This will be a very long post with lots of pictures. Last week I visited Birmingham and the Hobby Craft + Stitch international trade show together with Cicci and Katalin from DESIGN in PAPERS. I had a really good time, three days just rushed by! I wanted to post some pictures and share some of the fun. Since there was a lot of pictures they are kind of in a random order, no real rhyme or reason in the order they appear.
This is from the last workshop of the last day of the show. This is Andy Skinner, mixed media artist. He designs stamps for Stampendous and make the most amazing works of art. He was also very entertaining and this workshop was one of my favourites. Very inky fingers after this and I had so much fun and learned a lot! 
We made cute pieces of wall art, this is mine. Aren't they amazing? And it was not hard at all. I really need to try this at home too. It looks way harder than it is.
Just a shot of the table at the workshop. I really love the stamps and stencil we used, and I got to take them home. Yay!
Here is what we started out with. Looks like junk, right. Magic! :)
Here is one of Andys own, isn't it cool! He passed a few around for us to see and they were all equally cool. Go check out his blog where he posts videos and techniques. Very good! He is my new mixed media guru!
I spent most of the time in the Crafters Companion area. I signed up for all of their workshops and loved trying the whole Spectrum Noir product range and other things. Here is Sheena Douglass, she was a treat to listen to! She makes some awesome stamps and dies among other things. Really realistic. And here she is talking about the Spectrum Noir Aqua Tints, one product I was very impressed by. I can't wait to play with them. Lucky me, I got a set to take home. These guys are super generous!
Here Leann Chivers are demonstrating the Spectrum Noir alcohol markers. I really enjoyed this demonstration as well as the Aqua markers and the blendable pencils too. It is really cool learning from the woman who designed the products. She is also really sweet and fun, like all of the Crafters Companion Crew. I also got to meet Sara Davies who is the woman behind the company, she started the company in her early twenties, very cool! She was demonstrating the large A3 scoreboard. Being a Swede and using the metric system for all things except papercrafting I was really happy to see that one side had scorelines in inches and the other side in cm. How convenient! I really didn't know I needed this tool but I apparently did.
We went to the British Craft Awards one night. There was a LOT of prizes presented in a really high tempo but I really enjoyed it. Our friends at Crafters Companion and Tonic Studios won several awards even though competing with some well known companies like Martha Stewart and Spellbinders. The coolest thing was the fact that everyone was cheering for each other and it felt like this is a community where people care for each other and are happy for others success.
Here are Lynell Harlow from Dreamweaver. I was lucky enough to walk by the Stampendous booth just as she was setting up a workshop and she was really nice and asked if I wanted to join when someone didn't show up. Of course I wanted! This was such a fun workshop with lots of techniques. Lynell was really good at explaining the products and I enjoyed listening to her.
We made a canvas wall piece with ocean theme. I really loved seeing how everyones turned out. All the same materials but still all different.
Pretty cool, right? I loved the black embossing paste, I'm looking forward to playing some more with it!
One of the nights we went to dinner with the ladies from Fabscraps. I had a great time. This is Bridget or Bee as her friends call her and she runs things and also designs the lovely products. She told me a lot about living and running a company in South Africa. Quite a contrast from what I'm used to and the opposite from north of Sweden where I used to live. It was a fun evening. I really should have taken a picture of the lovely dress forms made from Fabscrap paper in the monter. Sooooo cool!
This was a display from a company selling storage bins. There are all little storage boxes, how cool is this??? Being a video game geek I LOVED this! I only wish there was room enough to take a picture of all of it at once.
This is the Sizzix booth. I thought it was so pretty with all the butterflies. I was very happy to run into Pete Hughes from Sizzix again, we met a couple of years ago and he was really inspiring. He gave me some great advice back then that I had good use for when I started making my own cut files for Pretty Crafty Stuff. Also he is super nice. I was doing a make and take with him, a felt flower pin and he had to help me to sew because that is so not my thing doing fancy stitching. It was a mess, I was VERY thankful for the help getting it all together. It turned out pretty in the end.
Here is another part of the Sizzix display. Love the colors. I wish I had remembered to take a picture of Petes amazing photo cubes and wall art. So cool! And I forgot to take a picture of us together like I did last time.
I think Tonic Studios won the award for great customer service. We were saying they really should do some more colors than orange on their products and the guys used their new glitter to make a pair of pink glittery scissors for Katalin. It turned out very cute. I'm still waiting for my glittered die cut machine ;)
Last but not least. Tania from WOW was the one suggesting I should go and I'm so happy I went. Here is my kind of creative space. Lots of lovely things! I kind of forgot to take pictures since everyone was so nice and I loved just looking around so much.
I stole this picture from WOW at instagram, I don't think they mind. This is me and lovely DT coordinator (among other things) Tania. It was so great to finally see her in person, she is just as sweet as she looks. I wish the days hadn't gone by so fast. I would have loved to hang around the booth a bit more. I also met Marion Emberson who designs amazing things, she is super sweet and I loved seeing her demonstrating.
And here is me, not as exciting as the other people ;)
We did have some time to do other things too. Here is me getting Starbucks coffee for the very first time. Yes, the first. I am like a century behind everyone else.
The first day we had time to visit the Bullring, a shopping centre with lots of stores and this handsome bull statue outside. I got a really nice pair of shoes that I love. I could not understand the sales clerk asking me if I wanted her to put them in a box. The accent was not what I'm used to hear. She probably thought I was a bit slow ;)
And we even went out to the pub a couple of nights. We were living pretty central and I really felt at home at this place, I think it was called the Victoria. I had to take a picture of this guy :) Fun times!
That was probably the longest post I ever made. Took forever uploading all the pictures. Hope you enjoyed it! See you soon!
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