As ever, it was great meeting up with old friends and chatting and making new ones. Plus the chance to stroke (and buy) (yet more) goodies from well stocked shop. This was the 9th retreat organised by Mel and Jill and (again as ever) it was totally fabulous. I was really impressed by the restaurant staff who went above and beyond to provide me with scrumptious gluten free options (very appreciated it was).
My first class uses My Mind's Eye Lush products. I was given quite a generous kit to work with, but I was a bit OMG! when I saw it, as I would never have picked these papers myself in a million years (and all but two of the ladies in the class agreed with me). Though it does go to show that stretching yourself with new product can give you suprisingly great results! I decided to do three layouts in the one class (very ambitious) each layout focusing on a specific design technique.
The first was 'what white space?' as in the white space was taken up by patterned paper, so it was there, but not obvious at all.
The second was 'little and large' the use of contrast (size of photos in this case)
The third was 'again and again' being repetition of design elements (pattern, butterflies and text across the page). A simple page to put together making great use of scraps and my butterfly dies and punch! (though someone completed theirs using snowflakes and that was STUNNING!).
My next class was a double layout, quite simple in construction (though there was quite a bit of cutting out and layering images from the patterned paper) as this was a technique based class where the ladies got to play with shrink plastic to create their own unique embellishments (on mine the shrink plastic is the smaller butterfly and flower centres). In the class they used different colouring techniques as well as stamping and die cutting the shrink plastic. The papers, trim and fabric labels are all from the Webster's Pages All About Me range and are totally gorgeous!
The third class was a home decor item of a chipboard star created from scratch, with a bonus card (as I felt guilty that the star didn't actually use up much of the kit contents lol!). I chose to work with the St Nick range from Fancy Pants as I like to use traditional colours myself for Christmas, yet there are enough whimsical touches in the papers (not those I used, but in the selection given to the delegates to choose from) if anyone wanted something more fun than traditional.
My final class was more technically challenging, it involved lots of measuring and cutting out to make best use of the beautiful Bo Bunny patterned papers (plus they had to cut a great big circle in the background which caused a few palpitations lol!), as well as creating flowers from fabric and paper.
Phew! A busy weekend to say the least!
Huge thanks to Mel and Jill for asking me along and to EVERYONE who was so friendly!
