Darcy, Lin and Jo teaching at SummerFest {for Birds In The Barn}

Hi everyone, Darcy here. We are delighted to bring you details of a fantastic craft event taking place very soon. SummerFest is a four day event and is hosted by the lovely Janet from Birds In The Barn

Here is an introduction from Janet, to tell you all about this exciting event. 

"We listened to you, all our customers who wanted some day workshops with some of your special tutors and Summer Fest was borne. This will run on 10th,11th ,12th, 13th July 2014.

We have some of your favourite tutors, some who you may have seen onT.V. and at many of the craft shows around the country. All the workshops will run from 9.30am to 4.30pm with a lovely hot and cold buffet lunch, tea and coffee morning and afternoon included for the price of £85 for the day. So treat yourself to a great day and phone the shop on 01206 211099 to book .We will have a retail shop on site so you can top up your stash, with general supplies, favourites and new things too.

We are very honoured to have Darcy UK taking a workshop as she does not get down to the south very often and is mostly found demonstrating for PaperArtsy so check her out on her blog. Likewise with Lin Brown so it will be great to have them with us for our Summer Fest. Jo Firth-Young, a familiar face to our customers will also be teaching too, along with Julie Hickey, Clare Charvill and Hels Sheridan." 

So, as you can see, there are 3 PaperArtsy designers teaching at this event in Essex, a great opportunity for you! More info from Birds in the Barn follows below:

The Schedule:

• Thursday 10th July: Lin Brown who is a designer for PaperArtsy will be using a 8" x 8" canvas, PaperArtsy paints, metal, her own design die cuts, stamps and much more to create a stunning masterpiece for your wall (picture below) .
• Thursday 10th July: Darcy who is also a designer with PaperArtsy will be creating a small album called 'Dreamy Bird in a Doughnut Tree' with her range of stamps and Paper Artsy products and I know Darcy has some exciting ideas to make your book funky. (pictures below)
• Friday 11th July: Julie Hickey from Craftwork Cards will split her day into two projects,In the morning she will be sharing some of her ideas as you make cards and in the afternoon you will try out a 3D project using the new papers from Craftwork Cards.
• Friday 11th  July: Jo Firth-Young our third designer from Paper Artsy will be making a working MDF clock from Candy Box with her lovely floral stamps, paints and much more I am sure. (Picture below)
• Saturday 12th July: Clare Charvill will be showing you how to make a super little album with lots of pockets, tags, and hiding places (we have posted a sneak peek on Birds in the Barn blog) using the By The Sea 8'' x 8'' papers from Graphic 45.
• Sunday 13th July: Clare Charvill making a lovely handbag from Candy Box with a book inside she will be using the fantastic new papers Come Away with Me from Graphic 45.
• Sunday 13th July: Hels Sheridan will be using canvas to make a cover for your journal using stamps, paints, Distress inks, Grunge paste and much more . I am sure there will be a flower or two too.

We are thrilled to be hosting this event at 

The Marks Tey Hotel, near Colchester, Essex

There are still some spaces left, so please call the shop on 01206 211099 to book aplace. We are so excited to be organizing what promises to be a great event and we would love to have you join us. 

Janet.  Birds in The Barn

  

How exciting is that? So what can you expect from the PaperArtsy girls? Well here are some sneaks of our projects. 

Thursday 10th July: Lin Brown 
This is going to be a fun class using all my favourite things. Fresco Finish paint, my stencils, some of my stamps, die cuts, Treasure Gold and metal. I would be delighted if you could join me so that I can teach you some of my all time favourite techniques.

Thursday 10th July: Darcy 

Hi there, if you would like to join me we will create a small book containing spaces for 10 tags. The project is entitled 'Dreamy Bird and The Doughnut Tree' The surprise element is that there is a bit of 'real' tree involved. We will be using a combination of my stamps, Jo's stamps and Lin's stencils. 

Friday 11th  July: Jo Firth-Young
Hi everyone. I regularly teach at Birds in the Barn and its always a pleasure, and I am thrilled to be part of the SummerFest - its going to be a fantastic, creative 4 days.
The project I've designed is a large pocket watch using my stamps, Lin's and my stencils and the fabulous Fresco Finish paints.
I hope you can join me for the class - its going to be a fun inky painty day!!

