Retreat Information

I have already updated the Retreat page of the blog to say that there will NOT be a retreat in April 2010 as we originally planned.  Adrian’s Dad, Derrick, is very poorly and although we’re all being very positive and willing him to pull round, even when he’s back home, he’s going to need a lot of care and attention for quite some time.  Adrian is on care duty for his mum most Saturdays, so we accept that at this moment in our lives, we have a lot of claims on our time and when planning business events, we have to factor in extra time this year to put the family first.

I thoroughly enjoyed the last event and we are definitely planning to run more retreats, but until Derrick is stable, we feel there is too great a risk of having to cancel the event at short notice and that would be like dangling a bag of sweets and saying you can’t have any!

However, this has made the job of selecting a weekend for our Grand 10th Anniversary Birthday Bash a lot easier.  We will now be holding that on Friday April 16th and Saturday April 17th.  Keep an eye on the Shoptalk page of the Graphicus Blog for more on that – we have an amazing Guest Demonstrator, a long standing arrangement with someone I know you will all love.  There’s a fun theme to the party which Lynn came up with and we’re all going crazy for.  We’re working out some kind of competition based on the theme so you can all get involved, even if you can’t make it to the shop.  Oh, it’s going to be fun and I’m already looking forward to it.

Meanwhile, today, February 7th, I finally get to have Christmas with my Mum!!  We haven’t seen each other since Nick’s birthday in November, so it will be lovely to see them again and good for us to have a day out.  We’re meeting at Rheged again.  Nothing to do with the Paper Mill shop there.  Honest.

New Journal for 2010

[EDIT: people seem to be having problems viewing the blog this week - don't know why, but hope it will fix itself soon.]

Hands up who doesn’t like their own handwriting?  I don’t either, but you know what – it really doesn’t matter.  Cheat – stamp it, print it out or draw round chipboard letters (I do like that technique).

This is my big A3 size journal.  The pages have been painted with gesso and coloured with something – chalks, pastels, inks?  I dug this out of the archives at the weekend and really can’t remember what I used to colour the pages with.  It might be Tinkabella inks actually.  The writing you can just glimpse through the aperture is my look back on the last ten years and I found myself writing about wanting a holiday.  Not a business trip with a few days tacked on, but a proper, long, warm, relaxing, completely switch the brain off, holiday.  The trouble is I don’t quite see when we’re going to get one this year.  Already the year is filling up alarmingly fast with shows back on the menu, open days, workshops and retreats to organise. If I don’t get it programmed in soon, it just won’t happen.  I think I need to check out the holiday calendar at work tomorrow.

I also wrote about a longing for my every day life to feel like I’m on holiday all the time.  I used to feel like that.  Back in 2000 when I started this business, I was turning my back on my old career for good and each day that I wasn’t doing computer related stuff was like a day off.  Life seemed so full of possibilities and opportunities and nothing felt like a chore.  I do want to capture that holiday feeling again – like a kid at the seaside with a brand new bucket and spade and all that sand to build castles with!

One project that has that kind of feeling to it is planning the Graphicus Birthday Bash – ten years in business this year, that’s something to make a big deal of and Lynn and I have some great ideas.  A date for that is imminent, we’re just tweaking a few other dates this week.

The journal at the top of the page is the one I mentioned in the last post, but didn’t show you a picture of as I couldn’t find my camera lead.  Here’s the stamped and coloured cover.

I have decided that I’m going to use this as a working journal and use it for all my work notes and to do lists as well.  I’ve even designed myself a plate of stamps that I want to use in it.  Not sure if anyone else would have the slightest interest in them, but I’ll run it past my ‘new stamp approval committee’ and see what they think of it.

Talking of journals, I have enough blank ones lined up to last me the next ten years already, but couldn’t resist this cute bird journal from Borders – it’s about 8×8inches and the pages are a nice sturdy kraft card.

It was reduced from $15 to $3.75 – definitely my bargain of the week!

PS – I’ve picked the winners over on the Elusive Images blog.  Could it be you?

