Coming up for air!

I feel a little bit like a terrapin swimming my way to the surface of a tank to grab a lungful of air before diving down again! The most recent batch of stamp designs that I have been working on are finally complete, in the presentation folder and ready to send off in the morning....whew! It's always a lovely feeling when a set of designs are finished and I'm especially pleased with these ones, which is quite unusual for me. I can't give any details about what they are of course...there are spies everywhere.....lol! There are more designs in the pipeline soon, but, at least for the moment, I can lay my pencil and pens down.

I had two very full boxes of new products delivered to me in the last couple of days and am now going to spend the next week making samples and a magazine project from them - needless to say all with unfeasibly short deadlines! There are some gorgeous new K&Co papers and embellishments as well as Martha Stewart products.....all scrumptious!

Unfortunately the demonstration at Crafty Corner in South Shields has been cancelled, so, if you were planning on popping along there to see me, I'm afraid that I shan't be there. Well, more time to work on these deadlines!

The snow around here has been thawing quite slowly but surely and the snow that was falling today hasn't stuck, so I'm guessing that we may have come throught the coldest of the winter now - I hope so anyway, as I am due to go up to Carlisle for a demonstration in a couple of weeks and I know it has been bad up there.

Well, this was just a quick pop in to keep in touch with everyone! Sorry that there are no photos tonight, but hope to remedy that soon. If you haven't checked out my sister's blog recently, have a look at the gorgeous post Christmas present that she has made for me.....aren't I lucky? (She is really getting far too clever

An inky day

I have multi coloured fingers this evening as I've been using Distress and Alcohol inks this afternoon to get some ATC's and background papers ready for my demonstration tomorrow at Dawn Bibby's Design Studio. Messy and fun! Hope to see some of you there and, if you're early, you can swap one of my new ATC's - bit of a Halloween theme on some of them, with orange and black Alcohol inks. I'll get some photos tomorrow - it was horribly dark here today, but that Autumn, cosy feel was nice too. Talking of which, the clocks go back tonight so it's a lie in and coming home in the dark tomorow....ugh!

Anyway, here are just a few pictures to liven up this post! The first one was taken at the QVC event in London, and is of my template kit with just a few of the samples that I made.

The card on the right features paper from the K & Co Winter Wonderland pack. I simply watercolour stamped two birds from my Swirly Birds clear set (PICS013) and added gem stones for their eyes. What, literally, tied this card together was the combination of purple and blue sheer ribbon which picked up on the colours in the paper. Simple, but I liked this one!

The last one shows two examples of the fairy cards which were one of the workshops that I taught at the QVC event. The backing papers are from My Minds Eye and are really easy to work with as they are double sided and have a nice mix of patterns and plain. The cards feature images from my Fairy Silhouette clear stamp set. Hope you like them, Lindsay

I'm still here!

Hello all, sorry I have been absent for a few days. It was a very busy weekend as I was travelling a lot and had a demonstration on Monday too, so I had yesterday as a proper day off - I was banned from doing anything remotely to do with work! Did me good though, so it was back to making samples again today.

I had a lovely time at Sew Simple near Norfolk. It is a really great shop, very spacious and well stocked and in a lovely setting too. Lorraine and her staff had set out a great display area for me and I had plenty of room to work...though it didn't take me long to use up all the space with my clutter of course! Here are copies of my book and you can see my favourite K&Co snowflake embellishments in the left hand basket.

There were lots of tables for me to display my samples on, so just as well that I had been busy and made plenty! I was using alcohol inks, amongst other things, and had a surprise when I came to use the blending solution as when I unscrewed the lid there was no nozzle on the bottle! Silly me had been decanting an almost empty bottle into an almost full one, and I had forgotten to replace the stopper....I said that I needed a rest! So I had to sprinkle the contents by putting my thumb over the bottle neck...had a nice clean thumb by the end of the day! Unfortunately I had little time to take photographs, but will definitely rectify that this coming weekend. Hello to all the lovely ladies who came along to see me.