We would love to see some of our fabulous #patwits and PaperArtsy customers at the event, book now to secure your place. Call Janet on 01206 211099 

Creative Crafts show {Sandown exhibition Centre} Surrey

Just a quick reminder that the Sandown Show kicks off tomorrow for 3 days. We have just got home from setting up and the show looks to have a good mix of Stitch, Papercrafts and Fabric. I can't wait to have a poke about, there are some lovely stand near us.

We have an extra big booth (P29), and we are teaching mini classes all day, each day on the stand. 30 mins to 1 hour duration, different prices according to length of class and supplies used. You can see the classes here and you can book at the show on our stand each morning, or during the day if you prefer.

So we have the stand ready and waiting, just a few more finishing touches to add in the morning. Hope to see you there

Leandra

 

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Crafty weekend in {Ireland}

I'm not the best when an early start is required, but last Friday was a fun early start. Off for a few days with Lin Brown to take a class with Anna Dabrowska in cork, Ireland. Mark stumbled across Anna's site when we were considering exhibiting at Scraptastic a few months back, and then, a few weeks later, Lin heard about Anna teaching in Ireland, and asked me if I wanted to go. Without thinking I said yes and we booked.

So glad we did. Not only did we get to hop on a few buses and see a bit of the countryside, but we also stayed in a great, nicely priced hotel, and of course did some shopping, and topped it all off with 2 awesome classes with Anna.

Breakfast table

I don't really want to sound like a hotel advert, but I seem to be getting fussy when it comes to hotels, and this one ticked all the boxes and more.

Crazy toilet door...same inside and out!

Crazy toilet decor

Modern, kind of quirky with some fun decor ideas (yes the loos were weird, but fabulous compared to the portaloos as V Festival last weekend!) Comfortable, great, reasonably priced food. So, I can recommend the Cork international airport hotel which is directly across from the airport, and only a 5 min walk across the car park to get to it. There is a shuttle bus service too if your bags are too many to carry.

All checked in and we headed off to Cork to suss out the town centre. Not only did we find a super coffee shop with a huge selection of tea, hot chocolate and coffee. As it was a bit wet and cold out, we opted for the hot choc option, and it was amazing!

Another lovely sight was this display of bottles collaboratively made, painted and displayed, these guys gave me their flyer, but i must have left it in the hotel. They said there was a video on YouTube showing how to make them. It was fantastic to see!

Our taxi driver suggested we take a look at the undercover food market, called the English Market. The fish displays were stunning, and I felt a bit sorry for leaving Mark at home who has been trying to get beautiful fresh fish to smoke for a few weeks, he would have been sorted here. Several amazing fishmongers to choose from. When we were in Weymouth last week, he planned to get some on the last morning to bring back to smoke, but we were told by local fishermen they had been prevented for going out to fish during the Olympics for security reasons, and so all the fish for weymouth at that time was coming in from London!

The next day we took the bus to Kinsale, and it was a beautiful coastal spot. Again, slightly dodgy weather, but it did improve as the day wore on, and the streets were so colourful and fun to explore, plus lots of fab art galleries, so we were happy bunnies.

We had amazing, and not expensive food the whole trip, nothing fancy schmancy, but fresh, well presented and very tasty! Here again in Kinsale we found a tea shop with amazing cake and huge cups of tea.

I think we will both be making trips back with family in the future!

So to the class itself. Lin and I were first to arrive and we immediately were rewarded with a goodie bag for being early! A great start.

Anna launched into class and kept the pace galloping along at breakneck speed, demoing each step and giving us what seemed like half the necessary time to get it all done, somehow, we managed to almost complete each stage by the next demo, and before we knew it the class was over. Here are a couple of the pieces she had on display.

I love how she can do OTT crazy loaded with bellies and colour, or minimalist and a splash of colour. It really is my cup of tea and I took to the process like a duck to water. I was in heaven!

Her style is very unique, but uses all the products you probably have in your stash. In effect she builds a grungy base from 12x12, adds strips of card for texture, then photos, washi tape, and finally flowers or other embellishments. We learned how to develop the structure of the peice with colour, positioning and stamped, embossed images as a resist, and how to place bellies and and add colour to many other elements.

This was my project from the first class, a picture of Miss 18 doing one of her trout pouts -I find this kind of pic on my iPad regularly. Kids eh.

This class was a bit 'flat' in the embellishment department compared to the next one which is mega lumpy.

It was a great intro to colour, sprays and structure of a layout. Not being a scrap booker, I did find the hardest bit was getting the photo in the right place onto the other layers. I never work with photos, but I get why people do!

