Yours Artfully

Sewing Machine Update

2012-01-26T18:27:00.001Z

After a lot of researching and mind changing, I have finally done the deed and ordered a new sewing machine which is going to be delivered on Monday!!!! There were a few features that I knew I had to have after using Leandra's all singing/all dancing machine last weekend and to my surprise most of those features are pretty much standard on the majority of machines now.......obviously been a long time since I purchased a sewing machine!!!

I had kind of narrowed the choice down to two or three different models of Brother machines. The main reason was that Leandra's is a Brother and having used it, I was really very impressed. Leandra did tell me that her machine is quite a few years old and so it was no surprise to find that that particular model was discontinued some time ago. The lovely Karen suggested I have a chat to my other lovely friend Mary as she had recently become the proud owner of a brand new sewing machine. Fabulous idea me thinks to myself and would you believe it Mary got the same machine as the one on the top of my list and guess what????? She loves it!!! Recommendation is good enough for me so more time spent on tinternet finding the best deal, order placed and now I can't wait for Monday. So what did I opt for???? It's a Brother Innov-is 50 which is no where near as fancy as Leandra's but it does everything that I want.

In preparation for Monday, I am now the proud owner of this fabulous fabric. Fabric is a whole new world to me and I can't stop saying "look at this" and "this is to die for". Now I know how my customers felt when they came into my shop and you are confronted with a huge selection of product.......it's all very exciting.

OK I'm off to drool over my fabric again.
Lin

WOYWW

2012-01-25T15:24:00.000Z

So at the beginning of the week my blog post was titled Monday, Monday then yesterday was Tuesday, Tuesday and I figured that was a bit too predictable to be Wednesday, Wednesday and after that I couldn't think of anything witty to call it so it's plain old WOYWW. Now the title may be plain but the whole concept of WOYWW (What's on your workdesk Wednesday) is far from plain. In fact it's a lot of fun!!! If you would like to partake in a little of this blog hopping/desk snooping fun, then hop on over to Queen Julia's blog where we all meet up every single Wednesday.

So what is actually on my desk this week???? Loads of stuff is the short answer. I am in class designing mode at the moment not only for Artsycrafts but also some of my own classes that I'll be teaching later this year. As everything is in the designing stage at the moment, I'm not going to show you a close up of the messy desk as I don't want to give anything away at this stage but what I will show you is this fabulous book that I picked up at The Works last week.

It's a huge book and it was even more of a bargain than the price ticket suggests. When I got it to the till and the lovely shop assistant scanned it, it turned out to be only £6.99!!! Anyways, this book is going to be the basis for an altered book project.

It's full of amazing photographs, I'm really chuffed with it.

Now that you have got over the shock of me blogging three days in a row, grab a cuppa and join in the WOYWW fun.

Lin

Tuesday, Tuesday

2012-01-24T17:44:00.000Z

I've been messing about in my studio today, knocking around some ideas for Artsycrafts and of course I can't share those with you just yet (that was quite mean wasn't it?) but I thought that you might like to see a couple of pieces that I did last week with Ice Resin.

I had forgotten just how amazing this stuff is and I know that it is available to purchase in the UK here at The Bead Scene which is where I'll be teaching some classes later in the year. It's an absolute doddle to use. Arrange you collage or whatever it is that you want to embed in the resin. Then you simply pour out equal amounts of the two parts of resin. Stir for two minutes and pour.....simples!!! My big silver piece is going to be used in an altered book which is intended to be a class in the summer. At the moment, it is still quite flat looking but that is all about to change. The beauty of this product is that you can add extra layers and sandwich stuff between them. You can even make the top layer really quite domed which is what I am hoping to do with this piece. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Right that's me for today, I am off to further my sewing machine research......wish me luck. I could be a whole lot poorer by the weekend!!!!

Lin

Monday, Monday

2012-01-23T16:57:00.000Z

I think I am starting to get used to not travelling in to the shop every day now although I am wondering how the heck I found time to go to work because my days still aren't long enough. I would like to add, my days are way less stressful which is lovely but I still have a "to do" list and a VAT return to file. I had some ridiculous notion in my head that I would have crossed everything off my list by now, but perhaps that will never happen, maybe they will just be shorter "to do" lists? Anyways, enough whinging from me, it's Monday.....a new week.....a new beginning and my head is now buzzing with ideas. I just spent three fun days with Leandra planning Artsycrafts projects.....was my head buzzing with ideas then.......NO!! Was Leandra's head buzzing with ideas then......NO! Well, actually that's not entirely true, we do have one fantastic project all sewn up......there's a bit of a clue there!!! Don't forget.....dates to be pencilled in your diary are 8th, 9th and 10th June.

We have the beginnings of an outline for another of the projects but as it is a three day event....there's still some work to do......oh well, there's an excuse for us to have another play day or two or maybe three!!!

Although, I am officially retired from the shop, it was always my intention to carry on teaching but I am limiting myself to just one class a month and my own classes will start around June. In the meantime, I am teaching three classes in Holland in March at De-Craftorij in Ede. My Street Life class and Pan Pastels classes are already sold out but Lia informed me that there are still a few places on my Triple Decker class on Sunday 4th March.

All three of these classes are classes that I taught here in the UK so you may recognise them but if you live in the Ede area, you might like to join us for some fun with Ten Seconds Studio products and PaperArtsy dies. It's a great project, one of my favourites.

Click here for the details.

OK, I'm off to investigate sewing machines.......I have a severe case of sewing machine envy. Leandra has a fabulous and I mean truly fabulous, all singing, all dancing sewing machine that I fell in love with so I'm off to scare myself with the price of these guys. If anybody has any advice for me on where to shop or what to buy, all advice would be very welcome.

WOYWW

2012-01-18T18:46:00.000Z

As it's Wednesday, it's desk hopping/blog hopping day. If you haven't got a clue what I'm talking about, click here to hop on over to Queen Julia's place where all us blog hopping, desk loving idiots gather to share what's happening on our desk.

My desk or should I say desks have been a hive of activity for the last couple of days. Desk No. 1 has a whole stack of chopper-upering of grungepaper and card ready for kits for a class that I am teaching in Holland in March.

Desk No. 2 shows what helped me get through what was on desk No. 1 !!!!!!

And on desk No. 3, well there's a whole host of exciting things. Hush, hush, top secret Artsycrafts stuff and a stack of artwork that I have been creating for Mr & Mrs Paperartsy which I should be keeping under wraps for a while but I'm pretty sure they won't mind if I share one piece with you.

Have fun with the desk hopping.
Lin.

AWOL

2012-01-16T19:14:00.000Z

Remember the tag from last week that sat on the top of the huge pile of tags that I made on my first official play day, well I finally got around to finishing it. I had intended to post this at the end of last week but sadly I had a bit of an allergic reaction to something and my eyes became two slits in what looked like two golf balls. To say I felt very sorry for myself would be an understatement. The worst part was actually the side of my nose where my glasses sit. It was so sore that I couldn't wear my glasses which meant that I couldn't see a flipping thing.....hence no blogging, no tweeting, no playing and if I'm honest not a lot of anything. Anyways, after a trip to the doctor who prescribed magic cream, I am now feeling much better. I still look quite shocking but at least I feel better!!!!

So just a little recap on last weeks experiments. First of all, I painted my tag with Fresco Finish Snowflake paint, which acts like gesso. I splodged some Hey Pesto and Claret Fresco Finish paint on my craft sheet and spritzed it with quite a lot of water then dipped my tag into it. I particularly liked the colours on this tag and was quite eager to get on and play with it a bit more so rather than leaving it to dry naturally, I blasted it with my heat gun. The little white dots that you see are where the hot air blew holes in the paint!! I loved it and was tempted to let the dots get big but I knew it would be a more usable tag with smaller dots so I had to show some restraint and turn the heat gun off.

Now to make some embellishments for my tag. I was so pleased with my dots, I really didn't want to hide them so I figured that if I made something that you could see through, that could be kinda cool so off I went in search of acetate. I die cut an acetate birdcage using Paperartsy's Birdcage die and was just about to stamp an image of the birdcage on top when I thought that it actually looked way too shiny against the matt finish of the paint so I took a sanding block and sanded the surface to give it a bit of a frosted look. You could still see through it but I liked this much better and went ahead and stamped my birdcage using Stazon ink.

You can see from the reflection on the acetate that it still has a reasonable shine to it but not enough of a glare to make you want to wear your sunglasses.

Next up, my birdie embellishment. I die cut a piece of cardstock from a manila tag using Paperartsy Songbird die and coloured it with Shabby Shutters Distress Ink. Using Ranger's Jet Black Archival ink, I stamped the flowers from Hot Pick1109 and coloured them with Prismacolor pencils.

The Secret Garden, the birdies in the grass and the two pence stamps all came from Hot Pick 1005, which is one of my all time favourite sets of stamps. I'm really liking how the bird turned out.....he's very different from my usual birdies and I'm pretty sure I would use this style of bird again.

I hope it was worth the wait, I wonder how long it will take me to finish the rest of the pile of tags.......there's only about thirty of them!!!!

As I no longer have a shop to sell you guys stuff, everything I used on this tag is of course available from my lovely friends Mr & Mrs Paperartsy and I think if you're quick, you might just catch the tail end of their sale!

WOYWW

2012-01-11T15:26:00.000Z

Today has been a bits'n'pieces day. I did a spot of babysitting this morning for my daughter Sarah and little Seb. It's always a fun time when you look after Seb, he really is the happiest baby ever but I didn't think that it would be inappropriate to sit him on the table and say this is what's on my workdesk!!!! I do actually have three desks that I could share with you this week. The first one would have been boring as it is exactly how I left it last week. The second one has prototype Artsycrafts projects on it and that is all top secret stuff at the moment abd Leandra might have killed me so it has to be the third desk.

This is the result of my day of playing on Monday. Am really liking the tag on the top of the pile, I'll pop back later in the week to tell you how I did it, it was one of those happy accident things.

Anyways, if you would like to join in the WOYWW blog hop, just click here to be transported over to Julia's blog.

Lin

Update on yesterday's post

2012-01-10T09:35:00.000Z

One of my lovely followers left a comment on yesterday's post asking about sealing the pastel that I had used........excellent question and here's my thoughts.

I didn't actually seal them at all as the Portfolio Pastels are oil based, not chalk based and so will not rub off. The best way to describe them is waxy, like wax crayon. They will still feel a little waxy to the touch if you just blend with your finger but this feeling will disappear if blended with water. If you heat them, they will melt but I found this left them with a shiny finish which is OK but not the look I wanted for my matt project.

Hope this helps.
Lin

Today was play day

2012-01-09T20:52:00.000Z

Today was the very first day that I got to spend a whole day just messing around in my studio since I closed the shop. I have lots of projects on my "to do" list but one of the things high up on my list was to play around with the new colours of PaperArtsy Fresco Finish paints, Portfolio Pastels and Lynne Perrella stamps. If you don't know about Fresco Finish paint, you are seriously missing out on a fantastic product. The first release of colours were all opaque as they have a chalk base and a matt finish, very different from any other acrylic paint that I have used in the past and I just love them. The guys at PaperArtsy released a second set of colours towards the end of last year and most of these tend to be more translucent. The colour range is a lot brighter but because you can see through them, they are very versatile. If you would like them to be opaque like the first release it's simple, just paint them over one of the pale opaque ones.....just fabulous.

I tested out quite a few techniques today and made about thirty background tags!!!! I'll maybe go back to some of those later in the week but for now I'm going to share how I made three complete tags, step by step.

To prepare my tags, I tore up some masking tape and stuck it to my tags. I tried to avoid having the straight edges on the tape, so I tore up quite a lot of tape!!!!

Next step was to paint over the tape with Fresco Finish Snowflake, this acts like a gesso and gave me a blank white canvas to work on instead of the yellow colour of the tags and cream colour of the tape.

For my first tag, I chose Pumpkin Soup, Butternut, Cinnamon and Irish Cream and squirted a puddle of each colour on my craft sheet.

I then spritzed them with water and used a small paintbrush to mix the water into the paint but i tried to keep the colours separate rather than mixing them all together.

Then I dipped my tag into the paint a couple of times.

This was my first attempt at this technique and I felt that I had way too much paint!!!

So I took a baby wipe and simply dabbed away some of the excess paint. (my following attempts didn't need the baby wipe)

Next I decided I would try out my Portfolio Pastels.

These are a water soluble oil pastel which will blend together beautifully with water or by simply rubbing them with your finger. I chose to add a little of the pastels around the edges of my tag and over the areas of the masking tape to highlight the texture of the tape and I blended this with my trusty finger tool.

I stamped a few images from my Lynne Perrella stamps. The main image for this tag was from LP004. I stamped it with Jet Black Archival ink by Ranger. Heat set it with my heat gun and coloured it with the oil pastels.

I chose the small shell stamp from LP001 to match the shell theme on my main image and also coloured this with the Portfolio Pastels.

I added a few baubles from Tim Holtz Ideaology range and a few bits of ribbon for the finishing touches. Hopefully you will be able to see the texture created in the close up shot below.

The next sample was made the same way using Beach Hut, Hey Pesto and Mermaid Fresco Finish. Stamps are from LP003.

I even coloured the Tim Holtz Game Piece by painting it first with Nougat Fresco Finish and when dry colured the raised up parts of the piece with the Portfolio Pastels.

The final tag uses Guacamole, Mermaid and Eggplant paint and the stamps are from LP001 & LP004

Now for the good news!!! If you fancy a little dabble at making these tags, the guys at PaperArtsy have a sale on at the moment so you could snap up a bargain on the above products!!!! Simply click here for all the details.

Well I've had a fun day, I hope you have too.
Lin

Old Altered Book

2012-01-06T10:08:00.000Z

Thank you all for your lovely, lovely comments recently. Everyone loves getting comments, it kinda makes you feel the effort of posting on your blog is worthwhile when you you receive a bit of feedback. Talking of feedback.....the whole blog posting saga from my ipad continues. Thinking that I had the whole thing finally sussed and managed to upload photos and feeling really quite chuffed that I had managed to do this, I now find out.....thanks to your feedback......that you can't click on a photo to enlarge it if I post using blogger+ on my ipad!!! For today's post I have reverted to my laptop but if anyone knows how to fix my little problem, I would be very grateful or your advice.....may have to swap to another App!

Many of you asked for a little peek inside the Altered Book that was on my desk on Wednesday. This was the very first thing that I had ever altered. I didn't go to any classes or anything, I just found a book with a theme that was interesting to me and messed around in it. In those days I was in love with Walnut Ink so virtually the whole book is brown!!! Of course I would do things differently now but that's the learning curve you go through. Anyways, here are some of the pages from said book.

From the huge pile of artwork that came home with me from the shop, I've been carefully selecting pieces that I would like in my house. This is quite a challenge as there is quite a lot of it!!! I have always loved polymer clay and finding the following two pieces reminded me just how much I do like it so these two pieces are now sitting in my bedroom.

I've also been hanging some of my favourite bits and pieces in my new studio so it's starting to feel less clinical and more homely now.

I just had to keep the metal sign that I made for my exhibition stand, out of all the pieces I have made, this is one of my favourites.

Penny and Bob have settled in nicely too.

A few more of my favourites.....was really hard to choose.

I think I am finally ready to start playing again.........have got a few experiments lined up for next week, then I'll be working on some ideas for Artsycrafts and some other exciting but top secret stuff!

