Workshop – Birds of a Feather

Vlogged memories of our Amy Tan workshop…

Whilst many of us can relate to the ‘curve balls’ that life throws us from time to time, equably many of us find that a craft is a welcome distraction!

And if you’re reading this, like us Birds of a Feather, you probably share a love of scrapbooking?

We have met some fabulous people whilst sharing the love of this hobby and I’m sure that there will be many more friendships to discover in the future.

Two such ladies who we met recently at our Amy Tan workshop were Claire and Georgia. These ladies ‘vlog’…. and if like me you’re not familiar with ‘vlogging’ the easiest way to describe it a video diary or a filmed blog!

Like scrapbooking, Claire and Georgia’s vlog styles are very different. I can’t categorically say why but they just are!

Having already watched Claires’ vlog, Georgia’s vlog is equally as great… It gives you an insight into so much more than simply the workshop, starting with a tube ride, then onto her hotel room for the night and dinner at Pizza Express, all before any filming of Amy Tan or indeed the workshop!

Why not watch it yourself and see if you agree with me?

Either way, it brings back some amazing memories…

From Amy demonstrating her wonderful talent and techniques to a reminder about just how packed full of lush stash the kit really was, not to mention the adorable Amy Tan herself… Her character is infectious, as is her laugh!

She chose to share some of her curve balls with us on that weekend, but her amazing and positively strong outlook on life gives others the feel good factor that Amy exudes so well!

Sadly for Georgia, today it is the funeral of her brother in law. He didn’t have enough ‘magic and sparkle’ in his life and felt there was no other way out…

Georgia has been crowd funding to raise money for his funeral. If you would like to make a donation, please visit his just giving page.

Think we would all benefit from a bit of Amy Tan ‘magic and sparkle’ in our lives… I know that I for one certainly felt blessed t have been in her company that weekend and can’t wait until our paths cross again!

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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Memories of a wonderful weekend….

It seems very hard to believe that this time last week we had arrived at Chateau Impney, were busy setting up for our Amy Tan weekend workshop.

Driving up to the Chateau still makes my skin tingle – it really is such an amazing building set in the heart of Worcestershire…

Amy really didn’t have much time in the UK at all – she flew into Heathrow on the Thursday, spent the day with Shimelle last Friday and then returned to London on Sunday and back to LA last Monday. That’s some serious travelling in such a short space of time!

The Saturday ladies…

And the Sunday ladies…

Mind you, we had plenty of time to get to know Amy, when we met her at Birmingham New Street Station last Friday! What an epic journey that was! We were mightily excited to meet Amy and had left in plenty of time. However we didn’t account for the standstill we found ourselves in the middle of in central Birmingham!

It was so bad that Sheena and Jackie resorted to jumping our of my car and walking directly around the standstill to get to New Street – crossing over a couple of roundabouts… comical now looking back!

I had managed to finally crawl to New Street station and after observing other cars do a three point turn right outside the main John Lewis New Street entrance, I threw down the gauntlet and joined in! Unlike some of the larger vehicles, ‘Betty’ my little Fiat 500 did her three point turn with very little effort!

We finally delivered a jet lagged Amy back to the Chateau at around 21.30. Fun, laughter and cocktails ensued with the fabulous Sarah and Lianne from Hey Little Magpie. They had bought their delicious ‘pop-up’ shop to the Chateau and this did not fail to disappoint causing a dent in many delegates pockets!

Still what would be a scraping workshop without copious amounts of fabulous scrapping stash?

Amy’s Hustle & Heart kit was rammed with delicious stash too, over £90 worth of goodies, so even after making four fabulous layouts and being introduced to a Travellers Notebook, there was masses of the kit left!

A truly fabulous weekend – what a memory!

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And we have our first vlog!

A big thank you to Claire Murphy, aka Scrappy Nerd UK for introducing us to the wonderful world of vlogging!

For those of you not in the know, or for those of you who thought predictive text had been un-predictive, vlogging is in layman’s terms video blogging!

Here at Birds of a Feather we love it, not just because Claire’s vlog has documented the amazing weekend we shared with Amy Tan (although that is mighty special) but because we got an insight into Claire’s world!

