Last workshop of the year

Well we have celebrated our 5th birthday and now it's time for the final workshop of 2011 - where does the time go?! Our last workshop is always a busy one so here goes with a few reminders.

*Award time. Have you been lucky enough to win one this year?

*Christmas competition cards have been judged and winners will be announced tomorrow.

*Charity raffle so please remember to bring your prizes and money to buy tickets.

*Mood board ideas - looking ahead to next year please bring in projects, magazine articles, pictures or card samples so we can start to plan for next year.

*And somewhere in amongst all this we will find time to make some quick Christmas gifts including mini maze books, shopping list memo pads and gift boxes!

I'm exhausted just writing about it all!

Oh and there is one more thing - anyone recognise the party animal below?!! Michelle had a great 40th party at the weekend. She looks happy doesn't she?!! Thought you would like to see a picture of her cake too as it was decorated on a card making theme - amazing!

Her birthday is on Thursday so might have to squeeze in a quick round of "Happy Birthday" on Wednesday too!

See you tomorrow.

Quick, it's nearly Christmas!

Well 5 and a half weeks till Christmas now and only 4 and a half till the last second class posting day in the UK! (See below for dates from the PO web site)

Wed 14th December Standard Parcels

Sat 17th December Second Class and Recorded Signed For™

Tue 20th December First Class and Recorded Signed For™

Mon 5th December South & Central America, Caribbean, Africa, Middle East, Asia, Far East (including Japan), Australia and New Zealand

Fri 9th December Eastern Europe, USA and Canada

Mon 12th December Western Europe

So time for some last minute quick and easy Christmas cards. We will be making use of our Christmas papers, peel offs, nestabilities, embossed vellum and reusing old Christmas cards amongst other techniques. So take the time to catch up on a few last minute cards before you have to sit down and write them all!

Don't forget to bring your competition entries too. Remember your card should fit through the Post Office standard letter slot to qualify. (Am making good use of the PO web site today - see below!)

Length: 240mm max

Width: 165mm max

Thickness: 5mm max

We also need to finalise numbers for the Christmas meal on Wednesday 7th December 8pm at the Woodman. We need a £5 deposit and your meal choices by tomorrow please. (See link on previous post below for the menu at the Woodman.)

ACMC turns 5 tomorrow too - yes 5 years since our very first workshop! We'll be having some festive mince pies to celebrate!

One last thing - we will be having our usual Charity raffle at the last November workshop (30th) so please start thinking about which charity you would like us to support and also start looking out prizes to dan ate. You can either bring them on the night or tomorrow if you have them handy.

Sorry - always a lot to think about at this time of year. See you tomorrow.

Christmas - important dates

Just a reminder, and also for those of you that didn't make it to last month's card club, the Club Christmas meal is on Wednesday 7th December 8pm at the Woodman. We will need a £5 deposit and your meal choices by the next workshop Wed 16th Nov. Click below to go to the Woodman Christmas menus - make sure you click on Festive Menu and make your choices.

Woodman - Festive Menu

Card competition entries also need to be in by Wed 16th. The theme is "Christmas Music" and your finished card must also meet Royal Mail requirements and fit through the Post Office slot - so the card could in theory be posted with a first class stamp only on it.

Details of the next workshop in a post to follow. We'll still be working on those Christmas cards though!

Apologies - but more technical difficulties...

...sorry again everyone but our old computer is now no more, this time thanks to a nasty virus. We have now switched allegiances to Apple, so am still trying to find my way around!! Will try to put some photos on this post, but can't promise anything!

So what news? Well the origami crane has been haunting me since the last workshop - it seems to have been popping up everywhere since then! Still we did get there in the end! As promised, here are the links to two of the useful origami sites where you can print off instructions and watch video demonstrations:

Origami Fun for the butterfly and the crane and many more.

Card inspirations for the kimono.

Because of our current computer situation I can't link to all of my nodding head card templates, but here is a link to the pig template and other useful templates:

Card Making Paradise - variety of templates

Tomorrow night we are working on a music theme and yes there will be a few Christmas Carols being hummed throughout the night I shouldn't wonder, although it doesn't have to be exclusively Christmas if you really can't face it yet. Michelle will be doing collage effect musical backgrounds using the Partridge in a Pear Tree stamp set from Creative Expressions, amongst others. My cards will be on a CD theme - using CDs as templates for making circular easel cards or creating CD card wallets, so you can pop in a CD gift or use as a money/voucher wallet if you prefer.

See below - fingers crossed!!

Hooray! It worked. Just to remind you also that you will need to bring your diaries so we can pencil in the Christmas meal date and let you know of the Christmas card competition rules and closing date for entries.

Look forward to seeing you there.

Back up and running finally!

Well our cable is fixed again now so all should be back to normal on the blog front - ie updating it last minute just before a workshop!!

Our theme for Wednesday is Oriental cards. (after that we will begin the countdown to Christmas so be warned! Although I bet some of you have started on Christmas already.) Techniques on offer this month include origami and paper piecing, brayering and monochrome stamped cards.

