Odds and Ends

The last few photos of things that caught my eye  at the Frankfurt craft fair. This first little cupcake shaped box is one I decorated in a make and take - looks good enough to eat doesn't it? My mum used to put those silver ball things on trifles at Christmas, so I thought of her when I was making this.

 They had cake stands filled with non edible sweet treats.....

I loved the wedge shaped cake slice boxes with the chocolate sprinkles, imagine these filled with home made chocolate truffles for a gift...

 The rolled up paper on  this decorated bird house was a banknote. A little bird was holding it in it's beak. Cute!

 I have no idea how the flowers on this box card were made, I don't speak German, and they didn't speak English, but they were so pretty, they really gleamed, so I think they had covered each bloom in glossy accents

This is a poor photo, but I liked the idea, they were four tiny camera charms mounted onto the card with ribbons, the sentiment says Smile

A quilled butterfly..... and an origami frog

I love the blues on this card

and the next ones were all on the Copic stand The woman there was a bit brusque (especially when she heard I was a ProMarker fan), and didn't seem to like us taking a lot of photos, so they are a bit badly focused. Some of the images are digi images from Saturated Canary 

That's all the photos from the German show, I hope you've enjoyed seeing them. I am going to the big UK trade show in two weeks time, so will be able to bring you the latest and greatest from the UK. I have had a couple of comments from Australia, looking longingly at some of the new products I have posted. Good news for you. Mandy Hall of Scrappy-go-Lucky is bringing a lot of fabulous stuff over to Australia for the very first time, all expected in the next few weeks, so keep an eye on her site, because the stuff will fly out the door when it gets there

I'll have the names of the first challenge winners on Tuesday, and will be setting a new challenge with more exciting prizes from Letraset.  

Oils R Us.........

There were a lot of artists materials at the show, so we booked an oil painting 'make and take' on the second day - I rather bullied the others into it, (come on, it will be fun). So here we are, very posey all ready to start. Diane in the aqua (luckily she wore lovely bright colours so that we could find her easily, Mandy and I kept losing her), me in the middle, and Mandy......... 

Now bear in mind that none of us had ever done any oil painting before, this is how we started - a splodge of murky paint trailing up the canvas..... 

and here we are, the class of 2012 with our almost identical masterpieces. No, it wasn't painting by numbers, he showed us what to do, and we did it. Impressed? We were!

Ta Da.......here is my work of art. Not bad for an hours work, and it was a lot of fun.  It will never make it onto the wall, but I still feel a sneaky sort of pride that I painted it

 We did consider offering them to the hotel - they had the most awful paintings on the walls of the lift lobby on each floor (we rode up and down in the lift especially to see them, and took photos of them).....I mean, look at the yellow one, Kiki would have done a better job, and she is only seven. Come to think of it, Monty and Milo could have done better and they are only two. Presumably the hotel paid good money for these - they should have gone to the show, they could have painted some for free......

I loved the look of these felt flowers, so I had to make one of those for myself.....

Here it is, I think it's really stylish, a bit big to wear on a sweater, but I think it would look great pinned to a belt....... 

Some of the stands were so prettily decorated.....these are tiny little felt hearts trailing from ribbons

Just look at this table setting made out of beads.....

and some very special Christmas baubles

These were nice, made from Nestabilities, they put large beads in between the layers to keep them apart, and threaded them onto wooden skewers. They would make a very pretty decoration for a party table I think 

and there were some people there who really could paint, an artist was painting this with watercolours, I loved it. Now I would hang that on my wall in a flash........


Back to the oil painting - they gave us a large artists box to carry them in, with the masterpiece carefully taped by them so that they wouldn't move around. So we lugged them home on the subway, had another mutual admiration session at the hotel, and when it was time for me to fly home, I just carried the box as hand luggage. Honestly, the Mona Lisa hasn't been as well treated as these blessed paintings. So there I was, just about to settle myself in the plane when I realised I had left the box at the gate. So I had to push past everyone trying to get on the plane - you know, that time when everyone is opening and shutting the overhead bins, then leaping to their feet when they realise they have forgotten to take out their book.... So there I was, going against the flow,  muttering 'excuse me, sorry....sorry.....excuse me.....terribly sorry......'
The flight attendants looked suspicious and asked where I was going 'terribly sorry, I left a valuable painting in a box by the gate'.
VALUABLE!
Where did I get that from? It was a free 'make and take' for heavens sake. Still I rescued it, and now that I have it home (I'm going to whisper this, so come close.....) I don't like it very much.


I still have photos of cards from the Copic stand, and a few others,  to show you tomorrow, so see you then

More Show Samples......

A few more photos from the show, this first stand was decorated with flowers made from wired organza ribbon......... 

 Wouldn't they make a fabulous decoration for a wedding?

A picture made up entirely of sequins - can you imagine how long that would take?

The next photos were all taken on the Marianne stand - she makes those very popular intricate dies, I loved the soft papers as well........

This next one will appear on the blog again very soon (in disguise), I love the triangular fold back on the front of the card......

Have you noticed that quite a few of the samples from various manufacturers have these little squares of hessian behind the image? Looks good, another one to bookmark......

A shoe made of cardstock........

I like this circle/scroll die very much, great to perch stamped images on, another for the wish list.....I also like the way they have used the gold border stickers on this card, I don't normally like the peel off type borders, but this looked really effective

This one used a photo as an image - an idea for a new home card maybe?

and a dress made of papers.....

I'll be back tomorrow with photos of a masterpiece - and a story to go with it!

Nellie Snellen at Frankfurt

One of my favourite stands at Frankfurt was Nellie Snellen - those of you in the UK will be familiar with her lovely dies, I have a few sets, and she also does lovely stamps, which I didn't know. The card below uses one of her new dies, the circle is cut out with one die, it has slits in it, and you slot the punched shapes into the slits, surprisingly quick to do, and very, very effective, so they have gone on to my 'must have' list 

Here I am (on the right) with the lady herself, she is Dutch, and the most delightful person you could wish to meet, modest and unassuming, just lovely........

I took photos of all her samples, which were lovely, bright and with a great use of colour.....

When I  admired one of the cards, she took it off the wall and gave it to me, so sweet......

The fairy stamps are called Elin, after one of her little granddaughters

She has a new range of punches, which make these lovely flowers.....

They come in pairs, you punch a flower, then pop it in the embossing punch and press, out comes a beautiful leaf or flower with embossed detail. They come in lots of different sizes so you can layer them. Very quick and easy to do.....

She had a range of pre cut aperture cards with net in the apertures, very dainty.....

So there you go, still loads of photos to show you, I'll be back tomorrow with more