My journey home on the Saturday evening was uneventful until the train got to Sheffield when a horde of Manchester United football "fans" boarded the train. There were lots of railway police on the platform and I thought they were going to leave us to the mercy of the chanting, swearing "fans". However, around ten burly policemen got on the train too, much to my relief. We were delayed for over fifteen minutes whilst they tried to settle the horde down, but with little effect. One guy ignored the instruction to stop swearing and chanting and was immediately grabbed by an officer. This set them all off again and there was quite a bit of scuffling. One policeman escorted me into the front carriage as they were trying to contain them in the rear one, but there was some overspill. If it wasn't so serious it would have been hilarious to hear all the yobs (no other word I'm afraid) complaining about the police behaviour whilst totally unconcerned about the disruption that they were causng to all and sundry. It would be good if the police were always in such high profile on weekend trains.

Sarah is drawing (well, her husband Ewan is) the winner of her blog candy tonight, so good luck to all who left comments for her. I hope whoever wins really enjoys their treasure. I must get organised and do another one myself.

On Monday I was at CJ Cardcrafts in Edgeley, Stockport, so hello to everyone who popped along to see me there - hope you can all remember how to use the different pens that you bought!

I'll be at Strikes (Burnside) Garden centre in Blackpool on saturday where I'll be showcasing Christmas stamps, Nestabilities and Distress inkpads amongst other things. Hope to see some of you there...if you are a blogger, do introduce yourself as it's always good to put faces to names. I am not even going to mention bringing ATC's with you for swapping this time....oh, I just did! My sister will be popping along at some point in the day too, so she may well have some for swapping too....there's an incentive!

Lindsay

A few more pictures

Right, let's see if the pictures behave and upload properly this time! Well, they did upload, but I wasn't able to move them around once they were up, so I'll try again now.

A couple more pics from Farmer Parr's....I was very fortunate to be there, camera ready, as this stunning Peacock put on a display for a singularly unimpressed Pea Hen....in fact she ignored him so completely that he began to literally bristle with indignation, so that his tail feathers were quivering and making a sound like wind through bamboo. I had to take the picture through wires, hence the cropping of his tail, but what a gorgeous creature he was.

Next is me having a go at "Shove Halfpenny" (well, shove wooden discs actually!) which was one of the old games on display in the nostalgia museum on the farm. My dad doesn't look overly impressed with my efforts, but I did get a couple of good shots in...it was actually great fun! Below is a picture of one of the pygmy goats (a young one) who looked as though he was making a bid to escape! He kept poking his head under the wire fencing although it looked like a painfully small gap to us. I doubt that the animals would want to escape from the farm though as they are all looked after really well and get lots of attention from all the visitors. Well worth a visit if you are near Fleetwood any time.

Whilst I'm on the animal theme, Matthew is progressing very well now and is even beginning to get a bit stroppy with the other birds. His tail feathers are growing very quickly now and his neck and back are fully covered again - amazing really.

Lastly, here are a couple of photos of the inside and back of the acetate card which I made at the weekend. These cards are easy to make so long as you remember to use double sided papers and cover all the adhesive so that nothing shows through. The great thing is that, although they are simple, they do look very expensive, and the style suits all sorts of themes. Using the Peppermint Twist papers and embellishments meant that everything co-ordinated really well, so I just had to use the right colours for my stamped image and some toning gem stones and ribbons.

I received a Cuttlebug machine today, to use with my new Nestabilities and Shapeabilities, so will be making sample cards combining them with stamping and K&Co papers. I'm not really a die cutting sort of person, but I am looking forward to using these. I'll post pictures as and when they are ready, and I will have them with me when I go up to Strikes in Carlisle on the 5th September. I spent today making cards for this Saturday's demonstration at Handmade Heaven in Chorley, combining Sakura pens with stamps, acetate, glitters etc - there is a light sparkly dusting around the room now!