See you on Wednesday.

Technology troubles!

Just a quick update while I am able to access the blog! We are still having a few technical difficulties at home so I have limited internet access at the moment. May not be able to add any of my photos till it is fixed. But watch this space...I may work out a way!! Or we might get it fixed!

The next Ashtead workshop is on a sports/male theme. Kay will be demoing 'steampunk' techniques and I do have some photos of these that Kay emailed to me - see below.



We also have some decoupage sports sheets, cigarette style sports cards and lots of rubber stamps for you to play with. A good chance to get more ideas for those always tricky male cards!!

And remember the challenge this month is to make a sports/olympic themed card.

Cute and cuddly, animals and nature...

...our theme for this month. Claire will be doing cute animal-shaped cards with moving arms and wobbly heads, including a Churchill card (Oh yes, yes, yes!).

Kay will be doing nature cards, with a bit of cuddly going on, in terms of using texture with felt and tyvek die cut shapes.


And Michelle will be stamping cute animal images or using peel-offs to create a scene (just like her to create a scene!!) on a 3D step card.

And don't forget we will be announcing the results of our card competition this month and returning any unsold cards, along with any earnings from Village Day.

Ashtead Village Day 2011

Well we were very lucky with the weather again on Saturday, considering it rained heavily all day Friday and then again on Saturday evening, just after we had packed our stall away! Linda please make sure you always bring your mac to Village Day as it seemed to work wonders in keeping the rain off! We were very busy with card sales this year (up 20% on last year) and lots of other hand made crafty items sold too - notebooks, mirrors, jewellery etc. Thank you to Kay, Linda A (and her magic mac!), Linda B, Jan, Karen, Marilyn and Pat for all your hard work on the stall on the day - we thought it looked great!

We also met lots of new people interested in joining us. So if you are reading our blog for the first time, then a very warm welcome to you and we look forward to seeing you at one of our workshops - check out the side bar for details of dates. You can also contact us by sending us an email here.

As you can see we did also manage to get this year's celebrity guest, Christopher Biggins, to judge our Membership Pack Card Competition. But whose was the winning card? All will be revealed at the next workshop on Wednesday June 29th!!

Friendly Plastic and more.

Another inspirational demo, from Kay this time, and another technique we might need to have another go at later in the year! If you can't wait that long you might like to have a look at this Friendly Plastic blog for more ideas.

By Gabby

By Kay P

By Monica

We were also impressed by your patchwork number techniques. A great way of using up paper scraps and at the same time honing skills in colour, tone and pattern matching.

By Jenny

Hope to see lots of you at Village Day on 11th June - less than two weeks away now!!

Letters, Numbers, Colours and Patterns...

...the theme for this month. So that covers quite a lot really!! The Cricut and Cuttlebug machines will be available to cut out letters and messages. We will be making use of our alphabet stamps and peel offs and we will be decorating die cut letters and numbers, either by using a patchwork of papers or stamping and embossing.

Paper patchwork

Kay will also be on hand to demonstrate how to create colourful, patterned embellishments using friendly plastic. So don't miss out!!

Friendly Plastic

And don't forget that if you want to send your cards for sale on our stall at Village Day, we will be collecting them in this week. (If you can help on the stall too then we would be very grateful.) Your Membership Pack Competition Cards are due in at Wednesday's workshop too - looking forward to seeing your creations!

Wax and shaving foam...

...might sound like a trip to the beauty salon, but no, that was our workshop on Wednesday!! Here are some of the cards that were created with the encaustic art and shaving foam marbling techniques. A big thank you to Graeme and Josie for their demonstration on the encaustic art. Cards below are by Gill C, Monica and Kay B.

The cards below all have backgrounds created using the shaving foam marbling technique, then images have been stamped on top. Cards below by Mandy, Marie and Brenda.

And well done to those people who completed the 'Red, White and Blue' card challenge this month (sorry Brenda missed yours for the photo). Hope you all enjoyed your Royal Wedding celebrations yesterday.

This month's challenge is to get busy with your competition cards ready to hand in next month for judging at Village Day.

Have fun and enjoy the rest of the long weekend!

Encaustic Art

A busy week this week - Michelle still busy counting everyone (census), kids (and me!) back to school tomorrow, Card Club workshop on Wednesday, then off again for the Royal Wedding and associated celebrations on Friday - hope you have all been making your red, white and blue themed cards for the challenge we set at the last workshop.


At this month's workshop we will be brushing up on our ironing skills! Graeme from the Tadworth club will be leading the encaustic art taster workshop. As you can see from his sample cards above he is very artistic and will be demonstrating some of the basics using special encaustic art irons and tools. I know lots of you have expressed an interest in this technique so it will be good to give it a go - and much fun than real ironing!!

In keeping with Graeme's cards above, our theme for this month is Nature/Underwater and we will also be demonstrating another technique for creating interesting background designs using shaving foam and inks - great for underwater scenes.

