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This next pair feature the Garden Chair set and again, masking was the key to making these. The birdhouse doesn't have a pole so that you can position it anywhere and then simply either sketch the pole in and colour it, or just paint some ink coming down from it. On the left card I masked around the birdhouse, chair and bonnet before blending Distress inks around for the background. I used watered down Peeled Paint DI to add simple shrubs behind the chair and then added more detail using the birds, basket and flowers from the set.
Next is the Old Jetty Set which I kept to very muted tones in the left card. The masking is very simple on these two examples, basically just the jetty really! 
The next two cards are made using the Cottage Set. I just wanted to show the very different looks that can be created with either full on colour (this reminded my sister and I of the painted mirrors we had in the family home - crinoline ladies missing here though!) or in monochrome. 
The next cards use the Cliff Top set which, from the emails I've had, seems to be the favourite at the moment! Two very different looks - a simple, clean look on the left. I brayered some Stormy Sky DI across the card after removing most of the ink on crinkled up paper to get the sea effect. The cliff and lighthouse were stamped, cut out and layered on top.
And here's another lighthouse created with masking, DI background and some faux bleaching.
Lastly, here is the Watering Can set which has lots of little stamps of flowers, leaves, pots, tools and birds so allows you to make very different versions with a little imagination! By the way, the messages, bunting etc that I've used on the cards are from new sets that will be available soon - sneaky peeks there! 
If you'd like to see more details of the stamps themselves, please check out the QVC website...if you put my name into "product search" it will lead you to the page where there is a video presentation and pictures of the sets themselves. They are available in two sets of three.
It was cold but very pretty and has been a lovely sunny day with a real feel of Spring in the air. Well, it's been a long, busy day and I still have to type up some project instructions so I will say goodnight and sign off for now. 
Here we are, posing at our workstations and Joanne (who doesn't even have any extra chins) suggested we do the old "face resting on hands" pose, though Heather didn't have much room to rest her elbows on the table as you can see!
We had a great time and got lots of work done too. What a lovely way to spend the day.
Well, just a quick post this evening to show I'm still here! Don't forget to tune in to see the new stamps but I'll post details of them as soon as I'm allowed. Keep warm everyone.
......as well as cards using my new stamps. This one is lucky to survive as I had placed it on the box by the window whilst the Stickles dried and, I can only assume in an effort to impersonate a Magpie, Fred, our favourite pigeon, decided it looked rather attractive and decided to walk on it! Luckily it escaped reasonably unharmed! He must have taken a fancy to the sparkly glitter as he was gazing at it for some time before he took the plunge! 
Here's another card using my snowy scene stamps. The idea with these is that you can create many different scenes from the one set. I used the bare tree stamp in the set to create the twiggy shrubbery on the right and just added some red dots to the branches to create the winter berry look. 
This stamp set, along with the one that includes the snowmen from the previous card, were featured on the last hour of QVC craft day yesterday, though if you blinked you may well have missed them! If you'd like to see the sets, just type my name into the search bar on the QVC website and they will come up as two options.
For the ladies who were asking me about penguin stamps last week, I do also have some in clear sets too - they are available through QVC as kit number 590197....very small picture below! There are also polar bears in there, some verses and trees - if you look very hard! lol!
I don't know if they will be featuring on craft day (from midnight tonight through to midnight on Thursday) but I will definitely have some of my new Christmas designs on in the 23rd hour of the event! Looks like there is going to be an interesting mix of products on over the day, so I'll be sneaking a look between working on some new drawings.
.....as you can see, he was pretty impressed and gave it a looong test drive! He sends his thanks!
Here's the Personal Impressions display table complete with Martha Stewart goodies and two lovely Charlie Bears....I did wonder if the cupcakes would be safe in their paws! We also set up the workshop room where I'd be teaching twelve classes over the next two days. 
We were up bright and early for the first day of the event and Craig was there to welcome everyone and get them in the mood for crafting! Craig also introduced everyone...Marion Emberson, Imaginations, Michelle, Stix 2, Amy, Julie Hickey, Sizzix and everyone else that I've missed off my list. On the second day, new presenter Anna was there to do the honours...she was lovely and made a really excellent card on my workshop.
