A long, long, long post from me today....

Well, I have got a whole month to cover as you'll see my last post was 1st March. I could have done with cloning myself or at the very least borrowing some time from someone with some to spare as I seemed to be running just to stand still all month...

I have doodled all my life and just lately felt in the mood to make a doodled card and the one above is the one that started it again. I had been at the Dr's to sort out a mistake with my thyroid prescription and found myself at the shop with an hour to spare before we opened and so I took out my pen and four and a half hours and a few customers later I had my finished card...
I then doodled a Happy Birthday card for the lovely Yaa my Saturday girl... and made an Easter card... and this is another one I did...and another one for my Mum... and so I decided to share my love with the girls who embraced it wholeheartedly...

Elsa from Madrid was the only one of the Saturday girls whose photo I managed to remember to take...
the Monday girls hard at work doodling...
and the Wednesday ones...
I ran a weekend for four ladies from the UK. They came last September for a similar weekend and asked me to do another one as they enjoyed it so much...
The projects this time were an album for men, a decorated frame, a hanging and shrink plastic jewellery...
I had a lovely surprise - Barbara brought me a sock monkey she had made for me... Barbara and Jen enjoying a moment! well there were more than one I can tell you - the whole weekend was chock a block full of such moments... Barbara with her finished frame... and Joy and Mary with theirs... The ladies treated me to a meal at a local restaurant on Saturday night - the food was superb - it always is there - and the other diners were quiet - and our table was noisy...just like the whole weekend really... March has English Mother's Day and Spanish Father's day and whatever nationality the girls are - and I have told you before the list of girls reads like a League of Nations - these days are both celebrated here.
This card was made with die cut butterflies from a beautiful Teresa Collins scrapbooking paper... as was the scrapbook page and Fathers day card made with loads of heat embossing and die cutting and a tidgy bit of stamping and Stickles thrown in... Alice and Celine, two of the older girls... here's Eva putting her all into turning the handle on the big Shot Pro... and succeeding - can you see that smile... here's the younger girls with their scrapbook pages... and their cards...
My oldest son Lee visited for a few days to play golf and it was so lovely to be able to have and give hugs - so different from Skype... The girls were asked to design and make four outfits for a model. We discussed things like fabric and looked at photos in magazines to illustrate drape and suitability for use and then when they had designed their outfits they made the model from heavy card and her clothes using watercolour pencils and heavy Bockingford watercolour paper - here are my designs - very basic - the girls really went to town with some of their designs... here's my model in one of her outfits - notice no face is drawn on - I preferred the girls to spend their energy on the clothes... and here are the girls with the first of their outfits... and a quick change later and they are in the second outfit...
and the third...and the fourth...

Aren't they all fabulous and at such young ages 7 to 11...
Meanwhile the older girls had asked if they could make this canvas of mine that hangs on a pillar in the studio... and here's Alice... and Celine and Arlette with theirs... and in the middle of the month we had two days solid rain as you can see from the ceiling over the till!!!!!that's all the news from me and the shop so I hope you enjoyed our month - I certainly did...

Bye for now
Sue

A Graphic 45 Christmas

The trouble with this time of year is that everyone is making Christmas cards and I made mine way back in July and August ready for the Christmas market I staged in the shop in September.

I am still teaching Christmas but behind the scenes it is Valentine's Day and Easter. I will show a few sneak peeks of what I have been working on over the next couple of weeks but for now you will have to be content with the Graphic 45 cards I made to show what you can do with just one pad and a few odds and ends. and here's an extra one that wouldn't fit when I attached them all to the display board.

Bye for now
Sue
ps and I still have loads of G45 bits left for future

A week of repeats...

This is what I have spent my Sunday doing! Making air dry clay foods.......well it beats doing the ironing any day!!! The pizza and breakfast are unfinished - pizza has slices of pepperami on its base but no tomato or cheese and the breakfast tomato is unfinished - my red marker ran out- oh and the tomato on the burger isn't done either...but the cakes aren't too bad. This was my first attempt - well actually my second if you count the faces I made yesterday... so I am not too disappointed with them...

I made these when yesterdays class had left - the lovely Liz Welch had been using air dry clay on her blog and with a spare half hour to fill I made these gruesome offerings... I first taught this marbled paper years ago and was asked by one of the Saturday girls if they could do this... ... and here's the youngsters from Saturday with their marbled notebooks... This is a CD album project I first made last year and Barbara had seen it lurking in the shop and asked to make it -I didn't tell them it took five hours to complete.....

and here they are ... Friday's ladies with their CD albums... I took this into the light so sadly you can't see them too clearly but they are all smiling...even if just the bare bones of the project was complete -they will need to add the stamping and finishing touches at home...my lovely friend Norah (2nd left in the photo) is visiting Javea and came to class - she has been so ill and it is great to see her looking so well...

Celine has been asking for ages to decorate wooden boxes and so on Wednesday the girls sanded and painted their wooden boxes ...after unscrewing all the metal hinges and fastenings of course... Right, I have an iron getting hotter and hotter so I had better go and attack the pile - how come there's so much when there's only the two of us these days???

Bye for now
Sue

Running wild!!!

Here are the girls hard at work at class last night.... and here they are with their beautiful work - well Mina's not looking too happy as she hadn't completely finished hers...Yesterday morning and today - in between serving customers - I have been busy making cards for the next few Friday morning ladies classes - there are a few techniques here - and for once I feel happy that I am ahead - if only slightly!!! The cards are pretty basic but its the techniques I am teaching, the ladies can then take the ideas and let their imaginations run wild - the words my ladies, run and wild don't usually appear in the same sentence but well there's always a first for everything so they say!!! Lol!I'll let you know after Friday how wild the ladies can get!!!!! so

Bye for now

Sue