My stamping book should be in the shops from tomorrow onwards and thank you for all the emails I have received about it. Your comments and good wishes are always apreciated. Well, it is time for dinner now, so I had better sign off for tonight. Lindsay

What a nightmare!

Hello everyone, what a nightmare start to my day I had! I was all set to get cracking on some projects that need to be done "yesterday" and the first job was to get out some stamps. I'd decided which ones to use last night and was already dreading the usual search amongst my, less than organised, collection! Apart from the boxes of stamps that are dotted about the place, my main collection is held in a three drawer unit that, admittedly, was not designed to hold hundreds of wooden blocks! There was I, rummaging through the layers, when the whole set of drawers completely collapsed!!! Yes, all three drawers gave up the ghost and all my stamps ended up in piles buried under each other and the remains of the drawers....wonderful! So my stamps are now sitting in the empty frame of the unit waiting for me to come up with a new storage solution...I think that some stackable trays are in order. I am now waiting for another crash, as the top of the, now drawerless unit, is weighed down with boxes of ink pads, peel offs, powders and a hundred other things. So long as the floor doesn't give way I wil cope, and, yes, I did eventually find the stamps that I was looking for!
I've taken some new photographs of the boxes, as promised, though they are still not as good as I'd like as it is rather dull here today. I'll be teaching these on two workshops at Dawn's Design Studio, one in June and the other in November. They aren't a new idea, and are a variation of the Exploding Boxes that many of us have made. But I had great fun making them, so I hope that you like them. The first one was made with papers from one of the latest K&Co ranges called Que Sera Sera (they are absolutely stunning by the way!) and I've used one of their adhesive borders around the lid. Inside the box are birds from my Swirly Birds clear stamps set which I've combined with the tiny flower from the "Count My Blessings" stamp set.
This picture shows the inside of another box and I used some of the alcohol inked metallic film and stamped butterflies onto it before cutting them out and adhering them onto acetate strips. I went a bit mad with the adhesive gems as you can see! No picture of the outside of this one as the image didn't come out very well.The last box is a little different as I had an idea to use the Owl stamp full sized on the outside whilst doing shrink plastic versions on the inside and I knew that I wanted to create a tree effect. After some thought I came up with the idea of a piece of black corrugated card which I cut into a wedge shape and then cut "twiggy" shapes into the diagonal edge. I rolled the card up with the tallest edge in the middle and stuck it into the bottom of the box - my must have product, Glossy Accents, came to the rescue for this job, as it stuck the spiral of card into place within a minute so that I wasn't forced to hold it for an age whilst it set! A little more Glossy Accents around the edges strengthened the bond and allowed me to add glitter for a slightly mystical look. The Owls were coloured with watered down Marvy Le Plume pens and I used a gold Just Glitter marker to add sparkle and a warm colour so that they look like Barn Owls when the light shines through them. I also coloured the beaks in gold to highlight them. I'll admit that I did make about twelve more shrinky owls before I was happy with the final three!!!

Apologies for the less than brilliant pictures, but I hope that they give an idea of what the boxes look like, and hope that they might inspire you to have a go. My friend Sarah has posted some photos of the weekend up at Oswaldtwistle Mills, so check out her blog (in my blog list) to see those...hooray, no pictures of me this time!!! Also check out MyTobyJug blog where Joanne has also posted some great pictures.

Well, I am going to have a cup of raspberry tea now and then back to those stamping projects! Lindsay

Quick update

Hello folks, this isn't going to be quite the interesting post that I'd hoped it would be, as I just uploaded my photos from the weekend and they are all blurry. I don't know if it was the lack of light or what, but they are a real disappointment. So, I am going to re-photograph the boxes tomorrow and will add the pictures then.