Hope you all have a fabulous weekend......I'm very excited, picking up my new car tomorrow morning and all the family coming for dinner on Sunday.
Lin x

WOYWW

2012-01-04T20:38:00.000Z

I wanted to post on my blog today so that I could once again join in the fun of WOYWW. I have been so busy for such a long time that I found it really difficult to blog on a regular basis let alone trying to time it for Wednesdays. Hopefully, I can remedy that now that I have more time on my hands and join in each week as it is a lot of fun hopping and snooping around blogs and desks of others. The other reason for my post today is to have another stab at blogging from my new iPad and hopefully upload a photograph this time. For those of you who asked what App I'm using, I'm not yet entirely sure if I made the correct choice but I opted for Blogger+. I'll let you know when I have everything figured out, I hope it does everything I want it to......let's wait and see!

So my desk today is a small desk in my old, tiny workroom (the one I used at home before Mark built my fabby new studio). It has become a bit of a dumping ground whilst I try and find permanent new homes for all my stuff and artwork from the shop. I came across artwork that I had completely forgotten about and the altered book you can see was my very first attempt at altering anything. It was quite a simple project, but I do still really like it.

I have a photo.....yippee!!! Now that I'm starting to understand the format a bit more, me thinks it's going to be easier to blog from my iPad instead of my laptop. Ssshhhh, don't tell anyone I said that though just in case it all goes pear shaped!

So if you would like to join in the WOYWW fun, click here to head on over to Queen Julia's blog for all the links.

Been shopping today

2012-01-02T17:39:00.002Z

I'm really gonna try hard to post on a more regular basis now that I have more time on my hands. Just hope that I can find interesting stuff to tell you!!!!!!

So today's post is a bit of a test run for me. I was a very lucky girl this Christmas, Santa popped a iPad in my stocking and I'm trying to figure out how to use it to post on my blog. So far, so good but I'll reserve judgement until I can actually see it on my blog. I think I may just stick to text for today though and try photographs next time. After all, too much excitement for one day can make a girl all giddy!!!!!

I can hear you thinking that's not very exciting! Well, I guess it's not but when I tell you that I've just bought a new car today too, maybe you'll understand that my excitement levels on a scale of 1-10 are about 10+!!!! I'll be collecting it from the garage on Saturday morning and the most exciting thing is that road tax on the new car is just a few pennies compared the the whopping £250.00 to tax my Vectra!

So tomorrow everyone returns to work and I can honestly say that it feels more than a tad weird to be unemployed. Please don't worry though, I have no intention of being completely idle. I'm off to PaperArtsy World HQ in the morning to catch up with my Franich buddies and do a spot of planning for upcoming events.

OK so now that I'm all typed up, where the heck is spellchecker on this thing? Found the preview button but no luck with spellchecker. Let's hope I'm good at spelling!

I've had the time of my life

2011-12-30T21:45:00.000Z

Yesterday, I handed the keys to the shop back to the landlord, so the whole retirement thingy is starting to feel real now instead of a figment of my imagination. It kinda made me reflect on the amazing career that I have had, so if you want to grab a cuppa, cos this could be a mega post, I'll try and talk you through the last 18 years!!!!

So if you are sitting comfortably, I'll begin. It all started about twenty years ago, in the days when I made soft furnishings and sold them at small local craft fairs. I wanted some original fabric for my cushions and so I decided to buy a few rubber stamps to stamp my plain and boring fabric. I took myself off to Hitchin, to one of the very first dedicated stamps stores in the UK and purchased three or four stamps, a ink pad and some embossing powder along with a the only book available at that time, which was actually not much more than a brochure, published by PSX. It was definitely instant love....I was hooked. My customers at the craft fairs asked me where I got my stamps from as they were really difficult to come by locally. So that's really how it started, I purchased about three dozen stamps from a tiny UK manufacturer and they just flew out the door at the speed of light.

The next door that opened for me was the opportunity to rent a market barrow from Milton Keynes Shopping Centre. To cut a very long story short, I was selected along with one other new small business from hundreds of applicants to rent a barrow, sponsored by the local Business Link, for a trial period of three months. After seven successful years in that location, it was time to move to bigger premises and after a lot of searching, I found the perfect place in Olney, just 20 minutes away from where I live.

I took on the lease of what used to be an antique shop and I swear that when I viewed the shop, I had no idea that the walls were bright pink! There had been so many things hanging on the wall....it was pretty well camouflaged!! We had just seven days to get the shop ready before our grand opening and spent most of that time painting the walls white to try and cover the pink before opting for a calming turquoise colour! So here I am with Kelly, my daughter in the background trying to organise the stock. I can't believe how little stock I had in those days!!!!

So shop open.....the journey begins! Over the years, I have been very lucky to host some amazing demonstrations and classes by some of the industry's most talented artists. In 2003, my very first guest artist was the one and only Suze Weinbrg. Suze had literally just stepped off a plane from America when she arrived at my store to work her magic with UTEE and her melting pot. Everyone was blown away by her enthusiasm and talent.

The next guest artist was Mr Tim Holtz....I have searched and searched for these photographs and sadly they appear to have vanished from the face of the earth but all I can say is that we were beyond lucky as Tim did not visit my little store just once.....he came the following year too and simply wowed my customers with his talent, wit and amazing products.

Not only have we had wonderful guests visit my store, I have been lucky enough to travel quite a bit too. I have been to some amazing places to attend CHA, the show has been held at quite a variety of places including Annaheim, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago and Las Vegas. Whilst on a trip to Las Vegas, I had the amazing opportunity to teach a class for my Friend Audrey Freedman at Stamp Oasis. Back in those days, I had my own line of stamps which focused on Shrink Plastic and I took these out to Las Vegas for this class which was such a lot of fun as the students had never seen my stamps before.

A couple of years ago, I also had the great pleasure of travelling to Ede in Holland to teach a class for my friend Joan. Here's a picture of her friend Lia taking a picture of me......I know, we need to grow up!!!!

I have also had the pleasure of my work being published in quite a few magazines. This was my Metal Masterclass project that was published in Craft Stamper.

The following pictures are not in any particular order, they are snaps of some of my favourite projects from the last ten years. This was one of my first polymer clay projects, using some Ten Seconds Studio tools

I was truly honoured to be invited by the guys at Ranger Industries to create a project for their Designer Challenge. I was sent a box of goodies that included all things related to the Melting Pot and a giant ticket to work on. My piece was called "A Meal Ticket" and I managed to fill my spoons with UTEE.

So now I am back to guest tutors.......my very, very dear friend Beverly Seymour from B Line Designs, came all the way to the UK to demo with me at Ally Pally and to teach a class or two at my store. Her gorgeous grand daughter Shelbie accompanied her on her first trip and here they are during set up at the show.

The Following year, I started to wholesale Ten Seconds Studio products here in the UK and Europe and Cheryl Darrow made a trip over to help us out on our stand at the trade show and whilst she was here, she taught quite a few classes. This is the project that I made during her class. Yes, I know it's pink, it wasn't meant to be pink, it was supposed to be burgundy!!!! I came so close to painting a wash of walnut stain over the top to knock it back a bit but everyone persuaded me to leave it pink. I love the style of the piece but I would love it even more if it were green!!!

Back to CHA, this time Mark and I helped Bob and Beverly from B Line to set up their booth, which looked amazing....just like a Victorian living room!

Are you ready for a second cuppa yet????? I know I am but I am determined to finish this post now.

Artsycrafts.....many people have asked how Artsycrafts came to be. Well, I had invited Leandra Franich from Paperartsy to teach a class at the shop. Leandra cooked up a cute little book, jam packed with lots of techniques. She asked me if I would like to teach a metal page to insert in the book.....which I did and everyone loved the fact that they had the opportunity to learn something from both of us in one go. So I suggested to Leandra that we do it again sometime and she had the genius idea of taking it up to the next level and teaching to a much larger class......as so Artsycrafts was born. The arch below was our very first project.

Our friendship blossomed when we travelled to New Jersey together to attend Ranger U. We had the best time, laughed A LOT and learnt even more. Tim, Suze and Claudine Hellmuth were all amazing. It is hard work but so inspiring. We made some fabulous friends too, here we are with our table buddies Lori and Lisa.

More guest tutors......Suze paid a second visit and actually stayed a couple of days with me....she taught me how to shop....properly!!!!!

Artsycrafts in full swing at Newport Pagnell.

This was one of my favourite Artsycrafts projects, it was all about the paint....Fresco Finish paint.

Here we are.....double trouble!!!

Rachel Greig from Dark Room Door also came to teach at the store. What a lovely lady she is and an amazing photographer too.

Then along came Linda Elbourne.I invited Linda to teach some classes at the store to try and take the pressure off me a little. She also demoed alongside me at Ally Pally a few times. She is probably the funniest person I know so this picture kind of sums up what it's like when we are together.

Last year, I was invited by Tim Holtz to become part of his Design Team....what an honour to be selected by Tim to share my ideas using his products. The project below was chosen by Tim as his favourite project of all the ones I created for him.

Then of course we were delighted to announce that Tim had kindly agreed to join us at our Artsycrafts event earlier this year. Here we are at PaperArtsy World HQ watching the website go into complete meltdown as the bookings came flooding in.

And now the event is over, the Artsycrafts team all together with the exception of Mario, Courtney and the Marks who I think were behind cameras! L to R - Karen, Linda E. (also known as Julia or Sweet Pea), Me, Tim, Millie, Leandra, Lynne (also know as Cheryl) and Jo.

Dina Wakley came to play too. She was just delightful. An uber talented artist.....she really knows her stuff.

And the last event, but not least, Artsycarfts with Lynne Perrella as guest tutor. HOw excited was I to be able to take a class with THE Lynne Perella of Acey Duecy fame.....beyond excited and Lynne turned out to be another fantastic tutor!!!!

I love the project that I made in Lynne's class.

And finally, if you haven't fallen asleep yet, a few of my favourite projects from last year.

It has been a long journey and after all that I guess you can understand why I felt the time was right to slow down a little. I will be teaching again a bit later in the year but for now, I'll be hanging out in my fabulous new studio.

So it just remains for me to say thank you to my wonderful hubby Mark for putting up with me being stressy all these years, my family for being understanding when I wasn't always around for their birthdays, to Karen for being the best member of staff anyone could wish for. To Linda Elbourne for teaching classes and being my webmaster extraordinaire. To Leandra and Mark Franich for being Mr & Mrs PaperArtsy.....you guys rock! To all my wonderful guest tutors who have visited over the years and most importantly to all my fabulous customers, without you guys, I would not have had the successful business that I had.

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year. I hope that 2012 brings you everything that you wish for.

With much love and thanks, Lin x

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T12:15:00.000Z

Wowzers, I don't think I have ever worked as hard as I have for the last month, I am really looking forward to a few days with my family. Now that the shop is closed, we have the wonderful pleasure of re-decorating both the shop and workshop before handing the keys back to the landlord on the 31st. I had forgotten quite how big the shop was!!! When it was cram packed with artsy goodies, it always felt really tiny but now that I have to paint every square inch of it, believe me....it's huge!!!

So today, I just wanted to take a few minutes to wish all of you a very Happy Christmas, I hope you get to spend time with your loved ones and that you get everything you wish for in 2012. These are just two of the little people that I'm going to be spending some quality time with over the Christmas period.....I can't wait!!

Lin x

Website information

2011-12-15T20:34:00.000Z

I just wanted to let you all know that I have taken the decision to close the website slightly ahead of our scheduled date. I had previously announced that the website would remain open until the 19th December, but quite frankly, I have nothing left to sell you!!!! I have the odd jar of paint, a few stamps here and there and one or two alcohol inks so I think you'll understand my decision to close it down early.

Everyone is asking me if I intend to continue with my blog and my answer is most definitely. I am really looking forward to have the time to start creating stuff again which will of course will give me something interesting (hopefully you'll find it interesting) to blog about.

In the meantime, thank you all once again for all the orders.......you guys have been amazing!

L.B.Crafts closed it's doors today!

2011-12-12T21:40:00.001Z

It has been rather a strange day today......Karen and I closed the doors on L.B.Crafts for the final time. We have been mad busy for the last couple of weeks shipping out tons of orders which stripped the shop nearly bare.

As you can see, there's not very much left!!

This will make my task of clearing out the shop so much easier. I know I have thanked you before but I am truly grateful that you guys helped me out by shopping so well, I can't thank you enough.

Having said that we have hardly anything left, we do still have some Ten Seconds Studios moulds that I would rather sell than take home so I have put together some fabulous deals for you.

EDITED 15th December 2011 - sorry website now closed

Just so you know, although the retail shop is now closed, the website will remain open for orders until 19th December 2011, after that date, this facility will cease too.

Take care everyone, Lin

Normal service has been restored

2011-12-10T22:28:00.000Z

Well, that was quite a day!!! Technology is fantastic when everything runs smoothly but when it all goes pear shaped, it certainly turns you world upside down. We have no idea what the heck happen to our website last night/early this morning except to say that it reverted to it's status as of 10 days ago which meant that it was showing that we still had a whole load of products in stock that we didn't actually have!!!! It is all fixed now and should be pretty much up to date, so please feel free to snap up the last few of the bargains.

The shop is now nearly empty of stock.....you guys have shopped your little socks off and made me a very happy girl as I now don't have to worry too much about any left over stock.....I don't think there will be much at all. So just to confirm, the shop will close it's door to the general public at 5pm on Monday but the website will remain open and we will be happy to take telephone orders until December 19th.

Many of you have asked me what I intend to do with all my classroom equipment. I have two groups that I will be donating supplies to and once I have had a chance to sort out the workshop, I will be selling off some of my used stamps. I will post details of this on my blog as soon as I am a bit more organised.

Have a wonderful weekend, Lin

Slight technical hitch

2011-12-10T09:28:00.001Z

Good morning one and all. I'm having a slight technical problemo this morning, actually it's a bit more than a slight problem, it's a huge stonking one!!! Some weird and wonderful technical nightmare is occuring on my website. Basically it is showing a whole load of products that we no longer have, it appears to have reverted to it's former self as of last week and it will not allow us to change it. Please, please, please. if you are thinking of placing an order, call the shop on 01234 714848 instead of doing it on line.

Will let you know when the issues have been resolved.
My sincere apologies for the inconvenience.
Lin

orders, orders and more orders

2011-12-07T20:05:00.000Z

I know I have said this a lot lately but today was a tad overwhelming....again!! We're on the final countdown to closing the shop and finally put half price on virtually everything in the shop and on the website and of course you guys all came up trumps and placed orders.......hundreds of them.......well not quite hundreds, but nearly!!!

This is the sight that greeted Karen when she arrived for work this morning......can't quite remember her exact words but I think you can imagine what she said. Thank you sooo much to everyone who placed an order either on-line or over the phone today, please bear with us, we are half way through the backlog and hope to catch up by the end of the day tomorrow.

Just a bit of a heads up for you guys if you are planning a visit to the shop...we do still have some stuff left....not a lot.....but some. It is looking like we are going to make Monday 12th December the final day that will be open for personal shoppers. The sale has been absolutely amazing and it really will not be worth us staying open after Monday. We will continue to process any on line orders up to 19th December, so if there are any last minute items you you feel you can't live without, you may want to do it sooner rather than later.