This second class I used a picture of Ella also practising the Essex faved-by-teens trout pout. Again, found it on the iPad. Do they think I won't check my photo file?

The close ups show you the height involved here. It really was interesting getting everything to stay stuck and of course lots of the elements wer soggy from the spray too.

And here you can see a bit better the detail in some of the edges- punched layered and distressed.

So I'm itching to have a go at more of this concept, I have loads and loads of bellies that will work nicely.

If you get a chance to go to one of Anna's classes you must. If not in Ireland again next weekend, then try scraptastic in Belgium this October or check out her upcoming schedule!

 

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ArtsyCrafts {June 2012}

So much has happened already here this year with shows, trade shows, and now it's time to look forward to ArtsyCrafts already! Ohhh how exciting

We have got 2 classes done and dusted, the 3rd is still a work in progress...but the description gives you a pretty clear idea about where it is heading. Lin and I are both so excited about all of these classes.

They are 3 entirely different projects, and to suit all budgets and interests, you can book, 1, 2 or all 3 days. If it were me I would want to do them all, but then i always say that! That's not very helpful is it!

So before you book anything make sure you read all the info here about cancellation policies, accommodation, facilities, what to bring, class times, venue etc etc

Then if you click here, you can see each of the 3 classes and you can add them to your 'shopping basket' to book for them. If you click on the picture then you will see the class description. Here is a summary of each class: 

FRIDAY: A fabric meandering book, although you could easily do this as a wall hanging if you prefer. Layers of fabric, lace, ribbon, and some wicked image transfer ideas, how about some soldered holes into gauze, and we have found all sorts of cool stuff to work with. We adored creating this class, quite a new medium for us but so easy to adapt to, and a clean tidy class! You don't need to be a machine sewer by the way!!! In fact it's an advantage NOT to be good on the machine! 

SATURDAY: A double hinged niche for the altered, painty people who like to fiddle and faff and arrange - this class has a sewing theme with lots of fun elements that will surprise you along the way. We have some gorgeous fun elements to put into these niches, new PaperArtsy products, and its very painty, but there will be the opportunity to work with fabric and metal - don't panic... nothing too difficult! We also have metal, clay, threads, mica sheets, metal charms and more in this class!!! 

SUNDAY: The rusty relic. You will have to book this class based on the description for now, but pictures will be available at the start of April. Think stamps and images transferred onto clay, gilding flakes, rust, distressed metal, mica sheets, wire, mesh and much much more! I am really looking forward to this. We have so many great ideas for this class, and I think its going to emerge into a little beauty of a relic!

I know people are always amazed at how we provide everything for you to use, and healthy quantities of everything too! We do it this way so you don't have to wait to use supplies, you can just get on with it. It also means for those flying in from overseas that they don't have to bring a load of stuff with them. When I teach elsewhere, people are often given a massive supply list of things to bring to class, and the teachers generally provide the bare minimum. We generally want you to bring as little as possible so you can kick back and enjoy.

As we have not got the massive expense of international guest teachers this time round, we have been able to drop the class fee considerably. We try to organise the event so that the fee covers room hire, your meals, tea break and snacks, class kits/supplies, and that is about it. In other words, what you pay to us is what we pay out in expenses to run the event. So I think you will be happy to know the classes are £100 ea (incl VAT) for Friday and Saturday. Sunday, which finishes at 6pm instead of 9.00pm is £75 (incl VAT)

Booking opens Monday evening, March 12th. Just go here, and add the class(es) you wish to book for to your shopping basket. You will get paperwork confirmation sent out by return.


But before you pay, just one small request....

Because we have a tight operational budget, please can we ask when you pay, don't use paypal. The fees are so high compared to worldpay or secureform, which are both alternative and equally safe ways to communicate your credit card details to us. For example, we can pay up to 8% of the transaction value or more to paypal (£22 per person if they book all 3 classes), and only 1.7% (£4.67) with worldpay, or even better, if you use a debit card, it might be as little as 30 pence fee per transaction. With paypal it's frustrating for us to pay £20 or more in fees per person, plus don't forget another 20% goes to the government for vat (£75 if you booked all 3 classes). So if we can remove paypal out of the equation, it means we don't have to find that 'lost' money from other aspects of the budget (class supplies!) I normally don't explain this to you guys, but if you understand why we ask you not to use paypal, we hope you will be more than happy to use worldpay or secureform instead. Ultimately it means we have more funds to spend on YOU for use in class kits or class supplies. 

