A day at Birds in the Barn

I have had a very busy few days. On weds I travelled down South, on 4 trains. I was met by the lovely Leandra from PaperArtsy and off we went to PA headquarters. It takes around 5 hours from my house to hers. A quick catchup and a cuppa and then straight to work prepping some exciting new products. Keep your eyes peeled for sneaks coming soon.

On Thursday we were all up bright and early, Leandra gave me a lift over to the Marks Tey hotel, where the Summerfest was taking place. This is a great 4 day event hosted by Janet and her staff from Birds in the Barn. 

This is the quirky mini book that we were to make on the day, entitled 'Dreamy Bird and the Doughnut Tree'

My ladies started to arrive, and though I was super nervous they were all so lovely and made me feel at ease .  We began work straight away, and wow did these girls work hard. As you can see the room was a comfortable size with plenty of room for people to move around. 

Jayne obliged with an action shot.

We worked on lots of techniques involving grunge paste and stencils and stamps and paints. 

Here is Deborah, working on her book covers. 

Sally really got into the bumping method of stencilling. 

Ginny was a star, being my helper for the day. her book cover turned out brilliant. Here she is painting grass. 

Here is Denise, blending and shading flowers through a stencil. 

Here is Margaret adding stencilled stems to her front cover.

Karen, concentrating hard on her front cover layout.

back to Jayne and another great action shot lol I totally loved the colours that Jayne used, she created some beautiful blending. 

We were treated to tea and coffee throughout the day, a 2 course lunch and then in the afternoon the hugest doughnuts arrived. We worked right up to the last minute. I had hoped we could have made tags to go inside the book, but everyone went home with blank tags and instructions, so I hope they are having fun playing with those. 

Here is a final pic of us all with our books. 

Huge thanks to each of these ladies, they are the ones who made it a wonderful day. Thanks also to Janet and her staff for inviting me. 

While I was teaching in this room, the wonderful Lin Brown was across the hall teaching in another room. Once our clearup was done, Lin and I set off and following instructions in an epic text from Leandra we found our way to a really nice pub. Inside we found Leandra and Mark and Jo Firth Young. We had also been joined by a lovely gentleman. Mister. Treasure Gold. He is the most fascinating man and we all had a great evening. In fact we  had a meal then stayed and chatted till midnight. 

This one deserves a caption... 

Such a great night, it is always a pleasure to catch up with Lin and Jo...Mark,leandra and Hans were perfect hosts. Thanks to everyone. 

Friday we were up early again and straight to work, it is always busy,busy at headquarters, always so much to do....I became an temporary helper elf, and sat painting paint labels. At one point Leandra and I popped out to a local award winning butchers, where I bought some of their amazing sausages. 

I bought 32!!! I don't normally buy so many sausages at once, but these are not available online, and they are just so scrummy. So I stocked up and brought them home. 

All too soon it was time to leave, and I set off on my mammoth journey home, another 4 trains. There were a few delays on the tracks, and I finally got in the house just after midnight.... wow, we crammed so much into 3 days lol

Darcy x