Twitcher alert!

"In a change to the published programme..." we will be doing Pan Pastels, Distress Inks and Gelatos this month and not silk painting and mini canvases as per the original list. (that will now be next month)

Karen will be demoing her little birdie cards using die cuts and either Pan Pastels or distress inks to colour them in to create the species of your choice. Here's a test for the twitchers among you - name these birds...

I will be doing a demo with Gelato crayons - looking at several different techniques using embossing folders, die cuts, stamps etc...

But that's not all for this blog post as you may have noticed I missed one. So here are the Challenge Cards from last time - Emboss It challenge.

A

B

C

And of course your brayered cards:

And your Brusho cards:

And finally some pictures from Village Day where we managed to keep the rain away again!!

April and the year ahead

The year is flying by - April already! This month we are doing an embossing masterclass. Michelle and I will start with the basics of stamping and embossing for those who haven't done it before or who haven't done it for a while. We will explore different inks, embossing powders and look at a range of techniques that can be developed from basic embossing.

Linda A will be doing a demo, based on a workshop she attended, featuring double embossing, i.e. using Cuttlebug embossing folders combined with embossing powders. See below for some of her ideas.

And the plan for the rest of the year, based on requests and pins to Pinterest, looks like this:

April 27th - Embossing Masterclass
May 25th - Brusho/Distress Ink Resist
June 29th - Collage Mini Canvas/Silk Paint
July 27th - Melt pot/Wood burning
August 31st - Pan Pastels/Gelatos
September 28th - Christmas decs (fimo/clay)
October 26th - Christmas bling
November 16th (Scout Hut?) - Christmas gift wrap/tags
November 30th - Final workshop - party?

This schedule is not set in stone so if there are any other techniques anyone would desperately like to do, or if you would like to volunteer to demo for any of the above then please let us know!!

Don't forget your entries for the "Wear It" challenge this month.

Ink and Paper Collages

It's the end of the month already and the next workshop is fast approaching. As it is half term please let us know if you are not able to attend this month as we know a few of you may be away (have to put my hand up here too!) Michelle and Kay will be demoing two different types of collage this month.

Michelle will be showing you how to do a collage inking technique to create a background, known as "bokeh". Originally a photography term, Wikipedia defines "bokeh" as follows:

1. In photography, bokeh (Originally /ˈboʊkɛ/, /ˈboʊkeɪ/ BOH-kay — also sometimes pronounced as /ˈboʊkə/ BOH-kə, Japanese: [boke]) is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image produced by a lens. Bokeh has been defined as "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light".

Kay will be showing you how to create paper collage designs using cut outs or torn paper from old magazines. (Be careful how you position your punches when cutting out from magazines though ;-) !!)

Don't forget that your 3D celebration card challenge entries are due in this month too. 

With regard to the Summer competition that we normally run and have judged at Village Day - don't panic! You haven't missed anything and you don't need to prepare this year. We have decided that we are going to do something a little different! Inspired by our "Great British Make-off Awards" we have decided to do our own version of a "Technical Challenge". So you will receive your instructions (demo) and your competition entry will be made and judged during our June workshop so we can look at the whole process and see how you interpret the techniques. We also want to encourage everyone to participate. The winner will still win back their membership and the runners up will win crafty prizes. More details will be revealed soon...

February fever!

Obviously lots of birthdays in February as the February circles were in demand - for Valentine's Day too of course! Good to see everyone again after the Christmas break and you certainly haven't lost your crafting mojo!

And you were busy making your calendars, ready for the year ahead too.

Distress Inks Mastered!

Well done to all our new recruits on Wednesday night. You did a great job on your first Distress Ink cards. And here are the photos to prove it! 

Thank you to Kay for her beginner's demo - exploring stamping, distressing edges and the basics of matting and layering.

Michelle demonstrated a double resist technique, first stamping and embossing plain card. Then adding colour distress ink. Then stamping and embossing again, before finally adding a dark colour distress ink. Very effective results! Click here for a tutorial.

And finally the distress inks and water demo. We looked at three techniques with water :

• stamping an image with distress inks and either spritzing or blending the colour with a wet paintbrush

• inking up an acrylic block then spritzing the block with water and stamping

• inking up card with distress inks then spritzing a stamp with water and stamping to create a watermark image (didn't get any piccies!)

 Click here for 'How to guide' for each water technique.