Little Sprout

Like yesterday's card this one is done using Crate papers, but in this case using the Little Sprout.
You can find all the products at Crafts U Love.
When I saw this die cut that says "Gather Love, Share love", I loved it immediately.
By the way, oday I am goin up North (ie Lancashire) for a week as I will be demonstrating this weekend and teaching the following at Dawn Bibby's Topaz shop. I am not sure if I will be able to post any new entries till I get back, but i will try with the iPhone. Fingers crossed!

Lillian Collection

Just using, die cuts, papers and stamps (only the brown small border) all from Crate paper. Yummy!
You can find all the products at Crafts U Love.

Even more butterflies

Another butterfly using the same Crate papers as before, or at least from the same collection, and some Bazzill dots cardstock. Funny thing, that embossed card, it has taken me months to get into that but now I can't get enough.

By the way, if you are around the Manchester/Blackburn area, be sure to go to Dawn Bibby's Demonstration weekend, click here for more info. Apart from the lady herself, the lovely Leonie Pujol, Lindsay Mason, Sarah McCrossan they all will be there, and many many more equally talented demonstrators.

Loving Butterflies

This is currently my favorite butterfly die at the minute, which may well change as I got another die last week. I love it because while is large enough for a layout, is still great in any card size and being a double die means that the options multiply. The delicate and intricate top layer is just fantastic.
I used the Little Sprout papers from Crate Paper to cut the butterfly and some of their glittered die cut shapes to add interest.
As I was demonstrating, I did not have all my crystals with me. In my craft room I have got a quite large collection of crystals in so many colours, most of them from Craftwork Cards as they do the Swarovsky, but for demos I usually only take clear and a few extra colours. Yesterday I was lucky enough to be sitting next to Lindsay Mason a lovely, lovely lady and very talented indeed, and she was demonstarting the new colours of the Alcohol Inks by Ranger. So Lindsey colour some of the clear crystals to fit in with the card. The picture shows it much more pinky that they actually look like in real life, they are more brown.
For the centre of one of the flowers, I used a black permanent marker over some white pearls and the effect it's beautiful, specially for the head of a butterfly or other flying beings. The pitty is taht i did not take photos of it. Hopefully next time!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JULIE!

Today is the birthday of one of my best friends, Julie Hickey.
I hope you have a fabulous day!

Yesterday's demo

Yesterday, and Saturday too, I demonstrated at the Crafts U Love Birthday Demo Weekend. I had a fantastic time using some of my favorite dies creating flowers and butterflies (Revolution dies).
The papers are from Crate paper, Little Sprout and Lillian Collections.


You can find all the products at Crafts U Love.

Impressabilities

This card is one we did at the Impressabilities workshop.

Supplies:
Paper & Card: Elegant Wrap and Bazzill card.

Impressabilities: Snowflake.

Ink: Brilliance - Starlite Black and then Perfect Pearls - Pearl.

Other: InCircle's Birthday - Craftwork Cards.

Fortunate-not-lucky

I do consider myself fortunate, not necessarily lucky. As I understand it -totally my interpretation-, lucky people get what they want quite easily, whether fortunate people get what they need. For instance, a lucky person will pass the driving test at first try, a fortunate may have to retake once it but those extra hours will mean that they will drive better and therefore will less likely have accidents on their driving first months. Provably statistics will show that my theory is completely false, but who cares? It makes me happier with my fortunate-not-lucky status.

My sister, in the other hand, is one of the luckiest persons I have ever met. Yes, she does work incredibly hard, but luck is on her side. Her birthday is next month, and although she did forbid me to share photos of her in the internet, I am sharing this layout I did a couple of months ago.

By the way, Tomorrow and Sunday I will be demonstrating at Crafts u love for their big demo weekend. Loads of other demonstrators will be there as well. Come along to be inspired!

Vintage

This is a card I did a few months ago using vintage Prima. Doesn't the word vintage sound so much better than just old? I have a lot of vintage/old stuff in my studio that needs to be used, one of this days...

Nestabilities workshop

These are the cards and box that we did last week at the workshop I taught at the Glitter Pot.

Thanks Fabrizio

You know me too well! Made my day, my month!
Thank you ever so much.

Seven years again

Yesterday was our official seventh wedding anniversary. And, Omar made me this card, with seven hearts!
Things like this make me happy!


To celebrate the seven years, we went to Bodiam castle, we rejoined the National Trust as an anniversary present to each other -hopefully doing some English tourism- and had dinner at one of our favorite restaurants.

Of Workshops and Die cutting

Some of my friends say I worry too much. I don't know. I only know how much I worry not how much others worry. And I know that worrying a bit a bout the right things allows me to become better about my job.
The thing is Thursday's class was not a complete success, although I would not say it was a complete failure either as there were some attendees that did not enjoy the class. Well, you may think that is hardly the first that that has happened to me, or any other tutor for that matter, that it is true and I know it.
But Thursday's was a bit different. Let me explain. I was teaching one of my signature classes, die cutting. As always, I tried my best to prepare some projects that reflected what the workshop's description said. I also tried, as I always do, to cramped in as much as possible. Why? Because I much rather over do it than under do it. I much rather have complains that too much was to be done in two hours rather than finish half hour or an hour before time. Timing workshops is really hard. Honestly, it does not get easier with experience because you never know who is attending.
Die cutting is even harder to teach. Although I brought my own Cuttlebug, it meant that there were three machines for twelve people (two are from the shop, The Glitter Pot) but obviously only one die of each kind, which are all my personal ones by the way. To make things smoothly and avoid large queues in the afternoon I decided to divide the class in two, meanwhile some were doing one card, the others were doing the little box, and viceversa. That did work for some, but not for others as some attendees needed more help and attention than others.
When you have a full class usually you get about twelve people that have got different speeds and different levels of experience. It is impossible to satisfy everyone, and I know that. But at the same time, it does not stop me from trying my best.
I suppose that lesson from Thursday's class was to limit die cutting classes to 10 attendees.