I’ve just stuck my thumb in a pot of paint

My sleep pattern hasn’t quite got back to normal, though why I’m awake so early doesn’t make any sense.  I’ve been downstairs for a couple of hours journaling and creating.  I spent most of Saturday wandering round like a zombie and occasionally falling asleep on the sofa, then late at night my creative muse seemed to wake up and I spent some time painting a base coat of crackle paint onto a mirror, buttering some molding paste onto a couple of journal pages and I dug out a little chipboard album and cut some Dove of the East Paris papers to fit it.

I slept til lunchtime on Sunday, did some (shhh) housework, went to see Derrick in the afternoon (update below) and carried on playing when I got home.  There has been a lot of discussion amongst my creative friends recently about journaling and I’ve been chatting away about it like I’m some kind of expert, but in fact, it’s been quite some time since I journaled regularly.  I have a tiny (4 inch square) journal that used to be my bedside journal where I would often create a page of doodling and writing before I went to sleep.  I was talking to Lynn and Lesley about journaling while we were away and realised that I have only journalled sporadically in the last few years and it’s something that I would like to fit into my routine as a regular thing – without turning it into a chore of course.

I always tried to keep my journals focused on the positive and when something unpleasant happens, it’s easy to let the journal become a whingefest.  I always used to counter that with a “What’s Better?” list each day.  No matter how awful the day had been, I would pose the question ‘what’s better today’ and look for at least one positive answer and write about that.

So while I was away, I bought a copy of a journaling magazine and when I got home, I dug out an old journal that I started in 2000.  That year was a huge year of fresh starts – I wound up our consultancy and training business and started Graphicus then moved house to the one we are currently in to give the business space to grow.  Reading back through that old journal was so interesting – in some ways not much has changed, in other ways ten years has brought huge changes.  I also found some other notebooks from the same era – one was full of images of beautiful country kitchens and other gorgeous interiors cut from magazines – something I used to do to help me refine the look I wanted in my own home.  Interesting that the painted country kitchens I selected ten years ago still appeal to me now.

I have lots of journals on the go and wouldn’t you know, the one I really wanted to work in yesterday is nowhere to be found.  I think I’ve left it at work.  So what did I do?  Started a new one of course.  It has a plain brown kraft cover and nice sturdy white pages.  I decided to decorate the cover with a brocade stamp and used Titan Buff acrylic paint to stamp a brocade design all over.  When it was dry I rubbed distress inks over the top and edged it with Versamagic chalk ink (jumbo java).

It was this morning as I was tidying up that I discovered I hadn’t screwed the lid down on the Titan Buff paint and as I picked it up by the lid, the paint fell away and I had visions of this viscous opaque paint going everywhere.  Somehow, as I made a grab for it, I ended up with my thumb right inside the pot, not great for my thumb, but lucky for everything else on the table that I had spent the last couple of days working on.  Phew!

I have some more California photos to share with you, but before I do that, the invalid update for those of you following their progress.

Derrick, well he’s really going through the mill.  Finally he can swallow, though he has to be careful he doesn’t choke and has had to learn to swallow twice or it goes down the wrong way.  He’s had thrush in his mouth and now he’s got shingles.  He really didn’t look too good when I saw him yesterday and I confess to getting rather upset as we left.  It’s been a tough week for Adrian having to deal with it on his own, and almost broke my heart when he said he didn’t know which was worse, seeing his Dad in hospital, or his mum on her own at home.  I am so proud of him for the way he is coping with such an awful situation and I know that when the time comes that they are no longer with us, he can be at peace with the fact that he took such good care of them.

Basil is pretty much the same. I had forgotten how skinny he was and was shocked at how light he is when I first picked him up.  He is still being a picky eater, and seems to prefer eating when we are with him – must be anxiety I’m guessing.  Other than being too skinny, he seems fine and he now has a new friend – a mini Mr Fuzzybottoms, who I found wandering round the Rainforest Cafe in search of a loving home.

