Tag: Retreats

Relaxed Retreat – 14th to 16th October 2022

Birds of a Feather is delighted to announce that our Autumn retreat in 2022 will be held in the exclusive Taylor Suite at the luxurious De Vere Staverton Estate, ideally located just a short drive from junction 18 of the M1.

Like our previous retreats, this event will be run as a ‘relaxed’ retreat, with no formal structure to the weekend. Class kits, complete with comprehensive instructions will be available to purchase.

With plenty of fun and laughter over the weekend and an abundance of ‘birds’ you’re guaranteed to have a fabulous time with many like minded, happy crafters!

And some might say better still, leave the weekend feeling renewed and revitalised…

After all, Birds of a Feather flock together…

The weekend package is available in both single and twin occupancy rooms and includes two nights full board accommodation.

Location: De Vere Staverton Estate, Staverton, Daventry, Northamptonshire. NN11 6JT.

Date: Friday 14th October to Sunday 16th October 2022 inclusive.

The price for this event is £365 for a single occupancy room and £320 for a twin room.

Please download a booking form below and return to bookings@birdsofafeather.uk.com along with your deposit or full payment to the bank details which can be found on the T&C’s.

Download Booking Form: Word doc. PDF editable doc.

Payment Structure / Terms and Conditions: Payment details

Relaxed Retreat – 25th to 27th March 2022

Birds of a Feather is delighted to announce that our Spring retreat in 2022 will be held in the exclusive Taylor Suite at the luxurious De Vere Staverton Estate, ideally located just a short drive from junction 18 of the M1.

Like our previous retreats, this event will be run as a ‘relaxed’ retreat, with no formal structure to the weekend. Class kits, complete with comprehensive instructions will be available to purchase.

With plenty of fun and laughter over the weekend and an abundance of ‘birds’ you’re guaranteed to have a fabulous time with many like minded, happy crafters!

And some might say better still, leave the weekend feeling renewed and revitalised…

After all, Birds of a Feather flock together…

The weekend package is available in both single and twin occupancy rooms and includes two nights full board accommodation.

Location: De Vere Staverton Estate, Staverton, Daventry, Northamptonshire. NN11 6JT.

Date: Friday 25th March to Sunday 27th March 2022 inclusive.

The price for this event is £365 for a single occupancy room and £320 for a twin room.

Please download a booking form below and return to bookings@birdsofafeather.uk.com along with your deposit or full payment to the bank details which can be found on the T&C’s.

Download Booking Form: Word doc. PDF editable doc.

Payment Structure / Terms and Conditions: Payment details

The mad cow with the stats is back!

Hard to believe, but it is a fortnight since we greeted Amy Tan at Birmingham New Street station!

In our opinion, the weekend was a massive success, with umpteen positive comments and messages, along with so many happy faces… even just typing this, my mind is flooded with so many happy thoughts!

As always, we really value your feedback. All comments, ideas and thoughts are taken on board to better the experience for everyone on our next retreat, which by the way is only in a weeks’ time! Yikes!!!

Anyway, back to our Amy Tan workshop…

We ask everyone to rate a set number of criteria, 5 being excellent and 1 being unsatisfactory….

We were delighted that 82% of you gave the Chateau Impney 5 stars as a location, ideally situated just off junction 5 of the M5.

92% of you lovely ladies scored the food 4 stars or above. The ‘breakfast butties’ went down exceptionally well, a great energy boost to a very busy day, which even included a Travellers Notebook!

100% of you scored the crop room space as 4 stars or above, with over 90% of you giving the room a big thumbs up no. 5. We were delighted to be located in The Elizabethan suite – blimey that room was so big you could crop, party and have a disco all at the same time LOL!

Comfort of the crop room also scored top marks, with 100% of you scoring it at 4 stars or above…

The teaching space and the classes both equally scored 5 stars by 94% of you – the classes were totally down to Amy, so massive thanks there Miss Tan xoxo!

WOW is the word that best describes the Hustle & Heart kits… 98% of you scored it as 5 stars, with some of you adding a + sign! Rammed with lusciousness and products galore, I’d like to see the first lady that uses her kit up completely!

And I can tell you that it won’t be me, Jackie or Sheena as we all succumbed and raided the Hey Little Magpie on-site shop and purchased the 16 papers that weren’t included in Amy’s kit. Hard to believe I know, but the hustle & Heart collection has a massive 24 different 12 x 12″ papers!

