Did someone say Blog Candy?

What a glorious season Spring is.  It has to be my favourite season of the year, I just love seeing the trees come into blossom, the lighter evenings and the lambs in the fields with their spring loaded legs and wing nut ears.

And we are having such a treat at the moment with this June like weather in April.  I was wearing cropped trousers and sandals yesterday – crazy!

Spring is also the season of renewal and rebirth and it very much ties in with a lot of what I’m feeling at the moment.  Two weeks ago I spent a weekend in Amsterdam taking part in a two day workshop called “Refilling your Creative Well”  with an artist I had admired from afar for a while called Lisa Sonora Beam.

I had looked longingly at Lisa’s descriptions of her retreats in Mexico and dreamed of making it to one of them someday.  (I still hope to.)  So when I saw that she was doing a workshop in Amsterdam I jumped at the chance as there are cheap direct flights from my local airport.  It was meant to be – I spent two days in the company of some very special women, working in a journal, getting in touch with some deep truths about my own creativity and my artistic dreams and I came home feeling refreshed, renewed and refocused.  Lisa helped me to get in touch with parts of myself I’d been avoiding, helped me to realise it’s ok to express grief and loss, and in the freedom of my journal, I began to define the new me that is emerging from the chrysalis.

On the way there, I heard some people getting upgraded to first class on the flight and I thought hmm, an upgrade would be nice.  In reality, it’s a very short flight from Durham to Amsterdam and first class simply means a few more inches leg room.  I didn’t get a flight upgrade, but boy oh boy did I get an accommodation upgrade!  I had booked a B&B, but got upgraded to a penthouse suite!  I had the top two floors of a typically tall Amsterdam town house with outside terrace and the most amazing views over the canal.  The open plan living room/kitchen had four huge double windows overlooking the Singel canal and everything was fitted out to the highest standards.  I felt like Kate Winslet’s character in ‘The Holiday’ when she got to the house in California!

So I had a very special weekend of luxury and creative introspection and it was just what I needed.  I also had a healthy dose of exercise walking up and down five flights of VERY steep stairs every day – if you’ve ever stayed in Amsterdam, you will know exactly what I mean.  Those seventeenth century builders couldn’t afford to waste valuable space on stairwells, the staircases are practically ladders!

So I’m feeling pretty good about life at the moment and I’m sharing some of that feel-good factor over on the Design Team blog at the moment with a blog candy giveaway.  I’m also enjoying some preparation for my colouring class which starts in a couple of weeks time.

So I’m off to my craft room now, but before I go, I wanted to let you know that we now have a chat room on our ning community website (www.chocolatebaroque.ning.com) and every day next week I will be online for half an hour for a lunchtime chat between 12.30pm and 1.00pm.  As well as being available to take questions, I will be using the time to let you know about some discontinued products that we only have one or two of, starting with punches on Monday.  You will need to register on the site to take part in the chat.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and long may the sun continue to shine!

Merry Christmas – I have a gift for you

Wishing you all a very joyous and happy Christmas and I have a little Christmas gift for you all.  My usual terms apply, you can use this for your own personal use, but you cannot distribute the file to others.  This freebie will remain here for the twelve days of Christmas, after which it will disappear!  To grab the printable file, right click (CMD Click on a Mac) and choose ‘save target’ (Save image as on a Mac).

Enjoy!

It’s blog candy time again

I’ve had some problems with the blog over the last week – well, with the site where it’s hosted actually.  Hopefully their technical issues are fixed now.

So I’ve been wanting to shout about this and haven’t been able to – there’s blog candy over on the Elusive Images Design Team blog – yay!!

This elegant lady is part of our new ‘Belles’ collection – three very stylish ladies wearing stunning dresses, plus some gorgeous chandeliers and swirls.  Leave a comment over there and you could be in with a chance to win a set.  I will announce the winners soon, probably this weekend sometime.

Colour Theory again

My online class Rubber Stamping: Back to Basics started last week and I’m really enjoying getting to know all my new students.  This week I’m covering backgrounds and thought it might be useful to give them a link to my colour theory article that I wrote a back in 2009.  Then I thought, I bet I have new blog readers who won’t have seen that first time round, so I thought why not put a link to it here on the new blog for all of you.  I’m all in favour of making the world a more colourful place.

So here you go click here to download the Colour Theory document.  You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open this document.

 

But wait … there's more!

I’ve fixed the Frosted Lace download now, that should all be working fine.  But that’s not all – I’m feeling generous and slightly Christmassy today, so here’s another download for you – I call this one Moroccan Velvet and I’ve done you two colourways of warm red and zingy green.

The usual rules apply – this image is copyrighted to me, Glenda Waterworth, and you have permission to use this for your own non commercial use.  Please don’t pass on the files to anyone else, but feel free to give them the link to come here and get the file for themselves.

If you right click on any of the thumbnails (CTRL click on a Mac) you can save the pdf file.  You will need Adobe Reader version 8 or later to print the file.

Sorry to repeat myself, but some people will find their way here in the future without reading the previous post, so it has to be said explicitly each time I do a download.

Have fun with it!

Life is good

A couple of days ago I said I’d been working on some stuff that was private.  From the emails, comments and phone calls, it would seem that may not have been the best way to put it, but at the time I  was just trying to explain away the absence of posts without using the busy word again.  It didn’t even cross my mind that it might imply some kind of problem.  Some of you have been so concerned and obviously really care, but please don’t worry about me, there is a huge amount of positive and good stuff going on in my life right now.  I’m not going through any kind of trouble or trauma, I’m not facing a health scare or a pre-menopausal pregnancy or anything daft like that!  I’m ‘being there’ for someone who needs me at the moment, that’s all.

So, it’s time for me to pass on some positive vibes by announcing a winner of our Essence of Nature Contest.  The winner was chosen completely at random and it is DENISE LICKORISH!!  Well done Denise – you will be getting an email from us soon with a voucher to the value of the CD.

And we were comfortably over the ten entries required for a free download, so well done to those of you who entered, you just made a whole bunch of people very happy.

Here’s the free paper download – it’s called Frosted Lace and it’s a subtle one.  There is a choice of 12×12, A4 portrait and A4 landscape.

The usual rules apply – this image is copyrighted to me, Glenda Waterworth, and you have permission to use this for your own non commercial use.  Please don’t pass on the files to anyone else, but feel free to give them the link to come here and get the file for themselves.

If you right click on any of the thumbnails (CTRL click on a Mac) you can save the pdf file.  You will need Adobe Reader version 8 or later to print the file.

Enjoy!

Now, tomorrow, we are planning to get our new Halloween and Christmas stamps uploaded onto the Elusive Images blog, so do check over there if you want to see the wonderful stamps we are launching. It’s also the second of our Summer Open Days – with Jean Hardy from Crafty Individuals joining us for the day.  If you can get to the shop at all, it starts at 10am we’d love to see you.

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