Torn newspaper layered with painted Bondaweb, decorated with gilding flake and transfer foil.   Well that's it!! There is no going back now . . I have just bought a Zoom licence. My first live Zoom Workshop is on Saturday, February 27th. I have been on the other side of many Zoom meetings, now I will be hosting my own. I am really looking forward to hosting.  I am offering 3 of my favourite workshops first, then I will be adding newly developed workshops from the end of May. The one day workshops run from 10am - 4pm. The first item on all my materials list will be cake! Cake, in any form, will be an important part of my workshops. Cake will be compulsory I am missing faces, happy faces, concentrating faces, 'I don't get it' faces and cheeky faces. Live Zoom workshops are the closest way for me to get to working with students. If we can't actually be together, at least we can see each other in real time. The workshops will consist of a one day workshop and then a 2 h...

Gorgeous newspaper faux chenille  It takes a lot to winkle me out of my life on the edge of the world. I thought long and hard about leaving for a few days to teach in Inverness, but thought it might be fun so I put Poppy into my wonderful dog minders and off I tootled. I'm SO glad I did. The C.A.T. group have been meeting for many years and because of this they are a fabulous group to work with. They are an absolute joy. Great fun but they also work hard.     The group working away on the first morning painting up their Bondaweb. The 2 day workshop we decided on was a combination of A New Starting Point and Newspaper Faux Chenille. They wanted to have some fun, not worry what anything looked like. This took the pressure off and the group enjoyed playing and going with the process.    Starting lay up the 'backgrounds' and 'prettys'.  A New Starting Point involves working with painted newspapers, old maps, books . . . The proc...

One of Val's samples from the 'Backgrounds and Pretties' technique. Session 8 of Experimental Textiles is a student choice. The groups negotiate with me what they would like to do - I become their resource.  Half of the Thursday/Friday group wanted to catch up with workbooks and the other half wanted to try my 'backgrounds and pretties' technique. The Saturday/Sunday group just wanted do the 'backgrounds and pretties'. But first it was time to look at the homework - this takes longer every session. It is a great opportunity for the groups to discuss the work with each other. We had a great laugh when Kate brought in 'It'. We have christened it 'It' as we already have a 'Thing' by Rachael. 'It' by Kate. 'It' started life as a weaving supported on chicken wire that became rounded at Kate worked on it. She decided to make the piece totally enclosed and started to stitch into 'It'. 'It...

  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...