Reasons to be grateful

Some of you may have noticed that I haven't blogged for a few days.

On Thursday morning I was driving home after dropping my 4 year old at nursery.  Just a quiet local street and a car came out of nowhere and plowed straight into the side of my car from a side turning without stopping.  It really was one of those moments where you can see it all happening in slow motion, but can do absolutely nothing about it.  All I could think was "she's going to hit me, she's going to hit me".  She hit me so hard that my car (actually my husband's car) spun 90 degrees, the rear window completely shattered and the drivers door completely caved in and got jammed shut.  The other driver couldn't find her number plate afterwards.  A passer by found it embedded in the side of my car! Amazingly neither of us were seriously hurt - especially amazing as the other lady had a baby in the back of  her car.  The worst part for me is the whiplash that I'm experiencing as a result and my nerves are definitely a bit shot - but a good dose of valium is sorting that out!

I also want to mention the kindness of all the local people who came out of their houses to help us.  It was pouring with rain and at least 4 or 5 neighbours came out with umbrellas, drinks of water and most importantly kind and calm words.  They took control of the situation as both myself and the other driver were in a state of shock, and having such kind people look after us until help arrived was very reassuring.  One lady even took me into her house, wrapped me in warm towels and gave me a cup of tea until my parents arrived to take me home.

By the way, the police were contacted but didn't think it necessary to come.  Apparently, if both parties can walk away and traffic isn't disrupted, then they won't bother turning up.  The witness who phoned them was told that it would cost them too much money - nice.  Makes you wonder what they're there for!

Anyway, the result is that I'm just not producing anything at the moment as my hands are just shaking too much when I'm not on the valium, and when I am on the valium I'm completely spaced out or asleep.

But - I am alive and let's face it, that's always a plus!!!

But I hope to be back producing again in a few weeks, but in the meantime I hope you all understand if things go a bit quiet here.   And for those of you who already knew about this, thanks for all your lovely emails - very much appreciated. xxx

Hampstead Papercuting Workshop - 10% off!

If anyone fancies booking onto my workshop at The Oak Studio in Hampstead on 6th July, you can get 10% off if you book via the We Make London Etsy Shop.  Don't be put off that the price is in dollars!

Wine Shop commission - papercutting (wip)

I've started cutting the design for the wine shop logo.  I'm pretty pleased with how it's looking so far.  I've had some lovely comments on my Flickr pages but I just want to say that I'm not finding it nearly as tricky as (a) I thought I would, and (b) as it must look!  I'm not saying that to be boastful or anything like that, I think I've just continually challenged myself over the past few years so that now I just feel comfortable tackling more difficult and intricate projects.  Anyway, here's the progress so far.

Papercutting Workshop for Beginners

Last night I held my first ever Papercutting Workshop at The Make Lounge in Barnsbury Street, Islington.  I have to admit I was pretty nervous about it - having never done anything like that before.  But as soon as I started talking about papercutting, all the anxiety went away and everyone just got down to work.  There were 10 ladies altogether - some came with a few ideas and some came with no idea what to expect and no idea where to start.

I had produced a few templates for them to work from as well.  A blank piece of paper is a scary thing to be confronted with especially when you don't really know how to approach the drawing as a papercutting.  It was interesting for me as a teacher to see what problems were thrown up to the beginners.  Actually they were the very same problems that I had struggled with myself as a beginner, but had forgotten.  

Anyway, after 3 hours or so, they all managed to produce at least one 15cm sq papercutting - and some of them produced more.  The photos are below - I think you'll see that some of the results are really fantastic for beginners!  I hope they all enjoyed themselves.