I heart Claudine (and other stories from Birmingham)

So we got from Birmingham just fine and we had a great time. We arrived into the NEC Sunday afternoon and did a quick scoot around. We just happened to be walking by one of the stands and Tim Holtz was there demoing away. We were a little star struck and watched Tim work away. After doing another quick scoot we climbed into the taxi, dropped our bags in the hotel and went for a Nandos. It was a very girly night and after feeling very chilled with a nice bottle of white with dinner we hit the cinema to See Valentines Day which was just a perfect girly movie. We had a very funny happening when I was getting the tickets for Valentines Day the guy gave us 3D glasses. Felicia and I were like "Wow all films must be 3D these days even romcoms" but we realised as the usher showed us in to Avatar 3D with our tickets that the chap misheard my Irish accent and thought we wanted to see Avator not Valentines Day. How funny would we have looked if we had sat through Valentines Day with our 3D glasses on!

The next morning started off with a swim (not the nicest, the 4* hotel was manky and there was literally stuff growing on the walls). So Felicia swam with her head above the water as she didnt want to get her hair wet and I swam with my head above the water as I did not want to swallow anything that may have been floating in the water. We must have looked a sight.

We had a crazy day of buying for the shop and as well as some of the goodies you know we are getting in such as Tim Holtz new range and 7 Gypsies we bought LOTS of suprises not only for our papercrafters but for everyone! We are so excited I am going to be attacking the delivery men as they walk in over the next few weeks to see what they have brought me.

The highlight of the whole trip for me was Claudine Hellmuth. I first heard of Claudine when I lived in the UK and I was doing a lot of art journalling and training in creativity. She is a mixed media collage artist. I was not expecting to see Claudine at the show and was ecstatic when I got to meet her and and see a few of her demos. Claudine is one of the nicest people I have met in the industry and I kept thinking how gorgeous she would look on the top of my Christmas tree (is that weird...) as she is the cutest pretties thing you have ever seen. Claudine is very talented and is right up my streets in the use of mixed media in her projects. Of course I have ordered in her full range of acrylics and mediums which should be with us in the next week or two plus lots of other Ranger goodies including the incredible sticky back canvas....

So tonight I am home, exhausted but had a ball! I am also watching Tim here on QVC and wondering how he is still standing after the few weeks schedule he has. So watch out on http://www.craftyalley.com/ for the arrival of the new goodies and keep up to date here with my new projetcs. To put up this week are my TWS swap for Veronica, Scrapzville Swap for Dee and Tag Swap for my group with Louise.

Cathy x