The joys of coming home

This is the photo of an Australian citizen. I thought that when I came home to Australia, that setting myself back up in the country of my birth (and where I have lived for the majority of my life), would be a relatively easy thing to do.

How wrong I am.

The healthcare system in Australia is a subsidised affair called Medicare. Every citizen is entitled to Medicare. However, if you're a returning citizen there are certain criteria you need to meet to be able to apply. Firstly, they want proof that you are permanently back in Australia - which, effectively I am for the immediate future. So, they want proof of bill of sale of your house in the country you've left or proof that you've closed your foreign bank accounts. Or, they want a rental agreement/bill of purchase on a house in Australia or utility bills or an Australian bank account. Since I have not sold my UK house, closed my bank account, rented/bought a house in Australia, I don't have any of that information. But hey, I have my Australian passport, birth certificate and marriage certificate so if I get the Australian bank account, it should be easy.

Hah!

I applied for an Australian bank account today. No problem. The passport and certificates are enough for me to open the bank account, but they need proof of address in order for me to be able to withdraw from the account. So, the helpful guy at the bank suggested that I apply for an Australian Tax File Number - apparently you can do it online. You can. But not if you're Australian. For some strange reason only known to the Australian Goverment, Australians have to go down to their nearest post office, obtain the correct form, fill it in and post it to the tax office.

The annoying thing about all of this is that the purpose of this is for me to get healthcare while I'm here. If I had come into Australia on my UK passport with a visitor's visa I could have got Medicare assistance without any issue - apply online and everything. Easy. But not if I'm Australian.

Another thing: I've come back to Australia to look after my elderly parents while my father deals with terminal Leukaemia. I cannot work while I'm here because they need my help too much. We've heard about so many people who've obtained help from the government for various things and my family has never needed to ask for help so we're new to this whole system. Because I'm Australian, with a possible exception, I may have to wait until I've been back here two years before I can apply for any allowances. I'm not intending to be here two years, so we'll have to see what happens.

It's just so frustrating to have to go through this: Applying for allowances will be easier if I have Medicare, can't apply for Medicare until I have a bank account. Can't apply for a bank account until I have a Tax Office Number (or ironically, Medicare).

Round and round and round we go...

Goodbye R496 URD

I sold my car today. It has been an integral part of my life for the last 11 years and it seems strange to not have a car, even if this is only going to be for a short while. It is so integral, that I cannot find any photos of it to post here. (but thank you to my friend, Missus Wookie for finding one). It's funny how you use something every day for so long, but when you go back to look, there's no other record of it's existence other than out-of-date paperwork in your filing cabinet.

This car was my first company car when I joined Conchango back in 1998. There were four Golf GTIs ordered for new staff and VW were just about to releast the Mark 4 and didn't have any in stock, so they recalled one from each of four other right-hand drive vehicle countries so that we could have them. I believe mine was the New Zealand version - air con and a sun roof. Someone got the South African one - no sun roof, but air con so good you could have stored your beef next to it. There was also an Australian one - air con, no sun roof - and a Japanese one - air con, no sun roof, a great stereo system as standard.

If all four of us turned up to a company do, there'd be R495 URD, R496 URD, R497 URD and R498 URD all parked next to each other. Mine was the only purple one so I never tried to drive one of the others away by mistake after a company do.

I'll miss the car. It's been good to me. The guy I sold it to said that the clutch was going and the gearbox was making a funny noise. The clutch hasn't changed in 10 years and the gearbox makes the same noise it's always made, so I guess it just proves that Golfs are the reliable cars that every one says they are. Their reputation is intact.

Dad's album

My sister, Beth, and I have been working on an album for my Dad. He keeps joking that if we don't hurry up, he'll be dead before we finish it. He has no idea how true that is. It's one of those things: just as soon as you think you've finished it, you come up with just one more page to do.

This is our sister, Susan doing her page. She's actually more of a scrapbooker than she thinks she is. She made a scrapbook of one of the trips the orchestra she's in did and I think it is wonderful. This is her doing her page for Dad's album. You can just see me on the other side of the table. We have this set up in the living room at Mum & Dad's place so that we can work on the album and spend time with them. It has actually worked out very well. Everyone who comes to visit gets a chance to see the process and many of them put in their 2 cents worth.