It was a great weekend and lovely to catch up with everyone and meet new people too. Hello to all my blogging friends who came and said hello....I am not going to mention you all by name in case I miss anyone out!!! (How diplomatic eh?!) No, there were lots of you and you know who you are - it was great to chat to you all. I hope everyone is having fun with the inks, metallic film, canvas, stamps and K&Co paraphernalia that seemed to keep jumping into your baskets!

It was also lovely to catch up with Leonie, Sarah and all the Topaz team who were at the Mill...we had a great time. Anyway, I shall say cheerio for now and will be back tomorrow with the box photos as promised. Lindsay

Lots of lovely new things...

Yes, a box of lovely new products arrived from Personal Impressions yesterday! Along with my new stamps there were lovely new papers and embellishments from K & Co, gems, rub ons, ribbons, brads and flowers etc - all very scrumptuous indeed. I shall post photographs as soon as I can do, but it will be a few weeks yet. So, I'm busy making samples for my workshops and demonstrations at Stitches trade show, which is my favourite working weekend of the year. It's always really busy and I get a chance to catch up with people that I hardly see otherwise.

This is a general picture from our stand at last year's show...it's a really large one that takes two days to construct and fill and then about an hour to pull down at the end of the show! It's very hard work but also enormous fun.

I've just added a new demonstration date for February too, at Heaths in Barrow in Furness, so do check the dates list. I'll be showcasing Sakura pens and how to get the best out of them - it's surprising how versatile they are!

Well, not a very exciting post, but I just wanted to say "hello"!

Take care all, Lindsay

Chilly weekend catch up!

Well, it's been a chilly old week here! At one point it looked like my saturday demonstration might be cancelled as the roads to Holmfirth were closed due to snow and ice. Thankfully all was clear by yesterday, so the show was back on the road! Here I am, busy at work getting some last minute samples made before the customers arrived.

"Hello!" to all the ladies (and gentlemen!) who came along and I hope that you're using the things you bought and not just looking at them! Below is just one of the cards which I made on the day. As you can see, it features the little penguins again, but I just wanted to share the idea of making a tall slider card with you. This card stands up nice and high, but it folds absolutely flat and will fit inside a DL envelope with no trouble.

Notice the lovely 3D snowflake from K&Co...these have been so popular, so if you see any on the shelves - grab them as they are like gold

We survived the drive to and from Holmfirth...it is a truly scary road with impossibly sharp corners, inclines and no barriers beside the sheer drops....lovely!!!

Today we went to Redesmere again, but this time were armed with loads of stale bread. The lake was a sheet of ice apart from the edges where most of the birds were congregating to be fed. The man who runs the hot food stand said that it was only the second time in four years that the water

has frozen. The larger birds looked very comical as they skated across the surface, but we did feel sorry for them - their toes must have been painfully cold! I tried to get a good picture of the Gulls who were very impressive with their mid flight bread catching skills. They are much too fast for a digital camera, though I liked the way this one had the vapour trails from the planes in the background! Redesemere is in Siddington which is a few miles from Alderley Edge, so if you live anywhere within reach it is well worth a visit.

It is now time for another cosy evening! I shall be adding details of the Making Cards workshops after I complete this post and will be putting the Topaz workshops schedule on as soon as they are confirmed. Dawn and her team are still very busy moving everything from the Mill to the studio, so it may take a day or two longer to get the details.

I hope that you have all had a great weekend with time to craft, relax and enjoy good company somewhere in the mix! Till next time, Lindsay

Some new cards...

Well, I waited and waited for the daylight to arive yesterday so that I could take some good photos of my cards in natural light, but it remained dark and dreary all day! Pretty much the same again today, so I have had to use the flash after all - the pictures have come out okay anyway.

The card on the left features new papers from the K&Co Christmas Cheer Speciality pad...aren't they lovely and rich? I used "Peek a Boo Kitty" (Funstamps FM200) and added a die cut hat from the Carol Wilson Jingles range. The greeting is hand written with a Marvy Le Plume pen - use the fine point to write and then the brush point to add a dot to the ends of each letter.

