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.

Distress Ink Masterclass

Our next workshop will be a Distress Ink Masterclass ("In a change to the published programme...!") We have decided to bring it forward as we have had a couple of enquiries about techniques. So on offer will be a Beginner's Intro, Distress Ink resist techniques and using Distress Inks with water .

Prepare to get messy fingers! See you on Wednesday.

Village Day and other news

The sun shone on Village Day and we had a much better pitch this year. We sold lots of cup cakes, cards, jewellery and sweetie gifts and met several more crafty people, who we hope will join us for future workshops. Looking forward to meeting you again.

Our Card competition was judged this year by David Gillott of Four Gables Food Academy in Ashtead, who was running his own demonstrations and baking competitions on the day. We will reveal the result at the next workshop and pass on his complimentary feedback too! Thank you very much to David for doing this for us - very much appreciated.

The crafting doesn't stop there! Michelle and I were up at Tadworth today running our regular second Monday of the month workshop. They all enjoyed having a go at the glitter paste and stencil technique, with some excellent results. Check out some of the new designs below.

Wednesday 26th June will be our next evening workshop in Ashtead at St Michael's Church Hall. In a change to our original schedule we will be covering Distress Ink techniques - check the blog the weekend before for further details on this one.

On Sat. 29th June we will be running another all-day crafting workshop at the Scout Hut in Ashtead. Techniques on offer include basic Mosaic projects, Decopatch projects and Altering items using a technique with bitumen (see mirror picture below)

We offer half or full days for the Mosaics and Decopatch, but the bitumen technique really needs a full day .

Workshop Costs:

Half Day (10am-1pm or 1pm-4pm) - £6 Members, £7 Non-Members

Full Day (10am-4pm) - £10 Members, £12 Non-members

You may bring your own items to Mosaic/Decopatch or alter or we will have items available to buy on the day too. Children (age 7+) are welcome, with a supervising adult for the half day afternoon session for mosaics and Decopatch projects.

Please contact us to book or if you would like further details.

Village Day 2013

Village Day tomorrow and this year we have an even wider range of crafty items for sale this year! We have Father's Day craft projects - cards, decorated tins, bottle gift tags...

...crafty cupcakes (although these are not edible ones!! A "sweet" little gift comprising a face flannel and a lip balm)...

...sweetie treats (and these are edible!) - sweetie and lollipop butterflies and decorated TicTac boxes...

...flower bookmarks and peg fridge magnets...

...and other crafty projects and gifts, as well as our usual range of hand made greeting cards.

Look forward to seeing lots of you there!

Stencil mania

A very productive evening on Wednesday with lots of cards created and lots of photo opportunities. So here goes - stencils and glitter paste first! For a step by step guide on this technique click here.

And now stencil bumping...For a step by step guide as to how to achieve these results, click here.

Wednesday was also the deadline for our humorous card challenge. Michelle and I found it very difficult to judge once more, but we had to make a decision!

Our winning challenge card was created by Carol S. She wins free entry into our next workshop - well done Carol! The caption reads "If I knit fast enough does it count as aerobics?"!! We loved the attention to detail, the humorous crafty reference and the hand knitting on cocktail sticks!

We had a tough choice with choosing just one winner again, so we chose a runner up who will receive half price entry to the next workshop. Linda W. is the worthy runner up. Not sure if this is a wedding or a divorce card!! Loved the sheet music to go with the caption "Another one bites the dust!"

And not forgetting our other entries of course which did make us chuckle and some were even a bit cheeky!!

 "Now remember ladies the secret of a long and happy marriage is early to bed and up with the cock!" 

"Madame President, where's the jam?"

 "Pinterest Anonymous were on their first outing. But Clarabelle had concealed her iPad under her hat"

 "Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go everywhere!"

"Mine's a Pint!"









"Come in No. 9. Oops! No. 6 are you in trouble?"