Lots of Crafty Madness!!!!!!!!!! - Part 3!

So after a busy weekend in Rushden and then Birmingham, it was back to the day job on Monday!

The following weekend I was back at my local craft shop in Tunbridge Wells, Pantiles Crafts, Books & Games launching some of the fabulous Clarity Stencils.

For those that have been following my blog, you will have read that the last time I was at my local craft shop, the lovely Barbara Gray popped in (here is the LINK if you missed it) and during her visit, the lovely crafty ladies made some suggestions on stencil designs. Well Barbara being Barbara, took it all on board and within a matter of days there were lots of designs appearing on the Clarity website, so it was great that I could go back the following month with a bundle of new stencils and show the ladies during the course of my demo how to use them and what to do with them:

I think at the moment, the Filigraphy Butterfly is one of my favourites!

So after a morning of playing, it was down to the basement for a workshop!

As you can see from the pictures, all the ladies had lots of messy fun, although I have no idea how Lizzie managed to get so inky!

So after a fun filled day, it was time for home (all of 10 minutes up the road!) after unpacking the car, walking the dog, having something to eat, it was time to chill. Oh, but I need to clean all the stencils and let them dry

I couldn't sit and just watch TV, so I decided to do some knitting. If you look back at the post on my blog about my last visit to my local craft shop (link as at the start of this post) you will have seen me wearing a rather fetching scarf I had knitted, but as a hat! Anyway, it was my cousins birthday and I had just picked up some new patterns of Desire fabric from my local craft shop so I set about knitting her a fancy scarf

It starts off as this

and after a few hours of knitting, ends up like this

Thanks again for stopping by, check back again tomorrow for part 4!

Happy Crafting

Paul x

Lots of Crafty Madness!!!!!!!!!! - Part 2!

So yesterday I told you about my trip to Coleman's. 

After having lots of fun on the workshop, I stayed over in Rushden and then Sunday morning headed over to the NEC for the UK's biggest Craft Trade Show, Craft Hobby + Stitches International. This is the place where all the trade companies showcase new and upcoming products together with all there existing products The show is not open to the general public, it is where all the shops go to network, check out the latest trends and place orders.

Over the Christmas period I decided to make some lifestyle changes, one of which was not to do any of the retail shows. It was a really hard decision for me to make as I love doing them, working with the team at Pinflair and meeting all the lovely crafters, catching up with friends new and old. 

It is the first time in about 8 years where I have not actually worked the show, so it was very strange for me to walk around and actually look at products in more detailed not have to rush back to the stand.

It was great catching up with various exhibitors, Clarity, Pinflair, Katy Sue Designs, Tattered Lace, Tonic, Creative Expressions to name but a few. There are some lovely products on the horizon from all of the above, some of which are already available. Clarity have some amazing new stencils in A5, 7x7, storage folders, stencil brushes, I really don't know how Barbara and the team at Clarity come up with so many different ideas and designs, each new batch just blows me away - check out the Clarity website HERE. Pinflair have some amazing new mediums that will work on so many different surfaces - check out the Pinflair website HERE. The team at Katy Sue Designs keeps going from strength to strength with the various product launches, from the silicone moulds perfect for cake makers and papercrafters as well as the papercraft CD's and coordinating stamps, with the recent launch of the "Fabulous" range for us men called Fabulous Fellas (how cool is the title!) we all know how hard it is to make cards for us men! Well Katy Sue Designs have solved that. There is a CD rom and 2 different sets of stamps - check them out HERE

Well this is a short and sweet blog, but check back tomorrow to see what I got upto when I introduced Clarity Stencils to the ladies at my local craft shop, Pantiles Craft, Games and Bookshop in Tunbridge Wells, but before I go, I will leave you with some samples I made for the Clarity Stencil stand at stitches and some other samples using Clarity Stencils & Stamps

Happy Crafting! 

Paul x

Lots of Crafty Madness!!!!!!

Well the past few weeks have sure lived up to the title of the blog!

Rather than bore you all in one, go, I will do various blog posts over the next few days!

