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.
So BIG GIANT THANKS to
Tim Holtz and Spellbinders!!
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!
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goodness i would love to either host or attend a crafty weekend like this. what a lovely group of women! i have hosted crafty evenings before where i had my guests prepare stationery kits that included about 6 or 8 cards to send with decorated envelopes and lots of bits and bobs included as well.
your bracelets look like so much fun; i think i may have raved like a crazy lady the first time you posted about the one you made. fantastic use of tim's goodness (his products, i mean!). anyway, thanks for sharing this peek into your wonderful weekend retreat!
Posted by: kelly | 05/04/2016 at 05:24 PM
Looks like you gals had a super fun time. If I had to bring some crafty thing I would bring some clear glass Christmas balls to be decorated with alcohol inks. A bit messy but fun to see the final result. Oh and a bunch of decorative ribbons to hang them with.
Posted by: Judyt28 | 05/04/2016 at 05:15 PM
What a fun time! Looks like you all had an utter BLAST! I'd bring my alcohol inks, sticky backed aluminum sheets and some Tim Holtz charm fragments along with some of his vintage style DP to make some adorable charms. Great for adding to bookmarks and the like.
Posted by: Brandi R | 05/04/2016 at 05:08 PM
Wow, what a fabulous weekend! I bet coming home was hard to do. All of the projects looked amazing, too! If I got the chance to participate in a weekend like that, I would probably pack my Grandmother's wooden spools, some wire, lots of pretty papers and embellishments and make little photo holders.
Posted by: Andrea Shell | 05/04/2016 at 04:41 PM
Pushed the 'enter' by accident before I finished! I have some very special vintage buttons I am saving to make bracelets with! The buttons were my Mom's and I want to do some memorial pieces with them. Have been looking on Pinterest for inspiration, trying to decide how I want to use them. That would be the project I would share!
Posted by: Denise Bryant | 05/04/2016 at 04:21 PM
What a fabulous and creative, special weekend you had! Your bracelet project turned out beautifully!
I spy a fox die in that prize and I would LOVE it! Had a very special stuffed animal fox named Lopki when I was growing up! Still love foxes!
Posted by: Denise Bryant | 05/04/2016 at 04:18 PM
Wow looks like you had an amazing time I'd bring watercolors and h2o twinkling watercolors for everyone to play with and be able to create bg and colour flowers up with them
Posted by: Nikki c | 05/04/2016 at 04:12 PM
Wow, sounds like such a great time. I would probably bring a decoupage project. I love decorating items with all of my beautiful papers.
Thanks for sharing.
Ang
Posted by: Ang | 05/04/2016 at 03:43 PM
I cant believe how much fun you all look like you had! I love the bracelets, I'm definitely in love with them but its because I metal stamp too. I would love to get together and have a group like this. I think If I did one of the first project I would bring is a wood jewelry box or picture frame so everyone could learn to wood burn. I think it is something everyone should learn. It makes great Christmas gifts and ornaments and its so versatile!
Posted by: carly pool | 05/04/2016 at 03:38 PM
I love the bracelet a lot when I saw it on your blog earlier. That would be a great project. Thanks.
Posted by: Flo | 05/04/2016 at 03:20 PM
looks like a wicked fun weekend :) hmmm... what project would I bring? maybe we would make a set of birthday cards with a simple distress ink smooshing. We could play with all different color combos!! :)
Posted by: jenn shurkus | 05/04/2016 at 02:38 PM