New Year, New Workshops!

Happy New Year 2018!

For all of us this year I hope we are blessed with love, friendship and good health! 

I hope that this year will allow you and your dreams to fly! To the stars! 

We have some amazing life and art adventures waiting for us. Share mine with me. Happy New Year to you all.

Letting Go!

Yesterday was the last day of a couple of 10 week Art Journalling Courses.  And nobody wanted it to end!

For most of the people who attended the sessions they have been a golden moment in a stressful week of caring for others much more than they have had time to care for themselves. Spending those golden moments being creative and learning ways to make beautiful art changes lives!

So when the courses ended, there were such mixed feelings: Joy for having been there and sadness that the weekly fix of making art in a safe, supportive cocoon has ended for the moment. It can be so difficult to let go.

But they are all ready to fly! Really firm friendships have been made that will last forever, skills have been learned and talents found that many of them couldn't have dreamed of. Their Journals are exquisite, and very, very precious.

So fly my friends! You haven't really had to let go. All the support is still there for you. And we will be making Art together again really soon.

This little sketch was made with Derwent Inktense pencil in Chinese Ink and a fine black pen. 

A workshop update

This is a quick little update on the upcoming workshops at Workaid Chesham and St Joseph's Boxmoor. 

I'm sorry it has taken me so long to publicise these. I have been working on all kinds of  new things and will have some exciting news to reveal soon.

Firstly the Workaid Workshops for 2017 and 2018. There are photos of these workshops further down on this blog.

13th and 14^th October 2017

Altered Books

10am -3.30

A 2 day workshop on making Altered Books.

£150

25^th November 2017

Fabric Books

10am -3.30

A 1 day workshop on painted and embroidered

 fabric books

£65

27^thJanuary 2018

The Art of Whimsical Illustration

10am -3.30

A 1 day workshop on drawing, colouring and

 layering illustrations

£65

24^th February 2018

A Mixed Media Canvas

10am -3.30

A 1 day workshop using a variety of specialist

 materials and mixed

 media techniques to make a textured and layered canvas picture.

£65

24^th March 2018

Folk Art Embroidered Hearts

10am-3.30

A 1 day workshop of Folk Art inspired hand

 embroidery on vintage  wool blankets using

 vintage found objects

£65

28^th April 2018

Scrap Stitching and Embroidery

10am -3.30

A 1 day workshop using precious scraps of silk

 and vintage fabrics  with hand embroidery and

 found objects.

£65

30^th June 2018

A Folk Art Painted Chair

10am-3.30

A one day workshop using hand painting and

 stencilling to 

decorate a small wooden chair. You will need to

 supply a chair or I  may be able to source a small 

 Ercol school chair  for you at an extra cost.

£65

Workaid, 71 Townsend Road, Chesham, Bucks,

 HP5 2AA

The Boxmoor Art Journalling Workshops are at St

Joseph's Hall,

 Horsecroft Road, Hemel Hempstead HP1 1NR

A very short 5 minute walk from Hemel 

Hempstead Station on the line from Euston.

Each 3 hour workshop will build on the skills 

learned previously to 

make up a very varied and comprehensive mixed

media course.

The sessions will be relaxed and fun and the

 techniques will be simple to achieve.

You will be amazed at the beautiful pages you will

 make. You will need to bring an A5 or small 

6"x6"square journal to  use.

I can provide one for £4 if you let me know in

advance.

Session times may vary so please check the times

of each workshop.

£35 per session.

21^st October 2017

12pm -3pm

Starting right at the beginning of this course on

Art Journalling, 

we will learn how to apply paint and decorate the

surface of our pages using stencils. 

We will be painting the pages for using at the next

session to make 'Waterfall Pages'

18^th November 2017

2pm- 5pm

At this session we will be using the pages we

decorated at the last session to make 

'Waterfall Pages' We will learn to

use punches to enhance our pages and embellish

 them with drawing techniques.

9^th December 2017

12pm-3pm

At this session we will explore the use of die

cutting, layering and painting to make a textured

 collage.

May Workshop: Vintage Inspired Mini Quilts

The next workshop, coming up soon will be Vintage Inspired Mini Quilts on May 13th 2017. The venue is Workaid, Townsend Road, Chesham, Bucks.

We will be using lovely soft vintage fabrics, lace and cotton, layered together with hand embroidery and found objects to make tiny pieces of textile art that you can wear as a brooch, frame as a picture or use in a fabric or Altered book.

You can also choose to make a hand painted mini quilt for a brighter,  more contemporary artwork which would make a lovely little illustration to wear.

There are a couple of spaces left. The price is £65 for the day. 10-3.30 and includes all materials. Leave me a comment if you'd like to join us for a day of stitching and relaxation.

Dancing Fairies

I think I'm addicted to Inktense pencils. I've been playing with them a lot! I've been teaching using them in Art Journals so they are always in my bag. They suit so many styles of colouring and artwork and are so easy to use.

Next year I'm doing a workshop on Whimsical Illustration so I thought I'd show you a little drawing I did lately. A Dancing Fairy.

She started out as a black and white drawing. I wanted an image that was like a paper doll that I could experiment with, cut out and resize. So here is what I did with her.

I resized her to a tiny size and copied the image 9 times. I thought I'd have them dancing in a circle. When I put them on the page the legs were curling up a little bit so I decided to leave them unglued to add to the dancing effect.

There was the space for a flower in the middle and between the fairies so I cut it out and coloured the background with the pencils, keeping the colours  light and fading into one another.

I've been experimenting a lot with holes in my pages and letting them show through  to interesting things on the following pages.

Soooo... On the next page is this!

And this!

At the top of the page is the fairy at full size, about 4 inches tall and coloured in. Its good fun to try to get extra uses out of your drawings and doodles especially if they take a long time to do. 
Give it a go and let me know how you get on. 

Oops! Inktense Part 3!

I've been teaching drawing and colouring with Inktense pencils this week. Every time I do, I am reminded that these are such a lovely product. I just love 'em!

They are so easy and effective to use with just a few top tips to make the effects extra special.

It reminded me that back in March I added two tutorials on this blog for using them and promised a third one. Life got so busy and I forgot to do it.

Part 3 was going to be about using these amazing, versatile pencils on fabric. Here it is...

It is a little known feature of Derwent Inktense pencils that when they are dry they become permanent. This makes them fab to use to colour fabric. 

Some artists use Fabric Medium to wet the pencils and it is great to experiment with this and see if it gives extra fastness but I have always just used water to fix mine.

The colours are also translucent which means you can layer them. This means that you can keep adding colour and blending it to make lovely watercolur effects.

Step one: I used a vintage doily and drew one of my  little crazy birds onto it. I probably used a 0.2 size Pigma Micron pen for this because it is permanent and can draw fine detail without the nib being ruined on the textured fabric, if it is used carefully.

I will have some workshops coming up soon,  in 2017 on Whimsical Illustration

Let me know if you are interested in these because lots of people have been asking about these and I think places may go quite quickly.

I then embroidered over the lines and details using 21st Century Yarns hand dyed thread. Then it was time to play with the pencils!

I drew around the embroidered contours on the doily with the pencils. I used 2 colours because I love the way they mix to give a blended watercolour effect. Here is a closer look.
Click on the photos to get a larger and closer look.

Then I added the water. Here is the most important bit......

VERY LITTLE WATER!

This gives you much more control over the dissolving the pigment and spreads it only as far as you want it to go.

As soon as the area you have been working on is dry, it is fixed and you can add more colour if you like.

The area on the right of the photo above shows the effect with the water added.

I will probably leave it like this now. Sometimes, you just need a little bit of colour to zizz up a thingy! Finished!

These would be fabulous to decorate one of the pages in a 

Fabric Book. 

Workshop coming up in February for making these and I will probably include this technique in that action packed day.

Have a go! I'd love to know if you do and what you think.

PS. Try colouring on Satin ribbons and on threads too.

Fish Talk!

Its been so lovely to have a day to myself just getting back in touch with my pen!

I love trying different media and get so excited about combining them but sometimes the simplicity of just a pen and paper and time to doodle are are one of life's little luxuries.

I can't get enough of looking at Fish and trying to capture their lovely sleek scales and the infinite forms of their shapes and colours. The more you look, the more you see all kinds of repeating patterns and the more we observe the details the better we get at drawing. 

The section below shows the repeating patterns and the lines that give the fish its structure and shading. This is the fish before I cut it out.

The collaged page is in my Fishy Sketchbook. A whole book of fishy moments! It's good to return to it when I need a fishy fix!

A little Fabric Concertina book

On Saturday I will be teaching a workshop for the Hertfordsire branch of the Embroiderers Guild JETS group.

These Junior Embroiderers and Textile Artists meet a few times a year and are a wonderful group of young people who have learned over their time at the EG to try all kinds of textile techniques and experiments with stitch. 

The youngsters of today are the future of our skills and craft and it is a joy to teach them.

We will be experimenting with painting techniques on fabric and embellishing with stitch, print, text and collage.

Sounds like a fun day doesn't it? Can't wait to get painty!

Dreams and Doodles

Tomorrow the wonderful new Stampington  publication, The Coloring Studio will be launched. 




I am so happy to have one of my illustrations featured in this great new colouring book that is much more than just a colouring book. Everyone who knows Stampington will know how gorgeous their magazines are; full of the most inspiring art and innovative techniques.

Today I thought I'd show you some of my other illustrations. These are copyrighted so please don't copy them but I do hope they will inspire you to draw some in your own style. Next time I will do a step by step on how you can start to doodle some illustrations of your own.

So here are some of mine...
This first one is an illustration for a wedding invitation. It is hand drawn in black ink.

 This one is a diorama of the Owl and the Pussycat in a little mint tin. Again drawn in ink and layered.

And these next ones are textile designs. They are drawn in black ink onto painted backgrounds.

Tomorrow I will show you how to start an illustration of your own with step by step photos. I will also be teaching this very soon so let me know if you'd like to be added to my mailing list for illustration, journalling, gelli printing, handmade felt or altered books and tins. You know you'd like to have an ARTY new year! Perfect for your New Year resolution for 2016.

Rain and Rust

Last Summer and Autumn I had a great time rusting fabric in the garden. I  tried out lots of different fabrics but my favourites were fine silk habotai, and vintage lace and doileys. 

It was always a surprise to see how much the fabric had dyed and the amazing patterns that were produced. Sometimes the rust ate right through the fine silk and made fabulous crusty holes.

In September I used some of the fabrics with handmade silk paper as a base for some of my original illustrations for Open Studios. 

After Open Studios was finished my butterfly of a mind moved onto other things and I completely forgot the last little rusty package... till today!

I went out in the pouring rain to rescue it and here is what I found.

So fabulous! 

The silk especially has amazing patterns. It is Eco dyeing, just using nature to make beauty all by herself. Its just a kind of magic! 

Happy day! :o)