Here we are in the Rainforest Cafe at Disney – looking a bit tired at the end of a long day, drinking cocktails (non-alchoholic, I certainly couldn’t process alchohol as well as jet lag) and eating fajitas.

The cocktails were like drinking pudding through a straw – yumm!

If you have never heard of the Rainforest Cafe, it really is a full on Disney experience as the whole building has been designed to make you feel like you are in the jungle.  There are vines and flowers everywhere above you with parrots and giant butterflies gently flapping their wings.  You are surrounded by huge tanks full of tropical fish who swim by and there is real water dripping down from the canopy above.  Every so often, the whole place goes dark and the water drips turn into a heavy shower while cracks of thunder roll around above you and flashes of lightning are puntuated by screeches from invisible monkeys and parrots.  The rain is carefully channelled so it doesn’t actually fall on the diners of course.  The whole thing is a masterpiece of theatrics and the food is good too.  What’s not to like?

These aren’t the real fish in the tanks, this is just the decoration along the bar.  The bubbles are real and quite hypnotic to watch.

The show finished on Wednesday at 2pm and by 2.40pm, we had the whole stand down and we were out of the door.  We headed to the mall we found on the first day to eat at JD Schmid again and have a browse around Borders. The rain had gone and we had sunny blue skies, almost warm enough to leave the cardigan behind.

You know you’re in California when this is the view from the shopping mall car park.

Hello England

We’re home safe and sound, though I’m not too sure about the sound part actually.  Between the three of us we’re sporting a collection of aches, swollen joints, minor injuries and snuffles – that was a long,  LONG journey home.

I’m being pampered and spoilt rotten by Adrian who arrived at the airport with flowers for us all and right now I’m enjoying my first proper cup of tea for over a week – bliss.

When I’ve had some sleep and feeling human again, I will be picking a winner over on the Elusive Images blog.

Farewell LAX

I’ve really not had much time for blogging while I’ve been here with the show and the jet lag.  We’ve had a great show, people really like our stamps and all the new customers we have gained at the show have all been lovely people.  In fact, we ended up on hugging terms with most of them.

We’re just about to head off on the freeway for the last time to drop off the car then begin the tedious long 22 hour journey home (we have a long wait in Amsterdam).  Bags are packed and weighed and despite the frenzy of shopping that we squeezed into our last few hours yesterday, they are under the weight limit.

I have ordered some great things at the show and hope that the show orders will start coming through within a month or so.  Lots of ideas for projects and the Graphicus Guild too, there’s so much inspiration at shows like these.

[Adrian - look away now, there's nothing else interesting to see here.]

I shall leave you with some delicious images from the Cheesecake Factory – before you drool all over your keyboard, just check out those calories!!  I’ll definitely have to push the slipped halo back on when I get home and get down to some seriously sensible eating.

I had the Raspberry Chocolate Truffle and couldn’t even eat half of it!

Elusive Images

Apologies for the blurry photos, these were taken with my iPhone in poor light, but they will give you a flavour of what the stand looks like.  I’ll get some better photos today as I’m taking my camera in with me.

The stand does look lovely, there’s lots to feast your eyes on and we had some amazing feedback yesterday.  What you see on the wall is actually just empty packaging – there’s no way we could have carried that much rubber.  We did make one tactical error when filling in all the paperwork – we ended up with signage that just says Elusive Images and really, it should have had our strap line (Rubber Stamp Heaven) so that people know what we do!  However, we made friends with our neighbours, Craftwell, who have a very snazzy cutting machine which we used to cut out some vinyl letters to go under our sign.

Their machine is called eCraft and I have to say it has actually impressed me big time.  I’ll come back to you with a full report once I know more on pricing, but I’m definitely having one myself, if nothing else just for the sheet feeder option.  Annette will be pleased as she cut about 400 arch shaped pages for the retreat on our old Pazzles machine and the most she could do per sheet was two at a time.  The eCraft has a sheet feeder!!  So you can set it away cutting 100 and it will just pull in the sheets from the tray. There’s no sticky mat and it seems to be very simple to use in it’s basic mode, but also connects to a computer and can do all the sophisticated stuff like welding.  Seems like a serious rival to the Cricut, but until I know how much they are, I can’t give a complete verdict. I’ll come back to you on that one.

Here’s some more pictures of the stand.

Lynn spent ages rolling up sheets of artylicious paper (which Annette had spent hours printing).  It looks absolutely fabulous and really gets lots of people stopping to look.

We found a lovely mannequin in TJ Maxx to display Lynn’s tags.  Shame she’s too big to bring back with us.  Anything we don’t take back like that will be donated to the Kids in Need Foundation who have organised a drop off point at the show.  I’ll probably donate some of my demo stamps to them to save me some weight and space in my suitcase on the way back.  Hey, I’ve got shopping to bring home.  Magazines mainly.

So day one is over and done with and we’re confident that there are a lot of people in Canada who absolutely love our style of stamps.  We had more interest from Canada than the USA, but there’s still three days of the show to go.  We were chatting to Dyan from Art from the Heart who is working on the Ranger stand, and she told us that this show starts quiet and gets busier towards the end.  The trade show at the NEC is usually the other way round, so I’m pleased she told us that before the show started.  We’ve seen quite a few Brits – we had a good chat to Rob from Once upon a Stamp and Andy from Sir Stampalot.  Joanna and Richard came over and we’re going out to dinner tonight at the Cheesecake Factory – yumm!

Talking of dinner, we had a rather disastrous one last night here in the hotel.  We ate there on our first night and it was fine.  We’d gone straight from the show to Michaels as we’d all collected a 40% discount voucher last time we were there which we could spend from Sunday onwards.  So we got back to the hotel exhausted and ordered a couple of panninis and burger with a side of fries (see I’m talking like a native now as well as driving like one!).  Well the fries arrived first – in a giant paper cone stood in a wire stand.  I’ve never had fries served like that before!

Turned out to be the best part of the meal, they were delicious.  So we all tucked in while we waited for the sandwiches.  And waited.  And waited, and watched the burger sitting on the gril for ages.  Eventually the food arrived and the burger was burnt on the bottom and the fries with it were cold.  The other two cooked sandwiches were cold, but they came with freshly cooked crisps which the waiter explained was what caused the delay.  So the sandwiches went back and new ones were prepared, but again they came out at a temperature that can only be described as tepid.  Add to that the fact that ‘tuna melt’ bore no resemblence to anything we’d give that name to back home  (it looked like sandwich spread)  and we were disgruntled, grouchy customers.

So I complained to the manager, and to be fair, she handled it absolutely correctly and didn’t charge us a thing for the meal or the snacks Lesley then went and bought in the hotel shop.  She apologised that it was her number one chef’s night off, but even when “Mr Easy” is back on duty, I don’t think we’ll be eating there again.

You’d think we were obsessed with food because Lynn and I started a tradition a couple of years ago of photographing our meals.  I think there’ll be a food scrapbook coming out of it at some point.  Look at my healthy breakfast.

Talking of which, my alarm has just gone off so it’s time to get up and go and get some!

Are we in California?

I am currently in Anaheim, California amidst the worst rain they are likely to get this year.  I think we’re getting the tail end of it, but there’s been a very severe storm here, causing havoc, especially in areas previously burned by forest fires where there have been terrible mudslips.  Below is a photo of some ornamental cabbages we spotted on the walk to the convention centre.  You can see how saturated the ground is, they’re swimming!

In the city, it just makes for very unpleasant driving, especially when you get stuck going south on the freeway and realise you are going the wrong way and need to turn around and head the other way, sigh.