It’s like an unedited episode of Big Brother, but whereas the housemates are all filmed, they would be filming themselves!

Claire currently has over 1700 subscribers to her You Tube site, let’s aim to get her to 2000 followers real soon!

We’ve had some amazing feedback which we will update you all on very soon, but in the meantime why not take a quick trip down memory lane and remind yourselves of the wonderful experience we all shared.

And if you weren’t lucky enough to be a part of our fabulous weekend at the stunning Chateau Impney, why not sit down with a cuppa and see for yourself what you missed!

My new little motor even gets filmed – see if you can work out which car she is, as Ive aptly named her ‘Betty Blue Eyes!’

Ultimately weekends like this are all about meeting old friends and making new ones… In fact, Claire and Georgia hadn’t met Roxy, all of whom feature in the vlog until we put a call out for a car share for Roxy… Claire and Georgia said that they were more than happy to give her a lift and arranged to meet up at a local crop, prior to the Amy Tan event! How cool is that?

It’s through scrapbooking that us three Birds of a Feather met – who knows who we’ll meet next?

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I got the ephemera tiger…

…which should be sung to the tune of the Katy Perry song “I got the eye of the tiger” LOL!

And you’re gonna hear us ROAR, because only yesterday, Amy Tan was finally able to send us an image of the kit for our forthcoming workshop with her at Chateau Impney, Worcestershire.

In case you hadn’t heard (where have you been in the world of scrapbooking?) but we have managed to secure the amazingly talented Amy to come over to the UK and teach on behalf of Birds of a Feather!

The kit image is still missing a few items but is already rammed with stash and has an RRP of over £80.

Amy is teaching four layouts as well as giving you an insight into a Travellers Notebook. And, if all goes according to plan she is also hoping to give a lesson in her iconic, hand painted script font!

Can you Adam and Eve it?

How adorable is the Hustle & Heart Ephemera?

And these 3D Stickers melt my heart – they are simply delightful!

Not to mention the Enamel Pins? What’s not to love about an enamel pineapple or typewriter…

Even the gorgeous, dinky suede effect bows are super cute – I’m guessing that there may be a few left over in the kit. I for one am totally glad about this as I would struggle to use them all up!

However, if I did I could always head straight to the Hey Little Magpie shop and buy another set!

If you didn’t know, the Hey Little Magpie shop will be on site at Chateau Impney! Such a bonus for our bank balance!

The kit so far contains:

7 patterned papers
1 gold die-cut paper
Cardstock
3D diamond wood veneer shapes
Layered sticker pack
Sticker book
Ephemera
Enamel pins
Glitter phrases
Inflated ephemera (think puffy stickers and you’re nearly there!)
Faux suede bows
Museum pins
Pom pom stickers

Reminds me of the Generation Game!

We do still have a couple of spaces left on both days, so why not come and ROAR with us?

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And the Winner is …..

To celebrate our first year in business we offered an early bird booking opportunity, to win a £50 Hey Little Magpie voucher if you booked and paid for the Amy Tangerine Workshop before 4th August 2017.

The draw was done on 7th August 2017 by random generator and the winner was No. 34, who is Kay Hall.

Congratulations Kay, we will be in touch with your prize.

We still have availability on the workshop, full details can be found under the workshop tab above.

Jackie xxx

Amy Tan is coming to the UK!

OMG, goodness knows how we’ve done it, Amy Tan is coming to the UK to exclusively teach for Birds of a Feather…

Can you ‘Adam ‘n’ Eve’ it? (Amy, for your benefit, that’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘believe it’)

We can’t wait to see what Amy designs for all you lucky ladies… We certainly drool over her beautiful, hand painted phrases!

We simply can’t believe it’s happening!

Amy has a captivating style and such an engaging way! Having looked at some of her recent IG posts, it seemed apt to include this post – hope you don’t mind Amy?

As well as being able to bring the lovely Amy to the UK, we’ve managed to secure the most impressive of locations, ideally positioned just a short distance from junction 5 off the the M5… the Chateau Impney

Tempted to book?

All you need to know is on our workshops page…

In the meantime, check out the advert for more details.

But don’t delay – snooze you lose… and spaces are limited!

