Workshops and gggrrr!

Hi folks, I'm blooming furious! It was a great weekend and I had a pile of photos to share with you of the demonstration and workshops.....but the computer has eaten the pictures, chewed them up and spat them out - after having deleted them from the camera at the same time of course. Oh I am so mad. I had lovely pictures of everyone on Sunday's workshop, plus the cards that they made, lots of samples that I left at the shop on Saturday and a few others besides.I will be able to take more photos of the workshop cards in the next few days, but the others are gone forever now. If you'd like to take a look at the cards meanwhile, do visit Joanne's blog, as she posted some yesterday.
Anyway, Saturday was a lovely, busy day at Crafts 4 U 2 Do and I really enjoyed working with all the new Christmas stamps. It's like a new lease of life when there are new stamps and other products to work with! Here's a card that I made with my new Nativity stamps set. I made the background with alcohol inks and Stazon spray cleaner then stamped the Palm trees with Archival black ink which always works very well over gloss card. I stamped the Nativity stable twice and cut out the doorway on the second image to layer over the full one below it. A star drawn with a white pen and the Silent Night from my "Silent Night" (Christmas words) set complete this one. The card which was second in my workshops was a similar one to this and everyone made a great job of them...and they all looked completely different too!
I have tried to make some of my new Seasonal designs useful beyond just Christmas, so, with the Nativity set for example, you can use the Palm trees for a tropical, or beach scene, the Minarets (which you'll see further down this post) can be used in conjunction with my "I dreamed of Castles" set as extra, differently shaped towers, and the Stable itself can be used as a shed, barn or even a dog kennel if you cut away the interior scene! Next is one of the Gorjuss Girl stamped cards, which I really enjoyed working with. I make so many distressy cards etc and I had great fun doing some detailed colouring in on these cute images. Of course, I couldn't resist using an alcohol inked background but I think it goes really well to evoke the icy feel with the Polar bear. This particular stamp is simply called "The Bear". Again though, the girl could be cut out and used on her own after Christmas...just sit her on a toadstool instead for instance. Here's a card I made using my "Build a Snowy Scene" stamp set against a Distress ink background that I bleached out with water. This set was designed in response to the many requests I've had over the last year or so for images to use with my Swirly Bird stamp set. So you can stamp the tree stump, fence, cottage etc and, with the use of a post it note mask or two, it's really simple to create lots of different scenes. The last picture is of a card I made this afternoon which hasn't photographed terribly well - it looks less detailed here than it is and the gold line I added around the figures looks more like a muddy brown here! I have used Adirondack dye based ink pads to create the background and to colour the Minarets as well. I loved using these rich colours and I'll be using Adirondack ink pads this coming Saturday when I'll be at Samuel Taylor's in Brighouse, Yorkshire. Meanwhile, I am almost ready for my trip to London tomorrow for the QVC customer event which is on Wednesday and Thursday....I will be taking my camera and the computer had better behave this time! I have lots of workshops to teach over the two days, so it's going to be fast paced, fun and a little tiring I'm guessing!
Talking of workshops....we have sorted out some more dates for these in St Helens. I will be posting more details of what each class will be, but, for the moment, here are some dates for your diaries!

September 11th - Sunday
September 22nd - Thursday
October 5th - Wednesday
November 6th - Sunday
November 12th - Saturday
November 19th - Saturday

Some of these will be seperate morning and afternoon classes, some will be the same workshop both morning and afternoon and some will be full day sessions. I will post the relevent details as soon as possible. You can email me for details and booking, or you can book by calling into Crafts 4 U 2 Do, Greenfield Rd, St Helens. There will be more dates to follow, so watch this space!
On a humorous note, I was about to chastise Thomas for scratching the carpet this morning when I could hear odd noises, but when I looked up it wasn't him at all, it was that cheeky squirrel who had come through the window and decided to find his own peanuts!! Thomas was just idly watching him running about the room - I guess he must realise that he has no chance of catching a squirrel, because, if it had been a bird, he would have been after it. Oh well, this afternoon the last of the scaffolding came down, so Mr squirrel will not be climbing through the window anymore...in fact, I just spotted him outside, looking up at me in disgust!
Well, I had better go and tidy up the remaining mess that I have left strewn about the place in my efforts to get everything ready for London. I'll post again as soon as I can after the weekend, with photos - I hope!!!