Thank you again for your continued support....you guys are amazing.
Lin

It's the final countdown

2011-12-06T14:06:00.000Z

We're now on the final countdown to closing the doors on L.B.Crafts for the last time. First of all, I just have to say a huge thank you to each and everyone of you who have sent me emails, gifts, texts, messages on Twitter and cards wishing me well for the future. Your extremely kind comments mean so very much to me and I have to admit to being reduced to tears a times but they are good tears, I truly feel very blessed to have made so many wonderful friends throughout my creative career. So thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Now for the important stuff. As the shop is now emptying out of stock at the speed of light, I thought I would share a few pictures with you.

So as you can see, there's not that much left now BUT and this is a really big but......everything except Fresco Finish paint and Pan Pastels is now half price!!!! Yep, that's not a typo.....HALF PRICE!!! If you happen to visit the shop (cos we have more in the shop than we do on line) if it's not actually marked down on the price ticket, we will deduct the 50% at the till for you. Here's the link you need to go half price shopping. Please bear with us though, our normal same day turnaround is a bit of a struggle at the moment due to the volume of orders but we are aiming for processing the next day. Don't forget, first come, first served....when it's out of stock, it's gone forever.

Thank you all so much.
Lin

Imagine the journey

2011-12-03T19:27:00.000Z

Today I taught a fun class called "Imagine the Journey" with a fun group of ladies, they all did an amazing job with their little wall hanging. Shelley is probably going to kill me for posting this picture but maybe she'll forgive me as it is the last class that she has booked with me. In fact, today was my penultimate class before the shop closes in a couple of weeks time........who could have imagined what a journey this turned out to be for me?

Margaret made this gorgeous piece as a gift for her brother......I'm sure he's gonna love it!

This one belongs to Chris.

And this is Sheila's.

And Trish made this one.

Sweta's work.

And last but not least June's

So it's has been a fun day today and tomorrow should be a lot of fun too as it's Dickens of A Christmas in Olney tomorrow. Don't forget everything in the shop is now reduced with the exception of Fresco Finish paint and Pan Pastels, so their are lots of amazing bargains to be had. Just a little reminder that we will be open from 10am - 3pm, hope you can join us for the Victorian stylee Christmas festivities.

Lin

We're back on track

2011-11-30T18:13:00.000Z

So the lovely Karen and I have worked our little socks off clearing the backlog of orders for the bargain boxes......we had to have another chocolate day though to see us through.......and we are now ready and waiting for round two. Our gorgeous webmaster extraordinaire, Sweet Pea, has popped the offer back on the website for me, so if you missed out first time around.....here's another chance to nab one of these outstandingly good value boxes.

I have also prepared some bargain boxes just for the shop too, these will contain items that are too heavy to post and are still excellent value, so if you are coming to the shop over the weekend for Dickens of a Christmas, just ask at the counter for a shop bargain box, we will have a stash of them ready and waiting.

Thank you again for your continued support.
Lin

Dickens of a Christmas

2011-11-29T20:13:00.000Z

On Sunday, Olney will be hosting it's annual Christmas extravaganza, fondly known as Dickens of a Christmas. The whole town of Olney decks out in Victorian stylee attire with a Victorian market selling all sorts of wonderful goodies. There will be lots of wonderful food stalls with produce from local farms, handmade items for those hard to find Christmas gifts and even a fun fair. Click here for further details, it makes a wonderful family day out. My little shoppe will be open from 10am - 3pm,so if you want to come along an experience Olney at it's best, you may like to pop in and see us and pick up a bargain or two or three or four at the same time!!!

Update on bargain boxes.....the empty boxes arrived today......yay!!! Well, partially yay anyway, we didn't get them until about 3.30pm so we only managed to process about 10 orders for boxes today, so the lovely Karen and I have a full on hectic day ahead of us tomorrow. Once we have cleared the backlog, I can evaluate the stock left and decide if we can put the offer back on the website, so watch this space, as soon as I know, I will post about it here on my blog.

This is the outer box that contained all our smaller bargain boxes.......it's huge.......thought I might keep it so that Mark can pack me up it in to take me home after we've cleared the shop....think I might need to be carried home after this little lot!!!!

Hope you get to have a creative evening.
Lin

Who knew????

2011-11-28T19:31:00.000Z

Well all I can say is WOW!!!! Who knew, I certainly didn't, just how popular our surprise bargain boxes would be. We have been inundated with orders and I have removed them from the website for the time being until we have filled all the current orders. If you have placed an order either on line or over the telephone, thank you very much. I just need to warn you that it is going to take us at least 2 or 3 days to catch up on the backlog. We ran out of boxes rather rapidly but more boxes are due to arrive tomorrow so we can start filling and shipping again. Once all the orders have been processed, I need to see if we have enough stock left to put them back on offer, so just watch this space for an update.

Whilst we are talking about lack of stock, I wanted to let you guys know where we are in the grand closing down scheme of things. Basically, I had originally planned to close a week before Christmas (probably 17th December) but the sale is going sooooo well that it may be sooner than that. The shelves are starting to look a bit bare now but there are still some great bargains to be had. Just because an item is not on the website, doesn't mean that we don't have it. Everything left in the shop is now at least 25% off regular prices, so a visit could be very worthwhile.

Thank you for all the wonderful messages wishing us good luck for the future, I truly appreciate every comment and email.
Lin

P.S. Yvonne W. if you are reading this blog post, I am receiving your emails but have no idea why my emails are not reaching you. Sadly, I do not have a contact phone number for you, perhaps you could call me at the shop if you get a second. Many thanks. L.

It's a surprise!!!

2011-11-26T11:51:00.000Z

Thank you guys sooooo much for all the on line orders over the last couple of weeks. I truly appreciate every single one, not sure if our lovely people in our local Post Office agree with me, but it's good to keep them busy too....right?????

So what's the surprise? Well, we have lots of fabulous stuff in the shop that doesn't actually appear on our website, quite a lot of small things like charms, ribbon, embossing powders, moulds and all sorts of treasure. So we came up with the idea of a lucky dip box. We have two sizes, the large one will contain over £70.00 worth of stock for the amazing price of £20.00.

The small will contain product worth over £35.00 for just £10.00.

P&P will be added at our normal rates and the contents of each box will vary slightly, but it will be like a surprise Christmas pressie. They are located on the home page of or website here.

Hope you have a creative weekend, Lin.

And today........

2011-11-24T12:44:00.000Z

Today we have made further reductions on Wendy Vecchi's stamps Large sets are now £14.99 and smaller sets are £10.99 and as always, first come, first served!!! Wonder what bargains, I'll cook up for tomorrow?????

Paint makes me happy

2011-11-23T11:10:00.000Z

Good morning everyone, I have a happy smile on my face today....the sale is going really well and I have new paint!! Paint makes me happy!! Obviously with closing the store, I didn't go overboard with the order of new paint but I just had to get a small amount for those of you who would like to complete your set of Paperartsy Fresco Finish paints. The colours are gorgeous and I just realised that Sherbet is missing from the picture....it must still be hiding in the box! If you would like some, call Karen in the shop on 01234 714848 and she will be happy to reserve them for you.

OK on to today's bargains.....Ten Seconds Studio DVD is now the bargain price of £5.00 and don't forget there's 25% off the regular prices of all Ten Seconds Studio products.

Claudine Hellmuth's Studio paint is now also reduced by 25% on the website....just while stocks last! Click the link and scroll down, it's just underneath Archival ink.

Have a fun and creative day.
Lin

Have I got news for you

2011-11-22T11:20:00.000Z

Just a quick one line post today as I've got a stack of mail order parcels that need my attention. I just wanted to let you know that Sweet Pea has been working hard on the website and now has all Tim Holtz Ideaology, Sizzix dies & embossing folders all reduced. You'd better be quick, it's first come, first served! Just click here and scroll down, it's all on the same page.

Lin

Christmas is a coming!!!!

2011-11-21T19:51:00.000Z

Having spent most of last week sending out a gazillion parcels to all you lovely, lovely people who are taking advantage of our sale items, I thought it would be fun to have a little time off to play. I actually sat in on one of the very talented and ultra funny Linda Elbourne's classes today to make some chunky ATC's. It was Linda who kindly reminded me that Christmas is coming a lot faster than we all thought and suggested that one of our ATC's could actually be a Christmas decoration......genius idea, I thought to myself and reached for Aged Mahogny and Peeled Paint Distress stains and ink pads......my favourite Christmas combination.

So this was my kit before I got started.

As I said Aged Mahogany and Peeled Paint are the way forward for me. A bit of stamping with a gold paint dabber for a bit of zing always makes a project look very warm and rich.

And voila!

I really like the way it turned out.

A drop or two of Adirondack alcohol ink on some of Tim Holtz Ideaology Christmas adorments finished off the project nicely.

OK so that was my day. It has been a good today today in more ways than one as the lovely Karen had confirmation today that she has secured a job which she will start in the new year following the closure of
L.B.Crafts, so huge congratulations to Karen.

Well, that's my news for today except I do need to tell you that I will back back, hopefully tomorrow, with details of further reductions of the website......lots more fabulous bargains will be up for grabs but remember, first come, first served!!!
Lin

A little reminder

2011-11-18T19:26:00.000Z

This must be the busiest week we've ever had. I have never sent out so many parcels, the poor Post Office is wondering what the heck is going on but I must just say a huge thank you to all of you who haved placed orders. I know they are bargains but I really do appreciate all your business as I cannot take the stock with me when we move out of the shop. There are lots of items that are already sold out but there are still many fabulous bargains waiting to be snapped up both on line here and in the shop.

So this is just a little reminder that the shop will actually be open this Sunday from 11am - 4pm, both the lovely Karen and I will be there to help you find some goodies and there are some fantastic gems to be had. All wood mounted stamps will be half the original marked price and everything else in the shop will be at least 25% of regular prices. There are quite a few 99p specials, so if you fancy a trip out on Sunday, head to the lovely market town of Olney, we will be very pleased to see you.

Hope to seeyou then.
Lin

It's getting bigger and better

2011-11-15T10:13:00.001Z

What's getting bigger and better I hear you ask?? The sale is getting bigger and better!!!! We are ploughing our way through the website and as you can imagine, it is a looooong process but if you are feeling like getting a little distressed today, we have now added Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pads, Re-inkers and Stains to the sale. Yep, That's 25% off regular prices....whilst stocks last with the exception of Pan Pastels and PaperArtsy Fresco Finish paint'.....don't forget.....it's always first come, first served! If you thought that was exciting enough....what about this.......there is now 50% the remaining stocks off
Tim Holtz stamps......it doesn't get much better than that!!!!

We actually have a lot more sale items in the shop that do not appear on the website so I am hosting a special opening day this Sunday. That's Sunday 20th November from 11am - 4pm where everything in the shop will be at least 25% off regular prices. All wood mounted stamps will be half price!!! That has to be worth a visit!!

The week that was

2011-11-13T14:23:00.000Z

Sorry that there's not a lot of blogging going on at the moment but to be honest there's not a lot of creating going on either......Karen and I have been more than a tad busy sending out a gazzillion parcels to all you lovely people who placed orders for some of our bargains, but more about that later.

What else have I been up to, well let's see.
Monday.......babysitting for this gorgeous little fella......only he's not so little anymore....well actually if I'm honest, he's never been little but he's always been gorgeous!

Monday afternoon.....dentist and then back to the shop and queueing in the post Office with a ton of mail order packages.

Tuesday.....I taught my Metal Masterclass, was a fun class, thank you ladies but sorry I didn't take any pictures on my own camera!

Wednesday.....I played shopkeeper and mail order dispatcher.

Thursday.....sorted out the stockroom with a trip to the dump.....that was quite an epic!

Friday.....I had a lovely, lovely day in London with Mark and look who was also in London for the weekend....Missie Sally, my friend and long term customer from France with her beautiful daughter Sabrina. We met up in Covent Garden for a quick cuppa and a catch up, which is always a delight.

I did a little bit of shopping at the bead shop.....only a little bit.....the shop was half empty which was very disappointing but I'm sure Mark was greatly relieved!

We then went on to Foyles bookshop. Mark and I are both suckers for a good bookshop, I managed to find four that I couldn't bear to leave behind........just need a few minutes to sit down and actually read them.

After a stroll up Oxford Street we decided to hop on the tube to go to Westfield shopping centre at Shepherds Bush. Mark actually did a lot of work in there before the shopping centre opened so it's quite interesting to know what went on behind the scenes.

I had the most unusual glass of apple juice.......definitely not enticing by it's appearance but it was the most delicious glass of apple juice I have ever had.

Was a pretty full on day and we were both quite exhausted so it was a little disappointing when our train home crawled along at a snails pace....signalling problems apparently.....never mind, we got there eventually!

Saturday......I taught my Street Life class to eight lovely ladies, another fun filled class, a bit emotially saying goodbye to a couple of my ladies but still fun, then went home to clean the house and collapsed in front of the TV to get my weekly fix of X Factor only to find they had some technical problems and it was all running late. Not sure I'm liking the show so much this year but I still watch it every week in case I miss something good.....I know that's sad but it's also true!!!

So what else has been happening recently......let me see.......my two beautiful daughters Kelly and Sarah have set up their own little business www.clararoseboutique.co.uk and they had their debut event last weekend which all went swimmingly well. It was a mad panic stricken week for them both, preparing for the event...they managed to take over my new studio to make a gazillion gorgeous candles and now my studio smells fabulous, the scent they used in the candles is called baby powder and it smell just like Seb and Isla!!!!

OK, so what's the latest on the sale items in the shop????? Our latest additions to the sale on line and in the shop are some super deals on Paperartsy lines.......25% off all items with the exception of the new Lynne Perrella stamps and Fresco Finish paints. Linda will be adding more items to the sale throughout the week and I'll try to blog about them as soon as they are up but it is worthwhile just checking the website to see for your self as I might not be able to blog about it straight away due to the volume of orders at the moment.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend, Lin

The sale continues

2011-11-08T18:22:00.000Z

The days and weeks are flying by at the speed of light and now it is only about five weeks until we close the doors on L.B.Crafts. Stock is flying out the door and my trusty webmaster extraorindinaire is spending a lot of time reducing stock on the site and even more time putting stock as "out of stock"!!!! She's been busy again today with the latest reductions which includes all Ten Seconds Studio products, Brilliance & Versamagic inkpads and Adirondack Alcohol ink. If you would like a bargain, act fast as once their gone, we will not be re-ordering any of these items. As usual, it's first come, first served. Click on the links below to take you to the bargains.

Ten Seconds Studio - 25% off regular prices

Brilliance and Versamagic Ink Pads - 25% off regular prices

Adirondack Alcohol Inks - 25% off regular prices (yopu will need to scroll down to the bottom of the page for these)

Hope you mangage to find a bargain that takes your fancy.
Lin

Two posts in one day!!!

2011-11-03T18:22:00.000Z

Two blog posts in one day.......what's going on you may say?A huge sale in the shop is what's going on, tis a mammoth task reducing all this stuff and of course there is more stuff in the shop that there is in the website so you can just imagine what it's like.

Having spoken to Sweet Pea, my webmaster extraordinaire this morning about the very long list of now "out of stock" items, we discussed the next website reductions and agreed that it should be none other that Tim Holtz stamps....yep, that's right 25% of all the remaining sets that we have in stock.