As a long time merchant with paypal we do have some of the better rates with them, but this can change from month to month depending on the volume of funds going through our paypal account. If you are not a merchant with paypal yourself, you are probably blissfully unaware of the cost of receiving funds. We only offer it because it is an easy way for international customers to pay for their orders.  But obviously we would rather all our regular customers used one of the other methods we offer instead.


Thanks we do appreciate your understanding with this.


So roll on June, and we hope to see you all there with buttons, lace and all your rusty bits! 

If you can't make it to Warrington, then you are going to have to wait a whole year for ArtsyCrafts 2013, which will probably be in Newport Pagnell, unless general feedback demands it stays at Warrington.


Have a great week


Leandra

ArtsyCrafts Oct 2011 {Weekend 2}

Hello bloggers

As ever, another weekend hanging out with wonderfully talented ladies was huge fun for Lin and I last weekend. Teaching classes really is the most enjoyable part of our work, and when I get to do a whole weekend of it with Lin, after months and months of preparation, it's the rewarding culmination of a meticulously planned event. 

Kudos to DeVere Harben House at Newport Pagnell. Both the accomodation and conference suites have all been thoroughly redecorated, and the restaurant and bar food (now the same menu for the same price) was far superior to anything we have experienced in the past. The staff who work there know us well now, and are very willing to help however they can. A big thankyou and well done to them!

For all ArtsyCrafts events, the biggest challenge for Lin and I is to create projects for each event that are quite different from previous ones, and incorporate new techniques and idea with existing and new to market products. Our techniques tend to have a metal and stamping focus, but we always try to create an item that is completely different to what has gone before.

On this occasion, we designed from scratch a wooden bird house with a cool new tin foil technique, as well as other more traditional metal ideas with Ten Seconds Studio adhesive metal, and Ten Seconds Studio Metal rolls, PaperArtsy Fresco Chalk Acrylic Paints and new Hot Pick Stamps. Lin's husband Mark is fairly handy with design programmes and routers, so he made the plans for our birdhouse with its interlocking segments, told the computer to cut one out of mdf and voila. Perfect birdhouse glued together easily and instantly.

If only life were that simple! When the 50 ordered from a man who cuts birdhouses (and other wooden objects) for a living from wood by computer was sent the plans, his computer somehow cut all the plans slightly to one side of the 'line' and nothing fitted together. This was 3 days before the Warrington event. Lucky for us we knew it could be done as Mark had done it already, and realising their error they told the computer to sort itself out, and eventually we got the items in the nick of time. Yay to the birdhouse man for resolving this for us so promptly!

Anyhow, even though we put many more hours preparation into this event than we ever have previously, we were still kitting up last minute due to these unpredictable hold ups. Thanks Karen, You are an ArtsyCrafts kitting wonder-woman star supremo!!!

But despite a behind the scenes panic, every one enjoyed crackling with the crackle glaze, painting with Fresco finish paints, and embossing and then distressing metal to decorate the main body of this rather large finished item. {Sorry international ladies for making your trips home a challenge - but you didn't look too silly wearing 8 layers of clothing on the way home....honest} ....

(PaperArtsy) Mark put together a video of how the birdhouse was constructed and the different colour combos people came up with when custom mixing the Fresco paints. This is now one of my favourite AC projects {i can hear you saying she always say that....soz, but tis true} And I am extremely keen to make another with Essex Lynne and Jo Firth-Young and decorate it beyond what we had time to do in class. That will be a great day! And yes it will be a shade of London Night I think...or maybe one of the new 27 colours of Fresco's due to arrive here in the next 2 weeks.......that decision won't be easy will it!!

 On Day 2 we made a great industrial styled item based on arranging left over configuration boxes randomly into a new assortment. We then bespoke mixed PaperArtsy Fresco Chalk Finish Acrylic Paints into a watery spray (50:50 consistency) in mini misters, and sprayed the nooks and crannies with lots of drippy bits. This is a great way to paint unusual textures of shapes, and of course our opaque paint gives great instant coverage even when watered down. 

We started with a cream colour to hide the weird colour of the config boxes, and then came over the top with a contrasting colour of choice, and hen more cream splats on top. Very fast, and quite entertaining when you got one of those hose-pipe mini misters that can shoot paint 1 metre towards your neighbour! {yes we saw that a few times didn't we!!}

The afternoon was spent making metal floors and roofs (rooves?) for each section, and decorating with many great ideas along the way. We sourced cool original vintage tape measures (metal, wood and cloth), old fob watches and watch faces, and the most teeny tiny gorgeous glass bottles too, as well as incorporating many of Tim Holtz' ideology goodies along the way.....any spaces were filled with images stamped onto PaperArtsy metal card, which has a special coating to accept stazOn ink beautifully, so stamping images onto this metal is easy peasey.

