Eat Sleep Craft Repeat

2019

Hello Stamplings!

As promised, I have a recap of my time with my friends at Loll's Eat, Sleep, Craft, Repeat 2019 Retreat! This is my second year attending. You can see last year's post here. Some of the photos were taken by Loll's very talented SIL, Alex, where indicated. The rest I took. Each of us is posting today, so the links below the photo will take you to each blog!

Here we are in our fun aprons that Lolly made:

l to r: Christine, Trina, Susan, (me), Colleen, Loll, Bonnie, Nancy, Linda

The place we stayed was located in a beautiful wooded area:

The first few days we had the pleasure of being joined by Nancy's delightful daughter, Jeani (arrow):

We also enjoyed having our very talented friends Colleen and Linda join us for part of the retreat this year. They are in the group photos above and here:

Lots of crafting happened!

Photo by Alejandro Garcia

Photo by Alejandro Garcia

Photo by Alejandro Garcia

Photo by Alejandro Garcia

We shared each other's supplies. Here I am with Bonnie:

Photo by Alejandro Garcia

Besides taking our photos, Alex took the time to teach us how to better photograph our cards and gave us tips on equipment to buy to achieve that. Here is he teaching us. Thank you, Alex!

To save some space, I made collages of some of Alex's photos. Here are some proud "Show and Tell" photos:

Photo by Alejandro Garcia

And here are the beautiful cards we made:

Photos by Alejandro Garcia

Weren't we productive?! We took turns teaching the different techniques shown. In addition to the finished cards, we each came home with lots of card fronts. As I make them into cards and post them in the weeks to come, I will talk more about the techniques shown in the cards above.

My lesson was on painting with watercolor pencils and here is a card I made using the technique. (You can see the other cards we watercolored in the collage photo above: bottom row, far left.)

To color with watercolor pencils, you color your image with your pencils and draw the pigment out with a waterbrush or paint brush. My tip was a simple one. I find I have more control over the color and vibrancy of the pencils if I hold a pencil in my left hand, then touch the tip of my waterbrush to the lead with my right hand, and then paint as usual.

The image and sediment are from my NBUS "Enchanted Iris" by Altenew. The background was made at ESCR by smooching Lindy Magicals on Yupo paper.

Unfortunately ...

We didn't think the knives were sharp at all, but on our last morning this terrible accident happened:

GASP!

I know, it looks bad, doesn't it? I'm just messing with you. It wasn't knives. It was just the result of the klutz below loosing her grip on a poorly-closed (by her) bag of frozen blueberries:

Thankfully, most of the stain wiped right up with a damp cloth, but that is NOT the way to start your morning!

Hammy

Last, but definitely not least, Hammy was in attendance for the whole thoroughly enjoyable event! Here he is sitting on the Werthers candy bowl to get a better view of everything:

And here he is ready to help dole out double-sided tape to anyone in need:

Photo by Alejandro Garcia

Everyone loved the little guy and how he scampered to help out. Of course, he did startle the ladies once or twice by also scampering up their pant legs, as he loves to do!

Thank you, Lolly, for including me again this year! You have everything organized and arranged so all we have to do is have a fantastic inky time! ❤

2018

We met at Christine's house in Vancouver for lots of fun and craftiness. 

I've been out-of-the-country-busy with these pretty ladies!

Nancy Littrell, Trina Pham, Susan Bridgman, 

Lolly Thompson, Christine Alexander, and me!

After the Mister and I had a sensational week-long getaway on one of the Gulf Islands in British Columbia, he went home and I was very fortunate to be invited to stay on in Vancouver for a crafty play with these ladies at their second annual Eat Sleep Craft Retreat! The beautiful photo was taken for us by Lolly's photographer SIL, Alex. 

We all met at Christine's house (an amazing hostess!) and several times we were able to Skype in with two more talented friends, Bonnie Klass and Nance Salkeld.

I learned SO much from these very talented card artists! I will have more photos to share in another post, but this gives you an example of the fun we've been having! This technique is called "dirty pour."

It's been super thrilling for me to step out of my very CAS style and I have enjoyed every single minute! And do you notice who else is in the photo? Yes, that's right, Hammy came, too, of course! Thank you, ladies, for including us this year!!