Dad is hale and hearty at the moment. As you can see from this picture, he is looking pretty good. His little brother came over from Canberra and told him "you're a fraud. You're not sick, you're just seeking attention!" (in the kindest possible way).

This is a picture I asked him to pose for last week. The card he is holding in his hand is one of thousands that we have in the garage. From about 1974 to 1994, Dad was the Chief Examiner for the Biology exam for getting into University. In the pre-computer age, he needed an efficient and cheap way to keep track of exam questions. These cards are about 20cm x 10cm and have punched holes around the edge - just large enough for a size 10 knitting needle.

The idea is that each card has the question printed on the front. Then along the top of the card, the first choice option is for which section of the accompanying text the question relates to. There is a choice option for whether the question is Multiple Choice, Short Answer or Essay, then there is a sub-section choice and a section for how the student must answer the question (display Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis or Evaluation), as you want a balance of these.

The idea was, he made his first choice (which section), insert the knitting needle into the first slot, then shake the stack of cards. The ones which fell out where all the questions relating to that section. Then he inserted the knitting needle into the question type (for example, Multiple Choice), shake the stack out and the ones left were the multiple choice. Then insert the knitting needle into the sub-section and shake (you get the idea now) and that gave you possible questions. He'd then insert the knitting needle into, say, the Knowledge slot, shake them out and that would give him all the questions in that Section, that were Multiple Choice, in a particular sub-section that would require the student to demonstrate Knowledge. It was actually quiet an ingenious system. He never translated it to computer, because the time that it would have taken to write such a database and then enter in all the data would have simply taken too long.

But by going through this process year, he could turn up to a paper-setting meeting with possible questions already determined. He could also keep track of which years the questions went into to make sure that they weren't repeated too often (as current students get past papers to practice on) and later on, he also recorded other data about how well the question had performed which would allow him to modify or replace bad questions.

Really quite clever when you think about it.

Another bunch of lovely people

My sister-in-law, Meredith, has been an avid stamper since before I left Australia in 1991. Last week, she asked me to do a demonstration/mini-workshop for some of her friends which I was happy to oblige.

I showed them a bunch of techniques they can do with Distress Inks and other products from Ranger. I got them to do three of the tag techniques and then we did a mini project where they took an ATC-sized canvas which comes with it's own mini-easel and they decorated using Adirondack Dimensional Pearls.

This week, Meredith invited me to join her little stamping group where Lucy was showing them this fabulous card. It uses one sheet of A4 or 8.5x11. Her card has only two pockets, but with a little modification on my part I got three pockets and I could've put in a fourth if I'd wanted it. This photo doesn't do it justice. We used Distress Inks and a little Perfect Pearls to give the labels a little bit of shimmer.

All craft products seem a little expensive over here (I guess if you have to ship it halfway around the world...), so I understand why they haven't been able to invest in some of the stuff I have.

These lovely people are two of the staff at a fantastic store here in Perth called Scraptivate - this is Mel (on the left) and Megan (on the right). This store has got some of the most amazing stuff and talented people working there, presenting Scrapbooking in an artistic way.

They have two Australian-made products that are great: The Collections range is pre-cut chipboard shapes and there's just been some new releases hit the store after the Australian equivalent of CHA. They also have some amazing German Scrap - black angel wings! - all exclusive

to Scraptivate.

My sister, Beth took me down there the Sunday after I arrived. That it took 6 days to get into this store is a dissapointment I'm not sure I'm ever going to live down. UK Stores would kill for this much space to spread out in. One whole length of the store is full of paper racks and she's got everything from the popular US manufacturers, plus some stuff I've never seen from Australian manufacturers. I'm working on her to get Scrapperdashery, but if you'd like her to get the Poetry range, please go in and tell her. I can't put up photos of all the amazing artwork that was dotted around the shop as there simply isn't space, but check out the amazing houses and things on this table.

I'm learning to let go

Spending all my waking hours with Dad is suffocating him - he says he doesn't want people to sit around and watch him die, which we're not - so I've been finding things to do and music has always been a great escape for me.

