Soldering Heaven!

Yesterday I was in soldering heaven. 

I have wanted to learn how to solder little boxes and jewellery for so long. Years and years!
Ever since seeing the artwork of Sally Jean Alexander and her book of Pretty Little Things.

To be able to make tiny works of artyness, collages of memories and love tokens has been TOP of my wishlist FOR EVER so when I saw photos of a workshop run by Diane Tinker Foster about a year ago where she was showing lucky people how to make these little treasures I have to admit I kind of stalked her. 

Luckily she is a complete darling and tolerated it all pretty well. I loved everything she made. Some made my heart beat faster, some made me weep with their imagery and poignancy. She spoke to my soul!

Luckily she was also found by Louise of the wonderful Hope and Elvis workshop studios in Worksop and she booked Di to teach 2 days of soldered boxes. 

http://www.hopeandelvis.com/workshops.html

Hope and Elvis is a pretty fab place to visit in itself; the walls are full of inspiring art by some of the great artists that teach there and some wonderful vintage finds beautifully displayed so just walking in through the doors starts the day with a warm welcome and the feeling that something special is going to happen there.

This time there was also some of Di's fabulous work displayed right by the door. It was heart achingly beautiful.

 This piece below is inspired by the exhibition Threads of Feeling at the Foundling Museum: 

The exhibition documented the stories of the more than 4,000 babies left by their Mothers with a scrap, usually of fabric, to identify them when they returned to claim them. The heart is divided into two halves as a love token. It is held in a handmade,shaped box which has been lined with vintage quilt fabric. 

You can read more about the exhibition here: http://www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk/events/view/Threads-of-Feeling/

Another love token.

On a much lighter note look at these French Girlies below. Vintage Half Dolls have been soldered onto an  Eiffel Tower made of glass.

And look at these cuties who are just waiting to be rehomed!

We couldn't wait for the workshop to begin. Here is Di telling us all about her inspiration and warning us about hot things! Look at her necklace!

 

Here she is demonstrating those HOT things! Her teaching was so good that nobody even got in a little bit trouble.

She spent months making us the gorgeous  little papier mache boxes to hold our treasures. They were covered with  beautiful vintage french papers. 

We could choose 3 different sizes. We started with the smallest which was only .75 " in size.

I made a teeny collage with a piece of antique lace, a brass bee and the tiny word from and old dictionary 'Bee Brave'

Di gave us beautiful bevelled glass to cover our boxes with before soldering them.

My medium sizes box was 1.5" square

Di had already made the box from fantastic Marie Antoinette  printed vintage paper and because I have been wanting to make a fabric Marie book for quite a while I decided that the box was waiting for me and just decorated the inside with glass glitter, diamante trim and a vintage carved gilded glass button.

For my biggest box which was 2"x 3" I had made a little embroidered piece the night before .

But Louise always has such lovely things for us to use at Hope and Elvis  that I made another from some snippets of fabric, stitching, little toy chicken and some flowers and buttons that I had in my stash.

The diamante embellishment on the top was a little found piece of broken jewellery that I had been saving since I first saw photos of Di's work.

Talking about stash, one of the loveliest things was going around being nosey about other  peoples fabulous stash. It got us talking about the exhibition coming up at the Barbican later in the year on Artists and their Collections.

http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=17071

This is a very long post but I'm just going to finish by saying a huge thank you to the wonderful Diane Tinker Foster for her inspirational teaching, her generosity and sense of humour and to Louise for the wonderful workshop. 

Here is one last photo for you to marvel at: A chatelaine! made from  delicious vintage found objects, soldered and wearable. Ohhh my goodness! xxx

More Gelli Printing coming very soon! and Altered Books too.

The new workshops are booking up fast!

On April 11th I'm repeating the beginners Gelli Printing workshop to fit in all the people who wanted a place last time. I so hope you can make it for this one if you missed out last time.

There will be Gelli part 2 in the summer where we will be developing our prints with drawing and experimenting with using our prints to make repeatable images on fabric  and embellishing them with stitch so it would be great to do the beginners workshop to get some really good images to use for part 2.

The whole process is so addictive and if you have been thinking about getting a gelli plate this is a great way to try it out and buy one if you like it.

On May 23rd the very popular Altered Book workshop will be happening again.

There are lots of images from some of my Altered Books further back in this blog and also on my website: 

www.paulawatkins.co.uk

They are such a joy to make: to take an old unloved book and make it into a very personal piece of art feels like rescuing an old friend and giving her a breath of new life.

We will be learning lots of techniques for starting and working in our books. The day is suitable for beginners, experienced mixed media artists and art journallers and everyone who wants a day of playing with paint, print, glues and exciting art media.

Both workshops cost £65 for the day and include everything except lunch.

Contact me through my website to book.

New Year, New Workshops.

Now that I have finished hibernating after Christmas, I am so excited to be able to tell you about the new workshops that will be coming up very soon.

The first two will be Handmade Felt:  A workshop for beginners on Saturday the 21st February. This will also be fun for anyone who wants to get back into felt and play with colour in the softest merino wool and silk. 

We will be making flowers....

And a picture. 