So would you recommend us again? Indeed you would… In fact 98% of you lovely ladies rated the overall workshop as 4 stars or more!

Thank you to all who completed our questionnaire and we look forward to seeing you real soon – some of you in seven days!!!

 

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What’s Your Crafting Journey …

Hi everyone, well this is a long with minimal photo blogpost today, I have tried to condense it the best I could, so I do hope you stay with me till the end!

We were recently contacted by a scrapbooker who was nervous about coming to one of our retreats on her own, and it got me thinking about my scrapbooking journey so far, and how it all started.

In 2006, I dipped my toe into card-making, attending a weekly workshop locally and loved my 2 hours a week crafting session. It’s at the same workshop that I met Julie, my best crafting buddy and my loveliest friend.  After attending a ‘memory keeping’ class run by the lady who ran the card classes, I decided that I needed to find out more about this ‘thing’ called ‘scrapbooking’.

Sorry photograph not very good, but an early example of my card making!

So after purchasing several copies of Scrapbook Inspiration magazine and reading from cover to cover, I noticed a advert for a Retreat … a what ??? a Retreat … you mean people actually go away for a whole weekend and do pages of ‘memory keeping’ … WOW, now wouldn’t that be something …

Several chats to my hubby, and several times me saying ‘oh it’s not for me – but I really want to go’ etc., I eventually made the phone call to the organisers and booked it.

At this point, I hadn’t even done one page with any photographs on, let alone met anyone who had.  So again back to the magazines to see if I could find a ‘crop’ … really ‘a crop’? I wondered what that would be like! Having found one locally to me, I went with my one packed bag, that contained everything I needed.

I went on my own not knowing what to expect, and said to myself if I don’t like it, I will stay an hour or so and come home… Honestly I could have stayed there all day and night, I loved it, and couldn’t wait till the following month to go again.

Then it was time to go to the ‘Retreat’… I was so nervous, but I knew I needed to find out what it was all about, and talk to people who had been doing ‘scrapbooking’ for a long time.

And the best of all, I would meet a designer who appeared in the Scrapbook Magazine that I was now subscribing to …  I met Shimelle … what a lovely sweet person she is.

The ladies who ran this retreat were great in making me feel so welcome and then I worked out that there was a few other ladies who where there on their own as well, so we made a bee-line for each other and before long we were where chatting and laughing like we were old friends. One of these ladies was Sam, and we have been friends, crafting buddies and now business partners since that day in May 2008!

After the retreat, I decided that I needed to visit as many different crops/workshop as I could, just to see what was on offer, what others were doing, anything really, I just needed to get a ‘crafting fix’ every month. At one such crop/workshop I met Sheena. I was talking to someone about going to an upcoming retreat and Sheena said she was going to the same one. So another friendship was borne out of this crazy hobby called ‘scrapbooking’.

Photo taken in 2011 at a weekend friends retreat I’d organised in Shropshire.

Jump forward 9 years and now I’m on several design teams, I organise crafting weekend for a group of friends twice a year, and I’m a partner in a business that orgainses ‘Retreats’ … yes people actually stay in a hotel and craft all weekend … bliss.

I’ve made some amazing life long friends, some on-line friends, who I might not ever even meet as they are all around the UK and even abroad, but we all share this great love of scrapbooking.

One of my recent layouts

Its not all been plain sailing, and I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in getting this far, but I’ve kept going and I’m so glad I did.

This journey is one I’m so glad I took and looking forward to seeing where it will take me in the future.

Whats your journey?

Jackie xxxx

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See 1, Do 1, Teach 1…

In my nursing profession, ‘see one, do one, teach one’ was a well known phrase for how knowledge was passed on and new skills learnt. Over the years I have gained lots of new skills this way and passed them on to my fellow colleagues.

I believe this is where my love of teaching has sprung from. I love nothing more than sharing my scrapbooking pages for Birds of a Feather, with other like minded people and maybe teaching them new skills and techniques along the way.

At our recent Birds of a Feather retreat I got the chance to teach on both Saturday and Sunday to a lovely group of ladies and we had a laugh whilst they relaxed and created my classes.

One of my favourite layouts was using the Crate Paper, Heart Day range and a technique for making glue frames.

Another class I taught using American Crafts, Dear Lizzy – Lovely Day involved hand wrapped frames which certainly tested a few but gave us chance to chat and craft.

I’m looking forward to teaching again this November and the planning is well underway for the classes I’m designing.

Sheena xxx

The mad cow loves stats!

