Dutch adventure

In less than two days, I flew to Holland, taught a 12 hour class.......yes, I did say 12 hours!!!! and flew home again. It was an amazing class, for an amazing store with an amazing group of people. Are you thinking that I had an amazing time yet? I had been invited by Joan, the owner of Joan Gavaert Rubber Stamping & Scrapbbooking store in Ede, Holland to teach the Arch class that Leandra and I designed. It has been in the pipeline for a long time but it finally happened last weekend. I was a bit concerned as I speak zilcho Dutch but I need not have worried as they were a great group of people who could all understand English. They even understood all the technical terminology like the scootchy, scootchy method, the scribbly,scribbly thing, the dotty, dotty thing and the schloopy,schloopy technique....just amazing!!!

Joan has only been the proud owner of this beautiful store for a year and I have to say, I fell in love with it, so if you are ever in the area, you need to go and pay a visit, it will definitely be worth your while. I was very jealous of the space that Joan has. For those of you who have been to my store, you will understand my jealousy as we have run out of spare space now, we are full to overflowing. I was even more jealous when she showed me her workshop area and storage area. Look at the size of this classroom, she can seat 50 people in there!!!!!!
So here are a few pics of my new Dutch friends, all hard at work
This is a picture of the lovely Leah, taking a picture of me whilst I was taking a picture of her!!!

They are all beavering away on the fabric part of the class, first stamping, then sponging colour followed by a touch of quilting and beading.

As you can see from the next couple of photos, they did a great job......or should I have said amazing!!!




And just to prove that it is not always females who are addicted to crafting, here is a picture of my only male student who didn't even complain about beading.

Fabric all finished, then the metalwork started. The whole of this Gothic arch was covered with sections of metal, all made with different techniques.
The final session of the class was using UTEE in the melt pot to create the now famous Leandra beads.

And now for my clanger of the weekend.....I do not have any photographs of the finished arches!!! I got so involved with talking to people at the end, that I completely forgot. I have asked Joan to try and get some pictures for me but if you attended the class and you are reading this blog post PLEASE, PLEASE send me a photo of your arch.

I was also very fortunate to be introduced to Angela Louwers, the editor of Art Specially which is a Dutch publication. We had a long chat and I'm chuffed to bits as I am going to have a project featured in a future issue.....I'll be sure to let you know when it's published.

Well, I think I'm off to catch up on some sleep as it's back to normality tomorrow.