The ferry, Port Sunlight, the stamps, the friends and a card!

Last Thursday we travelled up from the south coast to the Wirral, four and a half hours or so up north so I could demo Stampotique and Paperbag Studios stamps (links on the right)on the Happy Daze stand at the Happy Stampers show at Port Sunlight.



On the Friday morning (whilst all the merchandise was in transit from Yorkshire) my husband, little lad and I went on a FERRRRRRRR-RYYYYYYYY 'CROSS THE MERRRRR-SEEEEEEYYY.
Had to be done.
Can't travel for hours and not do the touristy stuff lol.



It was a tad nippy with a fair ol' fresh breeze (read "blinkin freezin" as I've become a softy southerner when it comes to weather having lived there for the last 25 years).

The afternoon was spent unpacking a huge amount of stock and then looking at the available space...and our stand looked like we'd been raided by the Tazmanian Devil at the end of the session and we left exhausted.

On the day of the show (the Saturday), Joanne Wardle, Karen Cass and Julie Dandy joined Moira, Claire and I for a 'frenzied finish presenting and reshuffling the stock' session at 8am and then we were ready!

Here's Joanne Wardle (standing) and lil ol' me before the mad rush began. Joanne and I have known each other online for about 8 years and this was the first time we had met in real life. This was a bit of a 'ohhhhhhhh nooooooooo' in a Zilly voice from Stop The Pigeon moment as it was taken minutes before the show started.



Here's Karen and Julie...



Joanne at the helm!



And off we go....










I managed to only take a few photos at the beginning as after then it was soooooooooooo busy!!!!!!! My husband took quite a few of these (thank yooou) when dropping in before the doors opened which was lucky. Wish I'd have managed to get photos of all the people that stopped by to say hello that I know online. Here I managed to capture Ann chatting to Happy Daze owner Moira(dressed in teal) in the distance, Claire at the till and that might be Mel on the left? Difficult to tell. Please let me know if you recognise yourself or anyone.
Hi to Chris, Sheila (She), Judith (PoppyCottage), Sid, Kath, Vix, Ann, Corina (travelled from The Netherlands!)Lorraine, and all those people I chatted with on the stands that I'd known for ages or just met and on my breaks. Thanks too for the wonderful artwork from Mary and Karen.

Here's Joanne in full swing. The crowd was so big I had weave my way back through and hold my camera forward in the air to take a photo.



It was an exhausting day. I've certainly never made that many cards and tags in one day in my stamping career. They were quickmakes, very quickmakes, but lots of fun. Everyone was so friendly it was great!

Thanks goes most of all from me to my husband Dave for driving for 10 hours in total so I could do the show and coping with the nightmare of the rear tyre blowing out on us on the central reservation on the motorway on the way home. eeeek!, and to my boys.

*If anyone ever fancies a card swap I have lots of more detailed work that I've made in the past and I'm happy to exchange. I would love to hear from you if you the idea. My work just sits in a box going no where mostly, and I would be great to receive a card or whatever you may fancy swapping in exchange.

Whilst I was at the show I managed to grab a bit of spending time and headed off to the Stamp Camp to track down a stamp I used to own (can't find it anywhere, you know how it goes) and it never reappeared after we moved house. Stamp Camp had travelled all the way from the States and I was hoping THE stamp had travelled with them. YEP!!! THERE SHE WAS!! The little girl in the hat watching the sunset aka #SD103 Beach Girl. So pleased I have her again. She reminds me of my childhood. A real chillout stamp image. Very relaxing to stamp with at the moment.I paired it up with #SD117 'One must Live'.




As it happens the The Cheerful Stamp Pad challenge this week is COLOUR MY WORLD and so this I feel fits in rather well I think :0) . I used a combination of Jenni Bowlin ink pads (the ones I demoed with on the stand )and coloured pencils to colour this one layer card.

Finally, you may have noticed the righthand side of my blog is looking a little less crowded. I've decided that now is perhaps a good time to concentrate on artwork for myself and for publishing (magazine and my book which is almost done) so needed to step away from the regular commitment of the design teams I belonged to (will miss chatting with the girls on the teams!), but it's not to say I won't be still working with all those fabulous images of course!!

Watch this space!!!