Sore feet!

Very sore indeed! I've spent most of the last few days on my feet and my little toes also had an argument with a chair's legs, not once, but twice, on Thursday, so they are a lovely shade of purple! Otherwise, it has been a lovely, if manic, few days.
I set off to London on Thursday morning and arrived at the conference hall in Westminster ready to get things set up for my workshops. Kathy and Jayne from Personal Impressions had done a fantastic job in preparing things and cutting out gazillions (!) of pieces of card and paper, so there was less to be done than I had feared. I had time to say hello to everyone and then the doors were opened so that all the ladies (and a few men!) could start coming in and having a look around before the official start of the day. Dawn and Catherine Huntley welcomed everyone and introduced all the designers, demonstrators and manufacturers before the event was declared open.
Here's my huge workshop, all ready to go and the very posh sign on the workshop door! (I wanted to bring it home with me!)

There were lots of new products at the event of course, many of which will feature on craft day which is on the 20th October, so don't forget to make a note of that. I have some new items (not stamps) that will be premiering that day, so I hope that you'll like them...they are fun! Here is a very sneaky peek, as I can't show them properly as yet! Jayne and Kathy took turns to help me on the workshops, which I was very thankful for, as we had around twenty five (mostly) ladies on each class, and there was lots to get through in very little time. Apart from the "mystery" object on the right (!), we did watercolour stamping with my fairy set and some scrummy new papers, and a Distress ink card featuring my Swirly Bird owl.
The day flew by as we were so busy, and then it was off to the hotel, a quick change and around twenty of us went to a fabulous Thai restaurant by the river. The meal was beautifully presented and served as well as being just delicious. You can see the attention to detail in my starter (Siam rolls) which looked as if Alan Titchmarch had planted a mini garden on my plate! Here's a picture that shows the table to my left - you can see Dawn, Lorelei (the designer behind the fun ladies you may have seen on QVC last week) as well as Jj and some of the faces behind products like Stix 2 etc.

Leonie and I were sharing a room, so, needless to say, we nattering away until pretty late...or early! She was very touched by everyone's messages after her Gran passed away. Well, next day we had another two hundred or so lovely ladies and gentlemen attending the workshops and make and takes. It was great to see familiar faces and meet new people too, and lovely to see so many people having such a great time. Here is Leonie's table which was full all day long.
The owl card (bet you're sick of seeing my owl!) on the left is not the one we made on the workshops, as we only had a short time on each one, but it was the one that everyone seemed to like! The paper is from the K&Co Winter Wonderland pad and I matched my Distress ink background to work with it and create a wintery feel. I created the trees in the background and the owl's tree perch using Le Plume pens and the Inkssentials white pen. The holly images were from PICS02 clear set from Personal Impressions.

Again, this is not the fairy card that I was teaching as that one used new papers which will be airing on QVC. The fabulous flower and swirling leaves were cut from a Winter Wonderland paper and you can see the foiling on the images. I watercolour stamped the faires in toning shades. Oh, and apologies to those of you who came to the final clas on friday...I could see that some of you were disappointed that we were not doing the Distress ink card after the previous people had shown what they had been doing. Unfortunately, we only had a certain amount of card etc prepared, so we had to stick to what we had organised.

It was a great couple of days in London and I headed back clutching my QVC goody bag which promptly burst apart, spilling the contents all over the floor whilst I was in the underground - disaster! I crammed everything into my other bag - just - apologising for holding everyone up!On Saturday I was at Rosemary Merry's shop, Crabapple Crafts in Frodsham. I felt a bit woozy at the start of the day, but I soon came round and had a busy day creating Christmas cards with stamps, inks and papers. Joanne and her lovely husband Terry came along (Joanne came especially to get a copy of my book and they hadn't arrived, so we swapped some ATC's instead!) and we had a good catch up. It was a very jolly day with a lot of laughter and I met some lovely people who were very complimentary about my work...always appreciated!

David and I were busy on Sunday too and got back home in the afternoon...to be greeted by the sight of a bird of prey in the car park making a meal of one of "our" pigeons. He watched us warily for a few moments before flying off carrying his meal - quite amazing as he wasn't very big. I tried to see the colouring of the poor pigeon but he seemed to be one of the generally grey ones which I can't really tell apart. I don't begrudge the prey bird his meal of course, and it's a good sign to see top predators around as it means that we are doing well with the smaller birds, but it still made me feel sad. Even more sadly, I have to report that Matthew (aka "Limpy Lou") has not been around for about a week so I fear that he may well have been taken by the falcon...very ironic as he had made such a fantastic recovery. However, I will keep looking out for him and will report if he (hopefully) turns up again. I'm not sure which bird of prey we actually saw, but, as Autumn Watch are having a feature on distinguishing between them this friday, I may be able to tell after that.

So, today I have been sitting on the sofa with my feet up (still throbbing!) to recover from the hectic last few days...I always feel a bit guilty doing nothing, but sometimes it has to be done! On friday I shall be setting off again, this time to The Stamp Hut in Bury St Edmunds - a lovely shop in a lovely town, so I'm looking forward to that. On Sunday I'll be teaching at Dawn's Design Studio so it's another busy weekend ahead with quite a bit of preparation to be done this week. Well, I'm now going to watch University Challenge and see if I can answer a few more questions than I did last week! I hope everyone is well and hope you are still awake after reading this mammoth post!