Home again!

Well, I can't believe how long it has taken me to report back from my crafty holiday with my Craft Stamping Quartet companions, Jo, Judith and Lesley.

Apart from the day we all travelled and arrived we had the most amazing weather - in fact some days it was a tad too hot! I was the only one of us to travel on public transport. Despite all the other girls being really kind and bringing as much as they could for me to use to save me carrying too much, my bags were like lead weights thanks to me packing so much "essential" craft kit and cakes!!

We found some really nice accomodation which worked really well for us. Seeing all our craft kit together was completely unbelievable - there were piles and piles of boxes everywhere. In true dedicated crafters' style, we made a mess very quickly. You all know how much mess one crafter can make - just imagine this multiplied by four!!

I did try and tidy up my working space from time to time. At one point I am sure Jo thought I was trying to steal the whole table - sorry - I really didn't mean to, but I suppose I am used to having my whole shed to myself!! Making space to eat our meals was a continual challenge!!

We just had a perfect time. We showed each other techniques. Judith taught us the essential techniques of jewellery making - she was very patient as I was a bit of a sloppy pupil I think!!!

A lot of our time was spent making the circle journal pages for each other. We worked in pairs keeping the final version secret until the last evening when we handed them over. We all managed to make two each, but somehow we all managed not to make any for Lesley, so she had three IOUs. Sorry Lesley, but I am making quite good progress with yours now!

It was so interesting working alongside each other - seeing how we all work in such different ways. I think the results were amazing - I know this is in large part due to the care and attention everyone devoted to the pages we made for each other. They felt like a really special gift for fellow crafters who really understand the pleasure of what we all do.

These are the pages I made for Jo. I planned my designs before I went away to make sure I took all I needed with me. My starting point was knowing how much Jo likes kraft paper. The ideas blossomed from there.

These are the pages I made for Judith. I knew Judith liked the Basic Grey Wisteria range, so this background paper drove my colour palette. I had to include poppies as they are Judith's favourite flowers, so I stamped these on mulberry paper, decoupaged the layers and added black seed beads in the centres to reflect Judith's love of jewellery making.

We also fitted in a brilliant class with Linda Elbourne at LB Crafts - making a fabulous wall hanging. I haven't finished mine yet, but will post it as soon as I can. It was great and shopping at LB was a treat too, what an amazing place with a fabulous choice of goodies.

My efforts at teaching were to show the other girls how to do my leafy background techniques, using the plume poppy leaves I had bought from home. I blogged these a while ago here. The leaves were sadly a little floppy by the time we got round to it, but everyone got really good results in the end.

Some people got quite messy in the process - no names mentioned, but you know who you are!!

We kept ourselves fuelled with cakes, chocolate, a little wine, lovely home cooked food and lots of fresh fruit and vegetables of course!! We laughed lots, talked about life, the universe and everything - including crafting of course, had horrendously late nights and just had the best time ever. We popped out to the outside world now and again and spent time dodging the very large resident black great dane who was nearly as tall as me with his feet on the ground!

Sadly our few days together were over so quickly it was like the blink of an eye. Saturday morning when we all said goodbye was just so sad, we had shared so much. So thank you Jo, Judith and Lesley - how often can four women spend so much time in such close proximity and never have a cross word - you are great pals - I hope we can do it all again before too long.

Elaine xx