Woo hoo! Look where I've been!

Don't ya think I look a tad excited???? Standing next to Tim Holtz! LOL!  It's because I was at this fabulous event:

Artsycrafts with Lin (LB Crafts), Leandra (Paperartsy) and Tim Holtz.

I arrived on Thursday evening and met up with Neet in the bar.  Neet had done the Thursday class and was on her way home, but we had time for a quick drink and a chat.  Then it was time for an early night as registration was 7.30 Friday morning!

I was on the early Tim class (there were 4 classes over 2 days - 288 attendees in total - the mind boggles at the time and effort spent in prepping all those kits).
We were all given a goody bag courtesy of Ranger:

In this little bag was a distress ink, a blending tool and pad, a paint dabber, a bottle of perfect pearls mist, some glossy accents, some matt medium and a scraper tool.  We were also given 2 rolls of tissue tape each and I was thrilled to find that mine weren't ones that I had already.
The project was a configurations box and our kit contained every piece of paper cut and scored to the correct size.  We also had a set of grungeboard letters and numbers and the new grunge tiles which are fabulous and enable you to make look alike printers letters.  There were some really interesting vintage dictionary pages which I loved - Tim had brought a whole dictionary so we could help ourselves.

For the first part of the class we added our papers to the box, secured with tissue tape and then distressed it with ink and added perfect pearls for a hint of glimmer.  We also made our "printers tray" letters/numbers.  Then it was tea break time.  Tim and Mario thought this was a fabulous idea and I think they are hoping to incorporate tea breaks in to their USA classes. Lol!

Tim was such a charismatic teacher - he explained things so well with a great deal of humour, he walked round all the tables all the time and was available to help anybody when needed. It was brilliant.  He was happy to sign things for people and was just so friendly and approachable, nothing was too much trouble.

When we got back to our tables we had been given a little calico bag each that was STUFFED with treasures for us to put in to our boxes.  In all the excitement I forgot to take a photo, but it was filled with things like little bottles with corks, ideaology metal items, buttons, a charlotte doll, an old car, cotton reels, numbers, tickets, a metal birdcage, flowers, tokens, pen nibs, string - marvellous.  So then we set to work and filled our boxes.
The last step was to add our metal feet.

I still need to add some metal corners (which were also in our calico bags) to the top corners.  I love it!

I almost forgot to mention the raffle prizes which were fantastic too - Stamp sets, Dies not yet available in the UK and limited edition Trade show bags. 

All too soon it was time for lunch and then off to our second class with Lin and Leandra.  We made this little house out of one large frame and 2 small frames:

The hinges were made from grungeboard and coloured with inka gold, and again these had all been pre-cut for us and the trees had been pre-embossed for us - an enormous amount of work.

Class finished at 5.30 and then it was time to drive home.

  Thank you to all concerned, it was amazing, and after looking forward to it for 5 months it lived up to and exceeded all expectations.  Happy bunny here. X

Romancing the Paper

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I have just completed a wonderful on-line course taught by Rachel Emilie Jackson called "Romancing the Paper".  Over 5 weeks we covered lots of paper staining and colouring techniques, learned how to press flowers and then we combined all the techniques in a little reference pamphlet.

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Back cover

I really enjoyed the whole course and I shall be using all the techniques over and over again.  Thank you Rachel!
X

Romance/Valentine theme on Let's Ink it Up.

I've made this little piece for the current Let's Ink it Up Challenge.

The background uses the Paper Blending technique by Liesbeth Fidder in the March issue of Craft Stamper, I used various script, music and ruler stamps on it.   The die used to cut it out is from Paper Artsy.

I die cut a chipboard heart using a Sizzix die and coloured it with Victorian Velvet distress ink and Creme de rouge Tattered Angel spray ink.  I silver embossed some script across it.

The flower is made with book pages cut with Tim's tattered florals die and sprayed with Creme de rouge and gold Tattered Angels spray inks.  A pearl brad helped to assemble it.

The sentiment is a Wendy Vecchi stamp.

I finished off the edges with silver and graphite Inka Gold.

The pale colours make a nice change for me - I love them on other people's work but I can never quite pull it off myself, so very pleased!

Hope your weekend has been relaxing - all we seem to have done is eat out - ooops - diet on hold for yet another week.  X

Love Potion

An altered perfume bottle for this week's Playdate Cafe Challenge.

My empty perfume bottle was heart shaped, and the colours this week are blue, pink, burgundy and crimson.  Seeing as it's almost Valentine's Day I thought I'd stick with a romantic theme.

I used Glimmer mists on tissue paper and stamped it with Plum, Crimson and Teal Archival inks using Elusive Images Damask Hearts and Swirls stamps.

The three-toned ribbon was in my stash.

I covered a die-cut heart with music paper, stamped "love" and added some lace and a dried flower to use as my tag.

I'm very pleased with my flower - have tried to dry them before without much success, but now I know how to do it properly thanks to a course I am doing at the moment, but I will post more on that in a few weeks when my course is finished.

Thank you for looking. X

Try it on Tuesday........Feel the Lurve!

They're all loved up over on Try it on Tuesday, so here is a Golden Wedding Anniversary Card:

I used embossing on the white background and golden corners, and the hearts were punched with Martha Stewart punches.

I think the greeting is from Papermania.

The bling is by Prima and I sprayed the heart doily with various metallic paints. It's much more subtle and muted in real life, looks a bit dark on this photo.

The 50 is done with American Craft thickers, painted and then fairy dust added.

Hurray - January is over, a step further towards Spring!  Happy 1st Feb! X