Two of my sisters sing with the University of Western Australia Choral Society (UWACS) and they are currently rehearsing the Mass in B Minor by Bach (lots of notes), so I trailed along to rehearsal with them last Wednesday night. Last night, we went to see the Perth equivalent of The Sixteen perform it. The group is only 18 members strong, but they are all professional singers. The choir was fantastic. The Alto and Soprano were okay (enunciation is a good thing, people!). The orchestra was reasonable but they were mostly students from what we could gather (there is no listing in the programme) and they were using early music instruments and to quote my sister Susan "Bach is the reason more modern instruments were invented"

It was performed at St George's Cathedral which is gothic-style but made out of brick, not stone as the only local stone is Limestone and I'm not sure it would be strong enough to hold up that style of structure.

But it was warm. I'm determined to not be like a Wingeing Pom and complain about the heat, but even some of the locals were leaving because it was too hot. Yesterday's daytime temperature was 37 Celcius (98.6 Farenheit) and the Fremantle Doctor was late arriving (about 3am) so the evening was warm. I had taken a light jumper with me just in case the clear skies heralded a cooler night. I needn't have bothered.

It's great to be home

I'm at home in Perth now and it is great to be here seeing the family. Zandy is with me and will stay for three of the four weeks that I'm here. My brothers are both flying in from their homes in Tasmania and Northern Territory in another week and we're having a celebration for Dad on Easter Saturday.

We've spent a lot of time just sitting chatting so far. Dad is being prompted by many people to talk about his life and things that he has done, so I'm learning new things about what he did. It's giving me an opportunity to clarify some of the stories I've heard over the years and get the story straight. We all thought that there would be plenty of time for this - even he did - so we're now cramming it all in.

Yesterday, an old work colleague dropped around and we got the whole chronological timeline of his working career. It was great because Frank would say "Graham, do you remember such-and-such and the time they did that?" and Dad would respond and we'd get the whole story with clarity of detail that was surprising since some of these things happened 35 years ago. He says it's because he forgets these things until someone prompts the memory and then it just pops into his head as though it were yesterday.

The tubes you can see in his neck are connections that allow the hospital to take blood when they need to without having to puncture more holes in his arm. He says that the arm connections were stinging, so by going straight into the neck, it is much easier. His blood count is down so they'll give him more reds next week, but his platelets are up to 101 (apparently something around 150 is normal and they don't give platelets until they are down to 10) but we're keeping an eye on him. If he starts to feel woozy then that is an indication that his reds are down and we need to get him to Emergency so they can give him a transfusion.

Now that I've seen him in person and spent time with him a lot over the last four days, I'm prepared to let go and see other people. So, I'm spending time with my sisters singing today and going to a performance of Bach's B Minor Mass tonight.

Life is okay.

A break in service for a little while

Just to let you all know, things are going to be a little interrupted for a while. I'm going home to Australia to see Dad. I'll be gone for about a month. I'll only update this blog if there is news to share - one way or the other.

Retailers: If you're planning to place an order with Scrapperdashery, I can still fulfill orders from elsewhere in the world. The only two things I can't fulfil are non-stick craft sheet sold by the metre because I have to be here to fulfil a special order like this, and solid-coloured cardstock as my distribution agent doesn't have any in stock at the moment. But all the patterned paper is still there and there are discounts applying until the end of March.

I know you'll be thinking of me and supporting me through this, so thanks in advance for that support.

Judi

For those of you who don't know him. This is my Dad. Mum took this photo of us together at Stonehenge last year when they came over from Australia to visit me. We had nearly 5 wonderful weeks where I took some time off work and we spent some great time together. We drove up to Scotland to visit Mum's Aunt and then down to Darlington to see where Dad's family left England from. The best bit for me was finding all the Hodgkins who are buried in Darlington Quaker Meeting House Burial Ground.

While they were here, Dad helped out on my studio, working on some of the plastering with me. He told me yesterday that my sister-in-law had shown him how to get to my blog so that he could see the studio and he was so chuffed to see that I was nearly completely moved in (I'm not sure that I'll ever be completely moved in).

Unfortunately, I am welcoming my own mortality this week with the news that my father has terminal cancer - leukaemia in fact. I'm 10,000 miles away and feeling rather helpless. We all disagree with our parents at some stages in our lives, and I'm no different. But they are the only ones I've got and knowing that at 40 I'm about to lose one of them is heartbreaking.

So, I'm going home to see him, let them both know how much I love them and share time with my immediate family. So, if I don't respond to queries, questions and anything else as quickly as you would expect, I am sorry and I'll be in touch with you as soon as I can.

Classes coming up at Stamparty

I will be teaching series of classes at Stamparty in Aldershot over the next couple of months.

