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.