Once I got the heads up from Linda that website was all up to date, I thought I would set to and tell you guys. Well how frustrating.....no bloomin internet connection in the shop. Never mind me thinks, I'll do it when I get home. Having said hello to a very excited Meg the dog, I fired up my lovely laptop....still no internet connection! Hmmmmm very strange me thinks to myself again. Fired up home jumbo comp. and I have connection so I'm seriously worried that my trusty laptop is a bit poorly sick. Hope Mark the master of all trades can fix me up cos I'm gonna be lost without my laptop.

Anyways nuff of my whinging here's the link to reduced Tim Stamps 25% of regular prices
Lin

New Fresco Finish Paint

2011-11-03T11:35:00.000Z

18 of the the 27 new Paperartsy Fresco Finish paints landed in the shop yesterday, just in time for my journaling class!!!! It would have been rude not to use them wouldn't it,so this is what I did.

I used Pumpkin Soup, Smoked Paprika, Autumn Fire, Cinnamon and Hey Pesto. Here are a couple of close ups so that you can see the depth of colour..........pure scrumminess!!!!

I had to do a quick colour chart, just so that everyone in class could see the magic for themselves.

All standing to attention in a sparkly new paint rack......nicer than a tray of pastries and an absolute bargain at £3.95 for a bottle of gorgeousness.

I'm in love! These colours are right up my street........simply gorgeous. They are not on the website yet but they are in the shop and of course you can email me linda@lbcrafts.com or call the shop on 01234 714848 with your wish list.

My other journal background also used Fresco Finish paints but these were from the original release. I used Vintage Lace, Butternut, Haystack and London Night.........look no green. It's still hard for me not to use green but I am getting better at it.

Righty ho, I'm off to figure out the next lot of stock reductions for you guys.......maybe back later today.
Lin

New bargains up for grabs

2011-11-01T12:25:00.002Z

Well, the weeks are certainly flying by at a rate of knots and it is quite scary to think that I only have about six weeks before we close the doors on L.B.Crafts for the final time which leads me nicely to the purpose of this blog post......more bargains!!!!

Bargains this week are in addition to those from last week

http://www.lbcrafts.com/Products_Viva_Paint.htm

25% off Viva

25% off selected Tim Holtz products (On the edge dies and a few Ideaology items, you will need to scroll down the Tim Holtz section)

25% select B Line unmounted stamp sets

Short and sweet post from me today, I need to go prepare for my journaling class tomorrow.

Catch up post

2011-10-30T21:38:00.000Z

This week has definitely been a whirlwind week and part way through the week I realised that I had not posted any pics of the Artsycrafts projects as I had previously promised so here's a little lookey at what our lovely, lovely Artsycrafters made at Warrington and Newport Pagnell.

First up the birdhouse. These turned out absolutely beautiful which feels like a bit of a miracle really as the wooden substrate that we had specially made for this event was a bit problematic to say the least. Basically, my Mark, who can turn his hand to most things, drew up some plans and made a prototype birdhouse for us from MDF using his router gadgety thingy- me-bobby. It was fabulous and Leandra and I were very excited. Off I trotted to find a man that could make these in bulk for us. Having found the man, we were on a tight deadline but had no choice but to go with it. They arrived four days before Artsycrafts and nothing fitted together....panic set in......phoned my Mark, he checked the drawings and of course they were correct. Phoned the MDF man who couldn't understand what had happened and promised I would have replacements in two days. Sure enough, two days later they arrived...perfect they were.....only one little snag....we were 50 pieces missing!!!! More panic set in!! Phoned MDF man again and although I was nearing a nervous breakdown at this point, I kind of felt very sorry for him. Anyways, we decided to use the Newport Pagnell quota to top up for the Warrington event and that gave MDF man time to send the missing items for Newport Pagnell. It all ended well as you can see by the fabulous terrace of birdhouses below.

Bit of a close up of the roof complete with dragonfly.

These were all MDF covered with Ten Seconds Studio metal and painted with Paperartsy Fresco Finish paints.

Project number two. Industrial Chic. We wanted to use the little inner boxes from Tim Holtz Configurations boxes and make it very Industrial and grungy looking which would be very in keeping with Paperartsy's latest Steampunk themed stamps

They were filled with all sorts of Tim Holtz Ideaology, nuts & bolts and some fabulous goodies that Mr Paperartsy found on ebay.

Every little compartment had an industrial looking floor made from metal and TSS Kabuka 13, they looked amazing!

All our students worked really hard and we loved how both projects turned out.

Leandra and I have been asked quite a bit about our plans for Artsycrafts following my announcement to semi-retire. Well, we can tell you that Artsycrafts will continue but it will be just one event a year as I really do need to slow down. We have provisionally booked Daresbury Park which is the De Vere venue at Warrington that we have previously used. It will be a three day event, Friday 8th, Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th June 2012 and it will be available as single days so you can book as many days as you wish. One, two or all three. The following year, it will be held at Harben House, the Newport Pagnell venue.

Now on to last week....I taught 4 classes in 3 days, it was a lot work but such a lot of fun and some fabulous projects were made. On Thursday I taught my Street Life class and guess who forgot to take pictures in this class!!!! My apologies to the girls in this class. I made a mental note to myself to do better.....which I miraculously remembered to do! Next two classes were Pan Pastels taster days.....these were very relaxed classes......

Pan Pastels and stamps everywhere.......and some fabulous artwork.

Finally on Saturday I taught my Books 123 class. Three different style mini books all in one class. The front cover is made with tin foil, Paperartsy Fresco Finish paint, Ranger alcohol inks and Stazon.

Inside the pages are a mix of Claudine Hellmuth's sticky back canvas and paper, decorated with Fresco Finish paint and Tim Holtz Distress stains.

Loved the results.

Book No. 2........a little house book made from greyboard, paper and sticky back canvas.

With a touch of Tim Holtz Kraft Resist paper.

Book No.3 Fab little book, full of all sorts of paper and Dark Room Door stamped images.

And the star pupil of the day......11year old Freya...she was an absolute star. Ready to try anything and everything. She even dared to make her book black.....it was simply stunning.....way to go Freya!

So that was my week......stop by again soon to find out what the next round of bargains will be on my website.

Lin

Oh My!

2011-10-26T13:41:00.000+01:00

Oh my!!!! Thank you just doesn't even come close to saying how much I truly appreciate all the wonderful comments and emails that I have received following my big announcement. I can't begin to put into words what they all mean but I am very relieved that it is now out in the open, I am feeling much more relaxed to know that you guys understand my decision.

Some of the emails have asked me what my plans are for the future so I thought that there may be a few more of you guys out there in cyberland wondering what the deal is. The shop will close a week before Christmas and it will certainly take me a while to sort out the aftermath of moving everything out of the shop. I have promised Leandra that I will help out at a trade shows and a few retail shows, including Version Scrap in Paris. I have a teaching gig lined up at De Craftorij in Holland in March and Artsycrafts will be 8th, 9th & 10th June 2012 at De Vere's Daresbury Park venue. At the moment those are the only details on my calender. I have been looking at a venue for my own classes but in reality, that will not happen until the latter part of the year as I really do need to spend some time winding down. Mark and I have a wonderful trip to San Francisco in April with our very dear friends, Bob and Bev Seymour from B Line Designs and now that I have just typed all of that, I'm thinking that it's probably a good thing that I'm retiring as I would never fit all of that into my regular schedule!!!

OK, now on to some good news for you guys.....the magic word is ....... SALE!!! Over the next few weeks there will be some wonderful bargains to be had. We will add new items each week and of course these offers are only while stocks last, we will not be re-ordering any new stock.

Offers this week are:

25% off all Wendy Vecchi lines
25% off Tim Holtz Configurations

25% off Dark Room Door stamps

All Ranger Colorwash and Perfect Pearl Mists are now £3.00 each

There are a few other offers in the shop on items that do not appear on the website but be sure to check back each week to see what the latest offers are.

Once again, thank you so much for your very kind words, I really appreciate every single message.
Lin

My big announcement

2011-10-24T16:45:00.000+01:00

I have already hinted that a big announcement was imminent but I am guessing that many of you will be surprised to hear what it is. Are you sitting down comfortably????? You may need to brace yourself for this one! There is no easy way to say it other than blurt it right out....so are you ready? ...........I am going to be retiring at the end of this year. Well, I say retiring, semi-retiring would be more accurate.

Basically, it has been 18 years since I started L.B.Crafts and I’m exhausted. I have loved every single minute of it, well every minute excluding the paperwork!!! I have made friends that will remain friends for life, I have taught hundreds of people over the years in my classes and many have become dear friends.....you guys know who you are.

It is not my intention to disappear from the face of the earth completely. Artsycrafts will continue as teaching is my passion, although it will be reduced to one event a year as it is my main aim to spend some quality time with my family. Leandra has a few things that I will be helping her with and I do intend to continue teaching my own classes although the venue for these is still to be confirmed.

My whole family, especially my fabulous husband Mark have all been beyond understanding about the amount of my life that I have dedicated to my addiction of crafting and now it is time to give something back to them. I have four beautiful grandchildren and it breaks my heart that I have not had the time to spend with them and this is the first thing on my agenda to put right. Mark will wonder what the heck has happened, a meal on the table when he gets home from work will be really nice......I hope......after all, I'm not a fantastic cook but I think he deserves a treat or two after everything he has sacrificed for me.

I have already told a few people about my plans and some have said how sad it is. Please do not think that I am sad about it, it is my choice and I am very excited at the prospect of a new beginning. I already have a few teaching things in the pipeline for next year and who knows where my new journey will take me. My only sadness about my decision is for Karen and Linda. I am sure that if you follow Linda on her blog, you will be able to keep up to date with her plans for the future and as for Karen, well, what can I say. I simply have not the words to express my gratitude to Karen. She has gone way beyond the call of duty in absolutely everything that she has done for me over the last few years and has also been very supportive of my decision to call it a day. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you to Karen, Linda (otherwise known as Julia or Sweet Pea) and all my faithful customers for the amazing support you have given me, I have been blown away by all of you.

The shop will actually close it’s doors a week before Christmas so keep your eye on this blog for details of bargains that will be up for grabs soon.

With my very best wishes and heartfelt thanks to all of you.

Lin

Artsycrafts and Lynne Perrella part 2

2011-10-20T14:45:00.000+01:00

Part two of Artsycrafts Warrington........my dear friend Sally from France just emailed me some of her photographs from the event and has kindly allowed me to use the here on my blog as I didn't manage to get a photo of Lynne outside of the classroom and for once, I haven't got my eyes shut which is actually a miracle in itself!

Ooo look, miracle no.2......eyes still open. Here we are enjoying some relaxing time. Sadly only half of my Mark made it in this picture and Leandra's gorgeous daughter Courtney also escaped......sorry Cork.....blame Sally!!!.

Here's a photo of Leandra's stunning work. Not only did she manage to master the shadowing effects with paint and stencils but she did it with some very delicate stencils beautifully and I can tell you that that ain't easy!!

Here's another pic of my creation, courtesy of Sally.

Now I apologise in advance if I have given you credit for a piece of work that is not actually yours but I think Lou is the very talented lady who created this stunning piece.

I'm not even going to attempt to put names to the following four for fear of getting it wrong but they are all to stunning not to post the pictures.

The following shadow boxes were created in Lynne's third and final class on Sunday and I am pretty sure that this one was created by Pat.

Anika created this lovely, lovely lady.

And I think Freema may have been the artist behind this elegant box.

Our very own Jo (many of you may know her as JoFy) made this piece. I think he was the only male in a room full of females.....Jo if you're reading this.....he still needs glasses! Even without the glasses, Jo created a beautiful piece.

So I think you'll agree, everyone made the most amazing pieces of artwork under the expert supervision of Lynne.

OK, that's me for today, I need to go and post my mail orders.

Lin

Artsycrafts and Lynne Perrella

2011-10-18T12:39:00.000+01:00

What an amazing weekend I just had. Artsycrafts Warrington was just the best, not only did Leandra and I have the pleasure of teaching two great projects to some very talented students (I'll share all the info on that next week as I really don't want to give away all the details for the people who will be attending Artsycrafts, Newport Pagnell this coming weekend) we actually got to sit down and join in with one of Lynne Perrella's classes. Yes, I did say Lynne Perrella, the one and only and uber talented Lynne Perrella. Lynne is not only a fantastic teacher, she is a genuinely lovely, lovely lady with a fabulous sense of humour and is an extremely good teacher so how lucky do I feel that I got to take her class.......beyond lucky would be my answer. I thought it would be nice to share some pictures of the triptych that I made.

I don't want to give away all the details of how this was put together but basically, it is all about the layers. Layers and layers of paint to create such depth and interesting details.There are some die cut leaves using Paperartsy's larger leaf die and Tim Holtz Glassine paper. My twiggy bits'n'bobs are wrapped in 7 Gypsies tissue paper and secured with copper wire. There's shredded string, paper flowers, feathers to create lots of texture.

When I started work on my project, the only thought I had in my head was to step outside my comfort zone and not make it green. I am still in love with green and guess I always will be but I was determined to try and make something in more pastel shades. So I started by mixing a lovely creamy colour with Paperartsy's Snowflake, Vintage Lace, Haystack and a dot of London Night. Followed by Butternut and more London Night. After many many layers, I was not in love with my project, it felt kinda wishy washy and needed a bit of ooomph to it. I came so close to adding green but after a very in depth discussion with Lynne Perrella, I opted for black and I instantly fell in love. Lots of layers went on top of the black too but it just pulled the whole thing together.

I'll be back in a day or so, to share some more photos from Lynne's classes plus a big fat, whopping announcement.

A fabulous day

2011-10-08T13:12:00.000+01:00

Oh my, a fabulous day does not even begin to describe the day I had yesterday in the company of 11 other lovely, lovely arty ladies and the uber talented Dina Wakley. I very rarely get the opportunity to take a class and if I do, I am usually a little disappointed as I have found in the past that I really have not gained any new skills from most of the classes I have taken. That really was not the case yesterday....I learnt a ton of stuff. Dina's style of teaching is very laid back and very informative and she has such a way with her that makes everyone able to achieve what they thought for them was impossible.

My journal is by no means finished and due to my heavy schedule in the next couple of weeks, it is not likely to picked up again until after Artsycrafts but I did want to share with you the pages so far.

So here I am manning the shop today and I can hear twelve new lucky ladies upstairs in my workshop having a lovely time in the company of Dina.......can't wait to see what they create!!!!

Hope you all have a creative weekend too.
Lin

Dina Wakley opportunity

2011-10-06T10:36:00.000+01:00

An extremely quick post this morning as I'm off to pick Dian Wakley up from the station in about 30 minutes!!!!
As you know, Dina is teaching at my store for the next two days, it's a fabric, mini booky type of project and one of my lovely, lovely ladies is very poorly sick and has landed up in hospital with a collapsed lung!!!!! To say that she is devastated that she is going to miss the class is an understatement but of course we now have an opening. If anyone would like this place, please call Karen in the shop on 01234 714848.

Sending lots of love and comfort hugs to Nicky, I do hope you feel better very soon.
Lin

Five minute breather

2011-10-05T20:19:00.001+01:00

Wowzers, this week has flown by in a flash. I know that I say that all the time but this week is flying by at the speed of light and I kinda need a few extra days. Karen and I have been busy, busy beavers working our little socks off preparing all the kits for our Artsycrafts events in Warrington and Newport Pagnell which are only two weekends away now. We do still have some vacancies, so if you think you would like to join us to make the projects shown below, simply click this link to be magically transported over to all the Artsycrafts nitty gritty.

