Craftwork Cards

Recently I had a chance to attend a special event laid on by the crafty people from Craftwork Cards in Leeds. It was a chance to view some of their new products as well as play with several designs in a few make 'n' take sessions.

These products have been a regular feature at YTOC and we've always intended to play more with them but haven't for some reason. When we saw all the fab new products we quickly realised all that would HAVE TO CHANGE!

As you can imagine Leeds was some distance away so the day started with a 4.00 am wake up call and a very long drive - 3 to 3.5 hours one way to be exact! But when we finally got settled in we were greeted by a table of goodies to get us started including a yummy cupcake and plenty of tea on tap. I do love my tea!

These pretty new Vintage Rose design papers - very CK in style (and you know I LOVE CK!) were one of the first things we saw.

And guess what? We had a chance to play with them because we had them in our pink goodie bags!

The first project was this cool little chipboard bag which opened to reveal concertina'd envelope pockets. How cute is this. We had a basic project design but then got to decorate them up just as we wanted - using lots of CWC products of course like 'press out' text designs, die-cut flowers and that lovely card candy. If you are unfamiliar with card candy check it out here. In fact there were lots of card candy in pretty cupcake cases in the middle of the table for us to play with too.

Of course Julie Hickey was also on hand to chat and have fun with us all as well as helping us to play! She was so down to earth and easy to talk to - just what you hope for when you finally get a chance to talk to someone 'famous' in the craft world.

There were so many lovely samples - most of which were probably done by Julie herself I'm sure. Don't these 'Vintage Rose' papers lend themselves to 'patchwork' and you know I LOVE patchwork! I can see myself sewing on these papers, adding vintage lace and maybe even paper roses - how pretty would that be? Of course these papers are far too clean for me - they would have to be 'aged' too (kinda like my bag project).

Lunch had been included in the event and this is always a hard part for me. As a veggie-tarian and a fussy one at that I usually struggle to get enough to eat. There were lots of meat dishes but also just enough veggie ones that I was able to join everyone else and not have to go grab the food in the car. I always take some nibbles with me cos I'm so darned fussy!

We had presentations and discussions throughout the event and then we had even more time to play after lunch. They had a Christmas range that featured these fab trees and text in a lovely shade of green and purple. They also had this same design in pink and black too. Ladies if you're looking at these and wondering when you can get your hands on them? SOON! Amanda already has everything under control!

They had used these pretty papers to make paper bunting that adorned the sample table. We even had pretty numbered cards in our goodie bags and throughout the event numbers were drawn for prizes!

After remarking that our table hadn't won any prizes we suddenly had a flurry of numbers drawn for our table. Both Amanda and her mum Kay were lucky enough to win prizes as well as 3 other ladies on our table. Sadly Rosina and I were not among them!

That's ok tho'. We really enjoyed the day, the crafting, the fun, the freebies and especially the company! Thanks sooooo much Amanda for inviting us along. AND lucky me - I get to demo with these new products at the Thetford Craft show coming up in August and I know you're just gonna love em' when you see what we create! PLUS look for them in upcoming classes too.

See you there (and see several of you in class on Wednesday).