Exeter Spending fun!

Well, I had my annual pilgrimage to Exeter Westpoint for the craft show on Friday with my best buddy Alison (see her blog here) - thanks Alison for a great day.  It's always great to go with someone who is as 'into' crafting as you - no one understands a crafter like another crafter & it's nice to get someone else's opinion as to whether the stuff you are buying is rubbish that will end up in a draw gathering dust (yes you do get dust in a closed draw, I can personally testify to that!).

We headed for the Storage 4 Crafts stall first as I've had my eye on a crafting cupboard for some time & with some measuring and re-jigging in our dining room, I have been given the go-ahead to buy one, this is the one that will be arriving with me in the next 3 - 4 weeks:

I am sooo hoping that all my crap, I mean stuff will fit, so much so that I am starting to have a clear out and ruthlessly look at what I have and whether I use it, I suppose part of the problem is that some of my stuff is hidden in corners and I forget that I've got it - I hope that by having it all in the boxes and easily accessible I will make better use of what I have (that's the theory anyway).

Well, once we'd finished with Storage 4 Crafts (Alison got a great deal on a small storage trolley too) we then headed off to have a look around.  In spite of being late due to an accident on the A38 and not arriving until about 11, it was still REALLY busy, but we struggled on and managed to get round everywhere eventually (except the last few isles of college displays and 'special features', which weren't the reason we went).

I've taken some pictures of my purchases & I'm really happy that everything I've bought this year will get used, in fact I have played with most of it already!

This is an overview of it all laid out, with the other photo's detailing the individual bits

Like I said, I have played with lots of this already - I have tried printing onto the pearl paper - boy is that stuff amazing!  I have cut out circles with the EK Success Circle cutter pro & it is brilliant, so many of my cards are going to have circle apertures in future.  The wink of stella pens are amazing & got an outing on the card I will show you in a minute, along with the tiny santa and sleigh die I got, which I don't think made it into these photos (I hid it in my handbag as it's so small I thought I might lose it).

Well, onto my most recent card:

The stamp is one of the new Father Christmas stamps from Crafters Companion, the backing paper is from the CD of the same name, the sentiment is on the same stamp sheet, the embossing folder was a freebie when I ordered the snowman and snowdog dies recently and is from the Snowman range.  The mistletoe is one of the Diesire dies and I used a pearl pen to put the berries on it.  I coloured the image with my speccies and you can just see the wink of stella glinting on the reindeer (I've also used it on the fluff on Santa's hat and wrists but you can't see it so well).

Hope you like, I'm off to do some more tidying and playing (not necessarily in that order!)