Both projects are made using Paperartsy's fantastic range of products.....stamps, dies and paint plus Ten Seconds Studio products......which means all thing metal. Leandra and I had a lot of fun designing these projects, it's not too late.......we would love for you to join us and you'll learn a whole new language as part of the experience!

As well as classes on offer with Leandra and myself, we sadly had a cancellation for the Lynne Perrella classes that we are hosting at our Warrington event. Can you imagine.....an opportunity to take a class with the one and only Lynne Perrella. This is a once in a lifetime chance....here's the link to get the details. Can you sense just a teeny tiny bit of excitement in my voice???? Well actually, it's not a little bit of excitement, it's a lot of excitement as Leandra and I get to take one of Lynne's classes.....how cool is that?

Next exciting thing that happened this week.....Lynne Perrella's new stamps. Designed by Lynne in true Lynne style and manufactured by Mr & Mrs Paperartsy......they are to die for and are in stock now....and wait for it.....they are on the website too.......I know........it's all a bit too organised for me isn't it?

In addition to all of this going on, Dina Wakley arrives tomorrow to work her magic and teach some classes at my store. I am beyond excited, I really admire Dina's work, I love her style and I get to take Dina's class as well as 23 other ladies.......two classes for me within a week of each other.......it doesn't get much better that that!

OK back to reality now......I have a huge pile of ironing to do.....that's no fun at all.

Lin

And the winner is..........

2011-10-01T12:47:00.000+01:00

..............Sue C who said:

I've been watching with interest all of the wonderful things you've been making, Lin, with Pan Pastels. I love making my own backgrounds so would love a chance to have a 'dabble'. I've posted a link on my side bar for you too :-)
Sue C
x

Congratulations Sue C., you are now the proud owner of 12 Pan Pastels plus a pack of applicator sponges. Please email you shipping details to me and I'll send them on their way to you. I hope you enjoy using them as much as I do, they are dead easy to use and simply beautiful, the colours are just amazing!!

Lin

Ally Pally.....done and dusted

2011-09-28T16:18:00.001+01:00

It's now Wednesday and I am only just starting to feel human again after Ally Pally. It was great to put faces to the names of some of my blog followers and wonderful to see all our regular customers again. Even though it is really hard work, it is also a lot of fun. It's a great excuse to play with all my favourite things for two full days without feeling guilty that I should be doing something else more important. I started out the show with every intention of taking a photo of every sample I made before giving it away and I did manage to do that for a couple of hours then it went completely out of my head!! Anyways, here are a few pics that I did manage to take.

These samples were all made using the fabulous Paperartsy and Dina Wakley stamps along with Pan Pastels. The colours are so rich, I really love this effect. Not many people had heard of Pan Pastels at the show and have been asking about classes. My Pan Pastels class is completely booked with people on the waiting list so I have decided to add another one to the schedule. It will be on the same date, Friday 28th October 2011 but it will be an afternoon session starting at 1.30pm til 4pm. If you would like a place on this extra class, call us at the shop on 01234 714848, bookings can be taken over the telephone.

Can you believe the beautiful weather we are having today......Olney is just stunning when the sun shines. This was the view along the High Street this morning.

Well that's me for today, I'm off to do some ordering.

Ally Pally......here we come!

2011-09-22T14:25:00.000+01:00

All my bags are packed and I'm ready to go.....where to????? The Big Stamping and Scrapbooking show at Alexandra Palace this weekend. Now when I say my bags are packed and ready to go, that is true but the gazillion boxes do actually need to be loaded into Mark's van when he's finished work tonight!

I actually feeling calm and looking forward to this show as pretty much everything has arrived. I'm just waiting for my next order of Dina Wakley stamps and a US order containing my Picket Fence Distress stains and Limited Edition Distress pads and we are all set. I have tracked both shipments and they are scheduled to arrive tomorrow, cutting it fine I know but compared to the usual stress levels, we are doing pretty good. I can even remember one occasion when Mark went to the airport late on a Friday afternoon to pick up a shipment from our freight forwarder ready for a show the next day.......that really was cutting it fine.

Anyway.......we have some lovely, lovely products for you guys........beautiful Pan Pastels.......which are one of my new found loves and I will be demonstrating with these.

We have all of Paperartsy's fabulous new Hot Picks......loving the industrial/steampunk theme......it all works extremely well with my Ten Seconds Studio products.

Some of Tim Holtz brand new Ideaology lines have arrived, they are Halloween and Christmas themed as are his seasonal Kraft Resist 12x12 pads.

Then........drumroll please......this was a shock arrival, didn't think we would have any of these yet.......Tim's Burlap canvas panels. I only have six of them though, so if you would like one of these babies, I suggested you come bright and early!!!

Now these little birdcages have to be one of my favourite new lines......they are beyond cute!!!

Lots of Ranger goodies, including the taster size of Claudine Hellmuth's Studio paints

We have all the new colours of Ranger's Perfect Pearl Mists and Distress Stains.

And lots of new artwork to inspire you.

So if you are heading to the show this weekend, stop by and say "hello" it is always nice to put faces to the names of people who leave lovely comments on my blog or who are Twitter friends. I'll be there demoing my socks off with most of the above products......hope to see you there.

Lin

More samples

2011-09-13T15:10:00.000+01:00

Hello.......today I thought I would like to share a few more of the samples that I made last week for the up and coming show at Ally Pally. All of them have Pan Pastels on them somewhere plus the products that I will be using in my demo at the show. Hope you like them.

1. Stamps from PaperArtsy Hot Pick 1104 & Dina Wakley - Create with Abandon. Fresco Finish Paint, Crafters Workshop stencil and background paper from Prima.

2.Stamp from PaperArtsy Hotpick 1108, Tim Holtz Sketchbook Tissue Tape and Ideaology

3. Stamps from PaperArtsy Hot Picks 1106, Ten Seconds Studio metal and stencils from Crafters Workshop.

4. More PaperArtsy stamps......do you get the feeling that I like this Steampunk theme???? Fresco Finish Paint and Tim Holtz Ideaology.

Here's a little close up this this guy with his brain in gear!

5. This is a bright and cheery tag.....still Pan Pastels.....still PaperArtsy stamps, this time Hot Pick 1006, another Crafters Workshop stencil and Ideaology as embellishments.

6. I love this sample, quick and easy is the name of the game, Distress Stains in Spiced Marmalade and a touch of Aged Mahogany over Vintage Lace Fresco Finish Paint. PaperArtsy stamps from a selection of Hot Picks (1004, 1005, 1107 & 1110) a die cut from Tim Holtz Weathered Clock and some Ideaology embellishments.

Here's a little close up of the Ideaology fragment with a stamped image behind it.

7. I used Tim Holtz Pennants Die to make my bunting with some alphaparts to spell Paris. PaperArtsy HP1007 & HP1107 plus some stencils from Crafters Workshop and Dina Wakley stamps for my background.

All of these samples plus more will be on display on my stand at Ally Pally 24th & 25th September.

Pan Pastels Update

2011-09-09T11:08:00.000+01:00

I have been inundated with questions about Pan Pastels following my "Giveaway" post so I thought it appropriate to try and address some of your questions here.

First of all, yes they are available as single colours and they are now all available as singles on the website here. At the moment they are in the misc. section, so when you get there from the link, simply scroll down.

So what are Pan Pastels? They are little pots of yummy, scrummy, luscious pastels. The quote taken from the Pan Pastels leaflet reads "Each Pan Pastel is lightfast, loaded with the highest quality artist's pigments and is made using a unique manufacturing process requiring minimal binder and fillers resulting in rich, ultra soft and low dust colours".

From my experiments so far (and don't forget they are new to me too, so I am still learning) although they are in fact a dry powder, they feel incredibly smooth and creamy. The colours are beautifully vibrant and the dust residue is way less than regular pastels. I find them a great product to achieve layers of colour and good coverage with depth of colour can be achieved very quickly. They will need sealing as do regular pastels and of course you can do this with a regular spray fixative but as I am not a fan of aerosol cans, I find that Paperartsy's Satin Glaze in the product I reach for to seal my work.

I love the fact that you can create new colours by mixing directly on one of the palettes of colour. No need to worry about colour contamination, it will simply wipe clean!!!

There are 80 colours, each colour family has the base colour followed by an Extra Dark, a Shade and a Tint. Then of course there is a black and white in addition to these.

I have already posted a small step by step project on my blog with Pan Pastels and Dina Wakley stamps but I will try and do a further tutorial in the not too distant future for you guys. I'm just a tad busy at the mo with classes and prep for Ally Pally & Artsycrafts.In the meantime here are a few of the Ally Pally samples that I made yesterday with my Pan Pastels.

Finally, just a little heads up that we had a cancellation for Linda Elbourne's Inking Masterclass on Monday so if you would like to spend a creative and very entertaining day with Linda on Monday, give me a call in the shop on 01234 714848 to secure your place.

That's me for today, got to go and unpack the massive box of Pan Pastels that just arrived.......might have a cuppa first though!

Hope you have a great weekend, Lin

Pan Pastels Giveaway

2011-09-06T14:47:00.000+01:00

If you are new to my blog....welcome.....I hope you enjoy your visit here. It a place where I share some of my artwork and random thoughts, I do also use it to advertise new products that I sell in my store as well as promote my classes and events that I am involved in. If you are a regular visitor then you know what a mad, hectic life I lead and that at the moment I have totally fallen in love with Pan Pastels.

I thought it would be nice to share the love so I am having a bit of a "giveaway" here on my blog. All you need to do is leave a comment, preferably saying why you would like to try out Pan Pastels, put a link on your own blog linking it back here and you could be in with a chance of winning this little lot. Now of course, you can still enter if you do not have a blog but it would be nice to play fair if you do have one. The Giveaway will be open for entries until 30th September 2011.

Here are a couple of background pages from one of my journals using the Pan Pastels, I love the way the colours blend together so beautifully.

You can achieve soft, pretty, subtle backgrounds

or bright vibrant ones........such a versatile product....everyone should have at least a few Pan Pastels in their stash of arty goodies.

So come on, join in the fun, leave a comment, you never know, you might just win!!

Have a creative day, Lin

A Little Reminder

2011-09-02T14:27:00.000+01:00

Just a little reminder that classes go on sale tomorrow at 10am. If you fancy joining either Linda Elbourne or me for a spot of inky/painty fun then either pop into the shop or call us on 01234 714848 to secure your place. All class details are availble to view at www.lbcrafts.com under the class schedule button on the side bar.

New Arrivals

2011-08-31T11:15:00.000+01:00

Exciting stuff is afoot! We have had a delivery of Tim's latest CHA Summer 2011 delights and they are now on the website! To be magically transported ... Just click here! Alternatively you can telephone the lovely Karen on 01234 714848

I Love Bank holidays

2011-08-29T17:27:00.001+01:00

Don't you just love holiday weekends.....no alarm clocks......staying up late watching a few episodes of house....eating chocolate and playing. The fun started yesterday when the lovely Karen and I set off for Hatfield to go to a bead show......we are both suckers when it comes to beads.....just can't resist! So after a small magical mystery tour as stupid Tom Tom needs an upgrade and doesn't know where all the new roads are yet, we arrived at the venue for a fun morning of bead shopping, one of my most favourite pastimes. We both managed to find some real beauties and today I have spent a fun few hours in my new studio playing with some of my new stash. I am really pleased with this first set of jewellery, a complete set.....necklace, bracelet and earrings. Quite often when I buy sets of beads there isn't quite enough to make all three items so I was extra pleased to find out that this time I did!

The dark beads are really unusual, they are navy blue and opaque, I have never seen glass like this before, here's a close up for you.

My second necklace uses my splurge purchase from the bead show. It is made by a very talented lampwork artist by the name of Sarah Downton, Karen and I actually drove down to her home last year to take a lesson from her in the art of lampwork, I just hope that one day I'll be able to make something that resembles a bead rather than a lemon.

Wait til you see the close up of this little beauty..... It's absolutely gorgeous!!

And now with my inky/painty hat on, I'd like to share a few samples that I have been working on this week. It's not long now until the show at Ally Pally (24th & 25th September) and we are busy beavers behind the scenes in preparation for the event. Lots of ordering going on, planning of demos....well actually , that's not strictly true as I usually make up the demos as I go along but as you can imagine, a lot of work goes into the prep for a show of that size so here are some of the card samples that will be on display at the show.

Sample 1
All images are Paperartsy, the focal images are from HP 1109 and HP1110. Loving those bottles!!

Sample 2
Main images are from HP1109, verse is from HP1008

Sample 3
Car image is from HP1106, background images - houses are on HP1110, small newsprint HP1108, map HPXT01 and script Mini 61

Sample 4
I think I need a lesson in learning how to crop my pictures.....you'll have to excuse my grey background!
The nice young man is from HP1108, the compass is from HP1110 and the pointy finger is from HP1102.

Sample 5
Flowers - HP1111, dragonfly - HP1109

Sample 6
Last but by no means least a mix of Paperartsy, Dina Wakely stamps and stencils
Dina's stamps are Lonely Girl and Script Heart, Paperartsy Mini 61 script.

I have used Pan Pastels on all of the above samples, if you are not familiar with Pan Pastels and are coming to Ally Pally, stop by our booth, I'll be happy to show you.

All images are available for purchase on line at www.lbcrafts.com or you can call the shop on 01234 714848

Okey dokey, that's me for today....I'm off to tend my roast chicken and pack my overnight bag as I'm heading off to Paperartsy HQ tomorrow for some more Artsycrafts prep.

Enjoy the rest of the holiday.
Lin

New class information coming soon

2011-08-25T11:52:00.000+01:00

It kind of feels that blogging has slipped to a weekly event at the moment, it really isn't intentional, it's just that a lot of "behind the scenes" stuff is going on here. Leandra and I are working hard on the Artsycrafts projects which are coming along a treat, it is very time consuming this tweaking lark, getting everything just so, but that's what makes Artsycrafts the event that it is. If you fancy joining us there are still a few places, click here for all the info.

I've also been ordering stuff ready for Ally Pally on 24th & 25th September, only a month away now. Note to self.....need to make new artwork for display boards!!!

My big relief this week though has to be that I have finally got 2010 accounts to my accountant......it has only taken 8 months to achieve this but phew, I'm glad to see the back of that challenge!!

And last but by no means least, new classes are on the horizon. Linda E. and I have been busy little beavers designing new classes for you guys. Not only do we have to make the samples, there's kitting up lists to be made, ordering to be done, the schedule to figure out, photographs to take and load all this stuff on to the website and of course this all takes a lot of time and effort. Anyways, we are nearly there now and hopefully, everything will be up on the website for viewing over the weekend. The important date for your diary is Saturday 3rd September 2011 when classes will be up for grabs. Class booking will start at 10am (not before) and as usual, it will be strictly first come, first served. I've got a few sneaky peeks to show you, hope you like them.

