bringing you right up to date...

I apologise for my tardiness in updating the blog but the virus I have had since December keeps rearing its ugly head and one day I am feeling so much better and the next day - wham! I am left wondering what hit me -

Well, here is Friday's class ladies. Its a frame and a card. The frame will take 2 weeks to make as it needs time to thoroughly dry before decorating it and the card will fill the rest of the time. It is quite an adaptable card - it is initially a Valentine card but could equally be used for a wedding, an anniversary, a new baby or even a sympathy card with just a change of greeting
The photos really don't do the projects justice - they are in the shop window if you have time to pop along -
Also in the shop window is this lovely jigsaw puzzle frame that I decorated but sadly this one won't be a class - these frames have almost sold out...
here's a close up of the two interlocking die-cut jigsaw pieces stamped and shrunk... this is part of the window display - I can't seem to get a good shot of the window display - it has the mini canvases and both these frames and looks a real treat...
and here's Becky... and the Wednesday girls with their completed canvases... and here's Ruth, newbie Barbara and Pat showing last Friday's canvases... All based on the same one but all different...
Hopefully, things will be back to normal healthwise very shortly and I will blog more regularly
Bye for now
Sue

feeling sorry for myself...and it's all Colin's fault!!!

Not really but he had the cold first!!!
I made this jigsaw piece to teach lots of techniques to the ladies. It involves using three different types of inkpad, some stamping both with ink and paint, triple embossing, shrink plastic - loads of laughs and oohs and aaahs there - and a sprinkling of accent beads. Went down a treat... and here are yesterday morning ladies showing their jigsaw pieces - I managed to get through the class OK somehow as I have a really bad cold - closed the shop an hour early today though as I felt so rotten...so sorry girls forgot to take photos of the lovely work you did today... Here's my lovely Wednesday girls , Arlette, Alice and Celine showing the Christmas tags they made...

and here's the Monday girls...Sienna, Liza, Ana, Dayana.Daniella, Ciara and Lauren...

As I said earlier I have a really bad cold, shivering, head pounding, teeth aching - going back to bed so

Bye for now

Sue

A birthday party and a few days away...

Just a quick update as Colin and I are off to dinner with friends Molly and Arie so I'll be brief...
This morning was my Birthday and having only arrived home at 1.30 am from Belgium I was quite tired but with a Christmas Open Day on Saturday to prepare for I still went to the shop.
My friends Inga and Molly came to help along with Yaa my lovely Saturday girl and Inga's lovely daughter Dayana and we all got stuck in making yet more cards and pricing up products and unpacking and other stuff.
Inga lured me to the front of the shop while they put up a Happy Birthday banner and balloons and set the table for a party with chocolate cake...I spent a few days away with Tanya in Belgium also visiting Holland for a trade show and we had a really good time even though Tanya got tired after her battle with cancer.
We stayed in a superb hotel in Holland and they spoilt us rotten with the food.
Tanya had mozzarella with tomato tower, consomme and hand made croquettes on top of tomato in jelly for her starter... my goats cheese interspersed with black bread with pink grapefruit.....gorgeous... this was as delicious as it looked.....slice of dried apple on top of cinammon ice cream with crumbled meringue, apple mousse and the apple crumble tart itself.... Tanya and I at the hotel enjoying our apple crumble and cinammon ice cream... This was Friday morning's class before I drove to the airport. That's me up to date so

Bye for now

Sue

Here's some of my work!!!! at last...

I am so busy making samples for my Christmas Open Day on 10th September that there is very little work that I can actually show without giving away the surprise effect on the day but

Yeah! Woohoo! here's something I made that I can actually show! This suitcase and mini album was great fun to make and I thought the girls would love to do it.... a glimpse inside the mini book... And from last night's class here's Lauren, Megan and Daniella with their beautiful suitcases and mini albums... Zoe from Valencia - she goes to the same school as Paola and Andrea below - in a city the size of Valencia how much of a coincidence is that!!! This is Marta, Paola and her sister Andrea from Valencia...On Sunday afternoon Tanya wanted a last yoghurt before leaving for the airport so we popped into smooy.....Just look at all that luscious goodness - Tanya's is topped with marshmallow, pineapple and chocolate and mine with marshmallows and chocolate... all those calories!!! a kiss goodbye...

On Sunday - her last day - Tanya got her sex on the beach...at last! It only took 4 weeks but she managed it!

This series of my work was displayed in the window and I was asked by one of the Spanish ladies if they could buy the canvas so I made it into a class instead...uhoh! more of my work!!!!! and here they are with their canvases - all the same but all so very different...

Gotta go, shop to open, people to see, things to do and all that so

Bye for now

Sue

A round up of the week ...in pictures - well almost

Today, the shop was incredibly busy and I actually did some crafting! though not intentionally!