This Thursday, 12th March:
3.30 - 5.30pm Brayered cards. This is a fantastic technique that I have to give credit to Michelle Zindorf for. Learn how you can stamp images for a completely different effect. Your cards will pop and people will wonder how you managed to get this card looking like it does.

6.30 - 8.30pm Clear Acrylic Albums. Using the new clear acrylic albums from Papermania, we'll do a number of techniques that will enhance the transparency of these albums, involving paper, alcohol inks and other mediums. You can either put photos into this, or not as your choice. Black & White photos will work the best.

Saturday, 21st March:
10.30am - 12.30pm Perfect Pearls. These mica pigment powders are unique in that they have a binder built into the powder, so require no additional input to make them a permanent shimmery addition to your cards and scrapbook pages. This is a technique class and you'll have the opportunity to learn a number of techniques that you can take away with and incorporate into everything you do.

1.30 - 3.3opm. Melting Pot. This is a great class to bundle with the Perfect Pearls class as we'll use them here too. Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel can be used to make all manner of beautiful embellishments and even jewellery pieces. There are so many things to do with the Melting Pot that I'm not sure we'll fit them all into one class - but we'll try!

Wednesday, 25th March:
3.30 - 5.30pm. Grungeboard. It's not chipboard, it's not fabric. What is it? It is one of the most versatile products to come out of the head of Tim Holtz in a long time. Learn a number of things that you can do with this marvellous product.

6.30 - 8.30pm. Decorate a cigar box. If you have been to any of my workshops before, you will know it’s a bit messy but the results are always fantastic. We’ll cover this cigar box in paper, remove the paper hinge and replace it with real hinges and box corners to make a box that will have people wowed.

Wednesday, 15th April:
CANCELLED. Sorry.

Saturday, 25th April:
10.30am - 12.30pm. Creating backgrounds with colour wash. This is a messy class, so don't wear precious clothing. We'll get really messy, making beautiful backgrounds with this industrial-quality fabric dye, change the colour of ribbon and paint with it.

1.30 - 3.30pm. Brayered cards. This is a fantastic technique that I have to give credit to Michelle Zindorf for. Learn how you can stamp images for a completely different effect. Your cards will pop and people will wonder how you managed to get this card looking like it does.

There will be more classes coming up, so come back to see where and when.

Experimentation Time

I've been doing some experiementation over the last two days - the studio is clean and orders from Stitches have been sent off to dispatch.

This first experiement was a result of a failure - and I coudn't let it go until I'd found out a solution. I ran a sheet of brass through a Cuttlebug embossing folder to produce a fantastic, highly detailed image. But I wanted to crackle it and Distress Crackle paints won't stick to metal. So, I coated the embossed metal with black Gesso, waited for it to dry, then sanded it down to expose the brass underneath. Next time, I know to paint a thinner coat. Then I glooped (that must be the technical term, right?) Black Soot Distress Crackle Paint over the metal and left that to dry. There is a very fine crackle as a result. I sanded it back again, but was unhappy that I couldn't see the crackle all that well because of the black Gesso underneath. So I painted over it with Gold Precious Metal (from Vario), working the paint into all the cracks, then wiping it off the surface before it had a chance to dry thoroughly. I love the effect and the photo just doesn't do it justice.

To finish it up, I wrapped two pieces of gold ribbon around the bottom, stamped a PaperArtsy image in Versamark and embossed it with Ranger Super Fine Detail Gold powder on black cardstock, vcut around the image and mounted it with Pop-Up Glue Dots (Glue Dots UK). I couldn't find my gold mirror card, so I mounted it on a Tomato Paste tube which has been flattened in my Wizard and used the Glue Dots to mount it on a Black Glossy (Ranger) card.

This next piece was more of an experimentation. I met a lovely company at Stitches called Vario (when I find a like to their website, I'll put it up here) and they very kindly gave me some stuff to take home and play with.

This is an A5 gessoed canvas that I picked up from Hobbycraft. I base coated it with Turquoise Precious Metal paint, then stencilled Tim's Time Masks with Gold Precious Metal Paint. I let the whole lot dry thoroughly, put Tim's Time Masks down again and smothered Vario's Transparent Croco (crackle medium) over the top and let it dry. I came back this morning and the cracking is very impressive. However, the transparent Croco had dulled down the Precious Metals, so I went back over with a paint brush and repainted the Gold and Turquoise in.

