Weekend round up and a sneaky peek!

Hello folks, it's Tuesday already...can't believe it! Welcome to new readers and followers of my blog who I met over the weekend and apologies to anyone who has joined as a follower in the past and been "turfed off"! David found that there is a problem with the Blogger, Internet Explorer and Google combo which was replacing followers, rather than adding them on. We think he has fixed it, but fingers crossed and sorry if anyone thought that I was being rude and deleteing them!

I had a smashing weekend (great word, "smashing"...sounds nostalgic and it's under used!) in St Helens and Workington. Great to see everyone as always and what a lot of creative fun there was. I was kept busy on Saturday and so well looked after by everyone at Crafts 4 U 2 Do, as always...nice to be fed and watered! There were lots of familiar faces there and I'm sorry that I didn't get chance to take any pictures that day. However, here are a couple of photos of one of the more whimsical cards that I made using my new Christmas cardstock and toppers. The card is covered with Green Gingham card and the tree was made using Raspberry Snowballs and Holly cardstocks. The teddy is one of my toppers and the ornaments border is, needless to say, a MS punch! I used the punched out shapes to decorate the tree. The inside features one of my Cosy Christmas toppers behind the white card in which I cut the aperture using the MS circle cutter. I used the Holly card at the sides and the ornament punch again across the top. There is a second Teddy topper and you can just see the Cat topper sitting inside! The greeting is from the matching message toppers sheet.I had to do a double shuffle to pack away as my train up to Workington was at 4.15! Special thanks to my two friends who drove ahead of us when David was taking me to St Helens station....they knew the quickest way, so "Thank you", you know who you are! I did catch the train! So, off I set to Workington, in Cumbria, where I had not been before. I had a relaxing evening of a meal, some telly and a good sleep before a good breakfast and then set off to the Crafty Workshop. What an enjoyable day it was there! I met lots of new people (and one or two ladies that I already know...some of you get about nearly as much as I do!!!) and haven't met such enthusiasm for some time!!! Hello to all my new friends up there. One of the things I made on Sunday was this little Christmas tag using Distress inks to colour the tag before spritzing with water for some snowy effects. I used Tim's Tissue Tape (Symphony) across the bottom of the tag after tearing and inking it slightly. I inked the Grungeboard numbers and adhered these with Glossy Accents and then the Adage Ticket which was inked, spritzed and held in place with Foliage accents and a brad. The cute reindeer was one of many silvery motifs that The Crafty Workshop had in stock and I simply alcohol inked him before adding the obligatory red gem nose! (Well, you have to really!) I alcohol inked the ribbon too....you know me! I had a great time up in Workington, so hope to be back next year. Oh yes! There was much discussion this weekend about the DI colour "Dusty Concord"! I'm ashamed to say that I could not, for the life of me, bring to mind the origin of this name! However, on Sunday, Lesley suddenly got the answer....it's a grape variety! Duh!Back to a little Art Journalling now. I had been working on this double page for a few evenings and I forgot to take a picture before I began colouring it in. Here are the pages once I had coloured them and the second shows them after I had added some words. I kept this one simple....it is just a pictorial way of expressing how I feel sometimes when all the deadlines come at once, all the bills arrive together, etc etc...I'm sure we all have days like this! Hope you can relate to it! I used my usual black drawing pens to draw the design and then used Promarkers to colour before adding more details and the words. The colours are flat in the sky area where I used the broad nib to colour with. The watery areas are more "shady" as I didn't want to go over them too much and was using the finer nib. I like the contrast in the flat and more textural colour though.

The "sneaky peek" is of this Saturday's "Matchbox Shrines" workshop at Dawn's studio. Just a taster for those of you who are coming to that one!Just a word of warning...it's going to be a very busy day with only half an hour between the morning and afternoon workshops to get everything cleared up and set out....making me dizzy just to think about it! If you are coming to the Shrines class then you may wish to bring any little tokens, charms, tiny ornaments etc that you might like to include in your piece. Don't worry if you haven't, as I have a little collection of treasures that you can pick from. However, the more eclectic our choices the better! Joanne....I feel terrible now, as if I have misled you! When I said that Personal Impressions had sent me all the goodies for the workshops I didn't mean that I had the latest, not available yet Ranger/Idealogy stuff....I wish that it had been so, but will have to wait a little longer yet. I have plenty of lovely things though!

Well, this has taken me ages, so I had better sign off as my fingers are going numb! That could be all the paint, Glossy Accents and Micro Beads that are stuck to them though! Lindsay