Then it was time for myself and Jayne to lead our first group to the workshop where we would be making our "Winter's Tale " cards. We only had forty five minutes for each session, so had to get straight down to making a Distress Stain and Perfect Pearl Mist background, before stamping, masking, bleaching, colouring, cutting out and sticking everything together! Whew!
Everyone did really well - even when, on the second class, Craig joined us and sang "Only a Winter's Tale" throughout! Bless him!??? Jayne and I scurried around, making sure that everybody knew where they were up to, and, with only twenty minutes between each class, we didn't have much time to spare! Here are a couple of the ladies carefully painting the fences, owls and postboxes for their cards. 
This is the lovely lady who had me in Stitches at the session that she attended...I've never seen anyone applying ink and stamping with such a lovely flourish and her laugh was infectious! 
A couple of the ladies went "off piste" so to speak, and used the techniques and the stamps etc to just have fun doing their own versions. This card was just gorgeous, with a very ethereal look to it.
And this lady got really into the spirit of stamping and made her own version too.
After twelve workshops Jayne and I were all in, but everyone's enthusiasm had made it all worthwhile - even stamping and cutting out 120 post it note fence masks was worth it (I had been going to stamp one each - 240 - but I caved in and people shared!!!).
How I would have loved to have won one of these Charlie Bears....but, of course, I wasn't even in the running for prizes. How cute is this chappie though...look at those pleading eyes! 
So, there's a mini round up of the Craft Party. It was a great chance to meet so many keen crafters and I hope you all went away having had a fantastic time at a memorable event.
Lastly, don't forget that it's Craft day on QVC this Thursday (ie starting at midnight Wednesday through to midnight on Thursday). I will have some stamp sets on air, including new ones. And, really lastly, I also have a new set of projects, featuring penguins, in the latest issue of Crafts Beautiful magazine. I am now off to give my typing fingers a rest!
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!
......though I'm not sure he was too happy with his efforts! Lol! 
If you are at home this afternoon do tune into QVC as there will be some of my stamps on...I think in the 3pm hour. I haven't made the samples for the show so I'll be interested to see what has been made using them - always fun to see what other people make using my designs! There will also be stamps by my friend Andy as well.
And here's a close up of everyone's favourite card of the day which features the tactile Teddy from Darkroom Door stamp set "Hello Baby". 
If you look closely at the cards on my table you can also see a girly pink teddy card. Carole kindly emailed me some more photos which I couldn't post as they came out like thumbnails when I save them...David will sort that out though I'm sure, so will show you them once he has got them resized for me.
Next is one I've made using Andy's Winter's Tale stamp set. Unfortunately the photo doesn't show it too well as I've used Perfect Pearl Mist on the card and it's reflecting in a rather odd way here! It's been Distress inked, Faux Bleached, stamped and spritzed. The words are from my new PICSA6263 set which has lots of little Christmassy sentiments and words in it.
Next is a card using Gorjuss Girl Clear stamps...if you love colouring in these are great. What I really love is the new Martha Stewart Holly Leaves Punch around the Page set which I have tinted using good old Distress inks. Think I will be using this punch rather a lot! The little character just fits in the 3.75" x 5" punched mat perfectly. The verse is from my new stamp set PICSA6264.
So, just a few sneaky peeks and I'll post more photos in the next few days. That coffee is stone cold now, so I shall drink it up and get cracking again with more stamping!
I've managed to complete another page for Heather's book swap and I've also done a couple of the backs as well. One is for the back of my Heart & Soul page, but I didn't photograph it. The pictures below are of "The Timekeeper" themed one. I've used three of Tim's cogs...I love this element as the cogs engage with each other properly so they all move if you turn one of them (I'm easily pleased!!!). The metal bird is also one of Tim's (sounds like I've stolen his personal stash!), as are the clock faces which are from the Lost & Found Paper Stash. The background is a mixture of Big n Juicy ink over gloss card which I'd partly covered with a large clock mask (Tim again!). I scratched some of the surface off to give texture and also added some torn tissue tape from you know who! The wizard was cut out from a charity shop book find. I added the letters and calendar scraps and glazed them all with Glossy Accents. The clock hands are just twisted wire which I bradded into place so that they can be turned to any time. Passage of time is my main theme here I suppose with the bird symbolising that time flies...how true!
