Upcoming classes

I'm teaching a class tomorrow morning at Kraft Crazy in Tidworth called Inky ideas - some more techniques using distress and alcohol inks.  I haven't got the samples here to show but I do have those ready for my class on 27th February which is about memory capsules. Here are the projects we will be making:

The smallest frame is actually a little (2 inch square) accordion book and here is the inside:

And finally back at the beginning of December I went to a class at Rumpelstiltskin in Broadwindsor and Tania gave me a cigar box to decorate.  I didn't finish it at the workshop but finally got it done this week (you can tell I've had a week off work!) and here it is:

It's holding my metal moulding tools.

If only I didn't have to go back to work on Monday I might get some more half completed projects done.  Ah well.

Goddesses

My daughter and I were inspired by Linda's art dolls on her blog Eclectic Visions of an Altered Journey.  I've linked to just the latest one but if you scroll further back you will find more.  So we decided to produce versions of our own.  We used an old Barbie (knew she'd been kept for a reason!) and some Mold n Pour to make a mold of a face and produced it in fimo. The body is chipboard and we've added Stewart Gill paint, stencils, flowers, skeleton leaves and trims.  My daughter drew the shaped paper templates and as is fitting her two are tall and slim whereas mine is rather shorter and squatter.  Here's mine:

And here are my daughters':

Thanks to Linda for the inspiration!

How lucky am I!

I'm thrilled to be the winner of a giveaway from Lesley Riley, a textile artist whose work I have admired for a long time. When I first discovered art quilts and contemporary textiles a few years ago Lesley's was one of the first websites I found and I loved her fragments and dolls. It was a real revelation to see scraps and images used in that way and to realise that pieces of fabric didn’t have to have perfect finished edges and that fraying all added to the character. I still have in my inspiration folder a picture of a Frida doll that she made and that I printed off but I never imagined that I would actually own a piece of her work.
Click here to see what I've been lucky enough to win. I'm the grand prize winner!  Thanks so much Lesley!

Christmas cards

Here are some of the Christmas cards I've been making this year.

These three cards were ones I made for my last class at Kraft Crazy in Tidworth, each done using the new Elusive Images Christmas stamp sets Damask Reindeer and Harlequin Christmas, 2 gorgeous sets of stamps.  And the next 3 are ones I'm giving out this Christmas:

Finally, I wrapped some bars of chocolate to give out as small gifts and I think that's me all Christmassed out!

However, I think I might be coping with Christmas slightly better than some of my fellow bloggers - read this from Ric-Rac and if you scroll back a few posts you can also read her attempts to get her family to change the toilet roll!

Sue Roddis Workshop

Last Saturday I was lucky enough to go to the Stamp Attic for a workshop with Sue Roddis.  Above is what we made - a lovely little row of houses and here's the back with the picket fence!

Sue was a great teacher and the day was a welcome reminder of just what can be achieved with cardboard, pages torn from an old book, inks and stamps.  I also liked having a go with Wendy Vecchi's stamps and also a girl from Stampotique - bought one of those for my daughter for Xmas!

The Stamp Attic is a bit of a trek from Dorset but my fellow crafters also thought it was worth the effort as some had come from Leicester, Essex and Cheltenham.  The shop is so brimful of stamps, papers etc. it was well worth the trip and I hope I'll get the opportunity to attend future workshops.

Thanks to both Sue and Wendy for a lovely day.

Burning Issues

The other workshop I went on this week was at Stitchncraft at Shaftesbury and was all about using the soldering iron with fabric, run by Margaret Beal.  Margaret was also very generous with her techniques showing us lots of different things, many of which can be found in her book Fusing Fabric.  I had already bought the soldering iron that she sells (it has a particularly fine tip) but hadn't got round to having a go.  Well, it's much easier to do it the first time with the expert there guiding you through it.  It really is very easy though and was just like drawing round shapes with a pen except that you didn't then have to cut them out as the cutting was all done at the same time.  We each made a sampler using both the motifs we cut out of the organza and the negative strips left behind.  Then the second piece was one we did very quickly at the end just using cut up pieces of organza and fusing them to felt.  I came home with lots more cut out motifs and plan to have a go at making some cards with them.

P.S.  The scale of the photos is quite misleading as the second piece is only about a third the size of the sampler at the top!

Silk Paper

I've had a week off work and have had a bit of time to go on a couple of workshops and do some playing.  Last weekend I went to a silk paper workshop at Broadwindsor, organised by Tania from Rumpelstiltskin and run by Janet Gibbins.  It was good fun and we managed to produce 7 different pieces during the day, all made slightly differently so we were introduced to a good range of techniques.  I also had a play one day back at home and these photos are a mix of pieces I made on the day and bits I did here.  The ones with inclusions have hydrangea flowers embedded in them.  I particularly like the pieces manipulated into folds and holds and can see them with beads and stitches in them.

The leaves were made by pressing fibres directly on to the backs of leaves and felting them in place - we chose ones with nice clear veins and they stand out really well.