Saturday 15 February
I left home at 6am to head up to one of my favourite craft placecs, Coleman's Craft Warehouse in Rushden, Northampton. If you live locally and have never visited then all I can say is "Why not!!!!!!" The massive warehouse is jam packed of crafting goodies, the staff are so friendly and helpful, the only warning/suggestion I would make is that you should leave your credit card at home as it will go into meltdown!!!!!!

Anyway, back to my trip. My journey to Coleman's normally takes me between 2 and 2.5 hours, so leaving at 6am gave me plenty of time to stop of at McDonalds just down the road from the warehouse and still arrive before 9am. However, what I didn't take into account was the weather! The night before was very windy and very wet, but by the morning the rain had stopped but the wind continued and as a result, the QE2 Bridge (aka the Dartford Crossing) was closed, which at that time of the morning was not really an issue, although it was busier than normal. My journey continued, around the M25, onto the M11 and then onto the A14 only to find part of it was closed due to road works - great joy! Now my all singing  and all dancing Mr Tomtom had warned me that the A14 was closed, but that was when I was back on the M25, but I thought to myself that by the time I reached that part of my journey, it would be open - wrongggggggggggggg! To cut a long and boring story short, I arrived at Coleman's just after 9 with no McDonalds :-(

So what was the purpose of my visit to Coleman's? Well I was doing 2 workshops using some products from Pinflair - Background Artist design sheets, Gentle Blends, Buff It and Glitter Paste with a little bit of stamping and a little bit of die cutting thrown in for good measure!

Here are some pics from the day:

Well I think that is enough for one post, check back soon to see the next installment

Paul x

A bit more Tattered!

Ok, so you may think I was a bit mean yesterday by not showing you what we did in the workshop at Pickwells on Saturday, but to be honest, I forgot to take pictures of the projects we made and was waiting for Carolyn to send them to me! 

Anyway, the first project was the medium Gift Bag from the Fabulous Giftware triple CD Rom from Katy Sue Designs together with the Lattice Bow and Lacy Rose dies

  

Now this was a straight forward project, I printed of the medium gift bag (which comes in 20 different designs), did the scoring and cutting, assembled it as per the instructions (really easy!) then I cut the Lattice Bow out in silver mirri card and again in white card. Then I cut the small Lacy Rose in white card and the base in silver mirri card. Then I picked a colour from the stash of Spectrum Noirs to colour the white card to match the design and this was the result:

The finishing touches was to add a stunning gem encrusted pearl to the middle of the bow, a gem in the centre of the Lacy Rose and then attach a magnetic clasp to the flap of the bag

The second project was my favourite. When Carolyn sent me the Peacock die, I looked at it and thought to myself how was I going to use it with the Fabulous range of CD's, so I thought I would apply the same rule to using the die as I would with a stamp - so I cut out 4 of the Peacock in white copy paper, took a black piece of card as a base and played around with the diecuts. Then the penny dropped! I realised that I could do so much with it (I will leave that until another time!). Anyway, I decided to print out the Dress Decoupage from the Fabulous Fashion CD

I knew that Carolyn stocked brown paper bags, so thought that this would be a perfect canvas for the project. To start with I chose the design (again there are 20 different designs on the CD), printed off a plain backing paper and diecut 4 of the Peacocks out of white card. I coloured the card with Spectrum Noirs in a colour that matched with the design, I then sprayed them with the new Pearl Spray from Crafters Companion. Whilst they were drying I cut out all the decoupage and built it up, next I cut the backing paper down to size and stuck to the bag. Then I arranged the Peacock diecuts onto the bag and when I was happy, I stuck them in place. I then applied the decoupaged topper, here is the result

The final project used another top from the Fabulous Fashion CD Rom and the Florentine Corners to make a card

Some of the ladies chose a matching design to go with either the Medium Gift Bag from the first project or the Brown Paper Bag from the second project so that they had a card and  gift bag for a present.

