Busy, Busy April

What with one thing and another, April has been a very busy month for me so as this might turn out to be a mega post I'd sit down with a cup of tea if I were you (or feel free to leave halfway through, Lol).


It started at the beginning of the month when I and my friend Jo went to a couple of stamping and cardmaking classes at a lovely little shop called Monk's Den at Ashby-De-La-Zouche. Unfortunately they don't operate an online shop but if ever you get the chance to go it's well worth a visit and Ashby itself is a lovely little historic town. They also run some fabulous classes involving stamping and getting inky. The morning class was called '5 Ways with 1 Stamp' and Deb, the owner of Monk's Den was our tutor. As the title suggests, we used a beautiful clear stamp from an Inkadinkado set called Morphic Bugs and did things like stamping onto acetate and using glitter on the back, stamping using Versamark and dusting with mica powders or chalks, stamping onto coloured card and then 'painting' with bleach, stamping onto shrink plastic and finally, stamping with Versafine and colouring selected areas with Sakura Stardust pens. We mounted this final image and made a simple but very effective card.







In the afternoon we took a second class which was run by Sheila Oliver who works for Deb. This was to make cards for men and we used the Eccentric Edwardian themeplate from Elusive Images to make two fabulous cards. We did lots of building backgrounds by blending inks and direct to paper techniques and we also used a Cuttlebug embossing folder on the first one. The following two cards were the result.

and this card is my own adaptation of the 'green' Sheila Oliver design.


Jo and I thoroughly enjoyed our two classes and would love to do some more when time permits. If anyone is interested in going to any of their classes or would like to see some more of Sheila's wonderful designs, links to her two blogs, Manicstamper and Manic's Inky Antics are in my sidebar as I visit them on virtually a daily basis.


A week or so after this wonderful crafty day my daughter and her family came to stay for the weekend and then as they needed child care for our little Isabella for that week she stayed with us for a few days while her mum and dad went back to Harrogate. It was a bit of a wrench for Jenna as it was the first time she had left Izzy anywhere overnight let alone for 3 nights. These are a few photos we took whilst she was with us including one of our other granddaughter Alexa.










The next event of my month was last Saturday when I went to a workshop run by Robert who co-owns Once Upon a Stamp. This was the second workshop in a set of three to learn how to work with Friendly Plastic and was brilliant fun. The first photo shows some pieces we made in the first workshop last month and the second photo shows some of the things we made this time, which include bottle top embellishments, a lovely little pendant, some beads and a button.






Unfortunately, my photography does not do these bits and pieces justice because they are really quite beautiful in real life. I can't wait for the class at the end of May when we are going to be making a gorgeous mask. I shall be a little sad though because it's the last one and apart from the pleasure of learning new techniques, Rob makes the classes really fun.


My final special event of the month was on Thursday when I went all the way to Barnard Castle, the home of Graphicus and Elusive Images, to attend a workshop with an extremely talented and lovely lady by the name of Lynn Robinson-Hunter. I've been to several different workshops at Graphicus over the past year (I'd do them all if I could) and this one was a beginners Ten Seconds Studio workshop, learning how to work with metal. It was a brilliant workshop and this was one of the most relaxing and therapeutic crafts I have tried. First of all we practiced different ways of using the tools and sheets of metal and ended by making a lovely book to put our samples in together with tags on which to write the methods we had used. I haven't done the inside yet but these are photos of a little embellishment and then the front and back covers of the book.

Well, if anyone managed to get to HERE, you deserve something a bit stronger than tea I think.

Thanks for sticking with me.