Workshop 2 -Metal Masterclass

Workshop 6 - Pan Pastels Taster Day

Workshop 3 - Imagine the Journey

Workshop 1 - Street Life

That's me for today, back to the paperwork.....think I'll make a cuppa first!!!!
Lin

Follow up on yesterday's post

2011-08-17T11:50:00.000+01:00

Just a quick post as I'm out the door to go to Papaerartsy world HQ in about 30 minutes but I just wanted to address the question that loads of you have emailed to me regarding the Pan Pastels. The question is do you have to fix them with anything? Well my answer is that you will get some rubbing off but I find not as much as regular pastels but to ensure that everything stays put, my favourite method so far after testing out a few options is Paperartsy's Satin Glaze. Simply sponge it on in a dabbing motion with a piece of Cut'n'dry foam....it works a treat.

Hope this helps, Lin

Dina Wakley stamps & Pan Pastels

2011-08-16T16:27:00.001+01:00

I've had a little bit of a play with my new Dina Wakley stamps and Pan Pastels. My only criticism....I need more of them!!! I'm kind of in love with my Pan Pastels too, they are very easy to use so I thought I would do a little step by step, talk you through it kind of thing so you can see how I built up the layers.

I took a bunch of tags, tore up some book pages and used Claudine Hellmuth's Matt Medium to stick the pages to the tags.

Once the book pages were pasted to the tag, I brushed a small amount of the matt medium randomly over the tag, making sure to leave a few gaps as this would give some interest to my background.

Using a sponge, I started to lay down some Pan Pastels and you will see that it is slightly darker over the matt medium areas.

With a piece of Cut'n'dry foam, I sponged some Versamark ink through a stencil.

Followed by more Pan Pastels. At this point, I have only used one colour of Pan Pastels but I have achieved lots of different shades of this colour.

I then repeated the Versamark and Pan Pastels through a different stencil.

Next I stamped Dina's "Earnest" text stamp with Versmark

I used a slightly darker colour of Pan Pastel to dust over the wet ink.

Last but not , I used Ranger's Black Archival ink to stamp Lonely Girl.

Sample No 2

Matt medium first, followed by first colour of Pan Pastels.

I used a smaller tool to apply streaks of my second colour.

I then stamped Dina's "Script Heart" with Versamark and used my small tool to add layers of colour to the solid heart.

The last images, Grungy Silhouette and Boys Star were stamped over the Pan Pastels with Rangers Archival.

Here are the step by step pictures of the last sample, I'm guessing you're getting the feel of this by now.

So there we have it, three samples and photo overload but hopefully you'll be able to understand my excitement.

I'm going to be absent for a few days, I'm off to PaperArtsy HQ to spend a few days with Leandra working on Artsycrafts stuff.

Hope you mangage to find some time to get creative, Lin

EDIT: Silly, silly me.....forgot to say that Dina's stamps can be found on my website www.lbcrafts.com in the misc. section

Monday, Monday

2011-08-15T16:57:00.000+01:00

Well, my Monday has flown by in a flash. Karen and I have been unloading the van after the Stevenage show yesterday and I have to admit that it really isn't my favourite pastime...in fact, it's bloomin hard work!!! Anyways, it's done and whilst I was unpacking, I came across a few of the samples that I managed to keep. I do usually give away all the samples that I make when I'm demoing but as we have PaperArtsy's fabulous new Hot Picks in the shop I needed to try and keep a few. Oh, nearly forgot....they on line already too........are you impressed???? Just go to www.lbcrafts.com and they'll be the first thing you see when you click the Paperartsy button.

If you stopped by the stand at the show yesterday, thank you for coming, it was lovely to see you all.
Anyways, I just wanted to share these few samples with you. The backgrounds are Fresco Finish Paint stamped as a resist, then covered with the new colours of Distress Stains. All the focal images are stamped on Copper Art Metal from Ten Seconds Studio and embossed with their tools.......enjoy.

Lin

Stevenage....all set and ready to go

2011-08-13T19:30:00.000+01:00

It's been yet another busy week this week, preparing for the show at Stevenage Leisure Centre tomorrow. I did have a lovely, lovely day off though as it was my birthday on Wednesday and I got to spend the day with my two beautiful daughters and my four gorgeous grand children. We were then joined by Mark, my son and two son-in-laws for a family meal in the evening. It was a delightful day, a real treat for me not to have to work on my birthday, so I went to bed feeling very pampered. Since then, my feet haven't touched the ground but it's all in a good cause as we are all set and ready for you at Stevenage tomorrow.

Mr & Mrs PaperArtsy, Mark and Leandra pulled out all the stops and hand delivered the six sets of brand new PaperArtsy Hot Picks stamps, so that we would have them for the show and OMG, they have excelled themselves this time, the designs are all Steampunky and Industrial and I love them all. Here they are in all their glory hanging on my rack ready for tomorrow morning.

Would you like a close up????? OF course you would!!!

Cast you mind back to my previous post where I had started to make a framed piece for the show using the new colours of Distress Stains, well, I managed to finish it off with the help of Steampunk Peter and Steampunk Paul......I really like this pair of birdy guys, they could become my next favourites.

Well, that's me for today, hope to see you tomorrow.
Lin

It's been a brain frying week

2011-08-07T19:14:00.000+01:00

It has definitely been "one of those" weeks this week, I really feel as if my feet have not touched the ground. It started beautifully on Monday when I taught my Triple Decker class to eight lovely, lovely ladies. They all made a fabulous job of their projects and we had a lot of laughs along the way too. Then my delivery of the new colours of Tim Holtz/Ranger Distress Stains and Perfect Pearl Mists arrived. Poor Karen, she unpacked and priced hundreds of them. Sorted out all the pre-orders ready for shipping the next day and then all the class ladies descended upon her to make their Distress Stain purchases. One of my lovely classroom girlies flew down from Scotland to take this class and it was a great opportunity for her to meet up with some of her Tweeting buddies. Shopping done and dusted, Gillian, Jo, Gabrielle, Hels, the lovely Karen and myself all trotted across the road to our favourite watering hole for what is now known as our Tweet'n'meet!!! Think that was Gabriell who came up with that little gem....anyways....it was a lot of fun and we shall certainly be Tweeting'n'meeting again hopefully, some time soon.

Tuesday, I was playing shop keeper, sending out all the pre-orders of stains, trying to do some ordering and then all these men kept arriving in my shop with boxes....lots of boxes.....containing all sorts of scrumminess including new books, more Pan Pastels, blank journals, Tim Holtz dies, Ideaology and more.....I was completely cream crackered.

Wednesday was more of the same....more boxes....more ordering.....I had to order more stains ready for Stevenage, these babies are flying out the door!!!!

Thursday, thank goodness Karen was back. I was hard at work in my studio working on new class samples when I get a phone call from Karen that went something like.....I've been so busy, there have been loads of deliveries.....sounding familiar????? But then I get the exciting bit of news....Dina Wakley's stamps have arrived.....then the bad bit of news......only one of the boxes arrived.......we have six of the designs.....it appears the other box is stuck in customs.......I'll fix that little problem on Monday. What about the stamps?....the only thing I can say is.......they are fabulous and I can't wait to use them. They are all on line here in the Misc. section for the time being, so go place your orders now....I only have or should I say had, 12 of each.

Friday was again spent in the Studio working on classes and Artsycrafts stuff, Saturday, I was shop keeper girl again and today has been "catch up at home day...fun stuff like grocery shopping and ironing!!! I am looking forward to my roast dinner though!!! In between the housework chores, I have been popping out to my fabulous studio.....have I told you how much I love my studio????......I love my studio LOTS. Whilst out there I've been playing with my new colour Distress Stains....very yummy they are too. Everyone needs Picket Fence....it's a must! So I thought I would make a little something for a display piece at Stevenage next weekend.

I started by cutting a piece of Claudine Hellmuth's Sticky backed canvas to fit in the niche of my frame. Stamped a Paperartsy scroll stamp randomly over the whole piece using a piece of Cut'n'dry foam to apply Honey Dew Fresco Finish paint.

I heat set this really well and then spritzed the whole thing with water to help blend the stains. I got this tip from Ellen Vargo

Whilst the canvas was damp, I applied Tumbled Glass, Stormy Sky and Brushed Corduroy Distress Stains, overlapping them so that the colours blended. What I didn't realise was that the Brushed Corduroy would turn green over the blue....nice colour too!!!

Next step...the frame.....I applied Stormy Sky Distress Stain straight from the bottle to the wooden frame, such good, fast coverage.....we like fast!!

Once the whole frame was covered with Stormy Sky, I added some of the magical Picket Fence for a shabby look.

Once my canvas was completely dry, I was able to remove the backing paper and stick it in the niche.

I'm loving it so far.....and now this is the teasing bit.........I'm going to wait for the brand new Paperartsy Hot Picks stamps to finish this piece off, I've seen a few peeks and there are a couple of images that are going to be just perfect for this......so no pressure Leandra.....hurry up and get those stamps pressed!!

Okay, that's me for today.....I have to say Blogger was a much happier chappie today and played very nicely with me......so now I'm off to check on my roast spuds.

A Little Journey

2011-07-31T21:18:00.000+01:00

I'm going to take you on a little journey.....this was an idea I had during my Journaling class last week. I had been using one of Tim Holtz dies, the "Journey" Movers & Shapers die as a stencil. I had cut it out of acetate and sponged Pan Pastels through it and then my little mind starts on a journey!!! Wonder what this would look like in shrink plastic???? Pretty good in my head but it turned out more than pretty good...I LOVE IT!!!!

So here's a quick run through of how this tag came together. First of all I covered the whole tag with Wild Honey Distress Ink, then used Forest Moss to stamp some background images. Now I kinda like using just parts of a stamp and to do this I use the stamp without an acrylic block. That way you can bend the stamp and just prints bits of an image....tis fun......give it a whirl....you'll love it!!


Hopefully from this picture, you can see how I bend the stamp.


Blogger is now officially driving me completely round the hat rack, if I managed to finish this post before screaming, it will be a miracle!! It is changing my font, it's putting my photographs in places that I don't want them, it will not let me insert text where I want it so fingers crossed you guys will be able to make sense of the rest!! What I was trying to tell you is that I cut out some tickets from Tim's Tissue Tape, tinted them with some Distress ink before adding them to my background. Now for the shrink plastic........I am sorry that this is one giant paragraph, but blogger seems to think that if you hit carriage return, it means jumping up two lines.....what's going on?????? Anyway........as I was saying.......you need a Sizzix base tray, your die and some shrink plastic, I've got translucent shrink here.

Place your magnetic die on the base tray, pop on the shrink plastic, sandwich the whole thing between the two acrylic plates and put through your die cutting machine. I like to leave a nice size border at this stage, so that I can trim it more accurately once it has been die cut.

Now for the shrinking. I like to use something made of wood to stop the shrink plastic flying off the desk, shrink plastic usually shrinks down to about a quarter of it's original size and also becomes thicker once it has been shrunk.

Whilst the shrink plastic was still WARM not HOT.....please be careful if you do this....I know I have asbestos fingers....the shrink can stay HOT for some time.....you can manipulate its shape

You can colour it beautifully with Alcohol Ink. I started out by using Pesto and Caramel but by the time I had finished, it was the same colour as my tag and sort of disappeared so I added some Silver Mixative and Black Alcohol Ink after I had taken my photos.....much better!!!

So here is the finished tag

How much mess can a girl make......I only made a tag!!!

As the theme was journey, I decided that Tim's aeroplane would be quite fitting for this tag

I added a bottlecap with a Paris sticker....still trying to stick to the theme! Some Ideaology finished it off a treat.

So now I'm going back to the journaling class where I first started this journey and you can see that I used a shrunken journey as a stencil in my journal page, so it has a lot of uses.

Hope you managed to follow my drift and enjoyed what turned out to be an epic journey instead of a little trip and let's hope that blogger is in a better mood next time.

New Ranger Products

2011-07-28T09:22:00.000+01:00

I am very excited to be able to tell you that my shipment of Ranger's brand new colours of Distress Stains and Perfect Pearl Mists are scheduled to arrive here in Olney on MONDAY......yes......this coming Monday....that would be Monday 1st August 2011. That's only four more days to wait!!!! Not that I'm excited or anything....can't wait to get my hands on the Picket Fence Distress Stain. The products are up for pre-order on the website or you can call me on 01234 714848 to have your wish list reserved for you.

So that was short and sweet......I'm off.....I've have another looooong "to do" list today. Need to order stuff for the Stevenage show which is Sunday 14th August at the Leisure Centre in Stevenage.....hope you can come.....it's a fun show

Dina Wakley

2011-07-27T09:47:00.000+01:00

Today is the day to reveal all the nitty gritty for the Dina Wakley classes to be held here in October. There has been so much excitement here over the last few weeks, I'm kinda exhausted!!! Anyway if you haven't heard the news DINA WAKLEY IS TEACHING AT MY STORE IN OCTOBER!!!!!

Here is the class description as written by Dina herself

Color of Me Fabric Mini with Dina Wakley
Join me as we use paints, stamps, and inks to create a colorful, handmade mini book. We will explore some rules of color and talk about how to know what colors to use together and how to get a color "wow" in your work. First we'll create the little mini structure, then we'll fill it with colorful explosions of art.

Dina will be with me for two days, Friday 7th and Saturday 8th October. She will be teaching the same class on both days, so you only need to book one. This way, we can offer the opportunity to take a class with Dina to more people. Classes will be 10am - 4pm and will cost £65.00. Class places will go on sale this Saturday at 9am, that's Saturday 30th July. Note I said 9am, not our usual 10am, this is because we have a class going on at the shop on Saturday.

If you are not familiar with Dina's work, click on Dina's name to hop over to her blog to see her beautiful, inspiring work, it will definitely make you want to come to her class.

I'll be back later today with some very exciting product news. All this excitement....I think I need a cuppa tea!!

Artsycrafts update

2011-07-24T14:20:00.001+01:00

It's Sunday and all the Artsycrafts places will finally be up for sale tonight on the Paperartsy website. Leandra has worked her little socks off this week, preparing the website ready for places to be available for purchase and tonight's the night....tis all very exciting. As the whole world now knows that the one and only Lynne Perrella is our very special guest tutor and I am sorry if I keep repeating myself,but I am feeling a little overwhelmed that she will actually be part of one of our Artsycrafts events. Having said that, I need to stress to you guys that there are only 25 spaces available on each of the three days at Warrington for Lynne's classes. So if you would like to be part of this amazing opportunity to take a class with Lynne or of course Leandra and I, don't hang around too long before booking, you know that saying if you snooze, you lose......I'm just sayin'. Leandra has explained how it will all work beautifully, so the next section of this post are Leandra's words, giving you all the information you need. We are aiming for the tickets to go on sale tonight at 8pm (that's 8pm here in the UK) so fingers crossed, no technical hitches, you will be able to secure your place then.

So....How will it work?

At the Warrington ArtsyCrafts, Lin and I will teach two different 1 day classes on October 15th, 16th, and in her own classroom, Lynne Perrella will teach 3 different 1 day classes on October 14, 15, 16. You will be able to book any combination of day-long classes with any combination of teachers. You might come for 1 day, or maybe 3, it's entirely up to you which class you attend each day. The maximum you will be able to attend is 3 of the 5 classes on offer.

Newport Pagnell ArtsyCrafts on October 22nd, 23rd will be a regular 2 day ArtsyCrafts event. It will only be available to book as a 2 day inclusive event (as normal)

Booking Procedure
So what next? Well if you have been following us for the last couple of weeks on twitter/ facebook or here on the blog, you will already know that tickets go on sale Sunday evening (24th July) from the PaperArtsy Website. We do not know an exact time yet, as we still have some crinkles to iron out, so watch the twitter feed, but we are aiming for 8pm.

