A Great Weekend Away

Well the retreat last weekend went really well, despite the fact that there was a terrible accident on the M42. Which held up traffic all day, Hubby and I took a detour and missed the last part of the motorway and arrived early afternoon. However a couple of the other ladies who left later sent me a text a 8.00pm on the Friday evening to say they were 27 miles away from the hotel. But they were sitting in a traffic jam, they finally made it to the hotel at 1.30 in the morning. Despite this we were ready to Craft at 9.30 on Saturday morning (all 8 of us). Our first day was spent discovering the delights of The Art Journal (ran by Mickey) and various ways to decorate the page (I'll show you some of what we did at a later date). The following day was a workshop that I ran and another (ran by Elaine) where we decorated a box frame (again I'll show you later, when I get it finished). The workshop that I ran was to decorate a canvas, and the idea behind this is that you decorate several canvases with photos and then join them together, sort of like a family tree.

My first canvas was my sample and used a photo of the family when they were much younger. First I added paste through a stencil and then when dry painted with a mixture of gesso and a few drops of vintage photo distress ink mixed in. When all of this was dried I gently rubbed a little gold gilding wax over the paste areas. The photo was placed in a frame made from a cricut cartridge, along with some swirl and the wording also cut on the cricut ( this could be done with other cutting machines or suitable dies). After distressing with vintage photo they were glued into place.

This second canvas was started at the retreat and finished at home, and shows my in-laws on their wedding day back in 1949. My next job is another canvas only this time with my parents on their wedding day. Glad to say there were no hold ups on the way home Sunday evening.

Thanks for taking the time to look and your kind comments which are always appreciated.

Sue

Fantastic Day Out

Sunday morning my alarm clock sang out at me at 6.30 a.m. Just as I was about to turn over I remembered that I was going to Kent to attend another of Eileen Godwin's wonderful Journal Workshops.With Eileen, there we only five of us but what a fantastic day we had. I'd gone armed with my Gelli plate and a lemon, both of which Eileen said we would be using. However once there Eileen showed us two wonderful projects, one she made while attending a workshop held by the talented Karen Buckle, and one Eileen had made herself very similar but using a different technique that she found on You Tube. Both were stunning and of coarse we wanted to know how she had made them. She gave us a rough idea on Karen's method and then set about instructing us how she made the second. What better way could there have been than getting our hands dirty and trying it out for our self's. I'm not going to go into lengthy details but it involved, White Card stock, Embossing Folders, Black Gesso, Glue and Seal and Inka Gold paints, oh and some die cuts. The picture below was my result, which was done in my new larger Art Journal. Eileen has posted the other three ladies pages on her blog, we all done some thing different so do pop over and take a look and don't forget to take a look at Eileen's project that she made, or Karen's workshop photo's. Needless to say the Gelli plates were put away unused.

Thank you for taking the time to look, and your kind comments which are always appreciated.

Sue