Spring crop

Hello

Here's a little catch-up for you on what I've been up to this weekend. I've been in Rochdale for a crafty time with some lovely, fun loving ladies. Carole Bryson Wood organised the weekend for us and along with Marlene and lots of other helpers and it all went very smoothly indeed and jam packed full of happy memories of very loud laughing mixed with random mannequins (it's too long a story to explain :-) ) and quiet creative times.

Rebecca on the left, Cherry being
naughty and 'Dolly Daydream'
on the right :-)

The weather was very cold but sunny, so that helped the mood along too I'm sure, as there were lovely big windows in the venue. We had loads of space with a fully equipped kitchen (from where Carole and the gang made us loads of food) and a well stocked craft room, so it was brilliant.








On the first day I made five cards instead of six (I'm too embarrassed to say why I only achieved 5) and a layout and some playing about.
Today I made most of a layout; an 8 x 8 scrap page for a challenge and a 12 x 12 'no photos allowed' challenge page. This isn't very productive for two days I know but I had a ball and played with some stamps and colouring too, so who cares?! 

This is the 8 x 8 page. We had to use the paper from a scraps box; we could use two embellishments; no stamps and we could create a title and use a mask; we were also allowed to use our own page base.

I used Catherine's sketch of the month to inspire me; which is just one example of one of my gorgeous friends helping me over the weekend.

The photo-less page was started by me wanting to use the negative of some die-cutting I'd been doing and then Rebecca took it from there to the fantastic place it ended in. I was talking to Kathie about what I could possibly do with them, when Rebecca overheard and came up with the fabbo idea of filling each star shape with places I'd been on holiday to and Kathie said 16 reasons why I think you're a star (aimed at my daughter). So then I thought of doing 16 places I love. The whole process of us making decisions together was great fun. 

Kathie made sure that my negatives weren't
'too' randomly placed

Fabbo Kathie having a fun time

I consider myself very lucky to know these ladies and having met even more caring, sharing ladies this weekend, my luck clearly hasn't changed. One lady for example gave up her raffle prize (a large album) for her friend, who'd said earlier that she really liked it.

Take care out there, let the good times roll and have a go at doing your own list of favourite places and note them in an album, so that you could share them with your family and friends and get them to do the same and learn more about each other.