Stitch & Craft Show

Today I went to the Stitch and Craft show at London Olympia, I've never been to this show before so was quite curious to see what it was like. It was spread over 3 floors, the downstairs being mostly knitting (which I can't do!) but I did see the 'knit your own royal wedding' scene in real life which is amazing! if anyone cares to knit me a corgi I will be eternally grateful!!

The middle was mostly cross stitch, fabric, ribbons and stitchy bits. I stopped off here to gaze in wonderment at all the beautiful cross stitch kits I know I will never have time to do and of course to see Crafty Ribbons and drop off some samples to them (more about those another time!)

Here is the Crafty Ribbons stand - apologies the pics arent better but there were tons of people pushing and shoving to get to it! They were rushed off their feet :o) Lots of lovely buttons and bits as well as ribbons and check out that queue! (and that was only some of it!) a very busy show!

The top floor was all papercrafting (heaven!) spied lots of new Tim Holtz bits, some gorgeous rubber stamps and these amazing displays from Decopatch

I then caught the tail end of Dawn Bibby's demonstration and managed a quick hello to Clare and Phil from DoCrafts before they started theirs!

I also had coffee with the lovely Emma who is also on the Kuretake design team with me, I didn't get to meet some of the other people I had wanted to say hello to but its such a busy show that I think it is easy to miss people.

If I'm honest, it wasn't my favourite show I've ever been too as there wasn't quite enough pretty paper for my liking and hardly any scrapbooking stuff but there was a good buzz and mix of products and I would go again :o)

Please pop over to the Challenge Blog, we have a sponsored challenge this week with a prize from the lovely people at Handy Hippo!

Thats all for today, I'm exhausted! Back with more stuff and new release details tomorrow!

Sarah x

Lovely Ribbons!

Tomorrow I'm off to the Stitch and Craft Show at London Olympia (come and say hello if you see me!) to shop and to meet the lovely peeps at Crafty Ribbons who I've been doing some work for. I will be dropping off some sample cards for them showing a few ribbon techniques that I LOVE! If you go to the show please drop by and take a look, for those of you that aren't here are a few for you to see...

These are using the lovely twill and seam binding ribbons that I'm obssessed with at the moment!

This card uses the twill ribbon which I've pleated to make a little ruffle (love ruffles!)



This uses the seam binding simply tied around and into a bow with a button popped on to finish it off



And this one uses the seam binding again, I've folded it in on itself to create a flower and secured with a big Pink Paislee brad

All on kraft card of course - another obssession! I do have rather a lot of them don't I..... I may do some videos of these techniques if anyone would like to see?

If you do pop to the show tomorrow make sure to stop by and see Crafty Ribbons, they have sooo many goodies, I can't wait to raid in person :o)

Also, after quite a few people said to me I should have a Facebook page I have finally got round to setting one up, please come and 'like' me here if you are on Facebook (of course, only if you actually do 'like' me, if not feel free to ignore, LOL)

Hoping to get the new release up tomorrow but depends on what time I get home, you know what the Tube can be like!! If not definitely Friday so keep your eyes peeled!

Sarah x

A Funny Old Day....

Today really was a funny sort of day, I stayed up late last night illustrating again, I seem to be more productive at night! But I woke up feeling ready for the day ahead and yet very relaxed and not my normal stressy self!

I think I'm making progress and I'm ahead of myself on my plan so thats a good thing. I'm also loving the way these illustrations are coming together. Sometimes it's too easy to be critical of ourselves, especially when you see fantastic work by other artists / crafters / designers. But you can only be yourself, of course you have to try and improve and better yourself but but never change your style or try to fit a mould, you don't want to be "the next 'whoever'" you want to be the first YOU!

Last night I had the whole ranty angry thing from yesterday swirling round in my head - I often carry these arguments out inside my head to make sure I dont say anything uneccessary when it comes to actually confronting who has hurt me and to make sure I have clear what I want to say, nothing worse than finishing an argument or impassioned speech and then thinking of something else you really wished you'd said - do it all at once and get some closure! It basically boils down to an issue of trust, I have a very hard time trusting people in the first place, but once I do, I do so implicitly. Once a person has broken that I've never been able to regain it, even when I've really really wanted to, I just can't. I feel an art journal page coming on! The best place to spill everything out... Maybe the fact that I had done that was what made me so calm today!

I've been planning out my diary today and the next few weeks and months look pretty busy (yay!) but I'm taking some time to go to the craft show at the Olympia next month to see the lovely peeps at Crafty Ribbons who I design for, I'll also be meeting some more twitter peeps, always fun! If you're going let me know :o)

Ah, no pretty pics today... will try and make up for it tomorrow, promise! Thanks for your guesses yesterday, keep them coming!! ;o)

Sarah x