These mediums are fantastic. The Precious Metals will adhere to all manner of surfaces: glass, ceramic, wood, metal and can still be used in normal applications. They're water-based, so the brushes simply was out. The Croco is best applied with a spatula or foam brush and laid down really thickly. The label says at least 2mm, but I applied it a lot thinner than that in some places and got a beautiful crazed look to the crackle. The best bit, is that I can paint over the transparent to give it colour in particular places. The leaflet even shows it being used on glass. Wow!

Again, the photo just doesn't do this justice. I can't see a way of getting the glistening effect to show up in a photo. You'll just have to come to my studio to see it for yourself.

For those of you who thought my studio was too neat

After the posting where I shared my nearly finished studio, I had a number of comments back from people that it looked very neat. I knew it wasn't going to stay that way. Here is what it looked like after I'd come back from Stitches:

I have done some tidying since this photo, but there's a long way to go. So, you can see, it goes from neat and organised to extremely disorganised rather rapidly.

Hey guys, I'm back from Stitches and we had a great time. You can see how good the booth looked. That's Wendrie setting up for a Make N Take and Zandy folding promotional leaflets for me.

The white signs you can see are Sold Out signs. That means that some of my stuff is now gone - never to be seen again. If you're a retailer and reading this and you want some of the end-of-line products, you need to let me know now because the remainder of stock is going up on the website next week and will hopefully sell out straight away.

Yesterday, I met up with Stacey & Jeff Caron and Kim Hupke and showed them around London a little. We ate lunch at Harrods and then walked around the store. Stacey bought the most gorgeous collar for the St Bernard (who's name escapes me at the moment) and had so much fun going back into the Egyptian room and trying out different perfumes. After much procrastination (and refusing to buy one that had Martha Stewart written on the bottom of it), we found the perfect, simple teapot and a selection of teas, tea ball and strainer, so now the Caron's have exactly what they need to make the perfect cup of tea. We spent so much time in Harrods that we didn't make it to the Victoria & Albert museum.

So we caught a taxi up to Piccadilly Circus and admired the lights, then walked through Leicester Square where all the movie premiers happen, up to Covent Garden where "My Fair Lady" was filmed (Jeff liked these gas heaters so much that we had to

have him pose in front of one but apparently they look good but aren't that heat efficient), down The Strand to Trafalgar Square and back up into Soho where we found a reasonable Chinese

restaurant to have dinner at.

I had to get some work done today, so tomorrow I am going back in tomorrow morning and we're going to aim for the Victoria & Albert Museum. They've got a lovely exhibition on at the moment showing costumes of the Tsars and since Jeff's family came from Russia, I hope we'll enjoy it.

After the V&A we're hoping to make it to the London Eye to do a flight. I've recharged the camera so I'll share photos of it with you tomorrow night.

We had more snow today

The snow arrived again. This is more snow than I've ever seen in this country. Everything was covered in about 4 inches of snow when I came out to the office this morning. So I just had to grab the camera and get a photo.

An artist needs refreshment during the day and I've been taking a Kikkoman Soy Sauce bottle up with me to the studio with milk in it for my hot drinks during the day. Today I was treated to my own personal fridge on the deck just outside the door.

This little guy sits on the wall at the bottom of the garden looking down the stairs. He was looking extremely unamused by the snow by the time I took this photo.

Zandy couldn't get into work this morning because the roads hadn't been gritted sufficiently so, after lunch we went for a walk down to the river.

I love the view over the fields nearby. Absoutely beautiful. As long as I don't have to work in it, I love it.

So this has been my work today. It's the poster for our next concert. If you want tickets, I can get them for you too. The background was created with alcohol inks on glossy cardstock. It's a little blotchier than I normally do. This is really thick photo paper. As I carried it up to the studio, the paper got wet and damaged the emulsion. I inked over the top and the blotches show through the inking.

Snow it's not!

For those of you who haven't heard, the UK had the worst snow in 18 years fall today. Now, I love snow, so I think it's brilliant. But I have noted that when the snow falls in Britain, the entire country screeches to a halt. This year it has been fun to watch the chaos because they were warning us about this snow two days ago. But a lot of councils didn't deploy the gritters so this morning when we all woke up to a white carpet, the roads weren't prepared. DH got sent home from work at lunchtime so he's working in the house, while I'm up here in the studio.