At the moment you can see an information page with dates and costs, but sometime tomorrow below that information the class descriptions will be up so that you should be able to read up on the classes and can plan out which you want to book. And then at 8pm, we will release the tickets so you will be able to add classes into your basket, proceed to checkout and pay.

Ordering and Payment......insider tips...
The fastest way to book classes is to add classes to your basket, and then click 'telephone payment' at the checkout. Your order will be placed immediately. We will then call you sometime next week for your credit card details and process your payment over the phone.

It is equally as fast (only for people in the UK) if you select 'bank online transfer' (BACS) but this does require you actually go online and transfer money into our account, so this is not recommended for EU or international customers.

If you wish to pay online with your credit card, please use 'secureform' this is a third party secure payment gateway. Once we have received your order, and we are ready to bill your card, we then can then approve your card to be charged sometime later this week.

Paypal is not ideal for various reasons that I won't bore you with, but in this situation it is slow as you have to leave our website to go to paypal, log in to paypal, make payment and then eventually come back to our site when finally your shopping basket/ waiting order will recognise your payment was successful. We would really prefer for administrative reasons that you don't use paypal to pay for these classes if possible, especially if you are an international student who will need their invoices amended to include 20% VAT.

For every single order we do like to manually check that each order is correct before we take payment. For example, that you have got the right number of classes or that nothing clashes. If you have ordered something in error, we can easily make amendments (particularly to add VAT to international orders), and check back with you BEFORE we take payment. We can't do this so easily with paypal, so this is why we are asking you to avoid the paypal gateway on this occasion.

I am feeling that we have made such a huge fuss of the Warrington event and I would love to stress to you that the event for Newport Pagnell will also be fabulous. Leandra and I have cooked up a couple of amazing classes so please do not feel that you will be missing out if you come to Newport Pagnell, it's going to be a blast just like it always is.

And now for the announcement of the lucky winner of six of Paperartsy's Fresco Finish paints. Quite a few of you guessed correctly but the lucky lady who wins these scrummy paints for leaving a comment on my blog is Jackie.

Jackie said...My guess is Lynn Perella. I do hope so, I lover her work!
21 July 2011 22:05

Jackie, please email me with your wish list of colours along with your address and I will having them sent out to you straight away.

OK, that's me for today....back to defrosting my freezer......not one of my favourite pastimes!

Artsycrafts on sale soon

2011-07-22T13:28:00.000+01:00

So by now you have all probably guessed that our guest tutor for our Warrington event is the one and only Lynne Perrella!!! As you can imagine Leandra and I are beside ourselves with excitement at the thought of working alongside an artist who we have both admired for many years. She is extremely talented and we feel so privileged to be able to offer you the opportunity of taking a class with her, here in the UK at one of our events.

Now to the nitty griity....places for both Warrington and Newport Pagnell will be up for grabs on Sunday evening via the Paperartys website. Click here to be transported over to Leandra's blog for all the details.

Hope you have a fabulous weekend and I hope to see you at Artsycrafts.

Lin

P.S. All the lovely people who joined in the fun to guess the idenity of our guest and guessed correctly will be entered into a draw ovcer the weekend and the lucky winner will recieve 6 Paperartsy Fresco Finish paint

News round up

2011-07-21T15:43:00.000+01:00

Have just spent about an hour trying to figure out how to move photographs around on my blog having loaded some upgrades to it this week. Sometimes I think if it's not broken, why fix it!!! I simply couldn't move my pictures up or down.....left to right was easy, but not what I needed to do. In the past I have always loaded my pictures, then slotted in my text and that method came about by a previous bad experience so now I am typing and slotting in pictures one by one.....there has to be an easier way than this and if you know me personally, you will know that this stuff can be a real challenge for me.....anyways, let's see what happens.....we could be in for an interesting post and not in the way that I had intended!!!

It's been another mad, crazy week here.Spent a fun couple of days last week with Leandra, working on our Autumn Artsycrafts projects and unless you are living on the moon, you will know that Leandra and I have been giving out clues all week so that you can try and guess the identity of our guest tutor for our Warrington event, if you guess correctly, you have the chance to win six Fresco Finish paints .It's not too late, there is still time to leave a comment with your guess.

Leandra is busy as we speak, preparing her website ready for taking on-line bookings for both Warrington and Newport Pagnell Artsycrafts. If all goes according to plan, this should go live on Sunday but I'll be back with more details soon........it's all very exciting!!!!

Last Saturday, I taught a fun class for twelve lovely ladies, they are now all addicted to Fresco Finish paint

Ooo, think I'm getting the hang of the photo thingy now.....it's not as bad as I thought!!!!!

I then spent a few days working at home,in my new studio, trying to design some new class projects for classes here at the shop......that was fun but it is quite time consuming........want to see a little sneaky peek???

I've got quite a lot of ideas buzzing around my head, but sadly the VAT return is going to get in the way of creativity for a while.

Then I had a surprise visitor...little Sebastian.....only he's not so little any more.....in fact I don't think he was ever little.....he was kind of on the large size when he was born! Anyway, here he is now at 16 weeks old.

He's coming along a treat, I told Sarah to watch out, he'll be walking on his own by next week!!!

He's soooo happy, I love being a Nanna!

Now my final snippet of news......Dina Wakely classes......these will go on sale on Saturday 30th July and again more details will follow next week but the dates for your diary are either the 7th or 8th October, you don't need to book both, she will be teaching the same class on both days.

I'll be back soon with more Artsycrafts details.

Lin

Artsycrafts Teaser

2011-07-15T20:55:00.000+01:00

Leandra and I have just spent a few days designing new projects for the Autumn ArtsyCrafts events, apart from the fact that Leandra managed to stamp Archival ink all over my brand new studio, it was a lot of fun. We always try to be really inventive and cook up projects that will amaze you and I think that we have achieved our goal, they are lots of fun and we were definitely thinking outside the boxes on these babies!!!! The projects are loaded with all things painty, stamps, metal, fabric and some very unusual items.
I think I may have mentioned before that we are beyond excited as we have a special guest for our event in Warrington and I am happy to confirm that it is now all systems go at Artsycrafts HQ to dot all the i's and cross all the t's in order for us to start taking bookings.

ArtsyCrafts October 2011 Dates

October 14, 15 16, 2011 will be at DeVere Daresbury Park, Near Warrington.
Our guest tutor will teach here all 3 days, and Lin and I will teach for 2 days as usual.
You can use Liverpool's John Lennon airport or Manchester Airport, both are only 20 mins from this venue. And located only 1 junction from the M6 motorway.

October 22, 23 2011 will be at DeVere Harben House, Newport Pagnell. This is near Milton Keynes, just off Jn14 of the M6, and about 30 mins drive from Luton Airport.
Lin and I alone will teach here, and it will be exactly the same curriculum as taught at Warrington
Those of you who attended the recent spring AC events will already know we have let slip that our Warrington guest tutor is an iconic muse for altered artists who has a unique style that fits beautifully with our ArtsyCrafts events. As an altered artists who works with paint, paper, stamps and more, she has a wealth of experience and it will be a real privilege for you to have the opportunity to be a participant in her classes. We are utterly thrilled that she approached us with the idea of teaching at one of our events. With only 25 spaces per day available in her classes at the Warrington event, we know that these will be snapped up quick as a flash so you will need to keep an eye out for the booking information which should go live on Leandra's website very soon.

Previously at ArtsyCrafts.....
For those of you who missed the May/June (Spring) ArtsyCrafts events....and I know being so close to the Tim Holtz event...many of you did opt to skip it in favour of the October event.... here are 2 wonderful videos that Mark put together at the event showing the projects we made.

Artsycrafts Day 1 June 2011

Artsycrafts Day 2 June 2011

The theme was Fresco Lifestyle with the emphasis on learning how versatile the new PaperArtsy Fresco Chalk Acrylics are as a paint. Specifically designed to work on ALL surfaces, we particularly love how they work so well on metal and even glass or ceramic! These paints have an amazing chalk finish which is an absolute dream to stamp on top of. And the colours are totally on trend and very appealing. We are so thrilled that many established paint artists, many fantastic people from blog-land, and loads of our loyal customers have commented on what a fabulous paint they are, so we hope you too have had a chance to play with them also. The full collection can be viewed on both my website and Leandra's and the exciting thing is that the range will be expanded soon to include a palette of colours suitable for Autumn and Christmas. So get yourself a cuppa tea or a glass of something nicer and take a little look into the world of Artsycrafts, I think you'll agree that it's a whole load of fun.

I know, I know we still have not told you who the mysterious guest artist is......well in true teasing style we are going to keep you guessing a bit longer. If you would like to leave a comment with your guess as to who the guest artist is, all the correct names will be put into a draw next weekend and the lucky winner will recieve their six Fresco Finish paints of their choice. We will then announce who the artist is and the date when booking will commence.

Guess who's coming to town?

2011-07-13T10:55:00.002+01:00

I am very pleased and very excited to announce that Dina Wakley is coming to town!!!! I've been chatting to Dina for a few weeks trying to iron out all the details and I can now confirm that she is going to be teaching classes here at L.B.Crafts on Friday 7th & Saturday 8th October. It will be the same class on both days so that we can offer this fabulous opportunity to the maximum number of people. Dina is extremely busy at the moment with all of her CHA commitments, so the class description with all the nitty gritty will follow soon.

I have been an admirer of Dina's work for some time, her eye for colour, composition and ability to turn something simple into an amazing piece of artwork makes me want to say "wow" everytime I see her work. I find myself peering into her work, looking at all the different layers and admiring how they all work together to make the complete piece. Hop over to Dina's blog and take a look, I think you'll agree, she is one very talented lady!!!

Keep checking back for the announcement of the details.
Have a creative day, Lin

Cornish Delights

2011-07-12T13:09:00.016+01:00

I'm back at work today having spent six lovely days with my hubby down in the sleepy hollow of Cornwall. It really is like taking a step back in time, the way of life is so relaxed and calm. Lots of fishing boats, Cornish pasties, cream teas and amazing views.

Can you believe that these fabulous tall ships were about 20 yards away from the door of our hotel? Apparently quite a lot of the Onedin line was filmed here in Charlestown.

There is something amazing about having breakfast every morning with a view like this, it kind of sets you up for the day.

Now you simply cannot go to Cornwall and experience at least one Cornish cream tea. Warm scones, clotted cream and home made jam......yum, yum!!! The funny thing is that we had this cream tea in a brewery!!!!
The weather was not fantastic when we were there but we did get some sunshine and blue skies which always helps when taking holiday snaps.
Both Mark and I wanted to visit the Eden project just outside St. Austell and although yours truly had a lovely cold while I was there, it didn't spoil our days out. This place is simply amazing, if you ever get the opportunity to go, it really is a must, after all where else would you see a frying pan this big, full of paella?
Beautifully designed, with breath taking flowers everywhere.
It is set in the hill side of an old quarry, lots of uphill walking but it really was worth the aching legs.
Michaels Mount always makes a picture postcard photo.
And just to prove that we went to Land's End!
The bay at Megavissey.....the water was very calm, almost like glass.
Now this was one of the funniest things.....a reclamation company had an Elvis making a phone call from an old Phone box with a pink bath tub of plants on top.......who thinks this stuff up???
Now to some of my special purchases....there is a fabulous shop in Bath called Instant Vintage.....I love this shop....I even loved the brown paper bag that they put my goodies in!!!
Okay, so that's a brief review of my week and today it's back to reality, so I'm catching up on paperwork and shop stuff......not so much fun.......I'm thinking a cream tea would make it better!!!

I'll be back tomorrow to share some very exciting news about a guest tutor who will be teaching here later in the year.....until then.....have a creative day.

Lin

Psssst!

2011-07-05T09:31:00.004+01:00

Did you think I was Lin then? Huh? Did you? Well ... it is actually the other Linda ... I have comandeered Lin's blog to tell you that the beautifully handmade Karen Turner buttons are now on the website here together with some beautiful fabric packs and lush Pan Pastel starter sets ... a real must for all your mixed media projects!
Of course ... if you don't want to order online and would love to chat to the lovely Karen while placing your order ... then give her a ring on 01234714848!
That's all folks ... Happy Shopping :0)

This is a first!!

2011-07-04T19:48:00.003+01:00

I love it when good things happen for the first time and for the first time in many years, my immediate "to do" list is all checked off!! My bags are packed.....well nearly packed.....and I'm heading off to Cornwall in the morning to spend a week with Mark doing all the touristy things and partaking in lots of cream teas!!! I'll probably be Tweeting while I'm away as I've got some nice things planned, like stopping off in Bath for the day where there just happens to be a fabulous bead shop.

Hope you all have a creative week.

Lin

Memories of Venice

2011-06-30T12:37:00.006+01:00

At Last, blogger has finally allowed me to upload pictures. Yesterday drove me completely round the hat rack, I uploaded one picture then it wouldn't allow any more. I'd wait 30 minutes try again, get one more uploaded then it would kick me out again. I was starting to think it was just me but having aired my frustration on Twitter, I find out that the rest of the world was as frustrated as I was. Anyway, today is another day and blogger is having a good day which is fabulous as I can now share my finished Venice project with you.

A couple of years ago, Mark took me to Venice as part of my 50th birthday pressie. I had always wanted to go and I have to say it is even more amazing in real life than I had imagined, I loved every minute of it even if it did rain a lot! So when I spotted those gorgeous hand made ceramic buttons with the Riato Bridge, I knew that I had to make something that I could hang on the wall as a reminder of our adventures.

So my frame was painted with Fresco Finish London Night with a small amount of Vintage Lace dry brushed over the top. I used the same colours on my canvas but it had the Crackle Glaze sandwiched between the two layers of paint. When completely dry, I diluted some of Tim Holtz Distressed Stains and washed them over the canvas so that was a variety of pastel colours and added a touch of stamping for a bit more interest.

I also stained some of Tim's Tissue Tape and a page from his Kraft Resist 12 x 12 pad of papers. I cut out the compass from the Kraft Resist paper which was a perfect match for the fabric, canvas and button.

I have a lot of customers who tell me that they do not find it easy to make a collage of items so I thought I would share a couple of of my rules with you. First of all, don't stick anything down until you are happy with the placement. Sometimes, I need to walk away for a while and when I come back to a piece, I kind of see things from a different perspective and something new usually jumps into my head. But my main rule of thumb is linking items together which I call bridging. I hate to see things floating in mid air so that it just looks plonked there. Now nobody wants to be known as a plonker do they????? So to avoid being a plonker just make sure that every item is slightly touching or overlapping another item, then it will all flow nicely.

To finish off my collage, I die cut some Ten Seconds Studio copper art metal using Tim Holtz, Pennants On The Edge die. I used a diagonal embossing wheel around the edges and my pointy tool to scribble a design in the centre of each flag. Gave them all the black paint treatment before cutting them into individual flags. I folded the top edge over a piece of chain to make some bunting and added some of Tim Holtz Alphaparts to spell out Venice.

Everything was stuck down with Claudine Hellmuth's Matt Multi Medium, this stuff works great on everything, it stuck my metal, paper, card, fabric and ceramic button.....I just love a product that is multi purpose!!!

