Snow, a translation and looking ahead . . .

Hot Textiles has been translated into Spanish - Whoo hoo!

The journey home from Glasgow on Monday was a bit scary - well the first bit of it was anyway . . . .The M74 was very, very, frightening. One minute there was a reasonable amount of snowfall -

The next, there was a whiteout. The traffic ground to a halt and we sat around for a while, an hour or so and then we started to move, slowly. With the ever useful travel information on the radio we were informed of an accident that had closed the motorway several miles ahead. We eventually diverted off the Southbound M74 via Lesmahagow, to return to a much faster moving M74. On the Northbound M74 there was a horrible accident involving two lorries and several cars. The scene certainly made me drive much more sensibly than usual.

I delayed my journey home to Brighton as I heard on the travel news that the M23 was blocked with poor drivers stuck in the snow, most of them all night! Luckily my best friend Claudia lives in London and I rang her at 5.30pm to ask if I could stay. "Of course" she said, "I'm just making a chicken casserole, there is plenty for two". She is always so accommodating. A true friend. I eventually got home yesterday when all the snow had gone.

 Until three years ago and living in Brighton on the south coast, I hadn't really experienced much snow of any depth. Being built for comfort and definitely not speed, skiing is not something I have ever considered. Three years ago we had a 10" snowfall in Brighton and every year since we have had at least 3".

 So - the show in Glasgow was great fun. It was good to spend time with Wendy and Rob Dolan. www.wendydolan.co.uk
I managed to find some time to play, Yes! more newspaper. I am addicted - poor old girl! Here are a few of the samples I was mucking about with.

 Layered and torn newspaper strips ironed onto unpainted Bondaweb on black tissue paper. The spaces in between the strips were decorated with white Stella Flash from www.craftynotions.com

 

 Painted Bondaweb was ironed onto black tissue paper which was then decorated with layered and torn strips of decorated newspaper.

 More decorated and torn newspaper strips with a judicious use of gilding flake.

 Strips of un painted Bondaweb ironed onto black cotton,decorated with a sprinkle of gilding flake - colour, Pirate Treasure. The spaces in between the gilding flake were filled in by applying silver and gold transfer foil.

 

Painted Bondaweb ironed onto black pelmet Vilene light. Decorated with turquoise and pink Blingy Bitz (the squares)and silver and turquoise Blingy Glitz. (large glitter)

 

 Painted Bondaweb again on black pelmet Vilene light. (I like this product as it is more charcoal than black, feels soft to touch and stitch and cuts well with a soldering iron.) I used gold and copper Blingy Bitz (the squares) and the same colours in Dot Jewels (round shapes). Gilding flake was added.

I am now itching to hand stitch these samples.

I tend to get most of my embellishments from Craftynotions.com. Sarah was such a great developer of gorgeous sparkly things. Art Van Go also sell them, 

www.artvango.co.uk when you go into the shop it can be difficult to choose just a few sparkly things.

I shall be seeing Viv and Kevin next week at the NEC for Fashion Embroidery and Stitch and I shall be teaching my design workshop at Art Van Go in May. (I think there are 2 spaces left)

I love teaching there, Viv and Kevin are such wonderful hosts and it means I get to spend a bit more time with them.

I think that's enough for now - I will post over the weekend with the details of the free Vilene workshops that will be a feature of the show next week.

x x x