East to West

Well, north east back to north west anyway, after my busy weekend in Darlington and Washington. It was a nice journey up there on friday after a freezing start to the day that included large hailstones!

I had a wander around Darlington for a few hours - after being evacuated (for the second time in a month!) from the shopping centre about two minutes after I walked in there. I still don't know what it was all about, but I'm pleased to say that nobody panicked when all the alarms were shrieking, shutters started coming down and a couple of sprinklers went off! In fact, given how many people were in there, it was amazing how calmly everyone just walked to the exits.

Next day I was at the Art Shop in Darlington - so close by that I could see it from my hotel room! Hello to everyone that came along - especially to Maria who it was lovely to see again and who very thoughtfully brought me a lovely plant for the garden. Thank you Maria, it will be carefully planted out as soon as I have decided exactly where it is going to reside. I also got a box of choccies from the staff at the art shop which was very nice.
Here's one of the scenic cards I made which has Distress Rock Candy dry glitter added down the left side and added to the snow.

Sorry for the slightly blurry effect, I was taking the pictures in a rush before I left for my train!

I headed off to Washington straight after my demo finished. I was on the fifth floor of the hotel with an amazing view across the skyline so I had a grandstand position to watch several firework displays going on at the same time - I didn't know where to look first!
On Sunday I was at Dainty Supplies where I was using the new Ranger dry glitters - I'm sure they were really happy to see all the sparkle I left on the floor! 

I made this card using some double sided adhesive film and acetate.

I cut curved lines into the protective paper on the adhesive sheet so I was able to peel back each section, adding various glitter colours to them to create a  stylistic sky effect. The palm trees are stamped onto acetate which I applied to the other (sticky) side of the adhesive film. It's hard to capture the shimmery effect through the acetate, but there's a real sparkle from the fine glitters. I drew the star onto the acetate surface using a white gel pen.

One of my neighbours was looking after Tara and Thomas over the weekend because Heather has unfortunately fallen victim to one of those sudden back injuries that can come from something as simple as opening a window or picking something up off the floor. Poor thing, she's been in agony for several days and can hardly move.

I got home on Sunday night after a long journey - four and a half hours. Of course, my two terrors let me know that they were quite unimpressed that I'd deserted them for three days! I think they've forgiven me now though and they've been taking turns cuddling up to me on the sofa this evening.

Before I forget. When I was at the hotel in Darlington there were two flavoured coffees as well as the usual Nescafe sachets. I tried them both and they were delicious...one was Hazelnut and one was Irish Cream. I don't take sugar so flavoured coffees are not something I usually like but these appeared to be sugar free. Tonight I looked up the website for Beanies and sent a message to ask if the coffees did include any sugar. To my amazement, I had a personal reply from a lovely man called Mark within ten minutes, even though it was after 9pm! None of the coffees have any sugar in them, so I've ordered some for the cold winter evenings. I was very impressed with the customer service, as well as the coffee, and they are a British company (and a northern one too!) so I'm giving them a plug!

Well, I'm back to my drawing board tomorrow so I had better give my furry friends their midnight snack before getting to bed and giving my eyes a rest. Hope everyone's keeping warm.