Mahoosive post coming right up....

Looky what arrived at ours this week...

Can you tell...???

 Yee hah....it's only my new Dylusions stamp release...

Now you would think from these photos that we had tons wouldn't you..???

And the answer to that is yes, we HAD tons, but they are flying out the door quicker than we can pick n pack them. Congrats to all of you who managed to get the ones you wanted as we now have some complete sell outs. We will restock as soon as we can but it could be a week or two so don't miss out on any of the others. You can find them all HERE.

One of my faves is Write between the Lines...The top four stamps are for stamping onto your journal pages or tags and writing between. I will show you how I work with these later, and yes, believe it or not I use them as well, tee hee, its much quicker and still looks hand drawn, what more could you want.

The bottom four tags are handy for stamping out and adding to the top of your pages, but when I designed them , the thing I had in mind for them was masking. I'm hoping to get a video of me demoing it as soon as, but Our Ben goes on holiday tomorrow night so theres not much time.

 Which reminds me, whilst hes away there will be NO MAIL ORDER...

I repeat....NO MAIL ORDER until 14th Aug.

I will be teaching and running the ship as well as all my prepping, designing, top secret missions and so forth so will not have the time to pretty parcel wrap. Plus Our Ben is only right in pointing out that I would only make a complete A**e of it and it would take him twice as long to put right. So if you want anything mailing out you had better order it pronto ie before 1pm..so we can ship it out tomorrow. Otherwise you will have to wait till he gets back. No ifs no buts no pleading, cos it won't work lmao.  If you are ordering please, please, please, check you are inputting the correct card details, as we wont have any time to contact you to correct them...thank you.

Anyway....back to Write between the Lines. I demoed it to my art journaling class and here are the beginnings of their pages, all masked up

Ooops forgot to go back at the end and photo them all finished, lol.

Here's mine, start to finish

Just frikkn love it...!!!

Well, the gorgeous Ellen Vargo has been at it again, making a beautiful accordion book full of Dylusions stamped images. She has really done them credit. Pop over to her blog HERE for a good gander. Thanks Ellen. xx

Now a while ago, way back in February actually at Stitches, which is the British Craft trade show, I met a lovely girlie, who was soooo excited to meet us all. She came on our classes and also came and hung around the stand making oohing and aahng sounds lol. Here she is with me and Mario.

Yes it's the gorgeous Karen Hall aka Kaz.

After the show I popped over to her blog to see what she was about and was really impressed with her work. She is a big fan of grunge and all things Tim but she does it in her own unique way.

She is also a luvvly, luvvly genuine person. Her she is with me at my last preview weekend. Yup she travelled half way across the country to come see us and gaze adoringly at my collection of vintage cases, lol.

Anyhows, to cut a long story short, she is my latest recruit to the Dylusions design team, and I am absolutely over the moon to welcome her on board. Her parcel of Dylusions goodies will be heading out the door tomorrow and I can't wait to see what she does with them. I hope you will all join
 me in giving her a warm welcome, and it would be great if you popped over to her blog to tell her yourselves. Her blog is HERE.

You will also be able to meet her on the Sunday morning at our Birthday Bash. I'm attending are you..??

I have conned, oops sorry gently persuaded her to do a bit of demoing for me. Tee hee.

Which leads me nicely on to our birthday celebrations.

Yes it's our 10th birthday, can you believe it. It was actually in April, but we forgot all about it, lmao. Only me eh.?? So we decided to combine our birthday with our workshop previews and make a big bash of it. We are open from 8am until 6pm Saturday and Sunday which gives you all plenty of time to get to us.  Details are HERE.

It also falls the same weekend as the GNPE, so if you are coming to us you can take a trip there, or vice versa, if you are going to the GNPE you can pop and see us. We are literally 5 minutes away from each other.

The decision to stop attending the show was one that wasn't taken lightly..But as you know there is only me and Our Ben, and it was just getting too much for us. Packing up, setting up, breaking down and unpacking all takes up 6 or 7 days of our time. This results in no workshops being made
available and we can't control the stock levels for our website. As we are getting busier and busier this was the solution we came up with and I feel it will suit all our purposes.

We will be having our usual taster workshops running all day, both days. You can find details of these HERE  and HERE
 They are the usual £5 and this time you can book up to three per person per day. Joining me in the teaching will be the usual suspects of Kate Crane (who will also be signing copies of her Dvd's). Kirsty Wiseman (who will be entertaining us with her rude jokes) and Sandy Poppins (who will be being her usual lovely self)

I am sure that Bezzie Su, Right hand woman Pam, pretty parcel wrapper Ali, the lovely Katie
 on the till, supreme cup cake maker Teresa and everyone else I am bound to have forgotten.!!! Please excuse I have been doing this blog for 3 hours and am on my second glass of the old vimto so memory is lapsing fast.

Did the eagle eyed of you spot anything else on the photos of my stamps...????

Oh yes we have the full releases of Tim's stamps HERE and Wendy's Art Parts HERE.

And lastly onto a few things that are floating my boat this week

The fabulous Lucy dress from Pin Up Girl

Although with my stupendous rack I will probably look more like this. Sandy Poppins hubby has already christened me Dyan Von Cleavage....lmao

Loving this bikini, also from PUG

Again, this would be more me, lol

Now this is simply divine...

