Birmingham NEC Hobbycrafts show

Google made me smile today!  Apparently Sesame Street has it's 40th anniversary today, which makes it the same age as me :)

Anyway, back to the matter in hand.  My friend Helen and I made a last minute decision on Thursday evening to visit the Hobbycrafts/Crafts for Christmas/Art Materials-Live show in Birmingham yesterday.  It's about an hour and a half drive down there, which makes it pretty accessible, and once we got there I realised it must be years since I went to a craft show as a customer only!!  So I made the most of watching people I admire demoing their skills and products :)

First up was Tracey from Lavinia Stamps, who, as you can see is working very hard

whilst her other half just hangs around ;)

They're a lovely, friendly couple and it was just so nice to sit and chat to Tracey for a bit, watch her demo brayering, and listen to the questions people ask.  Normally I catch a few minutes with her at the close down of the Port Sunlight show when we're all busy and tired!  [And Kevin (who I thought was called Steve...oops!) is packing up, he does work hard really!!]

Next stop, via the Dremel stand where I engraved a glass for the first time and bought Tom's Christmas present, was the Paper Artsy stand.  Leandra kindly and patiently told us all about the paints she's been using to get such fabulous textures in her work.

And kindly posed for a photo for my blog!!! :) 

Leandra has an article in this month's Craft Stamper describing the process of getting this type of texture in your work.  The base is a texture paste from Australia which you stamp into; once dry you can colour it with acrylics and add stunning sparkle with the precious metal colours.

I bought the colours for next week's play date colour challenge and am really looking forward to having a play :)  I also got to see some of the projects from the Artisan weekend 'in the flesh' as it were! It's funny how it's so hard to imagine size correctly from blog photos....this box was quite a bit smaller than I imagined,  large matchbox size really.

And just stunning, both outside, and inside...

I had time for a quick mooch round the rest of the show, but only about half an hour so visited very few other stands.  However, the Liquitex one was a bit of a find as they had some fab examples of mixed media canvases (which I failed to photograph, duh!!!) by an artist called Linda Hollingshead.  Just as I was taking a photo of the display (as I was too tired by this point to get out my pen and make a note of her details) she appeared and kindly posed for a photograph.  I've not checked out her website yet but it's on my list of things to do.

Right, best get back to cleaning my house, then off to see Eddie Izzard tonight :)

the play date cafe challenge #3

I had great fun doing the challenge this week.  I love red shoes, and would love a pair of high heels in red. I've been looking, but haven't found the right pair yet!  But my Stampotique bird has!!!

I really enjoyed putting the faintly ridiculous with the traditional!  Traditional snowflakes and words, accompanied by a bird who has caught a snowflake in her beak, whilst out in the snow in her heels!!  :)

Not only do I love the snowflake punch, I love the negative space it leaves behind and it often gets used somehow in my cards...

So big thanks to Alison who put these colours together for this week's challenge.  If you head over to her blog, you'll find her free 'digi stamps' which she generously shares.

happy day

After a stressful beginning to my week I'd been really looking forward to today..and it was just sooooooooo good!!!  Possibly not everyone's idea of a great afternoon's shopping, but Sue and I had a fabulous time.  Sue took me to a local 'antiques' centre that sells lots of yummy bric a brac.  Look at these potential steampunk pieces!!!  We had a great rummage through this lot :)

Along with old hardcover books and half a roll of bus tickets each (it was the last one, we have to share), we're all set for some happy days crafting ;)  Bliss!

ps I came up with a great title for this blog post on my drive home....can I remember it?  No!!!

Wooaahhhhh!

November came in with a bit of a blast!  I woke to the wind blowing a gale and rain thrashing down.  The rain eased off in the day, and it's not too cold, but it's been very windy all day! 

I've been busy journalling over the last few days, prepping for my art journaling workshop at the Stamp Attic.  I'm really pleased with the results.  Can only show you sneak peeks though! (really hard to pick which bits to 'sneak' I can tell you!!)

I've really enjoyed playing with the Adirondack acrylic paint dabbers.  Now they advertise them as a clean way of working.  Hmmm, I started off clean!!!

But I've been combining them with the Adirondack Colour Wash sprays so that didn't help the colour of my fingers!!

I can already see that I'm going to have to buy more colours.  These paints are so portable they're fab for journalling!!

Workshop's on Saturday 28th November '09,  would love to see you there!!!

ps whilst checking the link for workshops at the Stamp Attic I did notice Sue gives you much bigger sneak peeks, mine are smidgen sized ;) 

definitely a treat!

This treat comes courtesy of Jennie at the Artistic Stamper!  She's definitely getting into the spirit of Halloween, and all you have to do is leave a comment before Mon eve then post the blog candy and link on your blog!  But the treat doesn't stop there!  Even if you're not a winner of that yummy Tim candy, you can get 10% of any orders this weekend, just by putting 'Halloween' in the discount box.  Check out the Mabel Lucie Attwell stamps ... soooo cute!!!

I got these Karantha stamps from Jennie a few weeks ago now and decided to make a quick tag with them this evening.  The background is made using Adirondack Colourwash butterscotch and wild plum, and the lettuce Acrylic paint dabber.

mmm, now I reckon that miniature film ribbon'd look good amongst the ribbons on this tag!!!

Oh, and I coloured the diamantes with alcohol ink :)

busy, busy, busy

On holiday on the Isle of Wight this summer we had one very wet day which Sophie, Tom and I spent in a lovely secondhand bookshop.  It had a great crafts section and I picked up this book, c 1946 as paper sculpture has fascinated for ages.  And this is where I found the pattern for yesterday's rose.

Today I've been prepping pages for my sample journal pages for Wendy at the Stamp Attic.  I'm teaching a class at the end of November.  Sophie joined in and I just love the start of this page :)  She made some 'splats' with the dabbers then 'drew' lines with the dabbers diagonally across the page.

Just Us Girls challenge #4

This fairly new challenge blog has a different type of challenge each week, and this week's challenge was to use a 3d flower.  Now I'd love to make some with a heap of tissue paper or similar at some point, but just this morning I was looking at a paper sculpture book I bought in the summer.  I'll show it to you tomorrow when there's better light or taking pics.

So here's my 3d flower on a gift tag shaped card:

I added stamping and stitching to my flower before attaching it together.  And sorry Wendy, that blue background piece was supposed to be a journal page but it got nicked for this card :)  It's hard to see in this image so I'll post better pics tomorrow but it does have texture in the paint. [Edit: photos replaced ]