The card on the right is a sliding pop up card - great to fold flat for posting. This uses red card stock along with K&Co Swell Noel paper. The stamped image is Funstamps "Mistletoe Penguins"( FM203) coloured using Marvy Le Plume pens with Personal Impressions fine glitter in Blue Black added to the penguins using a glue pen. They look as if they are in their best bib and tucker! It's odd why we all colour penguin beaks and feet in orange when they should really be grey, but I guess they are dressed up for Christmas!

No stamped image on this card, which features baubles cut from the K&Co Christmas Cheer Speciality paper pad and layered onto the fabulous reindeer paper from the same set. I simply added some burgundy ink swiped around the card edges to tie the colours together.

Finally, on the right is a cute card made using "Peek a Boo Puppy" (Funstamps FM210). I've coloured him using a waterbrush and Le Plume pens and layered him up. I also stamped him onto Christmas Cheer paper to get the stripey effect on his hat. The presents were a mixture of images from Swell Noel and ones which I made using rectangles of paper with paper strips as the ribbon. Notice another terrible pun for the greeting!

Well, there are more pictures, but I'll add those in seperate posts. I'll be busy next week preparing for my trip up to Scotland but will hopefully get chance to get on here at some point! I'm off to Brighouse tomorrow morning, to Embsay crafts, so do pop along if you are in the area as I'll have these cards, and more, with me, as well as those lovely papers and embellishments to show you. Till next time, happy crafting! Lindsay

New products

Well, I have had a day of making samples for this Saturday's demonstration at Brighouse and.....I had new papers and embellishments to use along with my stamps! I was using the latest Christmas ranges from K & Co - Swell Noel (think snowflakes, snowmen, Babycham type deer and pastel shades) and Christmas Cheer (think classic, gilded, baubles and jewel tones). These are both absolutely gorgeous and you will love them I'm sure. I'll post photos tomorrow of some of the cards I have made using them. If you are in the area, do come along to see me on Saturday (details in my demonstration diary below left) and see what you think about the new products.

A lot of people have asked me how they can find out which stamps are those that I've designed. Well, I'm pleased to say that we have now cross referenced the stamps on the Personal Impressions website (see link on website list below) so if you put my name into the product search, all my designs will come up! Technology eh?!

Well, that's all for now, but check back soon to see the latest card samples. Lindsay

Bury St Edmunds

Well, I had a great time in Bury St Edmunds! It's a lovely town with lots of little streets off the main roads, filled with interesting shops...I just wished I had had longer to look around.

The Stamp Hut is a great store, filled with oodles of crafting treasures, and I was made very welcome there. "Hello" to all the lovely ladies that I met and I hope you are all having fun with your purchases! I was so busy that I just didn't get chance to take any pictures of everyone around my table, but I did take one or two of the samples before I left.

To the left is part of my (as usual, rather messy!) table and here is a canvas which I made using a mixture of Ranger products - acrylic paint dabbers, crackle paints and distress inks etc and featuring one of Tim Holtz's stamps. I love creating one off pieces like these, where I just go with the flow and see what happens!

Below is a Vintage lady stamped and smudged using Distress ink in Walnut Stain (a great colour)

and mounted onto a panel made with alcohol inks on gloss card. The background paper is from the Blue Awning Range from K & Co.

I must say "thank you" to Leonie for adding a link to this blog from hers and for using one of my stamps in the kits that she is selling to raise funds

for the Princes Trust - do check out her kits if you haven't already seen them. I don't know where Leonie finds time to do everything! Here's a great picture of Leonie and Tim when we were all together at Topaz Crafts earlier this year....

isn't it a lovely photograph?

Well, I had a very lazy day yesterday to recover from all the travelling on friday and saturday. Today has been catching up with
emails and finalising details for my next group of demonstrations.
So, if any of you are in the Brighouse area (yes, home of the brass band!) on saturday, do come alng and say hello. I'd love to see you.
Till next time, keep warm and cosy, Lindsay