Oh yes mustard! That'll do... Mustard? Don't let's be silly. Now lemon, that's different...

Mad Hatter: Why is a raven like a writing desk?


Alice: Riddles? Now let me see... why is a raven like a writing desk?

Mad Hatter: I beg your pardon?

Alice: Why is a raven like a writing desk?

Mad Hatter: [alarmed] Why is a what?

March Hare: Careful, she's stark ravin' mad!

Alice: But it's your silly riddle. You just said...

Mad Hatter: Easy, don't get excited!

March Hare: How about a nice cup of tea?

Alice: "Have a cup of tea," indeed! Well I'm sorry, but I just haven't the time!
 
 
Well this sight is not quite what you expect to be coming across the car park at 7am in a morning...This is Maries tribute to The Mad Hatter / Slash.....worryingly it suits her...lol

Next to arrive was this bundle of fun...

Now who does that remind you of...???

The lovely Katie appeared dressed as Alice...I decided not to bother dressing up and just wore my normal outfit...!!!!!

Tell you what it took me frilkkin ages to mask all these squares off...lol.  Cool pic for shoewatch...

and the Rabbit made sure it was warm and cosy.....

Some of the hats that were making an appearance were just fantabulosooooooo. This was freshly picked from her garden this m orning... I just frizzlingly lurve it.....

And heres the back, not sure whos going to water it though, lol...

Ooooops, don't know where The Goddess gets it from, do you...???

Some of the many, many cupcakes.

Kirsty tried to appear proffesional but failed alarmingly...

Do you think I would blend in well in a crowd..??

The Gorgeous, gorgeous, Giddy and Giddier, who did a sterling job of the refreshments.

The lovely Ruth utilised her baking supplies.

Oh so thats where she went...

The mini workshops were a fantastic success, the girls didn't stop for breath all day long..

My Northern Soulie bezzie had concoted a veritable masterpiece from Starbucks products.

Will the real Alice in Wonderland , please stand up..!!!!

Kates lovely concoction..

Always handy to have a spare set of cutlery on your person...

There I was one minute, chatting to bezzie Su ( sorry , discussing something  highly profesional ), the next minute, it all went dark, lol. 

Heres bezzie Su trying out my latest hat for size....Not particularly a good look, but it tends to keep her quiet. :-) :-) :-)

Now thats a cool trick Jay....

Heres the finished articles from last night....

and two more that I finished off today

Seems like they are a big hit, I can feel a class coming on

Just look at these beauties made by the lovely Teresa and her gorgeous daughter Claudia.

And these meals in themselves, by Our Ben and the lovely Katie..

Ooooooops must have nodded off before I posted this last night...!!!!! Hilarious...!!!

The festivities are continuing today, so why not come along and join in the fun...!!!

See you there xx


March Hare: Why don't you start at the begining?


Mad Hatter: Yes and when you reach the end... Stop.

The countdown is on.....

Yayy....hope you are all ready and raring to go for the weekends activities.... It is a bit of a mad house in here today, but amazingly I am a vision of calm and loveliness. I refuse to spend my time getting stressed. What gets done, gets done, and what doesnt, doesn't...Simples....

I have finished designing the Make and Takes which have turned into mini workshops.I wanted to do something with a bit more substance this time around, so thats what I did. They are priced at £4 a workshop, bookable on each day.

This is a wooden tag, painted with Claudine Hellmuth paints. Stamped with Stampotique, watercoloured images, doodling and a bit of extra collage thrown in as well.

These are card tags that live in their own co-ordinated pockets. A mix of my downloads ( including some newbies, to be released Monday..!!!), Stampotique and Wendy Vecchi stamps, and Tim's new Distress ink colours.

A simple but effective accordion tag book using the gorgeously fabby Domestic Goddess papers and tags from Graphic 45.

And last but not least, a gorgeous, gorgeous tag using Tim's Distress inks, 7gypsies stamps, my downloads, 7gypsies and Idea-ology embelishments, and Blonde Moment papers.

I had great fun this morning making a ginormous pocket watch for the White Rabbit...How cool is this..??? It will definitely remain a fixture in the studio afterwards.

I recieved this lovely card today from the lovely Jayne and her Mum Doreen. I just love it, right up my street, thanks girly girls....xxx

The gorgeous frizzling ball of fuzzleness, Marie came in this morning and set to work prepping and painting the gallery wall, and my painting wall. She did a cracking job in no time , and we managed to get some of the display boards up. Its starting to look more like home every minute...

Any idea what this might be...??? I am in the middle of 3 of them....No - can't guess, well I,m not telling you, till tomorrow, lol.

Soooooo, its 12.10am here in the studio and I still have tons to do before I'm back here at 7am..!!!!  So hope to see you all over the weekend. Heres my little run down of my gorgeous girlies who will be appearing over the weekend.

Saturday

Demoing 

The lovely Katie

fizzling Marie

Pocket Rocket Kirsty Wiseman

and of course the delectable Bezzie Su

On tea and cup cakes, we have the giggling girlies, Giddy and Giddier.

Tombola is manned by the angelic Anita.

The Goddess and the Resident bit of Glamour, will be socialising, selling raffle tickets and generally keeping a watchful eye on the proceedings.

Making brief appearances and checking you don't take all the glue sticks, will be the most Gorgeous Granddaughter in the whole world, Maisie Lilly... She didn,t quite get the theme of the weekend and is coming as a knight, with sword and shield..lmao...

Sunday sees the arrival of sexy Susie, who rather apallingly couldnt secure the day off on Saturday. She will be reliving tutors, providing me with tea and headache pills, swanning around in heels and generally looking effortlessly gorgeous....

Also Mr Unbribeable will be back from his Rugby commitments to keep an eye on the proceedings, and make sure I am behaving myself ( as if..!!)

Sunday maybe a little quieter than usual to start with as many of the Fallen Angels are reuniting at mine on Sat night.  There will be much hilarity and gossip whilst partaking in a few Desperados, woop woop..!!! I,m hoping that they will get real fed up of stepping over all the flat packs in the middle of the room and decide to give me a hand putting it all together..!!! What do you reckon my chances are..???  I'll keep you informed.

Enjoy xx

I,m starting off tonight with a little rant.... It's not a massive issue, but one that crops up again and again. What is it you may ask. ?? Customer bloody service, or lack of thats what it is. I stayed at work till gone 10 tonight and went to Asda for some bits. I needed baby wipes for the weekend, so picked up 4 jumbo packs, which were advertised at 2 for £8. Cool, till they went through the till at £4.67 each. When I pointed this out I was told, "its nowt to do with me , you need to go to Customer Services." So off I trotted, and waited and waited and waited. After a while I set off to enquire where the staff where, to be told to be patient but that they were busy..!!After another 5 mins I was again told it could be a while as they were EXTREMELEY busy. But by this time, tired, hungry and achey I was EXTREMELEY pissed off, and told them I wanted a manager straight away.!!! They finally found me one who explained to me that night time was not a good time to come for refunds..!!! I hadnt come to bring something back, THEY had overcharged me..!!! Unbelievable isnt it..??  If these big shops are prepared to stay open all night to take our money,then they should be frikkin prepared to provide enough staff to deal with THEIR mistakes... I know it was only a couple of pounds, but I,m fed up of it , it happens all the time, and it soon adds up, doesn,t it..?   Oh no, I,m turning into Grumpy Old Woman, lmao...

Preparations are in full swing for the weekend.
 We are
cleaning,
sorting,
hammering,
rearranging,
painting,
preparing,
designing,
shopping,
baking,
decluttering,
panicking,
 and generally being a hive of activity.

But this morning we took a little time out of our busy schedule t visit this shop...  A|ny ideas what kind of shop, lol...

Heres one visitor all togged up and ready...

And look  who else is going to be there

There,,s lots of other outfits popping up over the weekend, but I,m gonna stay tight lipped about them for the moment... Dare you come dressed up and join in the fun..???

I will be wearing my gorgeous nail varnishes that the lovely Jude bought for me. I am going to try nand put a different colour on each nail, but I can imagine I will get in a right pickle, lma...

And heres some more things that will be making an appearance.  Yes the famous cupcakes. Our Ben and the lovely Katie are decorating some as I type...

So after a long, busy day, its lovely to come home to a nice decluttered and relaxing home, yes..????  Err that,ll be a NO, as I am living in flat pack hell. This is all in the middle of my living room...attractive feature isn't it..??? Unfortunately they will have to stay there a bit longer, as I have neither the time or the inclination to fight with them.!!

Right I am off to the land of Nod, in preperation for another busy one tomorrow. I will also be having the pleasure of one of my bezzies, the gorgeous Kirsty Wiseman.... She is one of my little army of make and take instructerors..made up word...lol, and she is coming early to lend a hand, make crap tea and generally get in the way and make a right nuiscance of herself...!!!!  Still, she doesn't get out much these days, so I will make an allowance for her, just this once, lmao.

Enjoy xx

Well we have abit of celebrating do to this weekend, first of all there is  the opening of the new shop and studio. It is heaven in here - we can see the outside world and even if it's miserable out I still love to see it!

