Tagging with Tim Holtz!

Part of this week was spent up in Coventry to do a Ranger retailer workshop with Tim Holtz (master of Distress) and Dyan Reaveley (girl with a journal or two...or three!!)  Organised by Personal Impressions, the day was full of tags and techniques and friends!

 

We spent the day learning new and old techniques, all of which I will demonstrate in the shop or at my workshops.. My mind is definitely a'buzzing!
One of the highlights of my trip was seeing old friends, having lunch with Kate, and catching up, as you do :)  meeting new ones, and I had a great evening amongst some wonderful people.. Brenda, Jenny, Annie, Rita and Chris. We laughed and then we laughed some more... my sides ached from laughing.. a great tonic! Thank you girls ....

 

Here are a few pictures from the day... sadly none of my new friends as muggins here didn't notice her camera was switched on and the battery drained just as we started the workshop!! Doh! Had to use my phone, which is ok, but not marvellous :(

 

Have a very creative day
Hugs

Catching up with myself!

Oh my! It is almost a whole month since I last blogged, and so much has happened that perhaps the best way to describe it would be to say that I had been buried by an avalanche, and am just climbing my way out of right now!! It has been a manic month, and time as always has slipped away!
I will try to show what has happened this last month in pictures, without lots of waffle!!... Firstly we had the absolutely gorgeous and delectable Dyan Reaveley come to teach at The Artistic Stamper. Fun, mayhem, lots and lots of colour, and most of all SILENCE ensued while she was here teaching. I have never heard it so quiet in the classroom... everyone was just concentrating. The gorgeous Marie came with her to supervise (no pics of her :(

Artwork by Dyan

Decorating the classroom wall



Concentration!

Absolute silence!

Now you do it like this...

 

Cheese!

and we opened the new kitchen in the shop the same weekend..... thank goodness we did, as we drank gallons of tea and coffee!!

Built by Mal

Almost immediately after, Mal and I went to Ireland for some family business and to have a small break... it rained! well what a surprise, and guess what? We left the umbrella behind!! LOL The view from our hotel room was stunning, and I just had to show you this picture of a hill we came across... no gradient, and not an experience that either of us want to repeat again.. scary!!

Kinsale



Hold on to your seatbelts!

This is what we found when we got back.. a gorgeous new piece of art on the classroom wall! Created by Lesley, who gallantly looked after the shop while we were gone.



Imagine this on your wall?!

All in all, it has been an eventful month, and now the sun has come to give us summer! Yea!!
I faithfully promise to get some art on this blog, if I am not meeting myself coming backwards!! If you would like to catch up with me, I often post on Facebook, Twitter and on The Artistic Stamper Facebook page, both of which links are on the sidebars of the blog. Come and join me :)
Have a creative day

Dyan Reaveley is coming to The Artistic Stamper!

I have been bursting at the seams to keep this under my hat until today!! Mal and I are absolutely delighted and honoured to have Dyan Reaveley, one of Ranger's Signature Designers, and creator of Dylusions range of products, coming to teach at The Artistic Stamper Craft Store & Art Bar!!

Dyan will be here on June 8th and 9th teaching 4 new classes for 2013. Each one is unique and you can book any one of them, or all four of them. Never journaled before?  Dyan's unique talent will have you creating beautiful and fabulous pages that will set you off on that journaling road!

All of details on the classes and booking are now online, and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask me.
Am I excited?  you bet!! Cannot wait! Hope to see you in June or before....
Have a very Happy Easter, and eat lots of chocolate and be creative!
Hugs

Spray Tag Tutorial

Happy Good Friday to you! This weekend is a long weekend for everyone here in the UK, and at the moment here in the southeast of the UK, the sun is shining, and I have a very special visitor to play with today ( my husband's grandson :)) so cuddly!!) and I have lots of treats in store for you this weekend!
Firstly I thought I would share with you a technique I came across by accident a few weeks ago. Having been taught by Dyan Reaveley the technique of rolling a kitchen towel roll across wet spray paints to dry them. I was playing with Color Wash spray paints on glossy card, and this just happened!

Color Wash & Glossy Tag

I sprayed lots of colour onto a glossy card tag,

Wet sprays

and then rolled a patterned kitchen or paper towel across the paints to dry them. I rolled it lightly across and some of the paint stayed wet.. gorgeous patterns ensued!!

