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...

An amazing pinky blue sky as the light faded on the 13th December 2021             Well here we are - cantering towards THAT time of year. How are you all getting on? Do love Christmas, or do you dread it? I have had a busy few weeks with the exhibition and then a craft fair over 2 weekends at a local restaurant. I feel as though I have come into land now, and can take stock and start to look at next year.  You might have heard that Ireland suffered a pretty big storm last weekend. Luckily, only my big storage shed suffered, losing part of the roof. I am getting used to the regular storms that we enjoy on the west coast, but storm Bara was much more powerful than normal. I suspect the storms will be getting more powerful as the years go on. But onto happier and more colourful things. December can be strange weather wise here on the west coast of Ireland. We had temperatures of 13 degrees a couple of days ago. quite balmy. But today is pretty chilly. Th...

  Layers of Lutradur cut with a soldering iron by Joane from Montreal, Canada When you have taught for several, verging on many, years, you build a great collections of friends, as well as students. Some you see as regularly as time allows, others pop up now and again and the joy of seeing them is very special. I have had a few reunions in the past month on the workshops, making them extra special. This is an extra blog post as I wanted to showcase some of the amazing work created on the Zap Pow! Slash and 3D workshop. We worked with various weights of Lutradur using heat guns and soldering irons to create fabulous edges and shapes. A wonderful sample combining textured Lutradur and Tyvek decorated with painted melted glue by Frances in Montreal, Canada Pieces of zapped and soldered Lutradur and textured Tyvek   Squares of zapped Lutradur on a background of painted Bondaweb with wisps of wool tops. The long silver line is melted glue by Joane from Montreal, Canada Curved shape...

Donals Boat, Carrigaholt, Clare. One of the photos I have selected for my exhibition in October. How are you all doing? On holiday somewhere warm? Still at work at this time of day? Wherever you are reading this in the world. Thinking about cooking lunch or dinner? Whatever you are doing - I hope all is well in your world. Here in Ireland you can feel the season is about to start to change. The nights are starting to get darker, earlier, and it is quite chilly in the evenings. As my Nana used to say "Winter draw(er)s on"!   A car load of colourful farm plastic       I am starting to think about the work I am going to make for my next local exhibition. It is going to be a combination of photographs, textile wall pieces and a few large-ish plastic vessels. The soft plastic I have been collecting from local farms has been piling up, it will be good to finally decide what I will be doing with it. 4ft vessels hopefully and a few bowls. I just need to work out how many lay...