quite easily see the products (and her freebie) that she linked me to did NOT match the elements in question, so I sent the following reply (the images are posted after the email for everyone to look at):

From: Lissa
To: Michelle McCoy
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2011 11:38 AM
Subject: Re: Freebie On Your Blog

Geez, I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, once again though you have proven why I can't....I don't trust you as far as I could throw you and I really feel quite sorry for you.... I will also let you know that I have blind copied this to a close designer friend so she can compare the screenshots as well as you proferred "proof".

I downloaded your freebie Michelle and though you are trying to cover it well, I can prove what I am saying. Your proof does not match up.

I haven't been to your blog since all this stuff happened originally, you crossed my mind this morning and I decided to take a look...I do tend to go back to see when someone has done this to me once, just not often.

First here we have the flower. My flower was from Luiza Garay, I have also attached the product preview for you, the bead came from SweetMade, as you can see, they are exact from "your" flower to mine, and neither match the products you linked me to or your free bead. They are both totally different.

The string came from Flergs and Disasterpiece Studios, I cut it from a longer piece. Again, totally different from the product you posted.

Please do link me to the frame from Gunhilde because I have most of her stuff and this is not amongst it, as you can see it is clearly my frame, right down to the texture pattern which I made myself...

You know, I only emailed you about the ones I can prove, I could also tell you I know the staple, two of the ribbons and the bottle caps are from Grumblebum, the curly ribbon is from Candy Town, the flowers on the bottlecaps are from Something Funky....do you really think ppl are stupid? I mean some of them haven't even been recolored to change them *rolls eyes*

Please remove them.

The "proof" she linked me to:

My proof:

I've since removed the string from the Grumblebum kit as these strings are not allowed in freebie kits and I misplaced the folder when sorting (I have my CU folder strictly organised, Freebies Allowed, Freebies Not Allowed, No Collabs, that sort of thing)

You can even see on the bottom of the frame where she tried to erase the other section....it's messy and she didn't do it very well, and this is the size of the frame in the download so it's probably taken from the tagger size zip.

I've been trying to remember how I made the texture for the frame as I did the alpha the same way, I'm pretty sure I modified a string style from Veronica Spriggs (Studio Vivarant) which I bought from ScrapbookGraphics but it looks like she has retired the product.

I sent the above email 2 days ago and have had no reply since, nor has the freebie been taken down, so yesterday I decide to have a look through her other kits and store products, I found two kits she was selling with my items in them which the store have been quick to take down for me. I also found another freebie she is offering with my elements in it:

Her April Store Freebie posted at the bottom of this post (http://craftyscraps.blogspot.com/2011/04/hope-for-brady-blog-train-freebie.html) if you look in the upper left corner, the heart tag and scattered hearts elements are mine, the tag is from Candy Town and the scatter is from Color Psychology. The paper in the bottom right also looks to be a recolored paper from my Forever, My Love kit...I made the pattern myself and though it's probably easy enough to duplicate....given my history with this person already....lol.

In the case of the heart tag, I used a paper heart from Julia Fialho and the string tag is cut from a larger piece of string by Luiza Garay, the heart scatter I created myself from a heart brush.

I am so fed up with this person and her lies and theft, and now I want to make sure other designers know so they can make sure she is not illegally distributing their creations as well, and I will also be contacting both 4shared where she hosts her freebies and Blogger to see if I can get the illegal sharing removed.

I am absolutely disgusted by this kind of behaviour, there is NOTHING even remotely "reputable" about it.

To finish off this post, I'm not the most creative designer out there, or anywhere near the best designers out there lol but I do try to modify most of the CU I use and try to make somewhat unique stuff as well and just have fun doing what I do. I have every sympathy for this woman's medical issues if she is experiencing what she posts about on her blog, but that does not give her the right to illegally distribute someone else's graphics and claim them as her own.

I have allowed comments on this post, but they are moderated. As long as nothing really nasty is thrown in I will allow all comments through.

Update 1: 4shared have deactivated the link to the freebie for me.

From: 4shared Support
To: [My Email Addy]
Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2011 9:11 AM
Subject: Re: Feedback [ST-858266]

Hello,

Thank you for letting us know. We have deactivated the link to the illegal file.

If you know any other illegal use of our service, please let us know. We will do
our best to remove the files as soon as possible.

Thank you!

Best regards,
Josh
support [AT] 4shared [DOT] com

Edit - as of October 2012 this person is STILL selling my items in her kits, there are a couple in her personal store....I am so over it I can't be bothered going through this fight yet again