My teaching table . . . Scrummy! A New Stating Point is now by far the most popular workshop I have ever developed. It is very satisfying when a workshop 'works' so well. I taught a 4 day version of this at The Bridge Community Education Centre in Brighton. A scant 15 minutes door to door - it is such a treat to teach so close to home. The Bridge is a great place to work and the food is fabulous. More of that later . . . A New Starting Point includes my 'Backgrounds and Prettys' tearing and layering technique and making newspaper faux chenille. Torn and layered book pages with painted Bondaweb and lots of gilding flake.  Painted Bondaweb ironed onto newspaper and then printed with a printing block. Simple and very beautiful. A torn and layered sample printed with a spiral printing block. Another torn and layered sample that has been printed. The print has been highlighted in selected areas to give definition. All the commerci...

Even my fish sculpture is covered in snow. It started snowing last Friday at about 8am, by 9am I was in my local Asda supermarket, not so much panic buying as 'I'm going to be stuck in the house for a while' buying. I have lived in Brighton for thirty odd years now, and only in the last three winters have we had so much snow. It was unusual as we are close to the sea and apparently the salt in the air stops the snow - not any more . We had about five inches the first day and then three more inches the next day . Living on top of hill I get trapped as soon as the buses stop running up our road .  Having been caught out with very little food last year, as soon as it started to snow, I was off to do 'the big shop'. I was not alone - by 9.30am the queues were six people deep. It was like Christmas all over again. Everyone else obviously got stuck in their houses as well last year. We still have loads of snow but most of us in Brighton can get out and abou...

  Here we go flying head long into the Festive season. It's the third of December already aaRRGGHH!!!! As part of my procrastination exercises to keep me from settling down to write the book, I am sorting out my jewellery for this weekend. As part of the Brighton Christmas Open Houses, Foredown Tower is opening for one weekend and putting on a Craft Fair. There will be all kinds of textile crafts and gifts plus my sister selling her gorgeous cookies and chocolates and I will be there making a lot of noise and having lots of fun. Here are some of the new range that I have just finished -       These are all layered newspaper based.  These are my new foiled pierced drops.   . . and my new two layer foiled studs.  A selection of newspaper and foil studs. . . . and my brooches. I am very pleased with this collection - let's hope I sell a few bits as my workshop at Art Van Go didn't run this week which is a gre...

One of the many very beautiful pieces of newspaper layered with painted Bondaweb. I will make this a two part post - I have so many images to show you, you would be asleep by end of the post if I put them all into one. My new newspaper based workshops seem to be very popular. It is great fun to be able to share a new passion with so many lovely ladies.  I love teaching at Art Van Go - www.artvango.co.uk   everyone is so well looked after there. It always good to spend time with Viv and Kevin who own the business - they are excellent company and VERY good fun! I do miss them if I haven't seen them for a while. The shop has everything that you could possibly wish for to create stunning work, including the gilding flake, dot jewels and acrylic wax that we used on the course. The workshop was 'A new starting point' and had been full for several months which is very encouraging. We used newspaper to start with, then the students started using road atlases and maps...

This is 'Myra', a needle felted monkey by Lady Lazarus aka Jayne Routley, one of  the first acquisitions of the day. We had a FAB week-end at the Open House with lots of friends and new faces arriving to have a look at our latest gorgeous display of wonderful work and buy their Christmas presents. Although I don't know just how many of the lovely things that were bought this week-end will actually be given away in the end . . . .  I suspect that many of the scarves, brooches and bowls will be kept by my visitors. Don't you find that? You go out looking for presents for other people and end up buying for yourself - OOhhh!!! We are SO bad! Some of Ember's beautiful Raku vases These hand knitted hats and scarves were flying out Mary Moox's 'Bonkers Boxes' full of her recycled crazy creatures have caused much hilarity The collection of brooches and earrings that I had made has almost sold out. I thought there would be p...