I’m here for the Craft & Hobby Association trade show, or CHA as it’s known, with Lynn and Lesley.  Adrian’s taking care of the family back home.  This year we are exhibiting and today is set up day when we arrange the stand and all the artwork that we have lovingly brought in our six suitcases.  Yesterday was spent shopping for things that we didn’t really need to carry with us – wet wipes and kitchen towel, pens, stapler, notebook, etc.  We also bought some fabric to cover the bright yellow curtain to the side of the stand as that really doesn’t go with our teal and chocolate colour scheme.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing isn’t it?  We probably should have paid the $69 to get the sat nav in the car.  We were very resourceful though, and went online to get directions to everywhere we needed to go before we set out.  We had a great little route planned out:  hotel to Ikea, Ikea to TJ Maxx, TJ Maxx to Michaels, Michaels to Jo-Anns, Jo-Anns back to hotel.  It all went wrong when the directions told us to take a certain road, but didn’t explain which way to go at the T-junction we found ourselves at.  As we chose the left turn,  we could see Ikea up ahead and it was definitely on the right of where we were, so we turned around and worked our way to it (eventually).

The next stop also proved a little tricky to navigate to, but again, eyesight triumphed when we were about to turn around and spotted a TJ Maxx in the distance, (I’m still not sure if it is the one we were originally looking for or not).  Amazingly, on the same retail park we found Michaels and Jo-Anns too.

We never made it to Jo-Anns, but got what we needed in the other two shops.  TJ Maxx (TK Maxx at home) was full of breathtaking stuff, and was quite heartbreaking because there was so much gorgeous stuff that we wanted to take home, but couldn’t possibly get in the suitcases.  Michaels was fun – always lots of bargains to be had and Lesley turned out to be queen of the bargain hunting.  Photos of the spoils will no doubt appear on the blog at some point.  Lynn and I were tempted by some gorgeous books, but books quickly add up to quite a bit of weight, so we just made some notes to look up on Amazon later.

Los Angeles is one of those sprawling cities that has a vast amount of commuter traffic.  And I mean VAST.  We saw it first hand last night as we got caught in rush hour on the 7 lane freeway.  I’m driving a 7 seater MPV which feels the width of a transit van compared to what I’m used to and I keep bashing my knuckles on the drivers window as I reach for a gear stick that doesn’t exist.  It’s all good character building stuff!

The next few days are going to be very hectic, but if I can give you any show reports I will.  Meanwhile, why don’t you take look over on the Elusive Images blog where we have just launched a few new stamps of our own.

Whoop Whoop!

Thank you for all your good wishes, positive thoughts, prayer, whatever you want to call it.  I think it’s working.

• Derrick was moved from Durham to Bishop Auckland hospital today.  They think the C-diff is under control.
• Basil chomped his way through not one, but two foil trays of proper cat food tonight.
• This afternoon it rained.  Not snow, rain.

Things are looking up!

Remember the penguins?

I’m talking about a BT advert from years ago that had penguins bustling about repeating the phrase “chop, chop, busy, busy, work, work, bang, bang!”   Well that about sums up my life at the moment.

We fly to America next Thursday and there’s lots to do.  I’ve been so busy getting catalogues, artwork and show related stuff sorted, that suddenly there’s less than a week and I still have all the really important stuff still to do.

Well the hair appointment is booked for zingy pink highlights (I refuse to go grey gracefully); comfy shoes arrived today from shoe-shop.com (nope, not on commission, but a great site for all sorts of shoes, brilliant service and a useful returns paid option too); I have new glasses so I can see straight, but unfortunately they’re a bit too tight, so need to go back to my least favourite mall in the world (sorry Metro Centre) to get that fixed; flight’s booked, hotel’s booked, but still need to book a car (must do that tonight); and possibly the most complex and difficult job of them all – sort out a portable demo kit to take with me!  Eek, how on earth can I take a fraction of what I would normally have for demonstrating and still hope to fit any clothes in as well?!

Somehow it will all get done and this time next week, we should be starting our descent into Los Angeles airport before the two hour drive to Anaheim.   I will do my best to blog from the show.  I have laptop and camera and we have internet access in the hotel, so I’m sure I will be able to show you something interesting.

