one of my groups of keen students trying some new techniques Well here we are, another week on and I am sitting in my room in the Travelodge after a hearty breakfast about to pack up the car and start the long drive home back to Brighton. I have had a great if very busy and tiring time in Glasgow. The show was very busy and it was great to catch up with friends and customers up here.  Wendy and Rob Dolan were also with the show and we went out on the town on Friday night. We went to Ashton Lane in Glasgow - first of all we saw The Kings Speech at The Grosvenor Cinema, this is a refurbished Victorian cinema furnished with large leather seats with places to hold your drinks and food. You can buy a bottle of wine to take in with and a plate of Italian meats and olives if you fancy, or fresh popcorn or . . . .  you get the idea. After the film we manged to stagger 3 doors along to The Ubiquitous Chip, an amazing restaurant serving traditional Scottish fayre with a very modern twist. We a

busy students creating fabulous samples Saturday 8th January saw me teaching a group of very capable ladies who were great fun from the Cotswold Embroiderers Guild. The Guild hold their workshops at the The Reddings Community Centre in Cheltenham. It has fantastic facilities with plenty of room, tables and SOCKETS! When working with a variety of heat tools it can be a real pain to have to keep unplugging an iron to use a heat gun. This centre was pure luxury. We were working with Vilene Spunbond and layering it with painted Bondaweb. It was a great day and we covered several tec hniques. It was great fun and as you can see from the samples the ladies worked hard. Vilene Spunbond CS 700 & 800 painted and dyed. Bondaweb ironed to the back and leaf shapes cut with a soldering iron and than ironed onto more CS 800. Detail Right side of sample - Vilene Spunbond CS 800 painted and dyed and then zapped with a heat gun, the 'crunchy' edges were then foiled with heat transfer f

We will all, no doubt, succumb to the call of chocolate and other delicious naughtiness over the next few days. My favourite treats at the moment are Magnums minis, I can hear them calling me from the back of the supermarket as soon as I walk through the doors . In all my years of researching packaging for heat distressing the wrapping on these ice creams is the best so far. I just love the golden and brown tones that all merge together. If you buy mini ice creams you don't feel SO bad. The boxes are wrapped in a large sheet of gorgeous brown wrapping and then each ice cream is individually wrapped in more beautiful wrapping. Fantastic! I am sure that most of you reading this will already be aware of these delights but just in case they have passed you by, I thought it my duty to share this with you. Most food packaging can be textured with an iron just as you would Tyvek (see page 70, Hot Textiles). Place your packaging in between two sheets of baking parchment and iron LIGHTLY