Last month I was in England for a Craft & Hobby Association (CHA) UK trade event called The One Big Show. Come along for some highlights!
It’s a bit of a journey to get from Gdansk, Poland to Coventry, UK (via Warsaw and London)—but my lovely friend Carolyn picked me up at London Luton Airport and we drove to Coventry. The hour and a half goes by fast when you’ve got a lot to talk about.
Then for a late-night meeting with Sarah Hurley to catch up over dessert and talk about next year’s Creative Exchanges event. Ideas are coming fast and furious but at 10pm, I’ve got to get to bed!
First thing for Day One, classes… I had a fabulous session with a new company called Altenew, who has gorgeous silhouette stamps and cutting dies. For project ideas, pop over to their blog, they have really beautiful samples with a uniquely clean and simple style.
I also took Andy Skinner’s class for DecoArt, where we made really cool journals—
(Here we are in process.)
And the final. Cool, isn’t it? The resist method Andy used to create the peeling paint is men’s hair clay. He says it’s available at the drugstore so I think I’ll give it a try myself. The rust effect is made with dark red watery paint.
Then to a PaperArtsy workshop (of course I can’t resist), where we played with Fresco Finish paints and new JOFY stamps.
Here’s what we made: The wooden plaque is painted with Fresco Finish paints, then the JOFY stamps are layered on top. It’s a surprisingly quick and easy project!
My final hands-on class was with Woodware distributors, who carry the adorable House Mouse designs. Here’s the card we made, courtesy of Woodware. (You can see step by step instructions on their blog.)
The card outside and inside:
I mean, that stamp! It’s so cute!
This is what is so valuable to me—the chance to take classes and experiment with a range of creative techniques and styles, from clean and simple to edgy to cute.
In the evening, we had dinner networking and a craft-inspired game of The Generation Game. Someone had to explain that to me, since it’s a British game show where one expert demonstrates something and a select group of others compete to produce the best results. It was crafting mayhem with experts like the lovely Stephanie Weightman leading the charge. I mercifully escaped being called from the crowd to participate!
The fun carried on as after someone discovered a karaoke app on her iPhone. Who knew we had a Frank Sinatra impersonator in our crafting midst? But we did.
The Sunday was spent in meetings, networking and business seminars. If you are interested in blogging, be sure to catch up with Sarah Hurley—she is an avid blogger and gave a great presentation. Maeri Howard from The Make and Do Studio gave a super talk about social media and email newsletters. The finale of the event was a presentation on craft industry research which points to positive growth in a healthy market. Great news!
Carolyn and I loaded up that evening for the drive to London—chatting non-stop until I got to the tube station.
This is where I need to point out that the UK was experiencing a heat wave at the time. I know those of you in Arizona will laugh when I say that we were melting at 30º Celsius, which is 86º Fahrenheit. However, the UK is not generally equipped to deal with this kind of heat. Neither was I as I dragged my suitcase, bag and jacket (I was prepared for rain) through the stifling Underground subway system. Add in a thousand other people crammed into a metal tube and you have a lovely image, don’t you?
Here’s one that’s nicer: 
This was my view coming into the city. I adore the vibrancy of London and never get tired of it.
From central London, it’s a short train ride to Tunbridge Wells in Kent. Kent is just a 45-minute journey southeast of London—everyone says how beautiful the area is and they are right. It’s a curious combination of the Oregon greenery I’m used to, but with a unique British feel on the main streets and shops. Here’s the view from my hotel that evening:
The meeting was bright and early the next day at the Search Press office. Search Press published my Washi Tape Cards book and now we’re working on a Resin Jewellery (note the British spelling!) title. Planning means lots of mock-up samples, notes, and a flat plan that outlines what will go on each of the 96 pages. I love the people at Search—they are without a doubt some of the most professional and friendly people I’ve worked with and we had as much fun as one can with a calendar and notepad!
That afternoon I headed back into the hot city, braving the train and Tube to my London hotel. European hotel rooms are notoriously small and I’d stayed at this particular hotel before, so I wasn’t surprised to discover that my room was so tiny, the door couldn’t open all the way because of the bed. So I had to squeeze in my suitcase and myself around the bed.
(You can imagine how big the bathroom was, can’t you?)
Since it was hot and muggy, I spent the afternoon at Hyde Park, sitting under a tree in the shade (along with a lot of other people!) and then thought it was appropriate to treat myself to dessert at the Patisserie Valerie. I mean, this is hard to resist:
I was up early the next morning to taxi to Heathrow for my 9am flight and last-minute book shopping.
I am helpless when it comes to bookstores in the UK. We don’t have English language bookstores in my town so whenever I see that Buy 2, Get 1 Free promotion at WH Smith, I usually end up with quite a stack. This time I was nice and early at the airport so I had time to not only purchase a crazy amount of books (in multiples of 3, of course) but also a lovely new carry-on bag to put them in. Thank you to Cath Kidston for having a sale.
Home via Munich and then I’m back to the usual routine—ready to jump back into magazine articles, projects and of course, the resin book!
Hope you enjoyed this whirlwind tour with me!