I couldn't find the project for tonight's class which is my Dina Wakley journal from an online class I took with her some time ago and which I was going to use to show the girls how to use gesso and spray inks..... and so when needs must..... I rolled up my sleeves and set to at ten minutes to two - we close at 2 - and sprayed, gessoed, sprayed some more - loads of layers, took it home and doodled on it, typed and printed out a quote and whew! taught it tonight...
very happy girls Alice, Berta, Megan, Becky and Alesha with their lovely pages.... and I caught Beatrix, Beatrix number 2 and Iciar just as they were leaving..... the terrible twosome - Alice and Megan - we'll miss you Megan but it will soon be Easter and you'll be back... the little sweeties from Monday class - they marbled card and bound it into notebooks and diecut a message for the front... good work all of you... and here's the card I made whilst the ladies were spraying and stamping on Friday morning...and Suzanne here on holiday and in need of a crafting fix... and Pat, Mu, Rena, Shirley and Carmen sharing a laugh...

Tanya's here for another two weeks r and r and I will update you on what we have been up to - sadly no mojitos or sex on the beach yet as we haven't had time but the weekend is approaching and we know how to enjoy ourselves...

and having just said that I am absolutely kn.....ed and I'm off to bed - I know, what a wuss you're thinking and you'd be right.....

Bye for now

Sue

Language skills

Had an interesting morning on Friday. The ladies came to make lollipop flowers from fabric and kitchen paper.

Four ladies in class - no problem you would think and normally you would be right -such a small group would be quite a pleasure -

well it was a pleasure and thankfully I had asked Yaa my lovely Saturday girl to come in to help in the shop. Let me explain...

Pilar, the lady Yaa is helping, is Spanish and only speaks Spanish and when you don't understand her she says it again...only faster! She is so keen the words cannot tumble fast enough as she tries to explain......

Barbara (standing) is English and only speaks English

Chantal in stripes is Belgian and only speaks French

are you with me so far .....

and Emma is English but has lived in Spain since age 13 and luckily also knows French from school

and so between us all we had some very interesting conversations.

Since living here in Spain my language skills - rusty to say the least - have been sorely tested.
I have a wide variety of crafters coming into the shop from Germany, Netherlands and France and the like. I learnt French and German at school but was never very confident at the verbals and with the passage of time ...well need I say more.....mange tout, mange tout!! a la Del boy!

but it all went well and they are back for more next week so they all must have enjoyed it.

Right, need to get the ironing done but it's soooo HOT. Might just leave it till later!!!!!

Bye for now
Sue

The new Crafty Notions spray inks were a hit...

This is a long post and has taken me ages to write because I am doing it in the intervals between the Dancing on Ice final. At the moment Sam has skated the bolero - captivating was Jason's comment!! and Laura has yet to skate - no idea who will win as they are both fantastic. At Stitches, the trade show in February I thought I would buy a few bottles of Crafty Notions mica spray inks to try, and boy are they gorgeous!!! Just look at those stunning colours and the mica in them mixes like a dream. It looks delicious being swirled around and they spray really easily too unlike others I have tried....they have also almost sold out so if you want some be quick.

so I had a play on Thursday morning and I sprayed sheets and sheets of cardstock and also in my A4 and A5 Moleskines - a real joy. I converted some of the cardstock into birthday cards adding die cut butterflies as you can see here... they have a batik-like quality to them. Also in the photo below are the journal pages I sprayed and on the reverse the inks leaked gently through and left some lovely images....

Today, was sunny and warm and so I took myself out to the naya and equipped with a can of Pepsi and a Cadbury's creme egg I was all set.

It's weird journalling in an A4 size. I have so many A5 journals on the go and the larger size can be quite daunting at first but I am enjoying working in the larger size. As an artist I always worked large as it is much more freeing but for journalling smaller seemed safer.

Anyway, I doodled around some of the flower images that had leaked and added wording from my quote collection which reads " If you've never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom"

In my A5 journal I had sprayed through a new Sizzix butterfly die cut - I used the butterflies on the cards - and also dabbed the leftover spray onto the page reversing the image...look at these beautiful colours... and today I added some fairies that a friend gave me last year and found some wording which reads "Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life, and everyone deserves a little sunshine" .....which is a beautiful sentiment.

On Saturday morning I introduced the girls to the spray inks and they loved them. Here's Blaithin and Becky with the cards they made...

I find it so lovely when the ladies continue at home what they have learned in class and even more so when they bring it to show...

and on Friday morning two of the ladies brought pieces - Maxine finished her doll painting off at home with a feather and beading - truly a mixed media piece...

and Ruth brought in two examples of last week's alcohol-inked beer mats class that she made at home.....

Both stunning ladies!

So I decided to let the Friday ladies into the secret of these lovely inks and they donned rubber gloves and settled down for a messy time - you could have heard a pin drop the concentration was so great...

Lin doing an Ainsley Harriott, or at least seconds before she had her left arm raised!!! Lol!

Mu, Lin and Florence showing their creations...

Right, they are just announcing the winner so

Bye for now Sue