Classes:

I'm teaching some classes in the next two months that may be of interest to some of you if you're in the locality.

Firstly, this Thursday (27th November) from 7.30 to 10.00 ish, I'm teaching an 8x8 album class full of sliders, pockets and pull outs. This little wire-bound album is a great opportunity to learn how to add interactive elements to your projects. Although we're working in an album format, most of them can be adapted and scaled down to card projects. If you're interested in attending this class, contact MJ at sales@everymomentmatters.co.uk or call her on 07708 951 575.

On Wednesday, 3rd of December at 3.30pm and repeated at 6.30pm, I'm teaching a class on Perfect Pearls from Ranger at Stamparty in Aldershot. In this class, I'll teach a large number of different techniques that you can do with these marvellous mica pigment powders. Plus, because we're leading up to Christmas, I've got a great small project to add to the class that will brighten up your Christmas. If you want to book a place on this class, please email Alison at sales@stamparty.co.uk or call her on 01252 321 999.

Finally, I'm teaching a workshop at my house. The dates are 14-16 January 2009. The workshop will run from 3pm on the Wednesday, til 6pm on the Friday. This will be a technique workshop. The format will be as follows:

Wednesday:

4.00-6.30: Techniques

7.00: Dinner at the restaurant across the road

After dinner: we can continue if people want to

Thursday:

8.30-9.30: Breakfast

9.30-12.30: Techniques, stopping for breaks as people wish

12.30-1.30: Lunch at my home

1.30-6.30: Techniques, stopping for breaks as people wish

7.00: Dinner at my home

After dinner: we can continue if people want to

Friday:

8.30-9.30: Breakfast

9.30-11.00: Techniques

11.00-12.30: Start work on our project

12.30-1.30 : Lunch at my home

1.30-5.30: Finish projects

5.30-6.00: Pack up and clean up

The price for this workshop is £180. This includes all the food including eating out on Wednesday night. It also includes all the materials we'll use during the classes, plus a significant amount of goodies for you to take home with you.

I have accommodation for two people sharing a queen sized bed, or there are local B&Bs that I can recommend that are a short hop, skip and a jump away. There is no extra charge for accommodation if you stay with me, but you will need to meet the cost of the B&B, should you choose that.

If you'd like to do this workshop, please let me know via the Email Me link at the top of this page. I need to know if you'd like to attend by Christmas. A non-refundable deposit of £50 will need to be paid by the 24th of December, with the full amount paid by the 2nd of January 2009.

Lizzi's Album

A very good friend of mine asked me to create a scrapbook for her daughter's 18th birthday. Daughter had requested one that she can put all her favourite photos from school into.

You have to remember that when I scrapbook, it generally takes me two hours to create one page. The birthday is only two days away and I still have to get my day job out of the way and our Concert on Saturday really ate into crafting time. Plus the majority of my stash is still in storage. However, I'd picked up a bargain pack of papers from Costco made by Memory Stor and some of their albums.

So I decided to set myself a challenge. Could I create an album with limited stash and tools? Actually, what I've found is that it's faster to create an album if you don't have the worry of what photos are going to be in it! I'm not matching colours in photos to the album. I'll leave it to Lizzi to determine which photos she wants to put on which pages. It's quite liberating, actually!

I've limited myself to one sheet of each design. Besides the paper (which admittedly is 100 different designs, double-sided), I have glue, double-sided tape/photo squares and Distress Ink (because you're not going to get me to create anything if I can't use Distress Ink). My tools are limited to my Sissix Big Shot and only two dies, plus two texture plates, one set of Build-A-Swirl clear stamps by Prima, a non-stick craft sheet, Cut-N-Dry foam and my CM circle cutters. Everything else is off limits. I've managed to make and photograph 13 pictures in total and these are displayed here.

I'm going to continue working on the album tomorrow and hopefully have something complete for her mother to pick up on Wednesday. I hope she likes it.

I have to apologise for the poor photography. This was taken with my mobile phone as my camera is being repaired.

The Technology

All the benches have been put in now and I'll put up photos of them once I have them.

I haven't blogged the technology that has gone into The Studio yet. There aren't any photos of it, because most of it you can't see as it's hidden.

Doorbell: I needed to be able to respond to people at the front door no matter where I was. I have large doorbell on the front of the house labelled The Studio which is attached to a wireless unit. At my end, I have a handset that is wireless, so no matter if I'm in the house or the Studio, I can respond to whoever's buzzing and let them know that I'm on my way.

Networking: I have three cables running down a pipeline through the garden to the guest house at the back of our house. These will be attached to a switch which will pick up one cable running to the main house. Only two of those cables will probably be used to start off with (but Zandy says he'll set up Voice Over IP for me in the future if I want more sophisticated telephony up there). They will feed into a wireless switch which will also feed four cables that run through the walls over to my main work space. So, I'll have wireless and wired up there.