You’re probably wondering how the invalids are doing.  Every time I answer the phone at work and people realise it’s me I get the same questions – ‘how’s Derrick’, ‘how’s Basil’ and ‘when are you going to be on TV next?’  The first two I can answer, Derrick is ok, but not wonderful.  Still having pain and nausea when he is given any food.  Still can’t swallow so it’s all by tube and the poor guy is desperate for a cup of tea.  I hope that he will be in our local hospital by the time I get back – they’ve been talking about moving him next week and I think he would be happier there.

Basil is much the same.  He’s eating every day which is good, but only small amounts.  I think he really hates this weather and I really wish we could wave a magic wand and bring Spring forward by a couple of months.

He seems to be happier than he was over Christmas when he wasn’t eating at all.  I still wonder if he has teeth, jaw or gum problems though as he will only eat soft slushy food and isn’t interested in hard or crunchy food at all.  We just pamper him with anything he wants at all.

Now that third question is the big one.  I know a lot of you are disappointed not to see me on TV more, but let’s just say that at the moment, I’m happy with the way things are.  It might be some compensation to know that we have made a very important decision which will make some of you very happy.  Graphicus is going to be attending a select few shows this year and more details of which ones will be coming up soon!  Keep an eye on the Graphicus website calendar and blog for more info on those.

I shall leave you with a tiny little sneak peak of something I made this week for the Graphicus Guild newsletter.

Getting Sidetracked

Derrick seems to be a lot better than he was on Saturday.  Adrian came back on Saturday from visiting in a state as close to despair as I think I’ve ever seen him.  Derrick had been fed through his nose tube, but had reacted and been sick which had thrown the tube out.  Worse than that, he had severe pain in his abdomen, to the point where he could hardly speak and Adrian spent much of the simply time holding his hand. We both went on Sunday and he was a different man.  Still not right, but feeling much better, and (keeping everything crossable crossed here) continuing to improve.  The hospital have told us that if they can get him stable and get the C-Diff under control,  they will move him to our local hospital which will be a lot easier for visiting.

Basil still doesn’t like going to the toilet in the snow – here he is dashing back in again.  Even though it’s blurry, I really love this photo as it’s caught his movement and it captures a certain something about him.

He’s still eating, albeit tiny portions compared to what he used to eat.

I never did get the melt pot switched on the other night.  Isn’t it strange how you set off with one intention in mind and something completely different happens.  I have been wanting to play with the German scrap birds we got in before Christmas and for a while I have thought they would look good painted with Golden’s fluid acrylics.  The paint is very transparent, so a little paint would let the gold shine through.

I painted the bird with Phthalo Green (Blue Shade) and Phthalo Blue (Green Shade).  Yeah, I know, the colour names are just mad.  I don’t know why they didn’t just call them bluey-green and greeny-blue, but I guess that wouldn’t have been as clever as coming up with a chemical name that starts with four consonants.  Anyway, regardless of the names, these are two very intense, er, well bluey-green and greeny-blue colours and together they give you  gorgeous deep toned turquoises, but at the same time, they are quite transparent.

Anyway, over the gold German Scrap they went and did indeed give me the rich glowing colour I was after.  I hunted around for something to put my bird on and came across a pair of chipboard jotter covers that I’d painted with the same colours and covered with a sheet of paper from the Graphicus Guild paper pack.

We had generated some strips of scrap paper at work from a printing project and Adrian came up with the idea of making a shopping list style book with these skinny left over pieces.  The colour of my covers was perfect – too close a match for the bird to show up, so I needed a contrast.  I found it in the form of a tag which had previously been coloured with some combination of Glimmer Mists (I’m guessing from the moulin rouge set).  I stamped some flowers from the Grungy Brocade stamp set using Ranger Clover pigment ink and embossed with holographic embossing powder.  I looked at the bird and decided he needed a little rub down to let some of the gold show through.  Then I wanted him sparkly, so he got a coating of the holographic embossing powder as well and I love how it turned out.

This is the sheet that the bird came from

I can see some interesting possibilities for those butterflies with this technique.

Now, maybe I’ll get that melt pot switched on …