Imagination Crafts

At long last time to blog! It has been incredibly hectic for the last month, shows, shows and more shows! Manchester, Harrogate, Sandown, Exeter, Ally Pally, Leigh coming up this week-end and then the Creme de la Creme of stamping shows, Happy Stampers North West - 6 hours of unbelievable stamping madness and extravaganza! I love it- this is a real stamping show unashamedly devoted to passionate rubber stampers. I think Liz and her team are amazing. They organise this festival twice a year and they do it purely for the love of stamping - not for profit but just as a festival of stamping. The organisation takes months and months of work and they do it all voluntarily so that both visitors and exhibitors alike can indulge in a veritable feast of stamping.
Another lady who receives this months award for incredible service, beyond the call of duty, is the lovely Heidi from Stampavie. Can you believe it, she came all the way to Ally Pally just to deliver stamps and hugs. She and Stuart her husband left home at 6am to fly to London to come to the Show and were kind enough to deliver our stamps to the show. How many suppliers would do this?

Don't you just love the two cards we have featured here. Again thanks to Heidi for supplying them and to the amazingly talented Claudia Rosa (http://www.rosawelt.blogspot.com/) for creating them. They are of course using the wonderful Sarah Kay stamps that we are now stocking and these cards illustrate beautifully the point I made earlier about fabulous creativity with rubber stamps. The lovely balance of colour, pattern, matting and layering alongside stitching detail and sublte colouring with copic marker pens has produced two sophisticated elegant cards which show the stamps to such advantage. Note the delicate herringbone stitch around the edge of 'Christmas Preparations', (shown below), such attention to detail. We are so lucky to have these works of art and we are really grateful to Rosa and Heidi for allowing us to feature them on the blog and also to display them at up and coming Shows in Port Sunlight, Glasgow and Birmingham. Come and see the cards in the flesh, at the Shows, they are even more beautiful close up.
We are really thrilled with the response to Heather's new demo featuring the Inkadinks and Magi Blend used on acetate - you all went completely crazy for it and who can blame you! Heather's new Pansy Border Stamp, stamped onto acetate and coloured with the Inkdadinks got you all very excited. If you haven't see the demo come and see it at the next few shows - you will be ssssoooooo impressed. Heather works really hard behind the scenes to give you something new and exciting and she has come up trumps this time.
We are going to be running Make and Take Workshops at the NEC this year and if you need a refresher course with the Rollagraph or you have been thinking about buying it but haven't quite made it come and have a go with Michelle. 45 Minutes - and it won't cost you a penny to do the Workshop - it could change your creativity for ever - at least we hope so!!
Finally a huge thankyou to Lesley for helping out at Exeter. She has bucket loads of enthusiasm and it makes such a difference when there is someone who has time to chat and explain things. Also she does a mean Cibatta! These things matter when you are too busy to eat during a show! and the Chocolate Truffle seashells were to die for!
Happy Stamping!