WALL-TO-WALL SUNSHINE

Hi everyone

Yes, the nights may be chilly, the mornings frosty, but the sunny days are sooo good, aren't they?  Apparently it is going to be like this for a few more days - then back to chilly, grey days?  I hope not.

I hope you all had a lovely Valentine's Day and received lots of flowers, chocs, cards and even more chocs - and cupcakes too.  Talking of cupcakes, don't forget to check out my Friday blog of last week to see if you were awarded the Super Sweet Blogging Award.  It's a bit of fun, but I am sure you agree it is always lovely to be recognised by other bloggers and nice to be able to pass on the award too.

The last week has disappeared and I don't really have a lot to show for it.  Where does the time go?  I plan, I plot, I organise, I get set up, I make, but don't appear to achieve all that I had hoped for.  Perhaps it is because not everything I do can be seen?  I have been busy working on advertising and promoting my workshops, so I haven't been completely idle.  I have added the workshops to the UK Handmade website, and What's on in Surrey, tweeted them every day and placed posters around the Christmas Pie area.  I shall spend time this coming week adding the details to more websites.

The one thing I have to show this week is my pottery plaque.  Not complete, but very different from the last photograph I posted:

If you look back at the previous pic of this, you will see a lot has changed.  The blue glass beads have been added to the 'boulders' on the left hand side, the trees have changed as have the hills in the middle.  I reduced the amount of sky by appx 1.5" as I thought it was too much to fill.  By the end of last Thursday's session I had 'painted' everything.  However, as the colours will change once the plaque has been biscuit-fired I didn't really want to add a photograph at this stage, as some of the colours don't look great.  The blue glass beads (smashed to allow them to be 'sprinkled' down the hillside) will melt into pools and blobs, the ones with yellow in will apparently lose their colour and become clear. I added some more boulders to hold in the glass as I don't want to to leak into the sky.  No pottery this week as it is half-term; this will give the clay time to dry out ready for biscuit firing.  Once that has been carried out, I will paint the plaque in a clear glaze.  I also made a triangle-shaped porcelain pendant this week.  I folded up the sides and added crushed glass beads to the centre.  That will also be ready for biscuit-firing after half-term and then glazing.

I always miss pottery when it is half-term week, but I don't think I will ever forget how much I loved half-term when I was teaching.  The peace and quiet in college was wonderful - I know the students loved the break, but boy oh boy, so did we!

While on the crafting topics, don't forget to visit this week's Handmade Monday blog posts.  Wendy's weekly linky parties are a great way to catch up with fellow crafters, keep up-to-date on what is happening in the craft world and also read some great blog posts.

We went to see Les Miserables on Friday.  Amazing!  I know everyone who has seen it says it is fantastic, and it really is. Richard wasn't overly keen on going, but really enjoyed it.  Two rather unusual things happened in the cinema: nobody coughed during the film and the audience clapped at the end of it!  If you haven't seen it yet, I do recommend it.

I am off to enjoy the last of today's sunshine - everything in the garden is beginning to burst into bud and it's a good time now to prune things that need a tidy up.  I hope you all have a good week.  Milly will be here on Wednesday with her mid-week post.  I have some card orders for the unusual (which seems to be usual for me really) and will post pics of them next week.,

Jill

PLANNING, PLANNING AND EVEN MORE PLANNING

Hello everyone

A very Happy New Year to you.

Already one week into the New Year - the days seem to whizz by so fast.

No new makes this time around - I have taken some time off to work on various other things.

I am in the process of finalising six card-making workshops: two for Valentine's Day, two for Mother's Day and two for Easter.  The sessions will be two hours long, the first one will run 1.00 pm - 3.00 pm and the second, 6.30 pm - 8.30 pm on the same day, will be a repeat of the afternoon's session.  I had originally thought of having workshops for just basic card-making for all/any occasions, but think a themed one to begin with will be easier to run and provide materials for.  My cake-making friend is managing the refreshments and we are also offering homemade bread and soup mini-lunches and suppers.  Once everything is confirmed, I will add details on my blog and website, but I can let you know the sessions will take place in Chilworth, Surrey.

No New Year's resolutions for me this year.  I rarely stick to them so by not making any I avoid the disappointment.  However, I do have plans (they are not resolutions, are they?).  My aim is to be more structured and organised in my working life.  I am a terrible time-waster and am amazed at how much time I can waste on the Internet - doubt I am alone in that though.  This year I will make proper 'To-Do' lists on paper, not the mental ones I have relied on and conveniently lost, and I will stick to them and ensure everything gets completed - eventually.

