HSNW Port Sunlight Spring 2012

We spent last weekend up on the Wirral in Port Sunlight Village at the invitation of the lovely ladies from Happy Stampers North West. A very small committee of these ladies run an extraordinary event at the stunning Hulme Hall, twice a year, absolutely geared to addicted stampers - my spiritual home then really lol!

I got the chance to catch up all too briefly with Lesley and Judith but as this was a very busy show, we didn't get an opportunity to take photos during the day although the Headmaster did manage to catch me unawares first thing. It's those fabulous Pan Pastels that got me so absorbed ......

The Studio 490 Art School piece on the left of the demo desk will be shown in more detail on my blog here tomorrow if you want a gander.

Meantime, at most events we are so busy setting up and packing up there is very little time to explore the area we are visiting however, I was so taken with Port Sunlight last Autumn - when the heavens opened as the show closed - we decided we just had to make time to have a closer look around this time. Fortune (and the sun) shined on us....

As a maintained village the landscaping and the gardens are just beautiful, there are lots of places to visit including the museum and Lady Lever Art Gallery.

It is such a calm and peaceful place, even on a sunny Saturday evening in Spring, and I make no apologies for the next series of photographs, probably many more than you need to see, but it was such a striking and poignant memorial we were just blown away.

You can walk around the entire memorial which includes tableaux of each of the services together with representations of civilian suffering during wartime .

Amazing.

We stayed over on Saturday night to teach a workshop for 39 of the HSNW club members at another lovely venue on Sunday- no photos I'm afraid due to the effect of our 'just in time' management skills on our arrival lol - but we had a wonderful day. I just want to take this opportunity to thank everyone, but especially Karen, Liz & Gloria who make this wonderful weekend happen TWICE each year, for their hospitality, their kind comments and all the lovely emails sitting in our inbox when we got in this morning. We are exhausted but it was sooo worth it.

Now, just before I let you escape, we had prepared 40 kits for this event and didn't have to use any of the bits in the 'spare' so we thought if you would like to leave us a comment to let us know you have been by, then we will ask Mr Random number generator to select one of you to win the spare kit which includes the stamps, block, brush, cardstock and cards we used on the day - worth almost £20.

Thanks for stopping by.