Layers of Tyvek and polyester organza stitched together and zapped with a heat gun. *** A glorious weekend   Well, what a fabulous weekend. It has been warm in the sun. It is so good to feel the heat, even if it won't be long lived. We have to enjoy the sun when we can in Ireland!!! We have unsettled weather coming up. Over the past couple of days I have been catching up with admin as well as working in the garden. I thought a catch up on my live Zoom workshops might be helpful. We had great fun on The Journey in January and Creating Unique Printing Blocks in February. The Show and Tell 2 weeks after the workshop has proved very successful, students are pleased to have an opportunity to develop their work. There are still spaces on all workshops, so if you would like to learn a new technique, or remind yourself of the fun you can have with any of these workshops, just click the link on the workshop you fancy. This month is Tinkering with Tyvek. I do so love working with Tyvek, you

 One of the delicious slip covers ready to be stitched to fit the book. Well that is the last workshop for this year. It was great to back at Foredown Tower , you may have noticed it is now one of my favourite places to teach. I had six fabulous students on the course who worked very hard and were good enough to help with eating the cakes.       One of Claire's lovely samples ready to iron onto the Decovil light. The workshop was 'A New Starti ng Po int'. I have never known a workshop to be so popular, it certai n l y seems to have piqued everyones interest. The idea is to make some gorgeous surfaces by layer ing old newp apers with painted Bo ndaweb and all things spar kly. Gilding flake seems to be the most favoured spa r kle this year. Y ou can get this from www.craftynotions.com     Cla ire tearing up one of her samples ready to iron to the Decovil light.  The pa per layers are then ir oned onto pre-co loured Dec ovil light, the new iron-on interfa

One of Gina's beautiful pieces that ended up as a book cover. Only having four students on the course was a great treat for me - I'm not sure how the students felt, as many of you will know, I'm not very good at leaving my students alone to work in peace . . . I don't quite know why there were only four bookings, I have taught in December or January with ten every year so it is a mystery. I know some students worry about the possibility of snow, and it has snowed hard once or twice at this time. Anyway, we had a great time and it was a first for me so that was good. The students worked hard and fast so I had to introduce more than I was expecting to. It's good for me to be 'kept on my toes'. I can get a bit blase if things are too easy. 'Jewelled Surfaces' involved layering newspaper, painted Bondaweb and all kinds of glittery things and then reinforcing them with different iron-on interfacings. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it

   Playing with colour. I have three courses coming up in December and they all have spaces, so if you fancy two or three days away to recharge your batteries, then you might like to consider coming out to play!   Water colour paper colour washed then torn, then colour washed on the torn edge - simply beautiful.   On December 4 th - 6 th I will be delivering a 3 day workshop - Colour Works! at Art Van Go.  This is a new course especially written for Art Van Go and will involve paint ing you own colour wheel and a tints, tones and shades chart. After this we wi ll be colour washi ng all w eights and types of papers to manip ulate and play with shapes and overlaying c olours. Whether you wi sh to work in two or three di mensions this will be three days of colour, pl ay and stitch. There should be time to create a considered stitched sample or 3d piece .  Working with colour is something we all need to do regularly to help us bu i ld our confiden ce when choos