Am absolutely rocking this fringe and will be taking this piccie to the hairdressers with me. Not sure I could keep up with the eyebrows though..!!!

And I am loving this just for the frikkn hell of it, lol.

 And the wonderful Dollydagger has some stunners in at the moment.

  Would kill for this from their Betty Paige collection, which is coming soon.

OK it's time to give Mr Babe of Deliciousness some of my undivided attention, so I'll sees you all later.

Enjoy xx

The classes...

Yayyyy pictures have uploaded :-)

Video still thinking about it :-(

After a hectic show was up and out of my hotel room at 5.30 am to catch the airport shuttle. I was supposed to be flying to Baltimore via Cincinnati to arrive about 12.15pm. Giving me plenty of time to prepare the workshops, catch my breath and have some much needed down time with Patti and her crew, before my first workshop at 6.30pm.

Well the best laid plans and all that.! We got stuck in the worst storm I have really seen, and so were diverted left right and centre missing connections all the time. I eventually landed at 7.30pm and by the time we arrived at the store nearly 8.30pm!!! You can just imagine what I looked like after 15 hours of travel, barefaced and bedraggled, make up migrated South, hair doing its finest Afro impression

Oh well there was no time to get my bearings it was straight in teaching my guardian girl tags to 20 very very excitable women. Suitcases thrown in the corner, samples hurriedly sorted, deep breath and off we went. Not sure how we winged it through the class, but wing it we did and everyone was extremely pleased with their results. Unfortunately I didn't take one photo of the evening, too busy, so if anyone would like to forward some, I would be really grateful.

After samming it all up and getting it ready for the morning, Patti and Ellen surprised me with some tags they had made for me, using my stamps. Too cute.

And then they presented me with this

Its only a frikkin ledger from 1942...!!! In absolute mint condition. I was a bit teary and all overcome, as I had only just met these guys.

I didn't have a lot of time left that evening to look around the store, can't wait for you to see the video, you flabber will be well and truly ghasted...
After checking in the hotel and falling into bed well after midnight, it was back up again at 6am to do my Skype rounds and make myself look a bit more presentable.

I don't normally eat breakfast till lunchtime, but look what I was presented with at 9am...with instructions that they were for me and me only.!!! You must be joking..

But when in Rome and all that malarkey. It took a while but I got one down me.

 I don't eat "normal" breakfast, never mind something like this, so I tried to persuade Ellen to take part.

The funniest part of the weekend, for me, was meeting Sherry, who is just a little obsessed with Our Royal family

She was keen to show me her commemorative album of the wedding, especially as she and a friend had taken leave from work and "personally" attended.   As you can see from the evidence she has photo shopped herself into the photos.

 How frikkin hilarious is that.?? I was howling with laughter. The best bit was when she took the album to work to "prove" her attendance, she also took in a small white cake and said that Kate and William had sent her home with it.!!! Just love her....

 
And here is the gorgeous Donna who only had major surgery less than 2 wks previous, but was coming to the classes come hell or high water. She had also made me a stunning tag.

And then we were off.. First class...accordion watercolour book with colorwash.
 

And that's all the photos I took, the day passed in such a blur even though I taught three 3hr workshops. Barefoot because I was so swollen with the humidity, I couldn't get shoes on my feet.  The students coped with me really well, once they got used to the 90 mile a minute pace and the mine of information being hurtled their way, lmao.

And after what seemed like 5 mins sleep it was Sunday morning and we were off again..!!!

Quick preview of all my new stamp sets. Patti's is the only store in the world that has stocks of them at the mo, even I don't receive mine until Tues. Mind you she is THE Queen, so they were probably by Royal Appointment.!

They had given me pride of place at the front of the store, and recreated an English country parlour to make me feel at home, lol. A piano, hydrangeas, the works. Patti had spent hours making a stunning banner with my name on, and love how they have altered my own altered tags. !!

Just to let it be known, the hair is not styled by personal choice but by its sheer bloody refusal to conform to anything but frizz.!

I was amazed how far some of the students had travelled. The lovely Anne Marie lives way over the other side of New York, 8 hrs away, and is an avid reader of my blog. When I announced I was teaching she was straight on the case, finding out where I was and booking all 3 classes for her, her Mum and her daughter. How fabulous was that.??

Sunday lunch was the hugely renowned Baltimore crab cakes, and deli coleslaw.

Must have been some big Momma crab, have you seen the size of the chunks.??

Before we knew it it was time to say our goodbyes, amongst many tears and snotty hugs. Big huge thank you to Patti and Jan for treating me like Royalty, and making sure I wanted for nothing..

 To the lovely Terry from Ranger who drove up on the Sunday to see me and take the classes, the photos and the video lol.

The lovely Ellen whose infectious giddiness kept us all going. Pop over to her BLOG to see her account of the weekend

Love this picture of me and The Queen. It was taken about midnight and we both look absolutely knackered but really happy. Although this was the first time we had met I feel we made a strong and heartfelt connection. She is an absolute diamond and her store is easily the best I have ever had the privilege to be in. We are already making plans for January so watch this space.

Due to the intense heat all the time I was in the States my body had blown up and I could easily have been mistaken for a pregnant Mamma. And by the time I landed back in the UK this was the state of my feet and legs.. And don't get me started on my ankles. where the frikk are my ankles.???

Luckily I am back to normal now, phew.!!

Enjoy xx