 

Here are a few close ups

And even though the World Cup Rugby Final was screening Sunday morning (with the New Zealand All Blacks playing a very close game against France - and JUST winning by the narrowest of margins....) Mark still managed to pull together another video of our Day 2 class from Newport Pagnell to give you a far better taste of the project than pictures ever could.

If you came to any of our ArtsyCrafts days in the last 2 weekends, please leave a comment here on the blog with a link to your blog post or you could leave a comment of how your day went on the paperArtsy YouTube page.

So what plans have we for 2012 ?

Well if you read Lin's blog post this week you will be aware she is retiring at Christmas. She has been at the helm of LB Crafts for 18 years, and is probably the longest established stamp-specific craft shop in the UK. Having done a way-more-than-fantastic job of this over the years, I have seen first hand how dedicated she is to her lovely staff, enthusiastic customers and regular suppliers, but of course, behind the scenes she also has a fabulous family with quite a number of gorgeous grandchildren, and naturally she would like to be available to do the things that normal nanas and grans do. Good for her! That's the right decision! She will still be as creative as ever, and she will still blog and tweet, and of course, she will still teach ArtsyCrafts with me for you (YAY!)

Here at PaperArtsy World HQ {imagine the HQ glass towers...LOL}, we also have been trying to juggle huge growth in our business over the last 2 years, so I am rather relieved that Lin's retirement gives us the opportunity to cut back ArtsyCrafts to just 1 event per year. We liked the way the Warrington 3 day event worked this year, so we will again repeat the booking system of allowing you to book 1,2, or 3 days as per your preference. The dates for 2012 will been June 8,9,10 at the DeVere Daresbury Park. Booking will open in the first quarter of 2012. But for now, you can put those dates in your diary! And book cheap your train or airfares well in advance!

So that's the latest Update from us. Have a great week, and talk again soon. I need to go clean up the shed before Jo turns up this arvo and sees all those boxes lying about!!!

Leandra

ArtsyCrafts in Spring is only 6 weeks away !!!

Lin and I spent most of last week together planning the 2 Spring ArtsyCrafts weekend events which are only just around the corner you know! Usually we would have this info ready a lot earlier in the year, but we have both been a tad busy to say the least!

So the good news is this time we have delightful snippetty pics of the actual projects for you to  decipher and interpret. The theme is Fresco Lifestyle, and that is  big clue that we could possibly be using our new Fresco Chalk Acrylic paint line........well..... quite a bit!

We are thrilled with this line of paints, they are totally unique, unlike any other paint out there. A chalk finish means they are perfect to stamp on with all inks because they are extremely matte. They do not need a primer or undercoat on any surface (including usually hard to paint surfaces like glass, ceramic, metal and wood etc), and they are good for indoor and outdoor use. So Lin and I really can't wait to show you some of the cool stuff we have been up to with them for Spring AC!

To find out all you need to about the events, go to the homepage of our retail website here and in the 'events' section down the Left hand side of the page, you will find links to the Newport Pagnell (May 28/29, 2011) booking form, and also to the Warrnington (June 18/19, 2011) Booking Form.

The DeVere harben House Venue at Newport Pagnell is close to Luton International Airport, and the DeVere Daresbury Park, near Warrington is the same distance from either Manchester airport,  or John Lennon Airport in Liverpool. So both have access for international crafters, and of course both are not far from major motorways either.

So I guess you would love to see some sneaky peekys of the projects.

Working with texture is going to be quite a big theme this Spring. Colour will be more subdued than we have done in the past, but of course there is always the opportunity to boost it up if you prefer. It's going to look stunning either way!

You will also figure out how easy it is to paint glass!

And we will even be working with a completely new product which can be great experimental fun  along the way....we think its going to be an awesome result.

So we are really looking forward to seeing you at one of the 2 venues, for yet another fabulous round of ArtsyCrafts creativity, and of course it will be a great time to spend with your old and new ArtsyCrafty friends.

This year we are also including in the price an evening meal on the Saturday night (in addition to lunches both days) so you can relax and enjoy getting to know each other over a bite to eat.

Remember if you are staying in the venue, you will need to book your accommodation direct with them. Details are on the forms.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Leandra