I'm baaaaack!!

Lia and I at de Craftorij

Wowee! What an amazing, fantastic time I just had when I spent  few days teaching at de Craftorij, Ede, in The Netherlands :-))  Look out, this is going to be a long post with pictures galore ........!!

I arrived last Wednesday after a super-quick flight from the UK (just 50 minutes! That's all!) and was met by Lia and her lovely husband Marcell, who drove me through the beautiful Dutch countryside to Ede, in the middle of Holland. I even saw a windmill!!

We arrived at de Craftorij ... wow, look at this! What a craft shop! You could do some serious damage to your wallet in here :-)

I met up with Joan again, who was to become my invaluable helper over the next few days. We last saw each other at an art journaling workshop at Art from the Heart, UK:

The studio. The calm before the storm....:

Day 1. A full and busy class making inky year books using Dylusions:

Even the mop-up sheets looked good!

The Dutch girls LOVE their arts and crafts and I was greeted by amazing passion and enthusiasm every single day:

The end of the first workshop, and a whole host of gorgeous colourful inky journals to share:

On the evening of day 1, I met up with the super-talented Design Team for de Craftorij. These girls have amazing and yet totally diverse talents, ranging from metal work, to clean scrapbooking, to art journaling. I was blown away by their fabulous samples in the shop:

We had an inky get together .......

...and even the 'clean' girls got (reluctantly) inky! LOL! Too funny!!

So far, so good. Day 2 was the Journal Inspirations class, covering a variety of techniques, using acrylic paints and inks, and even a bit of collage. The studio got more and more colourful as the day went on, and even one of the walls was turned a beautiful shade of pink. Oops.

It was so nice to meet up with some of my blogging buddies .... Audrey and Karin (aka the dirty hands brigade):

You can tell that Karin was enjoying herself!

 And here the Friday group proudly show off their amazing art journal collages. Nice work!

Day 3. More inky year books using Dylusions. It doesn't take long to turn the clean studio into a riot of colour!!

And look who I bumped into on day 3. Astrid! My friend from the Stampotique Design Team! It is always wonderful to meet bloggy friends in real life:

And this is the fabulous, inky, colourful result of day 3:

Now, I don't want you to think this was all work and no play. Oh no. We still managed to find time to sneak off for a bit of this:

Leoni, me and lia.

The final day arrived, all too quickly, and this time we were making calendar journal pages. The popularity of this challenge seems to grow and grow .... just when I think it might be drawing to a close, there is a burst of enthusiasm!

 This class was busy, and a little crowded, but the results were amazing, and the calendar pages were glorious!

Neline is a clean card-maker. Usually. We soon put a stop to that!

And Nicole is keen on clean 3-D, but once she got her hands on in the acrylic paint there was no stopping her!!

And here are the amazing results from the final day at de Craftorij:

It was great to meet up with some of my lovely Dutch friends again:

Joan, me, margo, Hetty

And it was also great to meet new friends. Marjan called in to the regular crop class to say hello, and brought her gorgeous little 4 legged friend along. Look at this. What a way to travel!

And before I reluctantly left de Craftorij, I got to sign The Wall .... all international teachers are asked to leave their mark here:

So, which quote did I use? Why, this one of course!!

All in all, I had an amazing time in The Netherlands with some amazing people. The kindness and hospitality shown by my hosts was second-to-none. It was such an honour to spend time with such enthusiastic and passionate artists :-)

A HUGE thank you to de Craftorij team: Lia, Marcell, Joan, Irma, and Leoni. You are all amazing! xxx