Roll the kitchen paper lightly over the sprayed tag

Patterned Paper towel.. perfect for other projects too!

Dried Glossy Tag

Dry the tag off with a heat tool, and then I stamped onto it with black Archival ink and some of The Artistic Stamper new stamps. . Loved this technique! Thanks Dyan!

Finished Tag

Now onto Easter, and the wonderful world of Easter eggs!! Don't you just love it when there are prizes involved? Well, sign up to my newsletter ( link on the sidebar of my blog) before Sunday evening, and you will be able to join in a special Easter Egg hunt on my website! Lots of prizes, and we have FREE postage too, for any orders that might slip into your basket in the meantime :))
I do hope you have a very restful, hopefully sunny weekend, and please let me know if you try the technique.
Have a creative Friday
Hugs

Splish splosh and a bit of spray!

No it is not raining in my world..thank heavens, just a lot of colour and spraying and an altered book page made with the fabulously colourful Dyan Reaveley at Stitches last weekend! I have been hooked on altered books since I first did a workshop, almost 10 years ago at what was then HIA ( now CHA) in the States! Tear up a book...never! sacrilegious! How could you? It was heart rending to tear that first page ( of an old and unwanted book, of course!) but I have never looked back. Don't get me wrong, I adore books, and am always buying them, but if a book is unloved and about to be tipped, then recycle it, and use it to make art!
Dyan showed us a great technique and we got to try her new sprays with Ranger ( they will be in the shop soon :)) and some of her stamps and her stencils .. . Lots of paint and my hands were their normal mess when we finished. Thanks Dy, it was a little bit of colour in a black and white world.

I am off shortly to my workshop at Pickleberry, to show my girls the new Distress Markers, and to give them a taster of working with them! hehe. My gorgeous loving hubbie bought them for me as pressie from QVC.. how lucky am I? You can pre-order them from us.... sadly not due in for at least 3 weeks as they have been delayed from Ranger. This week we have FREE postage with no minimum order!
Have a very creative day
Hugs
 

What's On Your Workdesk? Wednesday 142

As my son or daughter would say.. this week's post for What's on Your Workdesk, now famous by way of the tv,(  allegedly mentioned by Dyan on QVC!!) probably is an epic fail! I am supposed to show you my desk , and all its glory or in my case, all its downfall, but I haven't used it, and the mess piling up on it is far too much for me to show you!! So in order for me to join in here is a picture of my desk at the Stitches trade show where I was lucky enough to join in a retailers workshop with the Duke of Distress, and his assistant the Queen of journaling... Tim Holtz and Dyan Reaveley. It was very busy and fun filled afternoon, and for the first time ever I had my photo taken with him!

Here is what we made.. lots of techniques and ooh the new distress pens :))

For those of you who kindly asked last week, here is the link on how to make my little porcelain rose.
Now I am off to check out some of the desks in this week's woyww hosted by the delectable Julia.
Have a very happy what's on your Workdesk Wednesday
xx
 

Paint, paint, paint everywhere!-Workshop with Dina Wakley

 Having spent a glorious three days being taught , (not teaching) by Dina Wakley I have decided that I am messy! The entire weekend , Friday through Sunday was spent using paints, which I managed to get everywhere! ( Sorry Dy! LOL) i even found them up  my arm after I had showered !! Don't ask me how, but my new handbag  acquired gesso inside it!! Miss Messy indeed! LOL I spent the entire weekend in the presence of some wonderful ladies, Teresa, (who was kind enough to invite me out to dinner with her friends..thank you I had the best time) Liz, Nikki, Hannah, and Chris.
For those of you who asked, I did get to Betty's and sat in the window, sipping a Viennois coffee (yummy) and eating their chocolate biscuits!  I even managed to shop in Leeds on the way home!

Sewing anyone?

I almost forgot in my excitement to show you what we made! Day 1 was a birdie canvas,  containing lots of paint and pencil. Do you like it? mmmm think it needs work....

Day 2 was my favorite.. a Coptic stitched book, which I loved creating, with lots of painted pages and stamping using Dina's stamps... still a work in progress...

The final day for me , was hard, intuitive painting is not one of my strong points, but I persevered, and the challenge for me was quite hard! I only admit this to people I know! LOL! The final outcome was to make this into a book.

I do admit I loved it once it was made.

 It was a glorious messy painty weekend. Thank you to Dina and Dyan  , I am full of ideas that take me out of the norm, and into getting messy!!