A Weekend with Finnabair

Well I hope you are ready for this photo heavy post of my wonderful weekend with Finnabair (Ania Dabrowska) at Harrogate this past weekend.

We started on Saturday morning with her "Over Emotional" Canvas. The canvas was larger than I expected at 20" x 8" and we had to work quickly to complete it in four hours.

It was rather fun trying to bring it home on the train and ferry!

I absolutely adore all the elements on this canvas - the colours, the embellishments, the lace …

I even managed to sneak in three of my own handmade flowers!















This was my first attempt at using a hot glue gun - I am now a convert and this morning discovered that my husband has one which he doesn't use!

I have never used so many embellishments on one piece! (In case you are wondering the photograph is of my Great Aunt Alice - I hope she approves!)

My second workshop was a full day on Sunday and was Ania's Black Beauty Journal. Oh my goodness! how I loved this and it is so different to anything I have ever done.

Again I love all those wonderful metal embellishments, the techniques, black gesso and the Luminarte paints we used are just fabulous - needless to say a few managed to get into my suitcase!

Even the back of the journal got a cluster treatment too!











That was just the morning's work and then in the afternoon we created some journal pages. I was really looking forward to this as I have tried to recreate this style myself (poorly).

The first page was classic Finnabair! Lots of layering, gesso, tea and sprays - I just loved it.

I can't wait to do more of this type of scrapbook journalling.

Our second page was paper layering and gesso, but we used the Luminarte Silks with our fingers to create patches of colours and texture. Two days later I still have rather inky hands despite lots of scrubbing!

By this time we were all flagging a bit and with only half an hour left Ania set us the challenge of creating a page in 20 minutes with one stamp, one colour spray, masking tape, washi tape and a pencil. 



There were quite a few groans but … everyone was actually very pleased with the result!

And despite all being very tired we all went out on a high!

Ania is an amazing tutor and a very lovely person and I was also very impressed with the facilities and amazing shop at Art from the Heart. It was jaw droopingly wonderful and fabulous to see everything in real life - I rather indulged but it would have been rude not to!

It was fabulous meeting up with so many like minded people - some I knew already from blogland and others I met for the first time. I can't wait to do another! 

If you are still with me - well done!

Jennie x

PS This was my very first workshop and visit to a "proper" craft shop!