Art from the Heart is also 9 years old, so we felt a big celebration was the order of the day. The big event is happening on Sat/Sun 8/9th May

Art from the Heart's - Mad Hatter's Tea Party

We have lots and lots of make and takes for you to try,I will be demoing all day, there will be competitions and of course a big raffle. All the profits will be heading to the Young Carers. A charity that was extremely dear to my mum's heart.

There will of course, as expected at a Mad Hatter's Tea Party - gorgeous Cupcakes and Delightful tea!!

Everyone who wears a Mad Hatters hat will get 10% off any purchases made on the day - the wackier the better!!

There will be a prize for the best hat on each day

Two Conditions

1 - Your hat can be made from anything apart from a hat

2 - You have to be wearing it

I can envision loads of laughs, much stuffing of faces, hilarious hats, a roaring raffle, marvelous make and takes and plety of prizes!!

Ooooh nearly forgot, I have been persuaded to part with some of my many samples, and so there will be a Tombola for small items and tons of the larger items will be for sale. Better do it quick before I change my mind.

This is your official 'Save the Date reminder...'

8th & 9th of May

See you all there with your hats.

Enjoy xx

PS...Jude...I finally remembered to go get your jewels from the hotel, yayy, sos about that, lol.

The magic faraway room....

Had a truly, truly scrumptious day today.  I was commissioned to paint a mural in a little girls bedroom.  Now its a long time since I last did this, so I was really nervous but extremely excited at the same time...!!! It was her birthday and when asked what she wanted,. she replied " I want Dyan to paint me something."..!!! How frikkin cool is that...??? So we have been plotting and planning to keep it a complete secret, and today was the day it was all going down.... Once she was safely ensconced in her school, I started to base out the design. These photos are hard to see as it is all just a light coat whilst I get the positioning right.

I then started to add some of the details in.

The design was to go up and around a double head board.

Even more detail going on...

And here it is almost finished....I just need to come back another day to add a drooping flower over her name.... I am sooooo pleased with it, and so is she. She came rushing into art class tonight with her sisters and I thought she was going to burst with excitement. awww bless..

Showed Maisie the pictures and guess what I,ll be doing next week..???? lol.

Tomorrow I,ll give you more details on our Mad Hatter birthday weekend, so until then.....

Enjoy xx

I now pronounce you a pratt pf the highest order..!!!

How about this view..????   It was the one from my patio in Egypt. Not bad eh...???

I love it at this hotel, and this is one of the many reasons why, lol.

Heres another...Its ace when they do this to the towels isn,t it..???

Anyway, enough, back to the real world. I have just spent a  brill weekend in the company of 17 fabby ladies going through the process of Art Journaling. And, I need to say, its a good job it was a Bank |Holiday today, cos I needed it to recover from them, lol...!!!

The fun started on Fri night when Bezzie Su made an appearance, and I gave her the job of cooking the pizzas. Amazingly she didn't burn anything, but that was probably due to the fact it took us 30 mins to work out how to put the oven on, lol.

Here they are on Sat, hard at work...

Pat, Sarah and Diane....Bev appears to be missing, lol...

Diane , Alison and Paula

Penni, Kate, Sheila and Emma

Jackie and Ruth

Lesley, Janet and Karen. And the other Janet who seems to be MIA

It didn't take them long to create this mess..!

Anyway despite all this they did eventually buckle down to work, and they all earned there certificate of Prattology. I can safely say that they are now fully fledged in the art of pratting around....lmao

Enjoy xx

Woop woop

Yayy, I,m back from the land of Sunshine and straight into teaching an Art Journaling weekend..lol..  Its rather manic to say the least so this will be just a quickie, but I promise a longer update soon as I have tons to tell you.... Also I am laptopless at the moment ( yes again.!!!!) so uploading is a bit of a nightmare....

Whilst I was gone I recieved 2 more dragon updates.....

Yup, thats him flying to Ohio...Do you think he's looking a little peaky...????  Looks a bit green around the gills to me..!!! lol.

Hmmmm thought so, well at least hes resting...!!!!

Egypt was a little strange to say the least.  I spent the first two days sleeping due to my bad chest, one day on beach pretending to be asleep to deter unwanted admirers, lol,  one day worrying about a crisis at home, two days in  my room due to stomach upset, one day worrying about a crisis at work, one full day on beach whilst they uprooted all the trees around me.!!, and then I came home...Still at least it didn't rain, lmao.

Ok kicking up my heels tonight at a Northern do, so I'll love you and leave you with a classic.

Enjoy xx