A Groovi week away

Bonjour mes amies!

I am back from the most wonderful week in France with Barbara, Dave and the Clarity Design team and friends. We were staying at the same place as last year, a very beautiful place.

 There are three Gites on the site and we have them all.  I stayed in the little one facing you in the first picture, back in 'my' room from last year. Sharing with me (the house, not the room!) were Sam Crowe, Kirsty Goodwill and Jules and Sally-Ann Hanes
It is an idyllic loation, peaceful and beautiful with a lake at the back

If I ever win the lottery.....!

This time, we were lucky with the weather too and had wall to wall sunshine right into late evening, so we sat outside and had our evening meal together.  Dave kept an eye on how much ice cream I was eating!!
There is a pool too and although I am not comfortable in water, I sat with my legs in the water while some of the others were swimming

The atmosphere was very relaxed, you could craft or sunbathe, chat or spend time on your own, sit and admire the view or walk round the lake.
The lovely couple who own the place looked after us so very well, providing home made bread, cakes and creme brulee to die for.  We had an evening of pizza and music - Alain fired up the oven outside and made pizzas, then he played the bagpipes, which encouraged Dave to get out his guitar and play us the most superb music, he is very talented!

All too quickly, the week was over and we were on our way home, sad to be leaving the beautiful place and the lovely people - but it's nice to be home and the sun is shining here too!

One of the good things with so many talented people around is that you can pick up helpful hints and tips: Sylvia and Maria were giving out tips on the Groovi system, Sam tried to overcome my fear of paints and mess and Kirsty managed to stop me blotting colour off my color burst backgrounds - more of them later.

This is my fisrt go on the Groovi board, I really enjoyed this, it isn't a quick thing to do, but it is very relaxing.  One of the main tips I learnt is not to use too much pressure, especially when embossing the back of the parchment, the first stroke you make shouldn't even mark the parchment, you just have to use lots of light strokes to stretch the fibres, then leave it to rest and do more later.

I did this sitting in the sun!  I have coloured the back of the flowery bits with Spectrum Noir pencils, but I don't know if that shows very well.  This isn't finished yet, it needs mounting up properly, I just used a green background to scan it, but it isn't attached yet, I just wanted to prove that I hadn't spent ALL my time eating and sunbathing!!!

Thank you to Barbara and Dave for their generosity and hard work making this all possible and Thank you to all the lovely people there for making it such a great week.

Normal service will now be resumed!!
Thanks for visiting,
Janet xxx