Foredown Tower Well, I'm home from the Bluewater show, it was great fun and I enjoyed meeting so many of you. Thank you so much for coming to say Hello! I have booked Foredown Tower in Portslade near Brighton for six workshops from this October to next July. They make up a 'course' of kind. They start with design and end with Tyvek. I have already started taking bookings as I launched them with my September newsletter last week and then took a few more bookings at the Bluewater show so don't take too long if you fancy coming to play . . . . The views from the Tower are stunning. I had such a great time teaching at Foredown Tower over the past two months I wanted to teach there more often. It is a kooky kind of place. There is a cafe on the ground floor, the teaching room is on the middle floor and the camera obscura is on the top floor with great views over the downs. Access to the teaching floor is via an external metal staircase so there is n...

  Sue's heart shaped box - decorated newspaper ironed onto heavy pelmet Vilene plus/S133 which was then cut to a box shape by my Big Shot Pro die cutting machine. We had a fabulous three days at Art Van Go www.artvango.co.uk . The previous post shows the decorated papers and book covers that the group made and this one will show you some of the boxes and the faux chenille.  Ruth used a block printed paper for the top layer of her faux chenille and only cut through certain areas of her piece.    Debby layered her newspaper with polyester organza and then gave it a good 'rough up' to help the fibres of the organza come to the surface.   Bea started to work into the channels with stitch.     Mary added little metal charms.   All the boxes were cut using Sissix 12" box template dies and my Big Shot Pro die cutting machine . The product used to make the boxes is Heavy pelmet Vilene plus/S133. This is a very firm ir...

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 a very quick post as we are just dashing out for an Indian meal. So here are lots of fab images of the work the group did today at Art Van Go.   We had a wonderful day playing with news paper,  painted Bondaweb, gilding flake and all sorts of sparkly things - what more could a girl ask? Well I suppose you could ask for dancing boys and vodka  . . .  x

One of the great paintings generated over the weekend. If any of you have tried your hand at life or still life drawing and are not natural artists you will know the fear of trying. Particularly in a group. There is always someone better you, not that it is a competition, but we naturally feel undermined when someone is better than us - as a general rule.      My Experimental Textiles course  experimentaltextiles.com was written to teach the skills required to help students with their confidence and to start to develop their own style. The exercises and course work that the group work through over the nine weekends will encourage this. Having the end of year show at Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch at the NEC at the end of March gives them a bit of impetus to produce some excellent work if it is needed.  I was very pleased with efforts of the group this weekend, they are now starting to make friends with each other and support each othe...