It was a Spookylicious Christmas!

Well, you would have had to have been there for the title of this post to make any sense at all and if you were there, then you'll know exactly what I'm referring to.

Friday the 13th - yes Black Friday was the first of our Open Days at Graphicus and the day we chose to launch the most fantastic collection of Elusive Images Halloween stamp sheets. I am totally biased I'm afraid and totally hooked on these stamps and have lots of projects planned for them which I'll share as we get nearer to All Hallows Eve. As soon as I got my sticky mitts on the new stamps I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them....... a Spooklylicious Gothic Arch book for starters!

Front Cover (Copper Leaf on Acetate)

The back cover

I used a very delicate lace border stamp from another EI stamp sheet (Damask Squares) and embossed it with a twinkling black embossing powder to make a wrought iron fence in front of the haunted house.

Mischievous Cats..... love them!

Not all of the stamps I used are new, last years Halloween stamps are in there too together with others from EI.The whole book opens in one long string but I didn't have anywhere I could lay it out and get a photograph of it. I tried putting it on the carpet but Diesel thought it was for him and tried to lay down on it. I think he wanted to squish those cats!

I definitely knew it was Friday the 13th. Just before leaving for work I lost my glasses, couldn't find them anywhere and I need them for driving. I eventually found them hanging off the ironing board where I left them the night before and went to load up the car with all my demo gear. The weather was horrid, lashing rain, dark clouds, blustery wind (very typical of the 31st of October actually). I opened my drivers door to put a crate in the back and the wind took the door back into a concrete capped pillar on the drive resulting in a very nice (arghhhhh) dint.

It was a fun day though with lots of new faces at the event and lots of friendly familiar ones too, despite the atrocious weather!

Saturday was officially the launch of the Christmas stamps and they are so beautiful. There's such a lot you can do with them when you study each element and think outside the box. I'll be posting pics of the Christmas samples I made, but it will have to wait a while as I left them all at work and didn't photograph them... so I'll save them for later.

We had the brilliant Jean Hardy with us on Saturday, she does such fabulous work and I only wish I could have snook away to watch her demos. That's the only problem with demonstrating, you miss out on what everyone else is doing. Fortunately, Glenda was set up right next to me so I kept poking my nose in to see what she was doing. She had some fab demos and her samples were so festive. It made me want to get going on my own Christmas cards there and then. She also had some printed page samples of her free Artylicious downloads which are available on her blog. If you love beautiful papers go take a look... this one is my absolute favorite and I'm going to go snag it for myself. Glenda had printed it onto 12 x 12 pearlescent card and all I can say is WOW!

It was a brilliant two days and lovely to see so many people join us, many of whom had driven for several hours to be there not to mention the train journeys too. I am so looking forward to the next ones.... get your planners out now and make a note - 'be at Graphicus on Friday the 15th and Saturday 16th October, 2010'. We have Joanna Sheen joining us on the Saturday but more about that nearer the time.

The weather may have been gruesome on Friday but it did improve over the weekend and today I was out in the garden doing a bit of tidying (more like pottering) and had to run in to get my camera. The Buddleia bush was alive with Butterflies, most of them were Cabbage White's but there was one which was so rich in colour and it was huge compared to the others. By the time I got the camera and got back outside Diesel had disturbed them all, he was trying to chase the Bumble Bees, but the one I wanted to photograph was still fluttering around and it eventually settled on the guttering. I think it was waiting for Diesel to disappear so it could get back to work but it gave me a great opportunity to get some pictures, just wish I'd had a long lens camera.

Well, that's all from me at the moment. Before I go however, I would like to say a big thank you for all your kind thoughts and lovely comments on my previous two posts about Geoff. I really appreciate your comments on all my posts but these were extra special to Stuart and I. Geoff's funeral was beautiful. He had asked that no one wore black, he didn't want flowers and he wanted it to be a happy event. We did our best but it was hard to be happy. It was a wonderful turn out, so many friends and so many beautiful words. Thank you for yours!