Crafting workshops with Leonie Pujol

At the end of March I had a fabulous time in Bridlington, crafting with Leonie Pujol as tutor. We spent three days at The Royal Hotel Bridlington, doing constant papercrafting, learning tons of new techniques and have a great laugh with fellow crafters.

I’ve attended a few other classes and courses in jewellery making but wanted to find something on papercraft as I desperately need to learn some techniques. Leonie is a popular presenter on Create and Craft TV and I found out about her workshops, some of her last for a while because of her TV work, quite by chance.

Local classes seem to be thin on the ground but lots of searching with different Googly search terms led to some leads. I was looking for local workshops, Leeds, York, Doncaster and I didn’t come up with much. One of the search results that caught my eye was a post on Leonie’s blog talking about her workshops in March. I couldn’t understand why this had come into the results as I thought she mainly did workshops in the South of England. Then I read more and realised that she was announcing a three day workshop in Bridlington close to the end of March.

Bridlington is about 75 minutes drive from me, but this was a residential craft retreat. Wow.

I saw this on a Sunday afternoon in mid February when it had only just been announced but alarm bells rang that this was going to be popular… I phoned the hotel to book first thing Monday morning. Bridlington is not that far from me and I was able to take the time off because of the wonderful flexibility that comes with being freelance. They were on holiday! I emailed instead and was hugely relieved and surprised when they emailed back to say there were some places left and I was booked in. Was I happy! The deal was also great value as it included three days of workshops, full board and a room in the hotel, which is very close to the south beach in Bridlington.

Three days of crafting

The three days were fantastic. I met loads of lovely people, much more experienced than me in papercrafting (I had never even made a card before I went) and they were very generous, sharing tips, expertise and rude jokes!

Leonie was a star. She knows so many techniques and how to produce different styles and use all sorts of materials to produce wonderful effects.

 

The hotel was on a mission to make us all gain a stone in three days. Full breakfast 8.30, morning coffee and homemade biscuits 10am (so two meals BEFORE any crafting was done), two course lunch 12.30, afternoon tea and homemade cakes, 3.30pm and then a three course meal 6pm sharp.

Bridlington at its best

For the end of March, the weather was fantastic. Apart from a bit of rain in the early afternoon when I arrived on the Saturday, it was bright, sunny with gorgeous blue skies. Not that we saw much of outside during the day because we were all hooked on doing the crafting. But I did get up early each day and go for a walk on the beach before breakfast. I love the sound, smell and views of the sea and it was too good to miss.

Hardly any time to see the beach, which was just outside. But a few of us did manage some early morning walks and the weather was blissful. The beach was totally deserted at 7am…

Bridlington beach 7am

And the crafting goes on…

After dinner, after a drinkie or two, Leonie was extremely generous with her time and we just carried on, learning new techniques, picking up tips, sharing expertise (not me obvs, I was just sponging it all up) and having a really good laugh.

Happy times. Hope, hope, hope they do it again sometime soon. I’ll be off like a shot.