I'm still here!

Hello everyone, and sorry for being so long in posting....the rumour that my leg had got infected and dropped off is not true! Lol! No, I have had my head down, putting finishing touches to the "hush hush" project that I'm working on. I've just about hit my deadline for this stage, so am feeling rather relaxed this evening, although I start work on brand new stamp designs as of tomorrow. It's all go!

Since my last post I had a lovely busy day at Ream's in Derby, where the staff and customers were very welcoming, friendly and enthusiastic. Jill's son even kept me topped up with hot drinks all day and I was given bottle of wine before I left! Yesterday was a full day of teaching at JGD Crafts in Sutton, where a lovely group of ladies had lots of fun making a varied selection of distressed, stamped and inked cards. There was a lot of laughter, but they still managed to make some stunning cards.

I shall be at the Garden centre craft shops (ex Craft Central stores) in Chester-Le-Street and Carlisle this coming Saturday and Sunday, so please pop in if you are in the area this weekend. I'll be demonstrating Sakura pens on both these days and will have ATC's to swap, so bring one or two with you if you are coming along. I will be showing various techniques, including stamping, working on acetate and doodling. I have some nice train journeys to look forward to, as the scenery is stunning along the northern routes. Hopefully I won't have any confrontations with yobs this time either!

For those of you who had asked me to email any further lists of my clear out items, everything has now gone, so my lists are no more! There is a nice space where the clutter was, although it does seem to be managing to fill itself up again rather alarmingly! Some new boxes will hopefully keep everything in reasonable order though....no more collapsing drawers!

We've had a mixture of warm sunshine, winds and torrential rain in this last week and the trees seem to have swelled to twice their size. "Our" birds and beasties are all doing well, and, as I type this, some of our regular pigeons are tapping on the window as if to order more bird seed! They are comical characters. On a natural history note, I emailed Channel 4 last night after seeing Bear Grylls (not someone I normally watch) confronting a huge Boa Constrictor in Belize. It was a beautiful, awe inspiring snake - until Mr Grylls decided to kill it because it "had a lot of meat on it". It was sickening and a complete waste of a magnificent animal. Had he really been stuck in a jungle, starving, then, obviously he could be justified in doing what he needed to do to survive. However, he was simply making a programme about survival and I was absolutely fuming (and still am, as you may guess) that he and Channel 4 thought that this was okay behaviour. I'll let you know what they have to say when I hear from them. Rant over!

Well, this has been a loooong weekend, so I am just about to nip out to the Chinese takeaway - something that we don't have very often, but we are both shattered, so are having a really lazy night. Lovely!

I shall post again, with pictures, soon. Lindsay

Up and coming events

Hello everyone - hope you have as much lovely sunshine as we do here today. I remembered to put my clocks forward and was quite happy that I wasn't working away from home today, so have been able to absorb the lost hour quite smoothly. It will be nice to have all that extra light later in the day again now, that's for sure.

I was at Create With Card in Ashton Under Lyne on friday...a very chilly day but they kept me warm with hot chocolate! Then, yesterday, was spent at Top Barn Crafts (above) which is in Plassey craft and retail village near Wrexham. It's a lovely setting as you can see in the picture on the left...the tree in the gardens has been carved into a work of art featuring different animals and birds as well as a naked lady! It's well worth a visit, with various Boutiques, shops and a cafe and restaurant as well as the craft shop of course. Hello to everyone that I met at both shops, and I hope that you had fun with all the techniques using your new pens. Below is a picture of a pendant made from one the kits that I was using yesterday...the metal butterfly has been coloured with Glaze pens to give an enamelled effect. I wanted to add something to the circles at the edegs of the wings and finally decided to use eyelets! They fit perfectly and I just pushed them tightly in with some Glossy Accents to keep them securely in place. It would be nice to add beads or gems, but I had to do something quite quick. It's not the best picture as the glaze is very reflective!I'm adding some new dates once I've done this post, so do check to see if I'll be in your area and come along if you can - we always have fun at my demonstrations!

Next weekend (4th/5th April) is the big demonstration event at both Osaldtwistle Mills and Dawn Bibby's Design Studio and will be well worth a visit. Dawn will be there of course, as will Leonie, Paula Pascual, Sheena Douglass and myself, as well as all of Dawn's creative team. There will be make n takes and demonstrations, lots of new products and more than a bit of fun I'm sure!

In response to your comments - yes, I really will be adding instructions for the owl cards (promise) it is just a case of getting the time to create the design in stages to photograph. I was all set to do it last week and then something else turned up that needed doing "yesterday"...just for a change! Thank you for all the comments that you leave generally - I do appreciate them all.

I was wondering where all "our" little birds had vanished to, as we seem to have had hardly any at our feeders lately. The pigeons have been as cheeky as ever of course! Our squirrels seemed to have deserted us too...was it something I said?! Thankfully, they must have read my mind as I can report that they are back with a vengeance and we have gained a Robin now too which is great...we found our last Robin dead over a year ago and think that he may have crashed into the window. One of our squirrels was back this morning which cheered me up, as I do love the way that they stand up on their back legs and look up at the window as if to say "come on, get the monkey nuts out!" - cute! He was burying them all this morning, so I hope that he remembers where they are before one of the ever observant Magpies starts digging them all up!

Well, that's my demonstration and wildlife report done for today! Don't forget to bring ATC's to swap if you are coming along next weekend and I will endeavour to post the owl instructions this week if humanly possible! Happy Sunday, 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