A New Starting Point 20 - 22 August Foredown Tower - part the first


Layers of torn newspaper and painted Bondaweb.

Regular readers of this blog will know how much I love teaching at Foredown Tower - high up on the Sussex Downs you can see for miles. It is also home to a wonderful camera obscura. The tower is open to the public on Tuesdays and Thursdays with camera shows at 11am, 12pm, 1pm and 2pm. On a clear day you really can see forever . . .  . Foredown Tower

A New Starting Point is my newspaper based workshop. It is easily my most popular workshop I have ever written. Once the group get the hang of the 'background' and 'pretty' rotation, they are off and away, having great fun throwing glitter and gilding flake around with great abandon. I think that because the workshop is process driven and the samples aren't supposed to 'look like' something, the students can just relax and enjoy making their samples.

Colour washed newspaper printed in a similar colour with a wooden printing block.
Once the samples have been layered to the students satisfaction, they can then decide which iron-on interfacing to use to iron their newspaper sample onto. Decovil 1 and Decovil 1 light are new iron-on interfacings that feel very leather like. The are for interfacing bags but I think they are fabulous for craft projects too.From book covers - decorative shoes. 
For projects that need a more sturdy support such as boxes and jewellery then the S133 comes up trumps. The jewellery blanks that we made on the course will feature in the second part of the post.

The following images show the first part of the workshop -
 

The group on with their 'backgrounds' and 'pretties'.
 






  
A sea of mess - it is very difficult to keep the tables tidy - though I do my best to nag!!!!
 



We used wooden printing blocks to enhance the samples using a colour that was in the work to print with - it is important for the prints to blend into the work - not jump out! Transfer foil was also used to add colour and bit of flash.

The little shiny squares on a lot of the samples are Blingy Bitz, the larger gold flakes are gilding flake - both of the these are available from Cratynotions.com - Blingy Bitz ( these are so new the images are not on the website yet but here is a pic that might help) -


The gilding flake can be found here - so many colours to choose from - 

 I loved these samples by Lynda - very well considered colour combinations with sensitive use of embellishments.

 
 

 That's all for now - I have my best friend arriving to stay for the weekend and the house is  - a right mess!!!! Whilst I love teaching - it is wonderful to have a whole weekend off - Yeehaa!!!!
Have a great weekend.

X X X
Hello Jill and Jill!!

Diana - not long now - you'd better batten down the hatches . . . x

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