Looking forward to seeing you there…

Jackie, Sam and Sheena xxx

Make mine a Mini …

Hi all, well I cant say hope you are enjoying the sunny weather, as I type this blogpost its cold and raining and hard to think we are in the middle of July, but I’m hoping the weather will pick up again shortly and we can be out and about making memories.

For my post, I revisited my love of mini albums. In the past I would do them regularly, then scrapbook layouts took over, so I don’t do them as often as I used to.

But after our last retreat, a delegate, Mell Cooper who attended the event, did a lovely 4×4 mini album of her experience at our event, you can see the album here, and it got me thinking … why not compile a mini album of each of our events.

I just loved the idea of working on the 4×4 format, and as I had a few these sized albums in my stash, I dusted them off and have started on the process of compiling our past events.

Our first event, which was back in November 2016, and seems such along time ago as such much as happened since then. But getting all the photograph printed off brought wonderful memories of a fantastic weekend flooding back.

Anyway, here are a few photographs of the albums. Apologies for the poor quality of the photos, but trying to take photos of the pages without glare was proving difficultly.

I used Paige’s ‘Take Me Away’ paper collection that she used for the workshop. Helping to keep with the theme of the weekend.

the room all set up ready for the delegates.

Sam made some lovely little sewing kits for each delegate.

Paige’s teaching one of her amazing classes.

Her classes …

The Saturday delegates

We were on hand the whole time to lend a hand

Then we had a mini photoshoot …

I used some the cut-a-part sheets and wood veneer to embellish some of the pages.

Group shot of the Saturday delegates.

None of our Sunday delegates are featured as we did not get consent from them to publish any photographs with them in. They are in the actual album which will be available to see at our future events.

Happy scrapping

Jackie xxx

Oh my heart

We’ve all been waiting with anticipation and the latest collection ‘Oh my heart’ by Paige Taylor Evans has just been previewed over on the Pink Paislee blog.

Personally I think it’s my favourite so far… it’s certainly made my heart say ‘oh my!’

Look at these totally adorable heart shaped charms – why is it that something so simple can literally melt my heart?

Even better, this is the collection that Paige will be using when she comes back to the UK to teach in March for Birds of a Feather! Lush, lush, lush!

Full of total cuteness in Paige’s signature style, I’m still in awe of the papers… especially the multi book cover one – can’t wait to find out its name!

And what about the ephemera?

Totally down my street, I simply love random – why shouldn’t you mix books, socks and the odd watch here and there?

Talking of random, look at the John Lennon glasses on the thickets sheet

I spy a birdie!

And I spy another birdie on the puffy stickers sheet!

I’m not normally a fan of puffy stickers as I tend to think the printed colours never quite match. But by the looks of these sneaks, the colours match spot on!

I’m intrigued to see the stickers from the stickers book for real…

Are they stripy or are they kraft coloured?

One thing is for certain – we aren’t going to have to wait much longer to see layout upon layout appear from the extremely talented Paige!

And even better, it only just over 50 days until Paige is here in person with this stunning collection ‘Oh my heart’.

Don’t delay in making your mind up – I think there is literally less than a handful of spaces left now on either day.

Why not take a look at what people thought of her workshop last November if you needed any more convincing!

See you in March!

And she’s back!

Whose back?

Paige Taylor Evans of course!

We were thrilled to hear that Paige had had such an amazing weekend with Birds of a Feather that she wanted to return – and better still before she returns to the US next year!

So as if by magic, we’ve only gone and done it again!

Paige is coming to The Village Hotel in Walsall, which is literally at junction 10 of the M6 to teach four amazing classes using her brand new, hot off the press collection, which is being launched at CHA in January.

It’s so new we aren’t even allowed a sneak preview, but I’m sure it will be as amazing as ‘Take Me Away’ and ‘Fancy Free’..

Sounds like fun?

What could be better than a day of crafting, laughter and ‘you’ time?

So if you want to be footloose and ‘fancy free’ and ‘taken away from it all’ then why not book onto our amazing workshop?

Spaces are definitely limited – we only went live last night and we’ve been inundated with bookings so far, so if it does sound ‘right up your street’ don’t delay in reserving your place – and if your still unsure whether to book or not, why not check out some of the comments that we received from our November ’16 workshop?

After all, birds of a feather flock together…