Monday, March 30, 2015

Today is World Bipolar day...

This extract is from the website, International Society for Bipolar disorders

World Bipolar Day

World Bipolar Day (WBD) will be celebrated each year on March 30th, the birthday of Vincent Van Gogh, who was posthumously diagnosed as probably having bipolar disorder. The vision of WBD is to bring world awareness to bipolar disorders and eliminate social stigma. Through international collaboration the goal of World Bipolar Day is to bring the world population information about bipolar disorders that will educate and improve sensitivity towards the illness

and there is some fabulous stuff, for those who are interested, on the Facebook page World Bipolar Day.

The aim of this is to stop the stigma of mental illness.

Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of and neither is talking about it.

One of the many mental illness I have is Bipolar.

I have rapid cycling Bipolar, which means I am very rarely down but frequently manic. It is hard living with it and harder for those who have to live with me. But it is a massive part of me, in fact I would say it is probably the main part of me. It is as essential to the whole of me as my right arm. We are one, part of the same package and I wouldn't change it for the world. It is the birthplace of all my creativity...

I am sure you all know the old saying

"There's a fine line between madness and creativity"..

Well I have walked that line many a time and teetered on it too many times to mention, lol.

I choose to celebrate my mental illness as its made the woman I am, and I fought long and hard to become that woman.

So today I raise my glass to all of you walking, or indeed, manically running, this journey with me.

I salute you one and all xx

Dylusions time...

This week over at the Ranger blog its Dylusions week, where everyday we will be celebrating and enjoying the wonderful wacky world of mine. Lots of treats in store for you including videos.
Here is the link to the first one, where you will see I am "assisting" in the pick and pack department.!!!

Check back in every day to see what we have in store for you.

On Saturday I was teaching at my store Art from the Heart. I don't get the chance to teach as often as I want as I am almost never home :-(
It was one of my favourites, the stitched canvas journal. Loved this rainbow that appeared in the window of the studio.

My ladies are trained, lol, and a lot bring their own sewing machines with them.. they also know to bring them recently serviced, otherwise I spend the whole day doing my impression of a sewing machine engineer and not actually teaching.!!!

Look at this fantastic machine that the lovely Gill brought with her. It is a vintage portable machine. Not sure that its that portable by todays standards, as it weighs a ton, but it sewed like a dream. She also had all the original attachments and packaging. Talk about jealous !!!!

This is one of the classes that I teach in the US, and if you fancy taking a class with me on this next trip, then this is where I will be.

Mon April 13th…Collins rep show, Framingham
Fri/Sat/Sun April 17/18/19th...Papercraft Clubhouse, Westbrook, Conneticut
Sat/Sun/Mon April 25/26/27th…Queens Ink, Savage, Maryland
Sat/Sun May 2/3rd…Occasional Artist, Glendale, Arizona
Sat/Sun May 9/10th…Scrapbook and More, New Braunfels, Texas
Fri/Sat May 15/16th…Pages in Time, Lititz, Pennsylvania

I hope you can join me somewhere along the way...

Heres a few more finished tags from my sample marathon.

Enjoy xx

Friday, March 27, 2015

Samples the Dylusions way

As you can imagine a great deal of my time is made up of making samples, journal pages, tags, canvas boards, cards etc.

But we don't approach sample making in the way people feel we would.

I very, very rarely make anything from start to finish in one go!! That takes too much concentration and thinking. Because of my Bipolar and ADHD I am too easily distracted with other things, shiny or otherwise, lol. So I do lots of the same thing at one time, then switch onto something else. This way I build up lots of the individual components needed and it is a simple case of pulling them all together for the finished article.

For eg., today I am finishing up a butt load of tag samples and this is how.

Sheets and sheets of stamped images…

and stamped quotes…

After a cutting out session this is what you have…

Ready made tags from all the demoing…

mix and match images and quotes onto the tags…

Get out your water brushes filled with neat Dylusions ink…

Colour in accents on the images…

And voila, stand back and admire your handiwork…

Here's a few finished today…

Enjoy xx

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Whats been happening in Dy's world…???

First of all, I had a birthday…

Yes, another one, by crikey!!!

I spent it at one of my favourite hotels, La Rosa, in Whitby.

I had my hair quoiffed…I'm quite liking the straight look, for a change..

I spent a week filming videos…

This is the start of the week

And this is how I feel at the end, lol..

This week the fabulous Dina Wakely is teaching in our shop, Art from the Heart, so she flew in a bit early so we could get tons of work done.

We always start with a production meeting, and what better place than the famous Betty"s of Harrogate.

Then it was back to Reaveley Towers to film another online class for our Back2Back series.

Early start the next day and back to Betty's for a traditional breakfast.
Nothing beats a good British sausage in the morning !!

We managed to squeeze in a little bit of retail therapy and then it was back to the Tower for more filming.

Here's to a fabulous weekend

Whatever you're up to

Enjoy xx

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

News from the retreat

The fabulous Dina Wakely and I have just finished teaching an art retreat in Sunny Florida, organised by the wonderful Michelle McCosh from Everything Scrapbook and Stamps, in Lake Worth.

You might not have heard much about it before the event because it sold out fully in nine days, lol.

The event was held at the Duncan Centre https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az8VPf_j_pY

and was perfect for what we wanted it for.

We started off on the Friday with all 60 women in one room experiencing the true back to back style off me and Dina teaching.

The wonderful Michelle getting the proceedings going.

By the end of the day we had over half of the art journal all prepped and ready to go.

The next two days we split the groups into two to have more intensive classes.

My Saturday girls

And my Sunday girls

We worked, we laughed, we ate, we played, we snorted, we sang, we forged friendships, we BECAME !!!!

Love this picture right at the end when we were all dropping on our feet.

We even wore out the animals…

Michelle and her wonderfully assistant Nancy worked their socks off to make the retreat the success it was. They will need to lie down for a least a week to recover, and I hope you will all join me in saluting them for their hard work!!!

We are definitely planning on repeating this event again so keep your eyes peeled for any news, just remember not to be too slow or we may well sell out again. you snooze you loose, lol

Thurs night we escaped before the mayhem started to a fabulous restaurant right on the waters edge. The Old Key Lime House, where they serve fish to die for and the biggest pieces of key lime pie I have ever seen.