We will be layering, using silk and other exciting fibres and discussing methods of stitching, beading and embellishing felt. Have a little look at some of the photos of Handmade Felt at the beginning of my blog to get some more ideas.

The second workshop which is on the 21st March.will continue from the first one. We will be finishing and hand embellishing our pictures and brooches, learning about needle felting and making a seamless wool and silk felt bag.

The cost of each day is £65 and includes everything you will need including refreshments but not lunch. The times are 10am till 4pm. Boxmoor, Hemel Hempstead. Let me know if you'd like to book. You can contact me through my website:www.paulawatkins.co.uk  I'd love it if you'd join me for playing with beautiful wooly stuff.

Happy New Year

Another year has flown by and we are all poised at the start of 2015 wondering what this year has waiting for us.  For those of us with worries and health issues it may have been quite good to wave goodbye to 2014 and to look forward with hope to a new year.

It can be quite scary not knowing what challenges are ahead but it also feels like a fresh page is waiting to be decorated with the colours of life. Sometimes those unexpected events can also show us how blessed we are and may lead to exciting changes that we wouldn't have been brave enough to make for ourselves.

I wish you a New Year that soars to new heights of happiness, hope, good health and good fortune. I wish you exciting adventures and the comfort of knowing how priceless it is to have wonderful family and friends.

This little New Year Dove is painted with white gesso onto a background of black gesso and gold acrylic paint. The gesso was straight out of the pot and painted in directional strokes for the feathers and swirls for the background which gives it lots of texture. If you have a moment have a little play with making textures with gesso and stuff you have lying around like plastic cutlery, wine corks, cardboard rolls, or a cocktail stick. It is a great way to prepare a new sketchbook and cover your blank pages in readiness for the colours of a new year of art. xx

Happy Christmas!

I'd like to wish all my family friends and everybody a happy, peaceful and blessed Christmas. May the New Year find us all happy and  healthy, and be full of the best surprises.

Thank you for visiting my little blog, your inspiration, your lovely comments and for sharing in the fun of artyness. xxx

I'm looking forward to sharing more art with you all in 2015. 

Hey Gelli! What's next?

We had such a lot of fun at the Gelli Arts printing workshop. Thank you so much to all who came, I enjoyed every minute and didn't we make hundreds of prints!

Some of the  people who came to the workshop were new to Gelli and some had their own plates but hadn't used them much. A few people were already Gelli addicts and wanted another chance to play and learn new techniques.

That's the fun of Gelli plate printing though isn't it? Every time we play we learn a new way of making prints and find new effects that can be made by trying different tools and different combinations of layers and colours.

Here are a few photos of a few of the prints.

I didn't take many photos because I was having too much fun but these show a few of the many techniques we tried including printing with real leaves, using stamps, stencils, hand cut masks, hand cut printing blocks.

All these lovely prints can be used for backgrounds, card making, paper patchwork, collage etc but sometimes people ask...

'What next?' 'What else can I do with my prints?'

If you are addicted to making prints you can end up with boxes full of original, unique prints that you can't bear to use because they are too beautiful, and probably unrepeatable. Or you may be so busy making new works of art to think about using the old ones.

Well, lets use them! The next Gelli workshop, next Spring will be all about using our prints as a starting point in design!

This will include learning to draw into the patterns to make unique artwork which we can develop into fabric prints etc.

Below are some of the drawings that I have done on the prints I made from the demonstrations I did at the class. Some started as hopeless failures because that is what happens when people are watching a demo!
Ha ha.

Doodling has rescued them!

Watch this space to see what's next for these prints and drawings. And if you'd like to join in, I will be adding next year's workshop dates to the blog soon.

Books! wonderful BOOKS!

Keep a look out everyone! 

On the 5th December Maggie Grey and Workshop on the Web will be announcing the start of the  online  auction for the Artist Sketchbooks in their charity Sketch-aThon. 

This will be in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust. The WOW team are hoping to raise as much money as possible from the sale of these wonderful books and are hoping that people will buy them as a Christmas treat for somebody special. 

You will be able to see them on Maggie's blog: www.magstitch.blogspot.co.uk  and the Workshop on the Web facebook page on the 5th December.

Here is a little sneek peek  at 2 of my books that will be in the auction. There are some more photos of the first book a few posts back if you'd like to see them.

This first one is done with a hand cut original stencil mask. There is one of these in an envelope, included in the book, so that whoever buys it can add their own artwork to the book.

These next two are a textured 'rubbing plate' and the rubbing made from it.

Goldfish!

This is the second Sketchbook. I seem to have a fish obsession going on. This book is fish shaped

The cover is made from painted and textured and hand stitched heavyweight watercolour paper. The pages are Gelli Plate printed like the ones in the previous post and ready to be decorated or drawn upon by it's new owner.
The eye is made from layered vintage Mother of Pearl buttons

There are books by some amazing, inspiring artists in the auction. Please look, admire and pass the word around. This is such a wonderful cause. The Teenage Cancer Trust does such amazing work.

UPDATE! The auction is now over and the books raised  a fantastic total of £1337. Such a brilliant idea and such great support from all the sketchbook buyers. Thank you so very much. xx