UPDATED 5/7/16: THE LUCKY WINNER IS TRICIA BARBER! Thank you for all the lovely comments everyone!
Gosh, how is it Wednesday afternoon already? WOWZA! I was in a crafty time warp for a few days and it was wonderful! I spent four days at a lovely craft retreat hosted by my amazing friend Brenda Walton. She invited a few of her crafty friends for a marvelous time in her studio from Friday through Monday. I've never been to a retreat like that before. It was great to be able to slow down and know that we had plenty of time together…. We crafted, stayed up really late, ate great food, laughed, took lots of pictures, went on a road trip, laughed some more, crafted some more… It was really such a nice time. Brenda and her awesome husband are truly gracious hosts. They make you feel so welcome. I am so very grateful to have been invited. I really want to share photos of our time together with you. Each crafty gal brought a project, or projects to share and that was really fun. Somewhere along the way I stopped and thought to myself "how did I get so lucky?" It's now been ten months since Crafting and Blogging became my full time job. I am blessed well beyond what I deserve!
I brought my Idea-ology Charm Bracelet project to share with everyone and they loved it. All the bracelets came out pretty and unique. Tim Holtz supplied the products for us – huge shout out to Tim and Mario for that. And, they sent enough items so that I could share one of the bracelet kits with one of YOU as a prize! (Read to the end of my post to find out more). I'll just start with some photos and share more as I go along….
Sharyn brought Brenda some beautiful Lilacs from Washington – on the plane! The smell was divine…
Here we are so giddy to be at the beginning of our long weekend….waiting for everyone else to arrive. That's me in the back, Sharyn, Brenda and Debi.
This is how I packaged everyone's bracelet project kits. I got the gable boxes at The Container Store and stamped them using stamps from Simon Says Stamp and Concord & 9th. (Links below also) I added a bit of pink confetti in the bottom.
This is what the bracelet kits look like – and what is part of the prize giveaway! YAY!
Here we are making our bracelets. We used alcohol inks to dye the gumdrops gems and the stars, and then glued everything together with Glossy Accents. The charms were attached to the bracelets using Tim Holtz Jump Rings. I bought the chain part at Michael's in the jewelry section. This is a super fun project that doesn't take a lot of time. The links to everything I used are below in case you would like to make one! (Great group project!)
Here is my finished bracelet!
I loooooove this photo of all of our creative hands together!! These hands do a whole lot of crafting!!
Debi hand painted these amazing cookies for all of us! Personalized with our initials! They were very tasty, too….although it was hard to eat these little pieces of art.
The group got a little bigger on Saturday! Brenda, Me, Cathe, Sharyn, Gina, Vicki and Debi. Thanks to Brenda's husband for always taking such nice pictures of us silly girls!
Cathe brought a fantastic project so we could make boxes for our bracelets. We painted boxes and then used vintage stencils and texture paste to make them fancy and beautiful.
Some of Cathe's cool stamps she brought in her bag of tricks!
So, this is what our table looked like at MIDNIGHT as we thought it was a good idea to make pressed flower items! Sharyn brought all of these gorgeous pressed flowers from her garden. She also brought vintage music and book pages to put the flowers on. What a neat idea….ready for framing and so pretty.
My favorite were these pressed dogwood flowers. Sigh.
Then Brenda got out all the fabric, felt, suede, leather, thread…. buttons….and we made softies animals!
Did I mention what a fabulous hostess she is? Well, I'm going to mention it again. Look at this beautiful breakfast. How nice to sit down and eat meals as a group with no hurry or worry. It really hit me that this is something I do way too infrequently.
On Sunday we all piled in the 'party van' and went on a road trip to Port Costa to the Theatre of Dreams and then on to Berkeley. We wanted to take the out of town ladies to some of our favorite places! (See my previous posts on Theatre of Dreams HERE and HERE). It was fun to see these places through new eyes and it was a great day!
Some of Wendy Addison's amazing creations….
Debi, Sharyn and Brenda being adorable!
The hostess with the mostest!! In her lovely studio.
That's all! Somewhere along the way I put my camera down and just had fun! Sorry that some photos are missing of our finished projects! Sometimes I get too carried away! LOL. Debi works for Spellbinders and they were very nice and sent us some tote bags and awesome products. I'm including some of them in the prize package along with the bracelet kit.
In order to be eligible to win the prizes in the photo, please leave a comment on this blog post. Tell me what would be the project you would bring to share at a craft retreat! I think we can all have fun seeing everyone's ideas. Maybe you will be inspired to have your own craft day or weekend! I will draw one lucky winner on Saturday evening and notify you via email.
Thank you for following along with me today. Have an awesome day! XOXO I'll be back here on Sunday as part of a cool blog hop celebrating the birthday of one of my favorite stamp companies! I'll be on the SSS Blog on Sunday too, with a Mother's Day card! See you soon!