So there we have it......wonder if blogger will work two days in a row?
Lin

3rd and final project

2011-06-28T20:21:00.006+01:00

So this is my third and final project using the embossing technique with Tens Seconds Studio metal and a brass charm as a mould. I loved making all three items, seems ages since I had a chance to mess around with metal and I have to admit that I've really missed it.

Having embossed my metal and given it the paint treatment as per project No. 1, I cut the metal to fit inside a Memory Frame. I placed it on my craft sheet and very carefully poured clear UTEE from my melting pot into the frame, taking care to stop pouring just before the frame was completely full to allow it to just fill the frame.

Once the UTEE had cooled, I was able to embellish it with some of Tim Holtz Ideaology sprocket gears and game spinners. I coloured a hinge clip with some alcohol ink to match the metal and frame so that it could be used as a bail for my necklace.
Hope you've all enjoyed my trio of metal projects.
Lin

Metal Experiment No. 2

2011-06-26T14:59:00.011+01:00

Metal experiment No. 2 involves Paperartsy Fresco Finish paint.....now there's a surprise....I'm using this paint on just about everything at the moment. I kind of feel that if an item hasn't moved in ten minutes, let's paint it...which is a bit scary really!!!

Anyways, for this little project, I embossed my metal using my brass charm just as I did in Experiment No. 1, this time, no crumpling of metal, simply paint some black paint on the clock face, wipe off the excess for an antiqued look then paint the remaining metal black.

I like it to be completely black, so I used two thin layers of paint, this is much better than one thick one.
Allow to dry completely. If you are as impatient as me, you can use a heat gun, just be careful not to get too close to the paint or it will bubble.

Next layer is the magical Crackle glaze. Only a thin layer is required for this and at Leandra's suggestion, I apply it with a palette knife which is so much better than a brush as you can scrape back the excess easily with the edge of the knife.

Once the Crackle Glaze is dry, add your top coat of paint. I chose Fresco Finish Vintage Lace and simply painted a nice even layer over the top of the crackle. I do like to have my brush well loaded with paint so that I can cover the area to be painted quite evenly and smoothly. You will be amazed at how fast this stuff starts to crack.
Think you'll agree, that this is beyond cool!!!
Once my Crackle was dry, I decided to go one step further and age it with some distress stains. I dispensed some on to my craft craft and with a wet paint brush, washed it over the paint....liking this look....very vintage.....very me.
To finish my little project, I popped my artwork into a frame that had been base coated in black with a touch of Heirloom Gold rubbed in the edges and crowned with a Tim Holtz Weathered Clock that was die cut from some Ten Seconds Studio metal.
Few bits and bobs of Ideaology......hey presto....done!!

Enjoy the rest of the weekend, Lin

Metal Experiment No 1

2011-06-24T19:46:00.008+01:00

I have just spent a fun couple of days experimenting with some new metal techniques. All three of them are based on embossing metal using a brass charm as my mould. I tried popping it through my Big Shot to eliminate the hard work of hand embossing......I can tell you that yes, it can be done......but......you knew there would be a but didn't you?.......the brass charm ends up quite banana shaped!!!!!!

So here's the first technique, this one is simply called crumpled metal.
To start, I secured my chosen charm to my acrylic mat with a small blob of blue tac, then placed my metal over the top, secured with some masking tape.

Rub over the metal with a paper stump to outline the design.

Then with a pointy tool (Ten Seconds Studio refiner) draw around all the detail on the charm to refine the image, it will become nice and sharp.
Leaving the charm in place behind the embossed image to support it, crumple all the surrounding metal.

Oh by the way, those are both my hands in the picture, one thumb painted pink was a bit of an experiment.....have been walking around now for two days with one pink nail.....keep forgetting to remove it!!!!

Next take some black acrylic paint and use a paint brush to work it into all the fine detail. Leave to sit for 30 seconds before wiping away the excess with a paper towel.

Last but not least, brush black paint over the crumpled areas and again wipe away the excess with a per towel.
I am really loving the look of this, it's a fun technique but sadly I can't reveal the finished project yet as it is a class sample for the next release of classes.

As for techniques two and three, you'll need to stop by again in a day or so when I'll be sharing the next one.

Have a fun weekend, I'm teaching my Triple Decker class to ten lovely ladies in the morning, so I think I need an early night.

Lin

Artsycrafts Fresco Finish Style

2011-06-21T14:03:00.018+01:00

Did we have a fabulous time at Artsycrafts???? Of course we did!!!! Now that both Newport Pagnell and Warrington are now in the bag, we can share more pictures with you of the projects that we made.

The whole event focused on Paperartsy's fabulous Fresco Finish paints and at the risk of sounding boring, because I think I may have mentioned this just once or twice before, I love this paint!!!!

One of the projects was this cute trio of mini jars, all painted beautifully with the paint as it adheres to any surface. We layered threes tones of colour, a light, medium and a dark, stamped some images and added some Metallic Glaze. The flowers are die cut from Tim Holtz Grungepaper with Paperartsys Grunge Flowers and Scallop Flower dies and again all painted with the paints....they all looked fabulous!

This is a picture from the Warrington event, everyone is busy working on the placement of their Grungepaper elements.

Then the painting fun begins!!!
Anne busy at work, she sat on the Brown Fresco table.
This is Sue's project.......
......here's a close up of the paint effects.....loads of depth......just gorgeous!
Our lovely Lynne made a beautiful job of her project on the blue table. I really like how she replaced the "o" of home with some Ideaology
And hopefully from this picture, you can get the feel of the size of the project.
The whole weekend was about layering paint and I really hope you can see from these next couple of pictures just how many layers of paint there are

Our final project was completely different from anything we had ever done before, it was still all about the paint but we mixed up plaster and poured in into moulds that we had made from Mold'n'Pour and also onto some Ten Seconds Studio moulds....how cool is this????
We think it's really cool, it is very inkeeping with the soft, subtle effects of the paint and I can't wait to hang my samples at home.

So it has been weeks in the planning, the dates arrived, I blinked once or twice and it's all over. Well it's all over until next time but we are already planning the next events for October. The dates for your diary are 14th, 15th & 16th October for Warrington and 22nd & 23rd October for Newport Pagnell. I can hear you all thinking why three days for Warrington????? It is not set in concrete yet, so I can't reveal who it is but we are hoping (actually we are 99% sure it will happen) to have a guest tutor for Warrington, so booking will be a different format for the next events. We will of course let you guys know as soon as we can and start the booking procedure.

First button project

2011-06-15T10:34:00.006+01:00

My poor hubby Mark has been working in Manchester and hoped to be home last night but things didn't go quite according to plan and he had to stay an extra night so I took the opportunity to have a late night creative session so that I could finish two projects with my fabby new buttons. Well two projects proved to be a bit too ambitious for one evening.....I've got one and a half!!! I'll share the other half when it's finished but in the meantime here's a little blue creation.

My frame was base coated with Paperartsy's Baltic Blue Fresco Finish paint and then I dry brushed a smidge of Ice Blue on the frame.....still love the shabby look.

The first layer of paint on the canvas was Fresco Finish London Night which I allowed to dry completely before adding a very thin layer of Leandra's super duper Crackle glaze with a palette knife. This layer was also completely dry before painting on my custom mix of colours. I wanted to create a beautiful ivory colour, so dobbled some Snowflake on my craft sheet and gradually added tiny amounts of Haystack until I achieved the desired colour. Now here's the tricky bit!!! I wanted to have a two tone top coat so I knew I would have to work fast as this paint crackles at the speed of light. So I already had my custom mixed ivory all ready to go, now I needed a very pale blue so with some Ice Blue and added Snowflake, I was all set. I took a large paint brush and generous blob of my ivory, I started t0 paint randomly over my canvas, filling in the gaps with the pale blue. You do have to work very quickly to blend the colours before the magic cracks start to appear, but it is so worth it, the effects are beautiful.

Then the embellishing fun began. I took a few scraps of printed paper and tinted them with watered down Baltic Blue, I also tinted some of Tim Holtz tissue tape the same way and started layering them on my canvas. I found some fabric that was the perfect colour and all of this made an interesting background. Once I was happy with the layout, I used Claudin Hellmuth's Multi Matt Medium to glue everything down.
I do like to add dangly bits and bobs to things, so a few simple beads and charms on my key, just added a little something to the overall look. Then I was faced with a a very unattractive gap between my canvas and wooden frame, plus I found out that my canvas was not completely square.....oh spit, I said to myself!!! Notice I said spit!!!! Anyways, I fixed my gappy problem with some chunky chain from my huge collection of chain offcuts.

The chain on the frame gave me another idea.....skinny chain through my button!!!! I joined it together with a small jump ring and added a few more beads....
...me likey this A LOT!!!
And guess what, Claudine's Multi Matt Medium stuck that button firmly in place.....who would have thunk it????

Hope to have project number two finished soon.
Lin

Buttons Galore!!

2011-06-14T13:37:00.006+01:00

We now have a wonderful selection of these BEAUTIFUL hand-made ceramic buttons in the shop. They are beyond gorgeous and I'm thrilled to bits with them. My only dilemma is that the very talented lady who makes them arrived at my shop with a huge selection of different designs for me to choose from but not many repeats of each one, which makes it quite difficult to put them on the website. I may have to order some more to make it a worthwhile exercise uploading all these images.

Anyways, enough of my waffling....you want to see them don't you? The first two photographs are the larger size approx. 5cm and are priced at £7.99

The rest are the smallest size approx. 4cm and are £5.99

A few close ups for you.....even the presentations tags are fab!!

Unless you are able to pop into the shop, ordering these may be a little tricky until I get more stocks but if you see one in those photos that you can't live without, either call me on 01234 714848 or email me linda@lbcrafts.com to reserve your favourite.

I'm off to make a little project with one now, hope to be back tomorrow with finished piece.
Lin

Timtastic weekend

2011-06-10T11:22:00.008+01:00

We're having a Timtastic weekend here in Olney. From now until midnight on Sunday 12th June 2011 there will be a 20% discount off all the Tim Holtz stamp sets shown below. The offer is available on line www.lbcrafts.com as well as in store. If ordering on line, the discount will not show on your total in your shopping cart but will be deducted manually at the time of processing.

CMS101 - Adverts: Normally £27.99 this weekend £22.40

CMS102 - Air Travel: Normally £21.99, this weekend £17.60

CMS103 - Book Covers: Normally £21.99, this weekend £17.60

CMS104 - Curiosities Normally: £27.99, this weekend £22.40

CMS107 - Steampunk: Normally £21.99, this weekend £17.40

CMS108 - Travel Labels: Normally £27.99, this weekend £22.40

The super talented Linda Elbourne is hosting one of her fabulous Configurations classes tomorrow and guess what, there are a couple of spaces. Why not kill two birds with one stone, pick up a bargain set of Tim stamps and have a fun day with with The Linda Elbourne......I can promise you it will be hilarious, her classes are also fun packed with lots of talent and wit!!

WOYWW 8th June 2011

2011-06-08T10:10:00.005+01:00

I'm very excited to be able to say that my desk this week is in my brand spanking new studio......woo hoo!!!!!! I feel extremely lucky to have this humungous and beautiful workshop but before any creating can actually happen, I need to move all my stuff in!

Over the years, I have collected a mammoth pile of magazines......Stampers Sampler, Somerset Studio, Cloth Paper Scissors and many more titles. Nothing wrong with that you might think, well, my problem is that if I keep all those magazines (and the pile seen here is from just one magazine rack) there are about 20 more of these! So I kinda figured I need to trawl through them all and pull out the bits I want to keep.

One of my clean, uncluttered work tops, with little buckets all ready and waiting for my pencils, watercolour pencils, pastel pencils and pens....got quite a lot of those too. Actually, if I'm honest, I've got quite a lot of everything.

So if you would like to share in the desk hopping fun of WOYWW (what's on your workdesk Wednesday) hop over to Julia's blog to see what happening this week. Hopefully by next Wednesday, I'll be a tad more organised!

Bits 'n'bobs post

2011-06-07T08:53:00.007+01:00

This is a bit of a mish mash post with snippets of information about all sorts of stuff. First up, remember those gorgeous buttons that I posted about on Saturday......well.......I'm very excited to announce that after chatting to the lovely, lovely lady who makes these button and happens to be called Karen, not my Karen of course......must be the name that makes them lovely........we are going to have them for the shop. She is going to put togethert a new collection for me and I should have more news about those in about 10 days......how cool is that?

After last night's lightening post announcing that Ranger's new Archival ink pads are in the house, thought I would show you how scrummy the colours are. There are 24 in total, all listed on the website but I think you'll agree that they beyond yummy in these display racks.

As they only arrived yesterday, I couldn't wait to open a few this morning, so I grabbed Monarch Orange, Vermillion, Cobalt and Saffron. Just smooshed them on a tag direct from the pad and I am very pleased to report that the colours are very rich and vibrant and now I can't wait to play around and find out what I can do with them.
Today is my Fresco Finishes class today, so I am typing this post whilst I am waiting for all my lovely ladies to arrive. Stiil in love with this paint and one of the techniques I'll be sharing with my students today is spraying the paint to get a soft blended look.
After my class, I'm hoping to dash home early so that I can continue the next mammoth task in my life......code name......"fill up the new studio with all things inky, painty and beady" ....tis a mammoth task, I have A LOT of stuff. I'll try and post updates.

Think I need to get the kettle on ready for class.

New Archival Ink Pads are in the house

2011-06-06T19:27:00.002+01:00

We had a fab delivery today.....Rangers New Archival Ink Pads.....the colours are beautiful and they are all unpacked, priced, on the shelves, on the website ready to go....here's the link you need to see them in all their glory!http://lbcrafts.com/Products_Ranger.html

Yours Artfully

Sewing Machine Update

WOYWW

Tuesday, Tuesday

Monday, Monday

WOYWW

AWOL

WOYWW

Update on yesterday's post

Today was play day

Old Altered Book

WOYWW

Been shopping today

I've had the time of my life

Merry Christmas

Website information

L.B.Crafts closed it's doors today!

Normal service has been restored

Slight technical hitch

orders, orders and more orders

It's the final countdown

Imagine the journey

We're back on track

Dickens of a Christmas

Who knew????

It's a surprise!!!

And today........

Paint makes me happy

Have I got news for you

Christmas is a coming!!!!

A little reminder

It's getting bigger and better

The week that was

The sale continues

Two posts in one day!!!

New Fresco Finish Paint

New bargains up for grabs

Catch up post

Oh My!

My big announcement

Artsycrafts and Lynne Perrella part 2

Artsycrafts and Lynne Perrella

A fabulous day

Dina Wakley opportunity

Five minute breather

And the winner is..........

Ally Pally.....done and dusted

Ally Pally......here we come!

More samples

Pan Pastels Update

Pan Pastels Giveaway

A Little Reminder

** New Arrivals **

I Love Bank holidays

New class information coming soon

Follow up on yesterday's post

Dina Wakley stamps & Pan Pastels

Monday, Monday

Stevenage....all set and ready to go

It's been a brain frying week

A Little Journey

New Ranger Products

Dina Wakley

Artsycrafts update

Artsycrafts on sale soon

News round up

Artsycrafts Teaser

Guess who's coming to town?

Cornish Delights

Psssst!

This is a first!!

Memories of Venice

3rd and final project

Metal Experiment No. 2

Metal Experiment No 1

Artsycrafts Fresco Finish Style

First button project

Buttons Galore!!

Timtastic weekend

WOYWW 8th June 2011

New Arrivals