Vicki's gorgeous sample. Torn layers of newspaper layered with painted Bondaweb and sparkly bits and then printed onto. After a fabulous weekend at Foredown Tower selling my jewellery it was a quick turn around to unload the car and re load ready to teach at West Dean College. This week it is Jewelled Surfaces for Decorative Textiles. This is a newspaper based course along with my favourites, gilding flake and printing. The idea is to create sumptuous surfaces with newspaper and then iron the papers onto iron-on interfacing to give support to make vessels, jewelry, boxes . . . We will see what is achieved by Thursday lunchtime. I love teaching at West Dean,  www.westdean.org.uk the grounds are stunning, everyone is very friendly and of course the food is fantastic.  The girls busily painting Bondaweb.    Colour washed newspaper.     Decorating the torn and layered newspaper samples.   A colourful torn and ...

  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...

   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...

 One of Val's beautiful prints on black paper.  I love teaching at Foredown Tower, the views are amazing and you feel as though you are in the middle of nowhere, not just off the A27. It is very peaceful.    Just the Downs and the sky. Making Printing Blocks was a course I really wanted to run, it is important to be able to design your own blocks and print your own fabrics and papers, it is what makes your work different to everyone elses. There were four intrepid students on the course which meant we had plenty of room to spread out. Because I run these courses myself, I don't need to have a certain number of students booked before I can run them. It is a great luxury and I am able to work more closely with less students - poor students . . .     We started off by deciding which designs would work best and taking sections from previously made designs.   These blocks were created from one of Lea's designs showing the 'positiv...

A rather delicious 'pretty'.   I apologise for the rather woeful delay in writing this post, I haven't been this behind for ages. What with teaching over the weekend and nid-noi.com being a bit busier I am a wee bit behind with answering emails and all the usual admin.  I am rather fond of the Worthing Embroiderers Guild. Being local to me I have delivered several workshops and lectures over the past few years and many of them turn up from time to time on other workshops. So I was looking forward to spending a sparkly day with them last Thursday. The workshop was 'A new starting point' - my newspaper based one day workshop.     A few of the ladies getting stuck into their 'pretties'. The Guild hold their meetings and workshops in a fabulous room with plenty of power and light, it was a great treat to work in there. The plan was to create some 'pretty' backgrounds to print onto and also create a faux chenille sample using newspaper an...