Donna Downey Weekend

A couple of weeks ago I was very lucky to be sent on the Donna Downey weekend for my Birthday which was organised by Creative Moments in Yeovil.  The weekend was held at the Custard Factory in Birmingham.  I set off before 8am to get to Birmingham in time for the class at 10am.  There was an accident on the way up which mean't my junction was closed, I had to come off the motorway one junction early, lucky I had Tom with me, he redirected me to where I needed to be.

The Saturday was Scrapbook Day.  We made Donna's "Vintage Chic" album, a mix of card board pages edged with inka gold and layered with muslin, burlap, flowers, book text and frames.

The second project was a scrapbook page made using two canvas heart sheets.  The canvas pages were torn, one horizontal and one vertical then woven back together, hopefully getting the heart back together in the right place!

The classes finished at 4pm, off to find my lovely hotel!!!!  I arrived at reception in the middle of a stag weekend, I couldn't understand a word the reception guy was saying to me, not sure what I am agreeing to!!!!  Alexa arrived a bit later to rescue me, we had an interesting evening in the hotel bar!!

Day 2 is an Inspiration Day, using Pan Pastels which I was really looking forward to.

First class of the day is Speckled Nest.  Donna taught us how to draw and paint the tree and make it look like bark.  The leaves were made from wetting and crumpling card stock.

Second part of the day was the Pan Pastel class, I now love Pan Pastels and had to buy a few!  It was a good introduction how to use them and shading etc.

We covered the canvas board with a layer of tissue then dried completely.  Used a crafters workshop heart stencil and the red Pan Pastel for the heart with black shading.  After spraying with fixative we covered the rest of the board in turquoise and finished off with flourish and word stamps.

We also had an evening class - She is Strength Poppy Collage - I think this was my favourite of the whole weekend, closely followed by the Pan Pastels.

After a very long and enjoyable day it was back to the hotel, hoping for a quieter night.

Day 3 was Art Journal Day.  We were given one of Donna's Fabric Journals which we filled with lots of paint techniques.

Image transfer

This was a good exercise, taking a small part of a magazine picture and  building up  around it so you can't see where the  picture starts and ends.

And finally some general pics of the Custard Factory and Donna.

Donna, Me, Alexa and Emy

Thank you Donna for some amazing classes, and Creative Moments for organising and to Mark for sending me!

Oh and I just had to share this entrance to the car park, crushed cars!!!