Ally Pally...

...was packed!  I arrived at at 9.30am and sat and had a coffee, and the queue was right the way across the palm court entrance hall and round the side corridor!  I have never seen it that busy before.  I waited until the queue had gone down before going in to the hall, and it was heaving.  Usually for the first hour or so you can move around the stands a bit, but not this time.  So much for the recession!  Anyway, spent waaay too much, as usual. Here is my haul .

I stopped by the LB Crafts stall and saw the amazing Julia Roberts lookalike Linda E and the fantastic l!n Brown doing amazing demos (and spent some money).  Linda was talking to Cardarian.  How amazing is that?  WOYWW is everywhere!

Jennie's Tag

I then wandered over to The Artistic Stamper stand and watched Jennie doing some amazing things with the melt pot.  She made a tag which she gave me :)  The leaf shape was die cut from some fab plastic stuff that isn't acetate which she dipped in the UTEE and stamped then heated slightly with a heat tool which made it pliable enough to bend in to shape which is kept when it cooled... amazing or what!! So I had to have some of that, plus some of the new stamps.... I actually love this background stamp here.... should have got that one too.  Guess I'll have to do some online shopping!  I managed to spend over £25 (what a suprise) so I got one of their fab grunge roses too

Jennie's Grunge Rose

Isn't it beautiful.  This one was made by Jennie too.   I bumped in to Alison watching Hels doing make and takes, but the hall was so crowded we didn't get a chance to do much other than wave and say hello!  Later on I did pop back to the stand (and spent some more money) and it was a bit quieter then so I did one of the make and takes

Make & Take with Hels

So not only did I get to shop, but I got inky and messy too! What more could you want?!

Visited quite a few other stands too (Scrap Revolution, Art From The Heart - Dyan looked great and was doing amazing art journal pages - Lavinia Stamps to name but a few).  There was also a Decopatch stand there which I hadn't seen at Ally Pally before, which was useful as I was thinking about using some decopatch papers on a couple of things.

Lin's Tag

I wandered back over to the LB Crafts stand and, while Linda E skived off for a while, poor l!n was left alone demoing her little heart out.  She made me this fabulous creation - isn't it stunning? I also got my mucky paws on one of the Paper Artsy button badges too :) I bumped in to Helen while I was watching the demo and we had a brief chat... she was laden with bags of stash as usual!

I was spent out by this time, and a bit washed out too - got the remains of some nasty throat lurgy hanging around - so I headed off to the bus and made my way home to stroke my new stash :)

Had a great time.  The thing I love most about Ally Pally is the inspiration.  Watching the demos and seeing the samples really gets the ideas buzzing and makes you think of new ways to use your stash.

Off now to stroke my stash some more!