Well, it’s Tuesday again so here I am with my weekly update,
and what a busy week it has been for me- well the last few days anyway.
At the start of the week I was eagerly awaiting my latest
design team pack from Samantha K. Frustratingly I was out when it arrived, so I
was delayed for 24 hours in getting my sticky mitts on it, but boy was it worth
the wait! Much of it was to create samples with for Sam’s June show on Hochanda, so I can’t
show you yet, but suffice to say that knowing that I had Saturday free , I warned
my family I would mostly be ignoring them for the day while I set to work. That’s exactly what I did, from around 7am,
while binge watching The Gilmore Girls on Netflix ( with a short break to watch
the Royal wedding). Every so often my husband Chris would tiptoe in with a
coffee for me and toss me the odd cookie to keep me going- what a star! When I finally stopped we did enjoy some time in the garden with a bottle of bubbly so he didn't feel totally abandoned. Oooh and I also discovered I have won a prize via a Facebook competition from Luv Crafts so that really brightened my week. I'll share my prize next week as it hasn't yet arrived.
I was very chuffed to have got pretty much all my samples made
in a day, even though it was intensive, because that meant that I was able to
hand deliver them on Sunday at the Hochanda Create It Event at Detling
Showground in Kent, where Samantha was holding a stall and doing a live show.
I picked my good friend and fellow crafter Erika up from
Basingstoke at 8.15am and we made the drive to Maidstone to meet up with my
sister Laura. It’s such a familiar route to me as I grew up there and both
Laura and my mum live a few minutes from the showground. I always like driving
back ‘home’.
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| Sisters- can you tell?! |
The day promised to be full of fun, crafty chat and laughter,
and of course shopping, and it didn’t disappoint. Our first stop was to visit the Samantha K
stand, and hand over my work, and say hello to the team. The ladies doing the make and take looked
like they were having a ball. My friend and team mate Denyse did a great job
organising it and the projects I saw were stunning. I have to say too, that the DT samples on
display were all so eye catching. They were commented on by so many visitors while
I was there, and I believe all weekend, and it gave me a real buzz seeing my
work up there being admired and talked about.
Like many crafters I often doubt my own abilities as there is so much
talent out there that I am in awe of, so it was such a huge compliment.
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| The make and take ladies getting busy |
With my bag relieved of samples, that meant I had plenty of
room for the important bit- shopping! I
bought some amazing goodies as you can see and I can’t wait to get the time to
play with them.
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| New toys!! |
All of the stands were
fabulous and inspiring, but I have to say I was blown away with Sandra Rushton's stand with her colouring art books. They were incredible and really appealed to
both Laura and I,and we had to indulge
in some. I have never seen samples like the ones on display on her walls. Dragons,
steampunk , gothic and floral- all so beautiful and to my personal taste. I’m
not convinced I can produce anything like them but I do know I will have fun
trying in my books and that’s what really counts.
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| The most gorgeous colouring books I now own |
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| Sandra's stunning art |
We only did one make and take, and that was trying our hand at block printing on fabric on the Colouricious stand. I’d never done this before and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was so therapeutic and simple to do yet so effective. The array of hand carved Indian printing blocks they had for sale were exquisite. We commented on how they could even sit on a mantle as stand alone pieces of art. In fact Erika bought an elephant to do just that. They really were beautiful.
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| My block printing |
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| Erika loved it too! |
I had another very important mission, and that was to meet up with my fellow crafty bloggers Angela and
Karen on the Polly Allsorts stand. As
with Sam’s stand, the make and take participants were all focusing hard and
having a great time when I was there. Their projects were so pretty and
magical. It was great to finally meet Angela too, having only chatted online
since I became a member of her design team.
I have known Karen personally for several years so it was lovely to catch
up with her properly too of course.
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| The whimsical world of Polly Allsorts |
After a full day at the event, we made a quick pit stop at
my mums house for cuppa and a slice of delicious home made carrot cake. That
alone was worth driving 100 miles for, not to mention busting the diet! Yummy and the perfect end to a perfect couple of days.
I hope you had a good weekend too, whatever you were up to.
See you next week
Lynda
x
It was such a wonderful day!!
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