Anyway, right now I am packing to go for a few days to Spain to see the family and do some paperwork.

By the way the card above was part of my article on Ten Ways with Chipboard published in Cardmaking and Papercraft last month.

Pure Heaven

So I like chocolate, a lot. Like a lot! Not sure what it is but I love it. Yesterday, I went to Harrods with Dawn and JJ after she had done the QVC show. And of course the chocolate hall of Harrods is brilliant, it has all the pertinent chocolatiers: Prestat -uk manufacturer of my favorite choc bar, Choxi-, La maison du Chocolat -good french one- and my favourite Belgiam one outside of Belgium, Neuhaus. And yes, I did get an small box which I am savouring right now!
Tomorrow I have a full day of workshops at The Glitter Pot doing die cutting and embossing, Fun!
Will post one or two photos after the class.

Birthday wishes

Yesterday was my grandmother's birthday. Since she doesn't read any blog or surf the net at all, I am sure she is ok with the fact that I post it a day later.

Bo Bunny papers used in this card.

Congratulations Roger!

Don't worry, I do not change affections that easily. I still love Nadal a thousand times or more than I like Federer, but you have got to admit it that Roger Federer is the greatest tennis player ever. Like many other Nadal's fans and probably even Rafa himself, I have always known that Federer is a far better player, even Nadal's coach and uncle thinks so! But that is precisly why I like Rafa. Even though he has been so unlucky to coincide in time with the greates of all time, he still has battled it out to be nº1 during Federer's time and won playing against him in Grand Slams finals in every surface.

People usually find supreme excellence inspiring. Don't take me wrong, I do too, however I find more inspiring when achivements don't come so effortlessly. Most people are never the best at something, not everyone is born being excellent at something. And to only admire people who are so obviously superior sometimes is depressing. I should know, as I had some difficulty to assimilate that growing up. I wanted so badly to be the best at something, that I didn't realize that the most important thing is not to be the best at something, but be the best you can ever be. Sure, provably there will be better people still around, but who cares when you can say: I try my best, little by little, others may do it better, but I do the best I can!

That is what I adore in Rafa, he may never match Federer's amazing effortless-looking tennis, but that hasn't stop him, he just keeps pursuing to be the best player he can ever be. I just hope that Rafa will keep inspiring us with his game and more importantly attitude.

Anyway, well done Federer! and also Roddick who kept fighting till the end!

And of course,

VAMOS RAFA!

Mini Album part 2

Here you have the second part of the mini album. Basically, the first couple of pages, or spread, are for Omar. Then, there is a page of Snowflakes and a spread of photos of me.


Then another snowflake page, then Wasabi has a couple of pages, one of only him -above- and then a spread with two photos, one with each of us.




And then "The Three of Us" spread, which is the last pages of the mini album.


This is the back of the mini album.

Mini Album

I did this as a part of a mini album class a few years back. To date, it is one of my favourites to do and teach.

All the snowflakes were done with the Cricut and the Basics cartridge that comes with the Expressions. The important thing is that they are all glued well together and any one of them is attached at least a two different points to the rest.

Inside, I just added some old Making Memories romantic tags and KI Memories sayings and just added photos. I used to love, as in major love, KI memories stuff. Then they went all Elsie and lost what attracted me to their product, I am not complaining as there are plenty of other option in the market and I do understand that as much as i do not like Elsie's stuff other people will love it.

Good old Peel Offs!

OK. So I am not a fan of Peel Offs. But I do love Francoise Read's or Magenta's peel offs. They are cute or sophisticated and look amazing in when they come in white and black. This one card I made as part of making a few samples cards for QVC, the kit consists of Francoise's peeloffs, ribbon and mulberry paper. I had a lovely time making the samples!

Again, you can see I took a crap photo of the card. to be honest I do not enjoy that much taking photos of something else than people. I love portraits, there is nothing like capturing peoples beauty with the camera. Taking photos of my projects... BORING! I need to change my attitude respect that, I am even thinking of getting a light tent which probably would help, but I rather spent my money in another lens.

So, I will just post a photo of my lovely husband that I took last Sunday in a BBQ we attended. It was hot!


I edited the photo using Lightroom, a fantastic program by Adobe that makes developing the photos so cool. You can save the presets that will then work in a similar manner to the Actions in Photoshop. I prefer Lightroom to Photoshop just because you can really edit a workload in very little time.

Back to everyday cards

Another Penny Black image. The village I grew up in -Campanet, Mallorca, Spain- has a few fields that in late spring get spotted with beautiful and fragile red poppies. They are such a delicate things! So I could not resist this image from Penny Black.
Again forgive my coloring in.

I just realized I haven't post anything other than card and little explanations for the last few weeks. The thing is that my life is pretty boring, so nothing much to share. Maybe I just should mention how hot it is here today, about 30º C (no idea Fahrenheit!). It is lovely when you know it's going to pass soon as it makes you enjoy the sun and the heat, back in Spain, it is hard to know that for the next two months it is going to be pretty much like this or hotter. For me that is not good!

Maybe I should share that I have been designing new products, new craft designs rather as they are nothing revolutionary. I do enjoy designing stuff so much, whether be cards, layouts, workshops or just papers, die cuts and so on. One of the greatest things is to see the actual thing you designed be used by other crafters, every time I see in a shop or over the internet my messages InCircles -manufactured by Craftwork Cards- I get so happy, so proud that people are enjoying and using something I created.