Hello Again

Well this is my secound blog and we have had some really nice goodies come into the shop needless to say I have been busy getting them made up into cards.

First  the other sunday I was happily reading when Diane phoned to say that the new Christams toppers from flower soft were being premiered on "Create and Craft" so I dutifully tuned in and thought yep were going to be asked for these on Monday. Diane ordered them on the monday and I did a demo on the following saturday.

The nice thing about these is that you can sit and put the flower soft on the toppers whilst watching tv and leaving them to dry overnight, then make up the cards the following evening. The other advantage you do not have the thickness or depth so won't cost an arm and a leg with postage. Dont forget after you have sprinkled with the flower soft and shaken off the excess repeat with the glitter.

The toppers themselves come in three designs the post box as you see on your left, the door which you get three green and three white, the white shown below the post box. They come in packs of 6, and at £2.50 a packet represent good value for money, enabling you to achieve a good quality greetings card. The doors and the piller box are proving extreemly popular. 

As you can see from the above sample cards the Trees I have "swagged" using different colours of flower soft per tree. You can of course use your stickles glue on the baubles to give them that little extra glitz (which I know you all love). The doors themselves you can do as little or as much as you want. The Holly Wreath and the shrubs by the door lend themselves to be given the flower soft treatment. And dont forget the snow.

Anothe new range of products that has come in is the new Elusive Images Christams Stamps. These again are proving very popular along with the "Seasons Greetings" CD-ROM.

The above three cards above I did on the recent retail retreat that Diane sent me on (see  blog below). The cards themselves can all be achieved in a days workshop which we will be starting in September, they are quite easy and straight forward to do. They feature various techniques: heat embossing, paper tearing, and stamping on acetate, producing as you can see excellent results. The backing paper all come from the Elusive Images " Seasons Greetings" CD-ROM. The lamp stamp is taken from Elusive images "Hearth and Home " set, which again is proving very popular. The lamps were embossed using the detail gold and silver, the reasom being it's a finer powder thus enabling the finer detail of the stamp to be picked up. Again we have a range of colours in the shop, gold, silver, copper, white, and black.

The lamp below I have embossed with the detail copper and used co-ordinating papers from the cd-rom. You will also find on the cd-rom the toppers that I have used with the lamps which just adds that nice finishing touch. Again if you are worried about the thickness of the decoupage then you can always opt for the 1mm foam pads which we sell in the shop.

One final word about the cd-rom it is very user friendly and the papers are arranged on themes and in colour groups, so it maskes it much easier to co-ordinate and match up your papers.

Anyway I thinks that enugh for the time being

Happy Crafting

Andy x

Hello All

This is my first blog for the shop so bear with me.

Firstly welcome to the blog page and I hope you will enjoy it.

I have just arrived back from Darlington where I have spent two days on a retail retreat with Elusive Images and working with Glenda Waterworth and her team. Needless to say it was a fabulous experience and did loads of interesting stuff. I got to look at the new range of Christmas stamps that Glenda has designed and they are really good. Had so much fun working with them. They are on order so will be arriving in the shop very soon. I have come back with loads of meterial to set up workshops and using elusive images's products. More about that later.

The retreat itself was set in the beautiful Headlam Hall Hotel, miles from civilisation and cut of from the twentieth century almost !!!. The mansion itself is a old Jacobean house, bedrooms with four poster beds ( of which I had one ), and was floral and pink ( I don't know if that was a deliberate request from Diane when she made the booking ).

Monday morning saw the first day of the retreat were we signed in and registered. then it was down to the crafting. Our first workshop was with the lovely Annete and we used the new Christmas stamps to make some lovely Christmas cards, we used the papers from the  Artylicious Christmas CD-ROM. The cards will eveutually be on display in the shop. Next session was spent with the bubbly Lesley where we exlopred the various Artylicious CD -Roms including the new peacock Party which compliments the stamps so wonderfully again these are on order and should be arriving in the shop soon. Then it was lunch.

The first afternoon session was spent with Lynn learning stampboard techniques. Again this is a wonderful medium to enhance your art work, whether its for an embellishment for a card, making a mini scrap book or what ever. 

The last session of the day was spent with Glenda exploring Glimmer mists again a very nice medium that works on a lot of surfaces.

The evening was spent having dinner with everyone and was a nice round of to a very exciting day.

Tuesday started slightly earlier at 9am where again we were with Annette this time doing a mini stampboard book. This also introduced using the tinkabella inks which are very good to work with, an exceptionally good on the stamp board. After a short break we found ourselves with Lesley again and this time using the Groovy Duo Scoring Board. We again used the peacock paper and card to create a slip case and cards to go inside.

Then it was time for lunch.

The first afternoon session saw us with Glenda were we talked and explored the buissness of crafting.

The final session saw us back with Lynn where we created a tag book using again the papers from the peacock party cd-rom . The tags themselves being decorated with various techniques. 

This is a group photo taken just before the end of the retreat

I would like to express my thanks to Glenda Waterworth for giving me permission to use the photo's

Thank you Glenda