Frances Pickering Workshop 2008

I had seen and admired Frances Pickering’s work at Ally Pally a couple of years ago.  So when I found out she was running a workshop for our branch of the guild, I was keen to be on it. I certainly was not dissapointed.

We all arrived laden with materials and on seeing her exquisite  books we were keen to make a start, even though I think a few of us thought “oh my goodness, can I do that?” but we all came away with books to be proud of, some finished, some to be worked on.

How we all enjoyed the two days. The techniques we used were fun, stamping onto gesso with a print block, letting it dry, applying colour and acrylic wax then enhancing the texture with treasure gold. Making the pages from lining paper and brusho produced a pleasing effect. A pile  of wet brushoo painted pages were laid across one another and let dry. I left mine to dry overnight and it was so exciting to see how they dried when I arrived the next day.

Then came the stitching and filling of the books, with a subject of one’s own choice. Everybody’s was so different.

Having a two day workshop was great. The only criticism, most of us slept badly on Friday night, as our heads were full of ideas and itching to get back on Saturday.

Thank you to those who organised this workshop.

Lorraine Orriss

Orange and Blue – January 26th 2008

Painted Book Covers Workshop on 26 January 2008 Run by Orange and Blue

An excellent day!

A large group of us gathered to generate a set of very individual and varied sketch book covers.

The morning tasks were to create a design, cut pieces of cardboard to represent the shapes needed to produce our designs, apply them to the front covers of our sketch books and apply the base colour in acrylic paint each one of us had selected.

The afternoon was spent applying additional layers to achieve a multitude of different effects, using a wide variety of media such as water thinned acrylic paint, metallic
paints, inks, Markal sticks, acrylic interference colours, all supplied by our tutors.

To complete the covers, all that was left to do after the workshop was the application of several layers of varnish. It was good to have so nearly completed the cover at the end of the day!

 

Dilys Thornton

 

October 2006 – Embroidery with the Sewing Machine with Louise Gardiner

In October 2006, Louise Gardiner presented a work shop about using the sewing machine for embroidery. You can find her website here.

We did a drawing exercise first of all. It was designed to relax us. Louise put some music on and we closed our eyes and doodled to it. We didn’t take the pen off the paper and we were encouraged to make different types of mark making. We did this a couple of times, to different types of music.

We then took a heavy piece of canvas and used our sewing machines with black thread to stitch a frame. We used different stitches based on the different marks we had made when doing our relaxing drawing.

Next, we all sat in a circle and drew the person opposite us. This was a bit stressful for the non-drawers in the group. Next, we drew the person again, but this time without taking the pen off the paper or looking at the paper. These images were much more interesting than the ones we had done whilst looking at the paper. We did this a second time.

We chose one of the last two drawings to use as a basis of our embroidery. The picture was placed on the back of the canvas fabric and we stitched one the lines we had drawn. When we were ready, we turned it over and embellished. We were also encouraged to add words to our creation.

September 2006 – Beads with Val Campbell Harding

In September 2006, Val Campbell Harding gave us an excellent workshop on bead making. We made paper beads, wrapped beads with wire, fibres and beads. Glue guns were used to wrap glue around beads. We also made wire coils.

Pictures are forthcoming.

July 2006 – Caskets with Sue Krekorian

In July 2006, Sue Krekorian gave a workshop about making caskets. You can find Sue’s blog here.

Here is an image of a work in progress.

This gives you an idea of the shape of a finished casket.