My up-coming class at The Craft Barn - Hearts and flowers

 Hi everyone, hope your weekend is off to a good start. I'm back today to show the sample for my upcoming class at The Craft Barn on Saturday 12th January. There are some places available which can be booked on the Craft Barn website or by calling the Craft Barn on 01737 822961 if you fancy coming along for an all day class of paint, stamping, stenciling, image transfer and modelling paste fun!

The canvas board is a progression of  this layout in my art book, slightly modified to fit in with Craft Barn products. I was very grateful to Ignacio at Nicecrane Designs for giving me permission to use the gorgeous spring flowers image for the class, a great one for image transfer.

There's also stamping with paint and ink, texturing with modeling paste and stenciling, so there's a good array of mixed media techniques to delve into.

To finish off there are some words that I've hand written and a bit of sparkle to liven things up. I thoroughly enjoyed bringing this on from the art book to a class and I'm very excited to see how it will be interpreted by the class participants, that's always the best part!

Enjoy your day.

 

Celebrations at The Craft Barn!

TIME TO CELEBRATE!!!

It's been 3 years since Sandy and Ian took over the Craft Barn and we would like you to join in our celebrations so we have some special things for you this weekend.

FREE POSTAGE

From 9am Friday 11th until 9am on Tuesday 15th February it’s free postage on all UK and Euro Zone 1 orders. Don’t worry if you live elsewhere, we haven’t forgotten you, if you place an order of £25 or more you also receive free postage.

FRAIS DE PORT GRATUITS

De vendredi 11 Février (9h00 GMT) à mardi 15 février (9h00 GMT), les frais de ports vous sont offerts si vous habitez au UK ou dans un des pays de la Zone 1.  
Pour le  reste du monde, les frais de ports vous seront offerts pour toute commande au-dessus de £ 25.

BIRTHDAY SPECIALS
Find out more on the Craft Barn blog

http://thecraftbarnblog.blogspot.com/

NEW CHALLENGE! The Craft Barn Wishing Well Challenge

Hi everyone and here I am with news today about the new challenge at the Craft Barn Blog. Hope you'll pop over and join in.

There is also followers candy which you can enter and all the info is on the blog, just scroll down a bit :).
Have a lovely evening.

Craft Barn Mini Album Competition Day 1

Morning everyone! Here's sketch one for the Craft Barn Mini Book competition and what I did with the first sketch which is the front cover. I decided to make my mini book of a holiday to Corfu using BasicGrey Marrakech papers combined with Inkadinkado Gem stone flowers stamps, Faded Jeans Distress ink and Typhoon Bazzil card. The writing is done with a Viva Decor pearl pen, There's a scalloped rectangle nestability to frame the photo, some prima flowers and pretty ribbons to decorate. Back tomorrow with page 2. TFL.

Craft Barn Blog and a decorated frame

 

Hi everyone, hope you’ve enjoyed your weekend. Some news about the Craft Barn today and their brand new blog which has just started this week. To celebrate the opening there are three Craft Barn online vouchers to be won so if you fancy a chance at winning hop over to the new Craft Barn blog to enter.

From the Craft Barn blog:

 

Hellooooo!
We can't start a new blog without some kind of celebration and something for you to win, can we?.
There will be a £10 voucher
for 3 lucky winners to win!
All you have to do is to write on your blog (real post, not side bar ;) ) using the image below to mention the new blog and the prizes to win.
Once this is done, come and post your link in a comment here to let us know.
Draw will be next Wednesday 13th January
And don't forget, our online sale has started!!! Don't miss out!!

I decorated the blank frame in the first photo a while ago for the Craft Barn blog using one of their plain wooden frames with a heart shaped aperture. First I painted the frame with white gesso, let it dry and then sanded it a little to give a smooth surface to stamp onto. The stamp is from a gorgeous Inkadinkado set ‘gemstone flowers’ and I stamped this around the frame using versamark ink and then embossed with clear detail embossing powder. The whole frame was then sponged with Black Soot Ranger distress ink and when dry I used an iron (no steam) and copy paper to remove the embossing. To finish off I added some white flowers edged with black distress ink, beautiful amber crystal brads for the flower centres and some half pearls also from the Craft Barn, then inserted my photo. TFL.