For the back of this page I've drawn a wizard using my 0.05 ink pen before colouring and shading with Promarkers. One tip with using these pens for skin tones is to use something other than the actual flesh colours for shading. I've used Blush to colour the face and hand and then shaded using Cool Grey 1. Using a grey or a very light green will give a much more realistic look to skin than using light, medium and dark shades of the usual flesh tones.
If you are colouring darker skin tones then just use darker greys and greens in the shadowy areas. If you look at portrait paintings, or even your own face in a mirror, you'll see areas of green, blue or even purple as well as the usual peachy, browny, pinky tones. Well, hope you like this latest page!
I was featuring my new Christmas clear stamp sets along with Distress ink pads...showing that you can combine whimsical with more distressy techniques. This is my table before we got started...looks pretty messy already! I had eight or nine people (not all ladies!) at my table per sessions and each lasted around half an hour with more people standing behind chairs waiting to come on the next sessions, so the the pressure was on both for me and those who were trying to finish their cards! Great fun though, but very tiring as you may imagine.
Here is the wall at the side of my table, showing some general card samples using my new stamps. 
And here are just one, very cheerful group of ladies at my table. And there's my coffee and a biscuit which was one of three cups that I only took one sip of during the day! All the QVC customers who had come along were able to go around the tables and to the Kanban workshop, so there were things to make with the various companies and guests that are featured on the channel. My lovely friend Paula Pascual came along to see us all too - she had a great time as she was having a day off and a busman's holiday! There are some good pictures from the event on Paula's blog. 
After the first day finished we left everything just as it was and I went with Kathy and Jayne, from Personal Impressions, back to Jayne's house for the night. We had a lovely Indian takeaway that was super delicious and a good night's sleep was had by all! Next day was a repeat of the previous one except that Anthony was there instead of Craig. He made one lady's day by giving her a huge hug and she turned to jelly! I did have more photos of the event, but my camera has managed to spit them out somehow! Hello to all the ladies and gents who attended the event and hope you all had as much fun as I did. On Friday evening I had to hot tail it to the station to get the train to Horley as I was demonstrating at Crafts U Love there the following day. I just caught the train and it then sat there not moving an inch until way past the departure time....a voice then announced that they were very sorry for the delay, but there was no driver! That's a new one on me! Scurrying to a new, packed, train then ensued and I got to Horley quite a bit later than I should have.
My day at Crafts U Love was less frenetic than the two previous days and it was nice to be able to take time with everyone to show the techniques I was using. I've lost all the photos from that day but I'll be making samples this week, so will add some pictures before the weekend. 
I was inking and stamping and dyeing flowers, though the card below features spotty ones from Petaloo, along with my "Vanilla WanTED" set of stamps (no, I didn't come up with that title, just the name Vanilla for the teddy!). I stamped Vanilla onto paper from Best Creations which I also used for the matted background - I do like this technique when I don't feel like getting inky fingers! 
As promised to those who specifically asked me this weekend, below are two of the Distress inked landscape backgrounds for you to have another look at. I use various colours of the Distress inks for these, but a good combination is Tumbled Glass, Stormy Sky, Dusty Concorde, Pine Needles and Walnut Stain, used in that order. The snow is created by spritzing with water and removing the spatters with a tissue. The trees and snowman are painted using just water, again tissued off, before adding some details to the snowman. I hope everyone managed to re-create the trees!
On Sunday we went off to Stampers Gallery in Tarleton. Another scorchingly hot day! Sue and Phil who own the shop had both been on the wars - Sue had fractured her elbow...ouch! And Phil had managed to drill through his hand....even oucher!!! They were still smiling though! As you can see below, it was a busy day....I am in there somewhere!
I had another sneaky day off yesterday (how decadent!), though I did make lunch and dinner - mind you, I had to have a lie down afterwards!!! He he! It was nice to have chance to watch some tennis too. I did do a few drawings as well, but all in all it was a pretty relaxing day.