More memberships are due this month and that means another batch of membership packs will be handed out. So time to rummage through your packs and begin to design your competition cards. This year we would like you to use at least five items from your membership pack in your card design. It can be any size, shape or design and can be for any occasion, but must include the all important five items - you can list the items used on a separate slip of paper if it is not obvious. As with previous competitions we will arrange for the cards to be judged at Village Day and the winning member wins back their membership money. Card entries will need to be given to us at the May workshop (or before if completed).

We do have a confirmed stall at Village Day again this year - Saturday 11th June. So once again we will be asking for a merry band of volunteers to help set up and man the stall - let us know asap if you can help out. Also please think about sending some of your cards and/or handcrafted items for sale. If you want to know more about how we organise this then again please ask us at the next workshop. It helps us to organise the stall if you can make sure your cards are given to us before Village Day, in cellophane bags with envelopes, sorted into event categories and labelled with your membership number.

And that's all for now. Till Wednesday...see you then.

Dress Code

Check out some of our card creations from our March workshop.

Using punches/die cuts:

Brenda

Fantasy film and fibre: Linda W

Gabby

Joanne

Nestabilities dresses:

Kay P

Monica

Folded dress:

Karen

For Karen's templates click on the links below:

Dress Shaped Card

Folded dress 1

Folded dress 2

For the origami folded shirt click below. This is not exactly the same as the one I had, but very similar.

Origami shirt folding - will need to scale down if using florist ribbon.

Make a fashion statement...

Wednesday's theme is "Fashion and clothing". We have three demos this month, with Karen W. being our guest demonstrator. She will be showing you how to fold dresses out of patterned papers - at least two different styles, one starting with a Nestabilities cut out circle and the other more of an origami type fold. I will be making dress embellishments (and shirts if anyone needs a man's card) using stencils and die cuts as a starting point and adding ribbon, braid, fabric, felt, beads, wire, sequins etc. and Michelle will be stamping on to Fantasy Film and Fibre to create her fashion embellishments.


So come and try your hand at a bit of miniature dress design - you never know Kate may still be on the lookout for that perfect Wedding Dress!!

See you tomorrow.

Distressed and shimmering!

Just a few of the masterpieces created last Wednesday at Card Club following Michelle's 'distressing' demo! (That's distressing as in Distress inks in case you were wondering!) It's great to see the different designs produced from one demo - just shows what a creative bunch you are! The designs above were created by Marie, Jenny and Linda W. And here is a Cosmic shimmer painted design by Gill C. Tones in nicely with the blog background!

Our themed workshops seem to have got off to a good start. Our plan for the rest of the year, based on your questionnaires, is as follows: (may be subject to change, but we will let you know as far in advance as possible)

March - Clothing/Fashion
April - Nature/Underwater
May - Numbers, Colours and Patterns
June - Animals/Cute cards
July - Weather/Seasons
August - Sports
September - Oriental
October - Music
November (1) - Vintage/History
November (2) - Crafty Christmas projects

Please let us know if you have any specific ideas or resources that you are willing to share at any of these workshops. As far as extra workshops go, we are working on this at the moment. Michelle spoke to Barbara Gray at Farnborough, so thank you to Linda W for putting us on to her. Watch this space...

Don't forget Kay's 'Fabric Figurines' workshop in Ewell too.


Venue: Glyn Hall, Ewell Village
Usually once a month an a Saturday between 9am and 1pm
Cost:£25
Bring: White t-shirt, pair of scissors, apron

E-mail Kay for more details.

And that's all for now...so ta-ra till the next post!

February Flower Fairies

Well Valentine's Day has come and gone - I'm sure all your cards were appreciated by their recipients. Hopefully I won't ruin anyone's secret admirer status by publishing photos of the cards below!!

Michelle's demo card

Musical Mandy!

Claire W's Heart fold card

Linda B's Ruby Wedding Anniversary card

February's workshop theme is "Flowers and Fairies" - two popular theme categories so we decided to combine them to welcome in the Spring (we hope!) Michelle's demo will be stamping silhouette images and building up a scene on to colourful backgrounds. I am also doing stamping, but with paintable images, and I will be demonstrating how to mask your stamped images to add depth and build up a picture. We will be painting with Cosmic Shimmer powders and if there is time we can have a go at spritzing too.

A few more memberships will be up for renewal this month, so don't forget your extra pennies to cover that.

Our new venue went down well with everyone - lots more space to get around. Jan has arranged for someone to put away the tables at the end of the evening, but if you can all remember to put away your chairs before you leave, then that is a great help. It also makes things easier if we can collect the cups back in a little earlier than we did at APMH, so the dishwasher has time to finish its cycle before we leave the hall.

Finally I'm sure most of you noticed the big lamp post in the middle of the car park, surrounded by planters? - well Michelle didn't! (should have gone to Specsavers!!) Just in case you hadn't noticed it, please take care when reversing. Michelle's bumper is now held on (very artfully!) with duct tape - fortunately the planters cushioned the blow a little and she didn't dent her back door, so it could have been a lot worse. Don't tell her I told you!!

Looking forward to seeing you next week.