The Craft Barn Extravaganza Weekend 13th and 14th September

Below is a new posting on the The Craft Barn and Kadoodle Blogs all about the Extravaganza Weekend coming up on September 13th and 14th.

I'm very honoured to be included in this amazing line-up of talented and creative demonstrators which will be my first event of this size. Nerve wracking, I'm sure it'll be but I'm very much looking forward to it too and to demonstrating the new range of cottages that I designed for Kadoodle. It's all very exciting and I really, really hope I don't mess up!!!!!!

If you live anywhere near The Craft Barn at Lingfield, I hope you can pop in for the demonstrations, a workshop and a bit of shopping, they have absolutely everything a crafty heart desires and the most lovely and helpful staff. Hopefully I'll have a bit of time over that weekend to add to my ever increasing stash mountain!

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From the Craft Barn and Kadoodle Blogs

"We are pleased to be able to release further info regarding our September extravaganza weekend. This is going to be a fantastic event and amazingly is still FREE!

We have managed to arrange a truly sensational line up of demonstrations and workshops for you.

Beatrice from Katzelkratft (her first time in the UK)

Jean and Malcolm from Crafty Individuals

Leandra from Paper Artsy

Little Claire Designs

Kay Carley

Sandra Dry with her new Kadoodle characters

Christine Dark with her new Kadoodle cottages

Isabelle Norris

Wendy Horrod

Carole Cann

Carol Staples

Carol Cockbain

Paula Pascual (Sunday only)

Jane Collman (workshops)

Kassie Spires (workshops)

We will be releasing details of the workshop programme shortly. The workshops will cost £2.50 and you will make a complete project to take away with you. They are limited to 12 people and last for 1 hour each. We are also running the lucky dip again for those who book and attend the workshops and, as those of you who came last time will know, all of the prizes have a value greater than the cost of the workshop."

My first post

Hi everyone, and here I go with my first post. It seemed a good time to start a blog as since I started making cards last year such a lot has happened for me.
Very recently I was so happy to be asked to design some background stamps by Kitty at Spiral Whisper. Kitty is launching a brand new stamp company which will specialize in high quality clear stamps and her website will launch on 21st July. This is such a wonderful opportunity for me and I'm honoured to be listed on her blog as a guest designer along with all the other very talented designers who will, I'm sure, bring a great variety of stamps to choose from. There are already some sneak peeks and a character naming competition on her blog.

Just a couple of months ago I won a prize in a stamp designing competition at The Craft Barn and on from that I was delighted to be asked by Sandy the owner, to design two sets of stamps for their new Kadoodle own range which are due to be released in September. I can't thank Sandy enough for her enthusiasm and encouragement over the past couple of months, it's fantastic to be given this amazing opportunity to get into stamp design and also to rekindle my love for drawing.

The winner of the competition, Sandra Dry, designed some wonderful stamps which were released two weeks ago. The Craft Barn will be launching their website very soon.

I should have some sample stamps very soon so that I can start making up samples and as soon as I do I'll be posting them here.

I decided to start off my first post with a card using a Penny Black image as they're my favourite stamps, particularly the Margaret Sherry designs as her cute critters are just amazing and so funny, it's also great that this stamp was sent to me by a friend.

I don't know the name of the stamp but the three little mice look as though they can't wait to eat that cake! I water coloured the image with Tim Holtz distress inks in scattered straw, mustard, tea dye, faded denim, tattered rose and peeled paint, and added stickles to the icing and scarves for a bit of sparkle. The layers are pale yellow bazzil card and doodlebug polka dots paper cut into three panels behind the image. I added a blue organza ribbon to finish.

Have a great week,
Chris