A totally creative weekend

I spent the weekend in Derbyshire.  Not the whole weekend because I came home to sleep, but the greater part of Saturday and Sunday was spent in the Snelston Reading Rooms with other eager crafters and the amazing Anneliese.  We were on a technique workshop using Ranger products.  Anneliese is a Certified Ranger Educator. You can find out about her workshops here.

There were 2 concerns about the workshop.  One, would the wretched weather last week prevent us from getting there.  And although the temperature was -7.5 degrees C when I set out on Saturday morning the roads were clear and the only ice was to be found where I parked in Snelston.

Secondly I have done very many workshops with Anneliese and I was concerned that I might just be repeating the same things.  I previously blogged about making an altered book to house all the tags I've made at her classes.

But joy of joys there were very few overlaps.  Anneliese had divided up the days into 9 product sessions and I haven't done any technique classes with her on Distress Stains, Perfect Pearls, Perfect Pearls Mists, Colorwash  or the piece-de-resistance the cotton bag to keep all the tags in.

We started on Saturday with embossing techniques which I found harder than I thought.  After all I've done embossing before but most of these didn't really work and my inner perfectionist was already panicking.  Anneliese was pointing out that these were technique tags and so didn't need to be beautiful but actually I would have liked the technique to have been right!  The one in the middle is a particular disaster - I used the wrong stamp I think.

Then we moved on to Dabbers ~ acrylic paint.

 

The we used Perfect Pearls.  I've never been very good with Perfect Pearls and it showed, but I feel that I improved.

The next group of tags was back in my comfort zone with Distress Inks.

 

Sunday was a messy day starting with Alcohol Inks.

Then we moved on to Distress Stains.  I haven't liked this product much as I couldn't see much use for it other than covering a large area in one colour.  However Anneliese introduced us to lots of techniques and I might be converted.  Just as well really because I found that I already own 8 colours plus Picket Fence!!!

We moved on to Perfect Pearls Mists

And then to Colorwash ~ another product I'm not very fond of.  But guess what?  I do have 4 colours of this.

And lastly ~ drum roll please.  We transferred a print onto canvas using Gel Medium and also stamped on the cotton bag.

And I'm pleased to say that my inner perfectionist enjoyed the weekend and Sunday in particular, thankfully coming home with a totally finished project that I like!!

Do check out Anneliese's workshops ~ they are really well-taught and enjoyable.

Letter Love

I have started a new online class with Joanne Sharpe called Letter Love 101.

It called for the use of a composition notebook and I had just the one.  When I was last in Florida, Laleina (my daughter-in-law's niece) asked her Mum to buy me this:

And when I had coloured it in:

So it is just the right notebook for practising lettering in.

First of all I gathered together all the black pens that I have:

 

I've still had to order some more because I don't have any Copic pens.

Here are some of the exercises using the pens: