Treasure       How are you at tidying up after a workshop or when you have finished a project?  I am dreadful!! I am making an effort, I have bought a few see through stacking plastic boxes to put my materials away in when I have finished teaching. How do you sort your materials and products? Colour? Textures? Products? Techniques?   Last week I taught my first 2 part workshop via Zoom to a group of students in America, Canada, and Scotland. 2 x 3 hour sessions 10am PDT/ 6pm BST. I can be in 3 places at once!! Students on the PDT time zone can work in the morning, and students in Europe enjoy an evening class.  The workshop was A New Starting Point. Featuring my backgrounds and pretties technique. We have the show and tell next week. I am very much looking forward to seeing what the group have developed from their samples.    3 book covers by Sue Redhead from the US.             ...

A rather splendid sample of textured Tyvek. Happy Easter!! It's a wild and wet here in Ireland. A good day to catch up with my newsletter and this blog. I hope you are all enjoying a day with family or friends and eating way too much chocolate . .  My recent online Zoom workshop Tinkering with Tyvek yielded some fabulous work. I do have wonderful students. Just look at this Tyvek dress made by Arley Berryhill. Small scale Tyvek dress by Arley Berryhill Arley is from Albuquerque, New Mexico, has worked with me on a few workshops. He is a fantastic doll maker and costume designer and maker. Do look at his website - https://www.arleyberryhill.com/ It is not often I see anything resembling gold work on my workshops!! Arley created this great sample by stitching Tyvek to gold lamé and then texturing it with a heat gun. Beautiful faux gold work, just fabulous       I love the way Arley has added beads to accentuate the edge of the Tyvek shapes. This workshop was quite inte...

Teresa adding the final layer of fishing net to the float This past week has seen the preparations for the first local St Patrick's Day Parade since the first lock down. And some absolutely incredible fundraising for our Ukrainian guests. Firstly - the parade I was asked to decorate a float with plastic. It is well known locally that I have a stockpile of plastics from local farms and beaches. The float in the parade I asked my friend Teresa to give me a hand, we had a great afternoon decorating the trailer. It was good to be working in the warm sunshine. I had a selection of coloured plastic to use. We decided to use the colours of the Irish flag. The sun shone on the day of St Patricks Day. Kilkee was packed with visitors, it is a very popular place to holiday at any time of year. It was brilliant, such an amazing atmosphere Having fun in the sunshine     The winning float. Carrigaholt School  *** Then, on Saturday the town of Kilkee did something amazing.    ...

Layers of Tyvek and polyester organza stitched together and zapped with a heat gun. *** A glorious weekend   Well, what a fabulous weekend. It has been warm in the sun. It is so good to feel the heat, even if it won't be long lived. We have to enjoy the sun when we can in Ireland!!! We have unsettled weather coming up. Over the past couple of days I have been catching up with admin as well as working in the garden. I thought a catch up on my live Zoom workshops might be helpful. We had great fun on The Journey in January and Creating Unique Printing Blocks in February. The Show and Tell 2 weeks after the workshop has proved very successful, students are pleased to have an opportunity to develop their work. There are still spaces on all workshops, so if you would like to learn a new technique, or remind yourself of the fun you can have with any of these workshops, just click the link on the workshop you fancy. This month is Tinkering with Tyvek. I do so love working with Tyvek, you ...

Beautiful, bright plastic screw tops How do YOU feel about plastic? Is it a necessary evil? Useful but overused? Do you ever consider that plastic isn't the problem? Maybe it's our attitude to plastic, and how we use it that is the problem . . . I first started working with plastic in 1975 as part of my degree course - Wood, Metal, Ceramics & Plastic at the University of Brighton. (it seems like a lifetime ago now) I eventually specialised in ceramics and silver, but my interest in plastic was piqued. I have experimented with different ways of working with plastic on and off since 1975. Since moving to the coast of western Ireland and living on the edge of a peninsula, surrounded by the sea and beaches, I have become increasingly aware of the plastic washing up on local beaches. Whales shapes made into a necklace. Made from melted hard plastic that has been cut up in a granulator.   If you follow me on social media you will probably be aware of my delight in being given 10...

  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...