Flowers Magic FREE class

Grateful for school holidays which are now at an end for me. I've had a good mix of jobs and play, and one of my joys recently has been participating in another free class called Flowers Magic hosted by Francesca Nunes : July 22-August 10. This is a very photo-heavy post so I can capture my discoveries for you and for me to look back on.

You can still sign up HERE.

I gathered some papers

and made my raw journal

Then I added my floral ingredients - it's Winter here in New Zealand so while I managed to find some Camellias and a couple of old rose blooms as I deadheaded them, I also included red cabbage, onion skins, and leafy fruit teas. One learning is that I decided to use some frozen berries. Unfortunately I didn't defrost them! Luckily they were placed at the back of my book but made it very wet and meant that a few of the end pages and back cover tore away. 

I undid the stitching and this is my collection of pages

All is not lost. Once dry, I mended my torn pages by stitching sari ribbon to repair the outer spine 

and glued some organza ribbon to reinforce the inside

I repaired the last pages by gluing extra handmade papers to make the hinge fold (the green handmade paper showing below) and then re-stitched my book. 

Bonus of re-stitching was that I was also able to include some of the fabric in which I'd wrapped the bundle. The wool didn't transfer any colour, but you can see the fabric only had some cleaned off paint to start, and bottom right you can see how it changed. I had sprinkled some rose petals in at the end.

It's most fun to see the before and after photos for the pages - these are my favourites but I must admit I love them all.

The fabric I used in the centre of my book had water-reactive dye on it so some of that transferred to my binding thread and to other pages and is another addition which I love. 

I think if I ever do this again, I will just do loose papers and bind them together at the end. What a joy this is to me. 

Red cabbage on Tracing paper - so delightfully crinkly ♥

You can see what other people are doing HERE on Insta. And you still have time to join HERE and find out how to do this, even if you don't attempt the other art journal lessons.

I can't wait to start working on the pages and adding my own spin to this book with lots of lovely elements, including some of these bits from my dyeing play in Fodder School with Aimee Bishop.

Hope you have a joyful and creative weekend. 

Back at Fodder School

I've had to break from Fodder School because my December was extra challenging but I'm so excited to get back to these lessons now. I'm on holiday so I've got some lovely play time ahead. 

November's instructor in Fodder School was DeeDee Catron and you can find more about her HERE where I shared my stamp carving explorations. She shared 3 lessons about making fodder, the other two being chipboard alteration and image transfers. I realised I haven't shared what I did with those. I've done many image transfers before. See some ideas HERE and DeeDee shared a simple packing tape transfer which I first discovered via Julie Fei-Fan Balzer on YouTube. I tried it again just to make sure I remember how. 

The toothbrush was a really good way to get the wet paper off. Once dry the tape gets its stickiness back so you can apply it over other elements or use as you would patterned tape. Store on baking paper.

Grungeboard is a product created by Tim Holtz and when it was first released (more than 10 years ago!) it was all the rage and I purchased and was gifted a bunch. From first glance it appears to be chipboard and can be treated the same as chipboard (painting, sanding, stamping, etc.), but it is pliable. You can bend it, distress it, and it won't rip like chipboard. You can stitch it which I also love. I used some of the shapes all those years ago for masking sprays, and I did this project creating a garden fairy - her wings are grungeboard. 

If it wasn't for this class, it would all still be sitting in a drawer untouched....but now it's become part of my fodder keeper so more likely to get some use.

I decided that I wouldn't do DeeDee's final project at the moment, but I have lifetime access to this class so some of these techniques may just show up in a project in my future. 

I was very excited as I saw interpretations from classmates of our lessons from our December instructor, Aimee Bishop. Her main project was these gorgeous mixed media amulets

I waited until now to start because there are so many amazing techniques to explore from the first part of the class before we even get to this project. Every teacher is hitting it out of the park for us! 

First up I wanted to try some natural dyeing with fabrics and fibres I already had in my cupboards : aida cross stitch cloth, PFD (prepared for dyeing) white fabric, scrim (muslin), mulberry silk filament yarn, some old lace, tatting and serviettes. 

I am so thrilled with how they turned out.

Here's the tatting with an original bit on the right to see colour changes. Subtle but so lovely.

The prepared for dye fabric and scrim had some variation where I used rubber bands for resist

but the Aida cloth was the biggest and really gorgeous variation. 

Next up is mark making on papers and making embellishments. Will share soon.

See all my posts about Fodder School HERE. It's not too late to join us. DeeDee has also kept a record of where we can find any lessons that have been shared from the original #fodderchallenge in June 2021. All the artists featured there are going to be teachers in Fodder School.

Mixed Media Fabric Banner Day Class

I've not been able to finish as many art journal pages lately, and one of the reasons is that I'm teaching 3 classes this month! I shared my "From Past to Present Artfully" collage class HERE. In November last year I spoke to the Feilding Kowhai Quilters group about my quilts and mixed media work, and as a result, I taught my fabric banner class to them on Saturday. This is the sample :

See my original blog post with details and closer photos about this project HERE.
Here I am all packed and ready to go - class notes at the ready and lots of lovely inks and fibres to share and inspire with

It was a great day - all the students came armed with supplies, questions, and open to new ideas. I ended up taking 3 different project samples 

and laid out my supplies

First I demonstrated dying our lovely fabric serviettes with a mix of distress inks, reinkers and sprays

Then they had a go - lots of different colour combos

We tried simple silk paper making with gummy silk cocoons

Mine included colour because I just can't help myself - theirs were lovely with the natural fibres - some will add colour later

You can see a lot of paper serviettes embedded above - I also demonstrated a trick for paper serviette tearing and attaching directly to the background fabric

and was lucky that they shared some of their serviettes with me 

We talked about 'found words', stamping and stenciling, painted fusible, and making lovely cords

We had a play with a heat tool and made lovely crusty tyvek beads

Then they started to put everything they'd learned into practice. Click on any photo to see it larger.  Below is a lovely combination of serviette, found words, stamping, silk paper and beads

Our tables were covered with all the demonstrations and play

And it was fun to see layouts evolving

At the end of the day here's a sample of where they got to - all so lovely and so different ♥

It was a happy day for all of us

Still to come, Star books on Saturday 26th for the Marton Quilt club. 

If it goes as well as the other 2 classes have I'll be a happy woman :-)