Speaking of which: this is the studio in the snow. Isn't she pretty?

I promised you more photos

I'll try to give you a 360 degree tour of the room so that you can get a feel for how it feels at the moment. Today, we moved in two of the three desks that will eventually be in the room. Now, if you look over to the IT corner, you can see my glass-topped desk and my Herman Miller chair that I picked up at an auction for a 6th of it's retail price. The desk will host my computer and main printer and the bench next to it will be my main repair station and the location of the other two printers. Underneath the bench will be storage.















This is my craft table. It's an old kitchen table that a friend of mine gave me. I've now covered it completely with a non-stick craft sheet to protect the surface. The second photo shows the 13" square light box that has been sunk into the surface. It's facing toward my IT desk so that (once I've got my desktop working again) I can watch DVDs while I craft.





















This is my craft desk from the other side. As you can see, from my seated position, I can reach most of the things I need without having to move too far. My Distress Inks are on a display next to me and I have a little netting bag with my Cut N Dry foam squares easily reachable.





















Right, so this is a close-up of the bench next to my desk. The drawers are from Ikea (but they don't make them anymore, pity) and they are screwed to the wall. Underneath, is a curtain pole that is designed to be hung from above and about 120 curtain rings with clips so that I can clip all manner of things to them. It's working out really well. To the left of that is a letter organiser thingy that I have all my cutting mats in. There are three stamp displays that I picked up from a store going out of business. On top of the drawers is currently where I'm storing my Radiant Rains, Colour Washes, Zig pens, Heat guns and little clock radio so I can listen to Radio 4.

Above the drawers I have two cupboards that I bought off eBay. One is currently where all my Bind-It-All stuff is stored. The other side doesn't have much in it yet. Fixing it to the wall was interesting because the fixings that came with the cupboards originally where broken and my plasterboard walls weren't strong enough. I screwed a piece of timber across the top of the inside of the cupboard which afixes it to the wall, and then put another piece on the bottom to support from underneath.





















If you turn 180 degrees upon yourself, you can see my bench that I showed you yesterday that is covered with non-stick craft sheet. Because I like to keep this clear for when I'm doing really messy stuff, it is also a really good place to put out stuff that I need to photograph at the moment. However, I have another glass desk that will go in front of this bench. So, I may move the non-stick craft sheet over to the bench on the left.





















We have all the amenities here. That's a coffee machine and a water cooler. The water cooler also doubles as my water source for cleaning brushes etc. Immediately to the left of this bench, are the double french doors.



























Excuse the rubbish boxes on the floor. Now, I have to explain this large frame. This is the frame for a "cupboard" that forms part of my stand at Craft, Hobby & Stitches. It gets clad in white corrugated plastic and provides a great storage space during the show. I will clad it after CH&S is over, but the plastic is too tall for the ceilings in my studio. To the left of that, you can just see the start of the storage area.



























My stamp storage. I've removed most of the wood blocks from my stamps (and they are now providing nice heat for us on our fire) and stored them in a combination of CD cases and file folders. Everything fits neatly onto this shelf and at the moment I even have space for my Wizard and Big Shot. This shelf was given to my by a friend who has returned to New Zealand (thanks, Bron). There is even space for my chipboard shapes on the top shelf.



























Okay, so this is the storage. These are two Billy bookcases facing three Sten shelving units (both from Ikea, but Sten is now discontinued). At the moment, I am simply dumping things on these shelves as they come into the studio in vague categories. I will do more organising once everything is in and I know how much stuff I have to put away. I also have left-over stuff from the construction of the studio stored here and again, that will be moved out - either to one of the garden sheds or given away on Freecycle.

These shelves will also hold all my books and magazines that I keep. Being a book person, I have quite a few so this may take a bit of sorting out, when the time comes. You can just see agains the back wall, my Really Useful storage boxes that will hold all manner of small bits and bobs once I'm more organised, but currently just hold extra screws from the building.



























These are the Sten shelves I referred to above. I have bought some inexpensive boxes from Tesco to sort things out into and this process has started today. Somewhere I have a labeller which I will use on everything.

So, that is the tour of the studio as it currently stands. I do need to do a lot more, because I looked at the house office today and was gobsmacked as to how much craft staff I still have to move up and that doesn't even start to take into account the IT stuff that has to go up. Anyway, this week I will be concentrating on moving all the stuff that is still in the barn up so that my neighbour can have his barn back. Then, I have to prep for Stitches, so I probably won't journal about the studio for a while.

