Finnibair Workshop

At the end of August I was lucky enough to be one of a group of people taking workshops with Anna Dabrowska aka Finnibair at Snazzy's in Swindon. The big bonus of the weekend was that I got to spend some precious time with my special crafty friend Lesley. It had been a year since we had been together, so we had loads of catching up to do.

This is a couple of pictures of my 12 x 12 layout made in the Tea for  Two workshop. This is based on scrapbook paper, but thanks to all the layers and embellishments it ended up quite dimensional and much more rigid that I expected. Being so large it was quite tricky to get a decent pic to be honest and I have now put it in a frame so I have a little reflection too.

I used a copy of a vintage photo of my Nanna, that I have always loved. The sepia picture fitted well with the warm tones of the backing papers, brass metal embellishments, gold and terracotta flowers and the tea colouring that was a major feature in the finishing process. I found a great 12 x 12 glass fronted deep frame in Wilkinsons that seemed made for my project.

The workshops were absolutely brilliant and Anna is such a great teacher. The workshops were fast and furious, but we all finished some quite complicated projects thanks to her guidance and encouragement. Everyone's projects reflected their own styles as well as Anna's ways of working. One of the key messages I took away from her teaching is not to overthink things. I always plan things to the nth degree, but I think I may have been slightly cured of the habit and I am starting to trust myself to just dive in a little more!

Since then we have been away for a holiday in this interesting conversion of a water tower in rural Sussex.

 

We didn't have brilliant weather with rain, by most afternoons, but we found some lovely places to visit each morning like Scotney Castle

 

Wakehurst Place which is an outpost of Kew Gardens and has some amazing trees

 

 

Nymans has charming gardens with wonderful plants and the main house ruined by fire was thought to be the inspiration for E.H. Shepherd's illlustrations of Toad Hall in Wind in the Willow, one of my favourite children's books.

 

 

 



 

 

Standen is a lovely Arts and Crafts house in wonderful grounds, and well worth a visit, even though the day we chose was not the best! 



There were some beautiful crisp early autumny mornings though which are so lovely this time of year.

 
We were also in the right area for visits to the Craft Barn and the Glitter Pot, so I took advantage of some great crafty shopping opportunities and on some of the wet afternoons I did a little crafting and made some collaged postcards of the places we had visited. I used watercolour card as the background, added pictures from the leaflets I had collected, together with leaves mod podged onto the layouts and a few nice images I found in a Waitrose newspaper!
 

 

We have been at home for the second week of our holiday so there has been plenty of opportunity to use some of the new crafty treats I purchased while we were away and from the Ally Pally show that I dashed up to the day after we got home.

 

If you made it to the end of this post, thanks for your indulgence of my holiday memories! Back with more crafty stuff very soon!

 

Elaine x