Just a mini post today, but don't forget to visit the other blogs taking part in this week's Handmade Monday.  I am looking forward to reading about the plans everyone has for 2013 - exciting times.

My Friday Guest Blogger spot returns at the end of January, so please get in touch with me if you would like 'book' a spot.  Our new kitten, Milly, will also be back towards the end of January with her Wednesday blog post - this coincides with my return to kitten fostering, so Milly will have plenty to write about.

'See' you next weekend.

Jill

THE CARDS ARE ON THE TABLE

Hello everyone

Well, not on the table rather they are in a magazine, but 'the cards are in the magazine' didn't have the same ring to it as my chosen post title and there is a reason for the title.  In October 2011 the Popular Crafts magazine featured my Blog in one of the regular blog reviews.  As I am sure you read in the post when I mentioned this, I was very pleased and excited to see my Blog 'in print'.  Shortly after the magazine was published, Katherine Jewitt (the Editor) contacted me to ask if I would be interested in reviewing a card-making kit.  Even better was that the version recommended for me to 'test drive' was about cats!  A double whammy and as you can imagine I said yes very quickly.

The pack arrived not long before we were due to go on holiday in November and I knew that I would have problems completing it before then, so I took it with me.  Along with holiday gear went laptop, camera, cables, paper, crafting kit and the kitchen sink.  Once or twice while Richard was out climbing the million and one steps in and around Valletta, I was back at the apartment drawing and colouring while sitting on the balcony sipping something nice and fizzy.  Who had the better deal?  Me - those steps were many and steep.

Despite creating greetings cards, I haven't actually drawn anything for many, many years and this review required me to do that.  Initially I had some pretty strange shapes to the cats I drew and did think I would have been better taking photographs of Jazz and Daisy that I could have drawn from.  After some trial runs, I managed to get two cat-shape outlines onto card and off I went with the fun bit of drawing the patterns in and colouring - oh boy colouring-in is such fun and made me feel about 5 again.  OK, I know that is a looong time ago, but I can just about remember it and know it was great fun.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and was very, very pleased when I had completed the project - particularly as we had a few hiccups with the Wifi in the apartment and I had visions of whizzing around Malta try to find an Internet cafe from which to send my final pictures.  The magazine is due out at the end of this week and apart from my review it is packed with lots of other great projects and articles, and I am really honoured to be in such great crafting company.  I really recommend you buy a copy of the magazine and once it has been published, I will put a couple of pics in my next blog - have you ever seen red, orange, green, yellow and blue cats?  Well, you are in for a treat.

I have been working on my new ranges this week, as well as building my website - takes a long while as have to photograph everything I make, change the size, make other alternations and ensure it looks good on the site, add information, and also think about the various pages that require setting up.  The hardest part so far has been the About Me page - I am sure this is the same for all website designers.  Too much detail about the things I do might not be interesting, but then again too little may make the site uninteresting.  Progress is slow but sure - although it has taken me absolute ages to get to this stage, I am still working slowly as I want to ensure the website is good when it first goes live.  No 'going live' date decided up on yet.

One of the areas I want to move into are card-making workshops and I prepared some handouts which I distributed at events prior to Christmas.  I have two people who want to sign up but really will need more to make it worth while and enjoyable for everyone involved.  If you know of anyone who wants to spend a fun couple of hours creating cards in or around the Guildford area, please ask them to get in touch with me.  With Valentine's Day and Mother's Day fast approaching, now is a good time to start making cards. I hope to have a Stampin Up demonstrator taking part as well.

It's Handmade Monday and for the second week running I don't have anything to actually 'show' as my makes this week have been for my website, and not yet ready for posting on my Blog.  Plus, having had a painful left arm for a couple of weeks, I went to the doc's and discovered it was the return of the tennis elbow that I had suffered from not so long ago!  It hadn't occurred to me that it had come back again, but it's very painful and the only consolation is that it is in my left arm and I am right-handed.  Rest, medication and some pain-relieving gel prescribed - the first one is very hard to manage though.  However, I am taking part in Handmade Monday this week as it is a great way to find out what other crafters are doing, so why not join me in checking out the other contributors' blogs and read what they have been up to during last week.  Believe me, you will see some pretty amazing work and read some great posts.

Have a great week - I will be back on Wednesday.

Jill