Guest Designer: Andy Skinner

Hi Folks

Before I start I want to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who voted for us in the recent Craft Business awards.  We were the runner up and Highly Commended in the Best Independent Retailer, South of England category.  You must be really eagle eyed because we hadn't even spotted that we had been nominated but we are really pleased you did!

The good news just keeps coming today, I am really thrilled to be able to let you know that Andy Skinner has agreed to join us in a guest DT member role, contributing projects as and when he can.  I know you will love his work and the great news is that you can see him in person at the June extravaganza .   Andy is very generous with his knowledge, skills and time.  He came and did a fantastic workshop for our staff and tutor team recently which was great fun and we'll have some news shortly about an upcoming workshop he will be doing for us at The Craft Barn.  

Andy started as a ceramic artist and has gradually moved into mixed media and papercrafting.  He has recently released his first stamp range which you can see here and if you scroll down you'll find some tags he has made using his stamps.  I have a few pictures to share with you of just some of the projects he has made recently and I think you will be blown away.  The first one uses a triptych like our three panelled icon, spot the tiny candles!

The next project is just amazing, it transforms one of our wooden calendar blanks like you've never seen, click here to see what it looked like before it was Andy'd!

Next up are some tags Andy made using his own stamps.

And finally this is one of the wooden chest blanks and if you want to know how Andy changed it to look like this, you'll just have to pop along to the extravaganza to see all his wonderful techniques!  I can tell you that this man may not be able to turn water into wine yet, but he can turn bisque into rusted metal and he has a whole new use for googly eyes!

Bet you agree these are pretty amazing, leave a comment and help us welcome Andy to the team, better still come along in June and tell him how much you like his work!

And some more great news (told you it just keeps coming) is that Neil Walker our other wonderful recent DT addition will also be with us demoing at the June extravaganza.  You will LOVE what he is doing with Tim Holtz products but I'm not going to spoil the surprise!

Jane, Isa and I spent some time this week planning the next 3 months of projects for the blog.  I can tell you there are some real bobby dazzlers coming up from all our hugely talented DT members.  Don't forget to sign up as a follower to know when we are adding new posts and of course right now you can win our lovely blog candy .

In our search for our next "permanent" DT member, we have started looking at the blogs of everyone who has so far applied to be on our DT, however, you still have a few days left to apply so what's stopping you?!

See you soon

Sandy