Again, I cut four of the large corners out in plain white card and coloured with a Spectrum Noir to match the design I chose and then assembled the card as below

Well I hope you enjoyed the post

Happy crafting 

Paul x

Just a little bit Tattered!

On Saturday I returned to Pickwell Farm in Netley, Southampton to run a workshop in the morning and then repeat it in the afternoon.

For those of you that are nearish to Southampton, you really need to pay this place a visit, they have so much under one roof (so to speak!) Pickwell Farm is a family run business where you can Pick Your Own fruit & veg (depending on the seasons), it is a farm shop, a garden centre and best of all, a craft shop!!!

So, what did we get up to? Well, as some of you know I love my dies, Spellbinders, Memory Box, Cheery Lynn, Joanna Sheen to name but a few and some of you will have seen that I like to treat my dies like Clarity Stamps i.e I try to make patterns with them or do something different with them, think outside the box!

So Carolyn asked me if I could do a workshop with some Tattered Lace dies and whatever other products I wanted to use. I had seen the lovely Steph and Nancy on Create & Craft with them and I thought to myself, do I really need another set of dies to add to my ever increasing stash, so I did some looking around to see what everyone was saying about them and all I could find was positive feedback, from comments about how intricate they were, how many uses they had and more importantly how easily they cut and how easily the card came out of the die, so I bit the bullet and purchased the Florentine Special offer from Create & Craft whilst waiting for Carolyn to send me some dies to use - the special offer consisted of all of these lovely dies

So when they arrived (which was 3 days from the day of ordering!) I had a quick play and was totally blown away at how, despite being so intricate they cut through my 300gsm card stock like butter! Again, for those of you that know me and for all you fellow crafty addicts, you will know that I have one or two diecutting machines:

• Cuttlebug
• Grand Calibur
• X Cut
• Artisan
• Ebosser

My favourite machine at the moment, is my Artisan, which I purchased from my good friends at Oyster Stamps in Rochester over a year ago - I love so many things about this machine, small, compact, extra pressure, manly looking!

Okay, so this is turning into a bit of a ramble and you may already have fallen asleep, so come back tomorrow to see what I did with these dies that Carolyn sent me:

together with some images from the Fabulous Fashion/Shoes/Giftware CD Roms from Katy Sue Designs

Life is a Cabaret!!!!

How true is that saying! 

The past week has been a bit manic, with the "day job" and also the "crafty job"! But I love every minute of it, well most of the time!

On Saturday I was at one of my favourite craft shops of all time, the award winning Coleman's Craft Warehouse in Rushden near Northampton. On the first Saturday of each month they have a Big Demo day with at least 3 different demonstrators, all doing something different. The staff and customers are all so nice and friendly and on the demo days there is tea, coffee and cake!!!!! I am very lucky and honoured to be asked to go back several times during the course of the year (I may even get a key to the warehouse soon!) and this year I will also be doing workshops, normally the weekend after I have been to the demo day. Anyway, yesterday was the first Big Demo day and I had great fun playing with some wonderful products from Pinflair - Gentle Blends, Buff It, Glitter Paste and Background Artists, and by the look of the emptyish table at the end of the day, the customers loved it too! Now I just need to prep for the workshop on the 15th using the above products - once I have sorted it, I will post again with some of the samples.

So, back to today, for some reason when I went to bed last night, I thought today was a work day, so I set the alarm clock for my 4am wakeup. When the alarm went off this morning, I woke with a start and then realised it was Sunday. No chance of turning over and going back to sleep, as once the alarm went off, Shep and Cassie wanted to go for a walk. Shep is a Sheltie and Cassie is a cat - here they are going for a walk

and here they are having a rest!

It seemed like ages until 9am arrived, ready to watch the award winning Barbara Gray on Create & Craft with Nigel May - I love to watch the shows when I can, as I love to see what the rest of the design team have come up with using the same stamps, and as always, I was blown away with what they had done - amazing, stunning, awesome are just a few words to describe what they had all done. Anyway, here are the samples I made for the show

Thanks for stopping by, enjoy the rest of the weekend

Paul x