Friday 26 February 2016

Parchment craft at the W. I. Denman

Hello friends,

I promised you a little while ago that I'd share with you some pictures of the Parchment craft course I taught at the end of January, as a stand in tutor, at the W. I. Denman college, very close to where I live, in Oxfordshire.

Here are just a few photos that I took, you'll be able to find many more pictures, taken by the college on their Facebook page just scroll down until you get to 2nd Feb :)!


This was my classroom for the 4 days....



The classroom was very high tech, check out all those lights, tv and camera so I could demo and my ladies could watch what I was doing on the tv!



This is Jane, she'd only ever been to one beginner Parchment craft course before, but her work was stunning and looked very professional!



This is Elvina,  her work was fabulous too!


Here is Elvina again with her friend Maureen, they were gorgeous, very supportive of their new 'stand in' tutor!  They were both seasoned Parchers and great at it.  They run a little Parchment Craft group in Jersey.



You can see Jean, Mary, Yvonne and Joan here.  They were all friends who meet together at Denman, they come from all over the country and were huge supporters of the regular Parchment tutor.  They were seasoned Parchment crafters who had all the gear and qualifications, I didn't know existed ;)! 


 On these next two pictures you can see Pat (also from Jersey), Margaret, Valerie & Sylvia, this was definitely my "quiet table".  These ladies were also regulars and huge supporters of the usual tutor too and very professional in their work and fast with it!  It's always the quiet ones that get the most done -I expect that's why I never get much done when I'm crafting in a group!



Here I think, are most of the projects finished by one of the ladies, apologies ladies, I can't remember who did all this gorgeous work, but nearly everyones looked the same ;)!


Here is a close up of the most difficult project we tackled, lots of pricking and embossing on the diagonal grid for this one!


and finally, a table I filled with other projects I'd made, hoping it would put the ladies at ease when they met me, hoping to show that I was a "good enough" teacher to be standing in for their course ;)!



I absolutely loved teaching these ladies at Denman, I am smiling as I type because I've got more dates for more courses I'll be running there, this coming autumn and winter!  It really is the most wonderful place to be!

Hope you've enjoyed looking at the pictures.

Happy crafting.

Carole x



Thursday 11 February 2016

Silhouette UK blog - weekly challenge

Hello friends,

As a lover of all things Silhouette, I thought I'd join the new challenge over on their new blog.

The challenge was to use this weeks free design from the Silhouette store, it's a cute little mail box - perfect for Valentines day!

To make this a challenge, as it were, I decided to try and copy the decorative parts.  I've never used the 'draw freehand' feature, apart from showing the feature when ladies come for a one-to-one class here with me.  I normally glide over it quickly saying something like "if you can draw, this might be useful, but I can't so can't ever imagine ever using it"!  Well I tried it today to make the the coloured boxes and you'll notice that I really can't even draw a nice line!

I personalised my letterbox with my husbands initials on the back ;)!

I hope you like mine, here it is....



NOTE:  when I started putting this together I noticed that the card naturally bends on the weakest part, the part where the opening is, to overcome that a little, I made an extra bit to protect it, as you will notice in the picture.  I also thought it was hard to put together and feel there should be a score line under the curved section on the side bits, I think there is one on their sample which you can see above!  So if I were to make this again, I'd definitely add an extra score line and curve the main part with my bone folder to avoid the creasing at the weak point!


Now all I need is to make and post a tiny card to go in it!

I hope you join in with the challenge.

Happy Silhouetting.

Carole x



Wednesday 10 February 2016

Silhouette Lessons - one to one

Hello friends,

I can't tell you how much fun I've been having recently, I've been busy teaching the Silhouette Studio software to some lovely ladies on a one to one basis and I've been teaching Parchment craft, as a stand-in tutor, after many years of not doing Parchment, so had to practice!

I'll share some of the projects we made for the Parchment class over the next few days.

Today I've been working on some Christmas projects.  I know it seems odd but I've been booked to teach a 'Christmas paper crafting projects' workshop early December and needed to do a write-up and they needed a picture of an example of what we might make.

One of my favourite things to do is to adapt my Silhouette files to make them fit my needs.  I adapted an envelope file to make the cutlery holder and the treat box file was adapted to fit my Stampin' Up rubber stamp!  Hope you like them.


Happy Silhouetting to you all.

Carole x