I had a fabulous day with a craft group up in Birtley, Northumberland, yesterday, showing everyone how to make a Japanese stab bound sketchbook with a metal embossed cover. In the morning I showed everyone how to make the cover, taking everyone through the tools and materials first, creating a sample piece, and then moving…
On Tuesday I had a lovely afternoon at the wonderful Breathing Space in Witton Gilbert, teaching mandala drawing. I call this workshop ‘mindful messy mandalas’, as it’s all about enjoying the creative process, rather than creating precise mandalas. We started off by creating a loose background using acrylic paints, and then we let the colours…
Over the past two weeks I’ve had a great time with Angela Reed of Creative Calligraphy and her two groups that meet regularly on Thursdays and Fridays. This is part of Angela’s larger Calligraphy and Creative Wellbeing project, that you can read all about on her blog. In the first week I took everyone through…
Two lovely greetings cards made by the students on my Celtic knot flow workshop yesterday. I taught a more flowing and less technical technique of creating interlaced knotwork, which included chains, triquetras and unicursal curves. I also taught a traditional space filling technique used in medieval manuscripts in order to create the backgrounds. Both are…
Over the past couple of years I’ve been really lucky to work with Breathing Space in a fabulous health and wellbeing community project in Witton Gilbert. I always love teaching at Breathing Space, it is such a beautiful and relaxed venue and everyone is always so enthusiastic and friendly. Coming up over the summer I…
On Saturday I had a fantastic day at Allendale Village Hall, teaching a lovely group chine collé lino printing, as part of Highlights Rural Touring Scheme. We had a lovely selection of floral lino prints created, and everyone took really well to carving out the lino and then to printing with collage. As usual, the time…
10 fabulous copper house numbers and name plaques made over the last two Thursdays by carers, organised by Newcastle Carers. Everyone was a complete beginner to metal embossing last week and just look at the fabulous work they created! Last week I took everyone through the tools and materials and we worked on a small…
Yesterday I had a great afternoon as part of Highlights Rural Touring Scheme when I visited Crosby Ravensworth Village Hall and taught an enthusiastic group how to create metal embossed coasters. Everyone took to learning the techniques really well, and they all made beautiful coasters, with a bit of experimentation going on too, which I always love to see!…
Yesterday I had two lovely beginner lino printers on my introduction to lino printing workshop, who as you can see, created beautiful lino prints! We started off the day by going through the tools and materials, and then worked on a test piece of lino, just to get used to using the tools and trying…
Yesterday I taught a workshop on how to create these metal embossed heart ornaments, and had a lovely afternoon with the mum and son who came along. The hearts are inspired by the Mexican tradition of making ‘milagritos’ and ‘corazones mexicanos’, which you can read a bit more about here. I took them through creating…
On Saturday I had a fantastic day at Soulby Village Hall, teaching a lovely group chine collé lino printing, as part of Highlights Rural Touring Scheme. The theme of the day was definitely tulips, although we did have a rose, a poppy and a wren being created too. Everyone took to the method so well, and…
Yesterday I had a great afternoon as part of Highlights Rural Touring Scheme when I visited St Mary’s Village Hall in St Mary Park and taught a fabulous group how to create metal embossed coasters. Everyone took to learning the techniques really well, and they all made beautiful coasters, scroll through the carousel above to see what…
