Craftathon 2011

Last weekend I headed up north to Lancashire with a group of crafty pals from the Craftbubble forum for Craftathon 2011 and boy did we have a ball !  We were all booked on a workshop with Rachel Grieg, the owner of Dark Room Door Stamps on the saturday afternoon at Topaz Crafts in Accrington and stayed in the lovely Maple Lodge Hotel.  They very generously allowed us to use the dining room as our crafting space and each of us took along different crafty goodies to share and play with.  The first hour after arrival was spent in 'oooing' and 'ahhhing' over what the others had brought but we did eventually settle down to some crafting. 

At the saturday workshop we created an Art Journal from scratch, using Viva Decor Ferro Paste/paint, DRD background stamps and metallic paints to achieve some stunning Grungeboard outer  covers.  Here are all the lovely books made by the attendees at the workshop, everyone's cover turned out differently which was fantastic.

Here's a piccie of the insides of the books.   The images used are also DRD and we used a variety of stamps to decorate the pages before adding the images.  We had used Distress Inks to colour the plain cream concertina pages before starting the decoration. 

On the left is  my own book and another project pack which I won when my name was pulled out of the 'hat' - such a pity that mine was the second name as the first one won a set of DRD stamps !! but hey, I was pleased to have another kit to work with at home and see what I can come up with, and of course I just HAD to order both sets of stamps once I got home ! 

I also made good use of one of my pal Kathy's sets of Crafty Individuals stamps which she'd brought along to share and created an ATC during one of our crafting sessions at Maple Lodge. I'm just going to have to get this set myself, it's just fabby ! 

On the left is a pic of Rachel during the workshop and you can just see me hard at work in the background !  I'm afraid I'm a standing up crafter, can't seem to stamp or get the placement of elements just right unless I stand up.

We were lucky enough to have Dawn Bibby around during the afternoon workshop, she was busy preparing for this week's QVC show with Tim Holts TSV so I took the opportunity to get a photo taken with her.  Thanks Dawn - this one's for you Dad !

We all had such a great weekend that we are already planning to do another one, we just need to decide on a venue and a date.  I would also recommend Maple Lodge to anyone who is looking for hotel accommodation in the Accrington area, they made us so welcome, their rates are very reasonable and the rooms are excellent.

That's it from me today folks, hope you've enjoyed hearing all about my craftathon experience, thanks for dropping by.