NEC Hobbycraft, sewing for Pleasure, goodies

Having spent a few days recovering from the two day trip to the NEC Birmingham Hobbycraft, Sewing for Pleasure, Embroidery and Fashion and Cake International,  I then worked on a dress for a wedding which was an intense week but a very valuable one.  Unfortunately I then came down with the flu and have just started to get over it and am able to sit a type while having a sofa day. So my blog is a long time over due.  But I started on my return from the NEC finding homes for all my lovely purchases and testing out a few items. 

While at the NEC I spent quite a bit but a lot of the purchases were for set items up my home business to expand my card making abilities.  So in this blog will be a fairly long one with lots of pictures and I will cover what I got at the NEC and I will upload a couple others this week catching up to where I am today.  I have split my two days up and took photos of purchases.  

Day One

So I arrived on the start (Thursday) with my mum and we parked at our hotel and made our way to the NEC.  We started day one by working our way around Hobbycraft show, then on to the Sewing for Pleasure. After searching through many stalls I came across some dies which I have been looking for and ended up purchasing the Creative Expressions Craft Dies with Relatives names.

Male Relatives

Female Relatives

Grandparents

I then continued along and Met Wendy from Card-io who was doing demonstrations on how to get the amazing effects on her beautiful cards.  I knew that I wanted to purchase some of her stamps but as the show had only just opened and everyone had reached this stall together it was a bit crazy so I added this to my list of stalls to return to and returned on Day two and purchased the following.

Small Medium and
 Large Stamp Pegs

Card-io Majestix Sweet Strawberries and Summer Meadow

Card-io Cottontail Capers and Woodland Walks

Card-io Tall Trees 

Docrafts Artiste Spritzing Ink
Forest Green and Gold Stone

I stocked up with lots of useful items at 'Every Craft a Pound', one of my favourite stalls for stocking up on crafting items.

Dovecraft 3D Pearl Effect Colours

XCut Dies Snowflake and Butterfly

Westcott Craft Knife and
replacement Blades 

Westcott Scissors

In addition to these items I also picked up some double sided tape, 3 Precision Applicator bottles, a set of 12 Derwent Pastel Pencils Skin tones as I want to try and work on my portrait skills, 5 different Royal Soft-grip brushes, Paper and card stock and finally in the Hobbycraft show I picked up 2 Really Useful Storage boxes one with 4 trays in and the other with a custom made cotton tread holders.

Jersey Fabric

After a rest break of water and a sit down we moved on to Sewing for Pleasure. I bought less in this show as I was looking for specific items.  I was looking for fabric to use to make the final dress for the up and coming friends wedding.  I found this fabric which was a jersey fabric which I loved the look of and would work with the dress I had practised.  As we continued round we found the Simplicity Stall and we began searching through the many boxes.  Now last year I think we ended up buying about 20 different patterns and had decided we didn't need many patterns this year.  However when we found the new to us 'Amazing Fit Collection' from Simplicity we got excited and went on a hunt for all these patterns and ended up with about 10 in our hands.  We carefully went through the patterns we had and refined out selection down to four patterns.

 

This then gave me a dilemma as I thought I knew which dress i was buying fabric for but now I had new styles I really liked and that evening made the decision to change to dress pattern Simplicity 2247 which gave me day two to find fabric.   I also picked up a few other sewing bits such as little more hand scissors (which I had previously picked up last year for cross stitch but wanted some to keep with my sewing machine) and what was called a pink poky thing for poking out corners of cushions and other awkward folds.

Day Two

We started day two with Cake International and made our way around the competition and exhibition area where the competition pieces where being judged.  Now I'm only just starting with cake decorating so this was more of a trip into what the height of the level that can be achieved.  We started going around the circus carnival tent where the cakes where themed to circus and carnival theme. I will add a few of my favourite photos at the end of this blog as I have so many.   We continued around Cake international and I purchased a Fondant Ribbon Cutter/ Embosser set for £10 so I can have a play along side the items I got for Christmas and have a go at decorating cakes. I also Picked up 3 different Windsor Cutters and ejector sets (Multi Blossom, Multi Daisy and Multi Star) again to have a practice with.

After watching a demonstration of making Fabergé style eggs and tea cups and saucers out of fondant icing using Easter egg moulds and old teacups and saucers I purchased a little Wilton Dust-n-Store pot for applying and storing icing sugar or corn flour. 

Now I love subscription boxes not that I can afford many.  I currently subscribe to Scrawlrbox which is a monthly art supplies box, now when I found the stall for the newly launched Bake Box and was told I could get the already released box 1 and the up and coming box 2 for just £20 plus p&p.  I thought I was worth a trial.  So I signed up for box by box subscription.  Now The Bake Box is sent out every 2 months at £14.99 per box plus p&p.  I was able to take home my box 1 with me and I am currently waiting on a re-delivery of box 2 which should arrive on Wednesday as I missed last weeks delivery being in bed ill.

So from here there was one talk we wanted to watch and we had sometime to pass so we went on a mission back to Sewing for Pleasure to hunt down some fabric and lining fabric for my dress and we were successful.  I picked up a two tone blue and blackish green poly satin and black dress lining. We also sat in on the full demonstration of 'The Lutterloh System' which we caught the end on day one.  A very interesting and temping system which we may later invest into but we decided that we would sleep on this and buy it at a later date or show.   We also walked about Fashion and Embroidery while we were back over at Sewing for Pleasure. 

Eddie Spence MBE at Cake International Friday 18/03/16 Theatre stage

We made our way back to Cake International and had a rest while we watched the talk on the Theatre stage by Eddie Spence MBE who is a master in Royal Icing and he did a demonstration of the art of different piping techniques with Royal Icing and made a Jemima puddle duck cake.  He is very lovely gentleman to meet with a proud Scottish heritage and it was a great honour to meet him.

Eddie Spence MBE Proud of his Scottish Heritage

Jemima puddle duck cake

I will end this blog with just a few of my favourite cakes from the competition entries of Cake International March 2016 NEC  as promised above.  Thanks for reading,  please do at comments to my blogs if you have any questions and speak soon in my next blog.