Wednesday 5 March 2008

Crafteire - Part Two - Saturday

Hope I can fit this all in!!

Started off my day bright and early, slept ok, but missed Des so much - as the song says The Beds too Big Without you :-(, so woke up at 6.50am.

Still the leisure centre was open at 7am so I got myself ready and set off for a swim, it was lovely there was only three of us in the pool. It was lovely to start off the day with a few lenghts - a Jacuzzi - and a sauna followed. Was back in my room and had my hair dried when my breakfast arrived up as planned. How indulgent to be sitting watching the morning news eating your breakie.

Down to the crop room by 9.30am ... the place was really starting to fill up with the extra arrivals who had missed the Friday night. I ended up moving from my original spot so that three people could sit together. So ended up on a table with JulieM, JulieFrog, LindaB & Jamie who I knew from the Donneycarney Crops, and from our CJ teams. I am in two circles with JulieM, one with JulieFrog and LindaB, and another with Jamie. So I was amongst friends... well acquaintances to start with Friends for sure by the end of the weekend. Great bunch of women altogether... such fun and laughter we had.

I had my first class at 10.15 with Linda Kelly ... we did a lovely chipboard and acetate book. I learnt how to stamp onto acetate, and Linda gave us some great tips for stamping, perhaps some may have felt she was teaching them stuff they knew, but I found all her advice brilliant. It was great fun, and the book is lovely. Its blue and brown which are great colours, very modern, but great if you have photos of both boys and girls.

Then I had a break where I was not doing the next class, so I worked on the book some more. I was glad to have that time to finish it off, felt it gave me less pressure during the actual class knowing I had that hour afterwards to complete the project ..

Got some shopping done too... well now that I knew how to stamp, and what ink to buy, I needed to get some stuff!!

My next class was with AmberJane. We used Fancy Pants papers, and again the kit was very generous indeed. The main focus of this class was to alter premade die cuts, and we used Stickles glitter glues for this. Well I fell in love. Little pots of glitter glue with nozzles. I found them very easy to control, a bit like royal icing onto paper!! The papers were lovely for this class, but quite girly, I used a photo of the three lads taken at Christmas, and intend to finish off this layout by putting in some small passport sized photos of each of them.

Back to crop room ...got a proper look at my kit, more shopping time!! Then we had a break for lunch, soup and sandwiches in the same part of the restaurant as the previous night.... bit disappointing really. I don't really like soup, so turned that down, and the sandwiches were just plain boring really. Luckily I had some Tim tams stashed in my bag for with the coffee!!

After lunch and it was straight back to work with us. Did a couple of make and takes - Annamarie was doing a mini book using the bind-it-all machine. Its a very neat little machine. Not sure I would use it much, although I am developing a liking for mini books. They just come together so quickly and easily. Make good gifts too. I also did a mini booklet with Beckie from Rusty Pickle. It was very much a premade self assembly job. But again I got to try out those Stickles!! Yummy yokes altogether.

Then it was into Annamaries class. The space in the class room was quite limited, and this was beginning to bother me at this stage, also I was getting hungry as I had such a limited lunch. So I have to admit that I found it very hard to concentrate in this class, and had to ask Annamarie to show me the layout a few times. I actually ended up skipping out of the class a bit early. I had the layout well started and will finish it off this week. Again the papers were really only suitable for girls.

After grabbing a coffee and some chocolate I felt a lot better able to face the next class. This was the master class with Jane Dean. This was something we were all really looking forward to as we had no idea what it was going to entail. We had been asked to bring a rolling pin and a pitza wheel!! So you can imagine the laughter around all that. It turned out to be great. We had air drying clay that we were going to turn into Mosaic type tiles and decorate a plain box with them.

As the bar stop ed serving hot food at 7 about half the class ran out after Jane did the initial run through ..but she knew we were going and had told us she was going to be available all evening so it was OK.

I am sure the bar staff didn't know what hit them, loads of mad women charing in just before 7 to make sure to eat.

After a very pleasant hour over the dinner, and sharing a bottle of wine, it was hi ho and back to work with us!! Making the tiles was tremendous fun, rolling out, stamping, cutting... suitably crafty to appeal to us all.

We adjourned to the bar, bit by bit, but I have to say come 10.30 I was done in and took my drink up to the room with me.

What a Saturday....

No comments: