A different view! Nicola Brown walking around her property. Happy New Year!!  Wherever you are in the world, I hope 2022 is looking good for you. Well here we are! Are you ready? I have lots of plans for my field/garden and the making of new videos for a subscription opportunity on my website in a few months time.   I have a few events in the diary already. 10 live Zoom workshops the last Friday in every month starting this month. I have been asked to do 4 more live streams on the Vlieseline Facebook page in January, February April and May and I am giving a live Zoom lecture to a textile group in Portland, Oregon, USA in February. That is enough to be thinking about for a while, along with running the website, social media and working in the studio.     Beautiful book covers by Sharon on a recent workshop I so enjoyed teaching the live Zoom workshops last year. They were such fun, it was wonderful to be able to work alongside the students in real time. So I am...

 Sample by Julia Zagar Well my first live Zoom didn't go too badly at all. I had 14 lovely ladies in the group who were great fun, and were patient while I learned how to 'pin'. There weren't too many hold ups and I think the flow was there. Zoom can never replace being the same room with your students, but it was a good second best as it was in real time. I have now discovered there is a 'spotlight' function that will help us all see one students work. Who thought we would all be learning all these new skills? A fabulous torn sample that works so well as the colour palette chosen is analogous/tones of one colour with silver highlights. It took a long time to set up for the workshop. Trying to think ahead. The students had a list of materials to paint and collect together before the workshop. The workshop was A New Starting Point, so we were working with painted Bondaweb, painted papers, gilding flake and transfer foils. The worst thing was not being there and b...

 A section of one of the Journeys half way through.  Right - now where was I??? The Journey in Jaipur . . . It might seem rather a long way to travel to do a design exercise, But I am sure you can imagine the incredible inspiration that we were surrounded by, before we even left the hotel! Your head just spins with all the shapes,lines and forms.  A beautiful lock on a door at the Amer Fort Palace.  Part of a fence in the paper factory we visited. One of the many stunning domed buildings in the Maharani's Garden in Jaipur. If you look back trough the last 2 posts you will some of the inspiration for these Journey exercises.  We painted the first part of the Journeys in a local workshop that had plenty of space for the long pieces of paper we needed. It was cool and not too bright in the workshop, great for relaxing and concentrating on the designs.      The group getting on with creating their Journeys. ...

The 2 sisters, June and Joyce, on their elephant at the Amer Fort Palace.  Having met the group at Heathrow we flew to Mumbai airport then onto Jaipur.  Mumbai is a beautiful modern airport, the roof is just FANTASTIC. Seeing it was a great start to our design based course.  The Jaipur Journey Colouricious Holiday was planned by Jamie and myself to be quite different to any previous Colouricious holiday. Jamie and I had handpicked each venue that we visited. All were chosen for their particular design and or colour inspiration, as you will see. This was not the usual block printing holiday, though we did have one or two sessions that were great fun. I wanted time for the group to absorb and just be . . .  in these beautiful places. Have time to draw what they see and take photos.  Our first day had two quite contrasting venues. The Amer Fort Palace which is very ornate and highly decorative. Contrasted with a visit to Jantar Mantar which is full of...