If you're trying to find yourself a place to build as a studio, I hope that this might give you some ideas. If you're not, then hopefully it has been a little entertaining!

I'm creating again

I've moved enough stuff into the studio now that I can be creative again. Which is wonderful and just in time to pull together more stuff for Stitches which is in two weeks' time. I found this beautiful clock in my local supermarket after Christmas for £10 so it went up today.

I created these canvases a few months ago. I love Paris. I particularly love Le Tour Eiffel and I'm working on getting images of it all over my studio. I bought these coasters off a tourist trap seller's stall on the banks of the Sienne when we went over in 2007. I picked up these canvases from Hobbycraft and painted them with Adirondack Dimensional Pearls (the stamps are also done with the Pearls) before adhering the coasters on with Glossy Accents.

Today I've been working on two projects: The first is an altered cigar box for a class I've been asked to teach. I don't think this sample is finished, but it's definitely something to start with.

I removed the lid and as much paper as would tear off by hand. I then took some Midsummer Night's Dream paper and sprayed Interferance Violet Radiant Rains on it and ironed it dry. I covered the lid seperately, but have learned that you need to trim the lid down first or it won't fit once covered with paper. The inside of the box is covered with watercolour paper that I painted the Adirondack Dimension Pearls on to tie it in with the Scrapperdashery paper. I reassembled the box with hinges, added a clasp on the front and added corners to the bottom of the box. The lid was stamped with Tim's stamps in Pitch Black Adirondack Pigment Ink, then dusted with Black Sparkle Embossing Powder. I messed up a bit with the stamp, so I took three Prima flowers, covered them with Pitch Black Pigment Ink and dusted with Black Sparkle and set it.

My other project today as been to work out what the best Make N Take I can do at Stitches can be? It needs to be something that can be done in less than 10 minutes and that retailers might want to recreate when they get back to the shop. This little tag book uses one sheet of 12x12 (Romeo & Juliet), Radiant Rains, Distress Ink, Pitch Black Adirondack Pigment Ink and Black Sparkle Embossing Powder. It uses two sections of O-wire and the Bind it All to hold it together. It's simple, but I'm not sure if it's simple enough. Need to think about it more.

So, how is the rest of the studio coming along? Well, I haven't shown you any photos of it for a while (because my camera has been on the blink). So the photo of the cigar box shows you the work surface that I have covered completely with non-stick craft sheet. Wonderful stuff. So easy to keep clean. The corner that my computer equipment will go into is now ready for me to start moving in. I have network up in the studio (I'm writing this from the studio as we speak), so I need to move my desk up and then start to get the computer equipment in place. The desk will go where the white chair currently is. Behind the desk is a set of Billy bookcases, facing a set of Sten shelves that I painted white. This is my main storage and still needs sorting and organising. Somewhere in storage I have a label maker so that everything can be labelled once it is in it's permanent home. Underneath the benches, I have loads of Really Useful Boxes full mostly with paper.

This is the opposite corner - the one where the bench is entirely covered with craft sheet. There will be a desk going next to this. You can just see my paper racks to the right of the photo and I have a little oil heater which I can roll around the studio depending on where I'm working most that day. I have to be careful: this place is so well insulated that it doesn't take much to warm up and if I forget to turn it down, it gets too warm quite quickly.

I will take and share more photos so that you can see how things are progressing. But not right now, I need to go find dinner.

2.5 day workshop

We're about to start the last day of my workshop here in my studio. The girls have been doing fantastically.

On Wednesday night we managed 16 techniques and yesterday, clawed our way through another 30 or so. But, that still leaves another 34 techniques and they have to complete their projects after that! So, we might have to miss out one or two things along the way...

The girls say they've eaten better here than they do at home, so no complaints on that front. It didn't help that one of the toilet in the house decided to block up on Tuesday night. No time to call out a plumber, so we're having to restrict ourselves to only using the other two toilets.

I'd love to share some photos of the event, but when my camera came back from repair just before Christmas, they'd stuffed up and it still wasn't working. I had hoped that it would be back on Wednesday, but no messages, so I guess not.

Just know that we're having a blast of a time. We're all three of us exhausted - me from teaching them all this stuff and them from having to take in all of this information!