I also have a 16-port switch that will hang on the wall over my work area. This will allow me to have my two printers networked, plus my network attached storage as well as my main desktop and secondary laptop attached and still give me plenty of space for having customer's computers on the network. I have a nice, large screeen for my main desktop so that I can watch DVDs while crafting.

Telephone: I have a DECT wireless booster that allows my digital phone to reach up to the Studio. The phone system has an intercom facility, so Zandy can call me from the house if he needs me.

I'll blog more about the technology as it starts to go into place.

Moving in

This is how I finished the plastering. As you can see, it's not as neat as if it had been done by a professional, but it is good enough.





I was a little concerned about the finishing where the plaster met the rafters as it really didn't look very good and I knew there was no way I was going to be able to ignore it. So I purchased some lengths of quarter-round and they have edged the bits of the plasterboard. Now that they're painted in, it looks almost professional - almost.



So, I started painting. I had bought a large bucket of brilliant white paint with the idea that I'd paint it all like that. However, as you can see in this picture, I'd put up some second-hand cupboards I picked up on eBay and against the white paint, they looked grey. I have also tried every gadget available on the market to supposedly make painting easier and I have to say that there's a reason why most painters still stick to the old roller and tray method. However, one tip I picked up from a painter was to put the tray into a plastic bag then pour the paint into the tray over the plastic bag. Work like that and when you're done, you simply turn the bag inside out over the dead paint and throw it away. No clean up of the tray required. I decided to leave the ceiling white so that I get the most light reflection and to paint the walls a gentle cream. A friend, Richard, came over to help me paint and over the course of a weekend we got all the painting done bar a few touch ups which I went back and did later. He also stayed on an extra day and helped me lay the floor which was an added bonus.



This last weekend, Zandy came and helped me put up some of the workbench. My neighbour, David, is coming back to cut down the other workbench so that it can go in place, but this means that I have started moving in. Things are not in their final places, by any means, but I've started to sort things out. As you can see, I've added another set of drawers under the cupboards. Hung underneath these drawers is a curtain rail with pincer clips hanging on it so that I can hang just about anything I want and have it within easy reach. I've seen these sold as a commercial product in the US and thought they were a really good idea but very expensive to buy and import. This cost me about £65 in total and it is exactly the length I need for my work space. It has 120 clips on it so I'm not going to run out of space any time soon.

Underneath one of the worktops I have a display stand that I picked up from a shop that was going out of business. It is designed to dispense small bottles of acrylic paints. So far, it is holding my Folk Art acrylics, my Making Memories Acrylics and my Glimmer Mists. As I unpack more, I'll see how much will fit into it.



One corner of the room has a different type of workbench on it. This is because I already had this length of workbench which I had used on the Scrapperdashery stand at Stitches last year. It seemed a pity to waste a perfectly good piece of workbench. This will be my "wet area". I have a water cooler that supplies 4 litres of water which I just refill from the tap when I need a top up. It even has the facility to chill the water and dispenses either chilled or ambient temperature depending on what I want. Not bad for £50, I thought. I also have a little kettle so I can make myself tea and coffee. At present it is also the home for my iPod speakers, and anything else that I bring up from the house, but that may not stay that way as I have other plans.



I have 40 Display Dynamics paper trays that I bought from the shop going out of business and I have another 9 that I bought years ago at great expense. I've been trying to decide what to do with them. I think they'll go under a workbench, but we'll see. It will be great to have the paper I use a lot out where I can see it.

At the other end of the room, I've put up some of the shelves from Ikea that I mentioned in a previous post. They cover most of the width of the room. Facing them I've placed two of the largest Billy bookcases and backed them with white corrugated plastic left over from the Stitches stand. As you can see they provide me with a kind of storage cupboard so that I can put unsightly things out view. It also increases the amount of space I have for storage by a vast amount. What you can't see in the photo to the left is that I have a frame (you can see two of the parts of the frame leaning against the shelves) that forms a tall cupboard in the corner of the room. This will be clad in more of the white corrugated plastic and will give me a storage cupboard for things that are too tall to go anywhere else. It has a shelf at head height so lots of the tools that I don't use on a regular basis will go there. As will some of the network that is yet to be installed.

I have yet to attach the fixings for the car roof box to the ceiling so that I can store the roof box out of the way when it isn't being used. I also have two of these Really Useful sets which are going to be attached to the wall somewhere.

So, the next week or so is going to be spent with me moving things in slowly. There's about three or four car loads of stuff in storage and I really can only move one car load a day - some of those boxes are very heavy - and I want to sort things out as I move in as much as possible so that it goes in in an orderly fashion. I hope this weekend to start moving in some of the furniture out of the house but we have a concert coming up this weekend so that knocks out Saturday. I'll see how much I can get done on Sunday.