What can I say? This Birds of a Feather mad cow loves stats!

It’s three weeks since we embarked on our first retreat and we are still buzzing from the truly wonderful weekend you guys made it xxx

Thank you to all that completed the feedback form – it really goes a long way into shaping the way forward with our future events… And some of the feedback will be actioned as early as this November.

We’re not a threesome that shies away from the truth, so in the order that the questions were asked, here is the feedback:

Comfort of the bedrooms scored a massive 91.4%.

Now I for one didn’t get to spend much time in mine, but I have to agree that those mattresses are fairly super. And I do love a decent shower in the morning – only wish our pressure was as good at theirs!

Food scored 66.1% – everyone loves the accessibility of the hub, but felt that a sit-down evening meal simply took valuable scrapping time away. We are looking into this for November. Equally, the Sunday carvery scored top marks – guess we all like a bit of tradition!

You scored the crop space as 87.6%, with over 66% of you giving it 5 out of 5 – sadly no matter how hard we try we can’t make those tables grow!

The comfort of the crop room scored a great 88.5%, with over 62% of you giving it 5 out of 5. Personally, I see this as one of our best achievements –  do you remember how hot it was that weekend?

The classroom space achieved a score of 86.6%, although a large number of you felt moving to the classroom unnecessary – again something that we can act on for November.

So how did our class kits do?

100% OF COURSE – a truly fabulous result. We are thrilled with this feedback and it seems to make all the stresses of trying to locate 30 Maggie Homes Chasing Dreams 12 x 12″ chipboards a minor blip – after all whats the world wide web for if it isn’t for locating 12 x 12″ chipboard!

And equally our kits didn’t fair too bad either scoring an overwhelming 99% in the feedback results!

And so the burning question… how did we do overall?

We were given a truly magnificent score of 95.7% and better still 100% of you would recommend us!

Perhaps that’s why we’ve now filled all retreat spaces for November and March 2018.

It goes without saying that all of this isn’t possible without your support and friendship!

After all, Birds of a Feather (and the odd mad cow!) flock together!

1st Retreat – was a Blast ….

And as usual the retreat went far too quickly … but  I wanted to share with you what an amazing fun packed weekend we all had at the end of May.

Be prepared for photo overload of the weekend, and over the coming weeks we will be showcasing the classes and layouts that some of our delegates completed.

The weekend consisted of the amazing Wilna Furstenberg teach two classes via video, showing the delegates various techniques using watercolours and acrylic paints, as well as Sam and Sheena teaching classes in person, I did two layouts that was self-paced class that the delegates could complete over the weekend.

So here goes, we set up and eagerly waited for our delegates to arrive.

As a welcome gift Sam had hand finished aprons for each delegate, we chosen aprons as a gift as we knew we would be using paints with Wilna classes, and they were gratefully received.

 

Once the delegates had arrived and settled into there places, the lovely Hey Little Magpie shop opened for business, and as true scrappers it wasn’t long before we where in there, seeing what we needed, like true Scrappers we need it all – lol.

The format for this weekend was to have as relaxed as possible craft retreat but at the same time having some fun.

So after we had our evening meal it was back to the crop room for a party game.  Which involving rolling a dice, dressing up, inflating a palm tree and putting up a deckchair – which was so funny.

With the lovely Jooles was our winner.

After the game the delegates had an evening to themselves, and to get ready for  the following day where we had planned 3 classes, including one video from Wilna.

The delegates all got struck into the classes – which we will share in another blog post,

and I just had to take a selfie, which was photobombed by Penelope – lol x.

 

We also had my son, James helping out, and he was made-up that Starbucks was on site and he could nip down for one or two during the weekend – lol.

 

And to finish off Saturday, we had the lovely Elaine attend from Stix2 to demonstrate their products with two lovely make & take gifts.

Sunday followed the same format, after breakfast we had 3 more classes, raffle prize draws, challenge winners and of course a photographs of us all in our aprons, and like I said the weekend ended far too quickly, and it was time for us all to head home.

But before I sign off,  I wanted to share an extra photo of us and Wendy in our Paris Cardigans – Wendy had attended our Paige workshop in March with this lovely cardigan, and as we were going to Paris shortly afterward, Sam set herself the task to locate Paris cardigans for us – love them.

Well thats all for now, but we want to thank each delegate for attending our retreat, all the lovely feedback we received, and we are looking forward to seeing all the delegates again in the future.

Come back soon to find out more of what we are up to.

Jackie xxx