Fodder School with Jane Chipp

Our March lessons for Fodder School were with Jane Chipp. As always, the lessons released at the beginning of the month are to make the fodder, and the second (released mid-month) are to use the fodder. Last month was all about altering photographs and then making an album for them. I decided to honour my lovely dad who passed away at the beginning of 2018. I managed to make a start with some of the techniques in March

I loved adding the beads to the wedding bouquets of my maternal grandmother and my mum

And this one makes me smile - added a map of the area mum and dad went on their honeymoon

This month I've thankfully had school holidays (not always thankfully for parents with small children but I work at a school so get a break ♥) and I was able to do some more photo alteration and layering techniques. I was lucky to find some writing of Dad's and once photographed and printed on some old paper it makes a nice backdrop to the tractor photo. Also thrilled that I managed to print on tissue paper through my home ink jet printer

And then I made my altered photo album. Mine has my own mixed media additions sprinkled through and I love it. The front cover is at the top of this post. This is the back cover

Inside front cover

Some of my favourite spreads

And here's a video flip through.

Jane has a book about altering photos - available to order here including PDF format. I borrowed mine from our public library.

You can still join us in Fodder School where you'll get the full experience of how to make the album.There is also going to be a Fodder School 3 and you can already register for the Free Fodder challenge 2023 event which introduces us to all the teachers in July. 

January Fodder School : Part 2

Our January lessons for Fodder School were with Liz Constable of Book Art Studios. As always, the lessons released at the beginning of the month are to make the fodder, and the second (released mid-month) are to use the fodder. I shared all my paper and fabric making and her free tag project in this Part 1 post. As well as the excellent teaching by Liz, there were bonus lessons from other teachers so before I looked at the portfolio project, I couldn't resist one more printing session. I wanted to try out some different surfaces and techniques from bonus sessions. 

I altered metal washers with grungy colour

More tags 

Had a play with lutradur which worked out very nicely. It's a spun bonded synthetic fabric which is slightly translucent and doesn't fray. I have quite a lot that people give me from wrapping gifted flowers. This was just white. 

And made some dark darks

Then I combined all my printing sessions into the piles you see below : on the left are my textures of paper doilies, corrugated card, tags and envelopes. Middle is fabric, round tags, coloured metal washers and small scraps. Right is darks, mediums and light coloured papers. 

Our first lesson on using this fodder was to create clusters. We were encouraged to use our sewing machines - and these are my first stitched clusters and strings

And this, finally, is my version of the main project - an imperfect portfolio. I am so happy with how it turned out. 

Front cover above and back cover below

Open the front cover

And then unfold to the right

Let's unpack from left to right

Liz had the idea of a permanent collection roll within the portfolio. This is my cluster collection 

and these are my paper samples

And below is the open back view of the portfolio

And to finish - view from the top 

You can still join us in Fodder School and/or Liz has a class and a book where you can explore some of these techniques (although this project and some of the techniques are unique to Fodder school). I've ordered my own copy to support this wonderful teacher. I know there'll be more joyful learning within.

Snippet rolls and faux postage stamps

I'm making more slow progress with my handmade book inspired by lessons from Wendy in our fodder school lessons in August. I did my base pages and some fabric dying which I'll share here in case you haven't seen them

I want to add more bright colours to my book and have recently had fun with a couple of ideas. First I got inspired to make some snippet rolls. If you're not familiar with them, there's a whole instagram tag devoted to them #snippetroll. Here's the link to Nik the Booksmith's tutorial on YouTube which many refer to as their first inspiration for snippet roll making. 

I decided to make mine on a fabric base since I already had some 2" wide strips of fabric leftover from a quilt binding - a lovely mix of paper and fabric, and they're very soft and flexible. 

But what do you do with them? You can add more decoration to them before use - this could include hand stitching, found words, beads and other small embellishments.

You could enjoy it as a long roll like my book attached to a cotton reel base. 

Or if you make books or decorate journals you can cut them down and use pieces as tabs, as tuck points, and as a strap for a journal closure. Wendy Solganik has a great Instagram post with lots of ideas.

Here's my most recent Journal 52 word prompt where I used some on a tag : 

This month's fodder school lessons are with Kelly Anderson. I was inspired by her faux postage stamps and am very happy with how my first attempts turned out. 

I'll hopefully be able to share more of my book soon. I'm getting excited by how all these bits are going to come together. It's going to be so much fun to have a book that showcases many of the techniques I've learned in Fodder School 1. 

We start Fodder School 2 in a couple of weeks and you can join that and even still join Fodder School 1 HERE. I was lucky with my timing and got good deals for my memberships, but based on the past 12 months I'm sure if you take the leap you won't be disappointed.  

Birthday Celebration Zine

In 2017 I was teaching this book form but I didn't know that catchy name Zine. 

Dina Wakley has a great demo of making these on YouTube and in my library community this great post from Christchurch City Libraries was shared recently. A Zine is a book you can make from one piece of paper.

This is my most recent version, inspired this month by a bonus lesson by Wendy Solganik in Fodder School and versions by Tiffany Sharpe. First to make collage master sheets.

Recently I managed to find this A3 pad of cheap watercolour paper.

It's 190 gsm weight so about double the weight of my printer paper, and I thought the size would be really useful for creating bases for cards and also for Zines since it's a lighter weight than normal watercolour paper so easier to fold down. By the way - worth a trip to Feilding from Palmerston North for art supplies - got the gold pens from Aotearoa Art Supplies (you can also order online), and the paper was from Dollar City - Top Cats Alley. Next to each other on Manchester Street.

Here are a couple of master sheets created with papers from fodder school lessons

If you're not part of fodder school, Wendy Solganik has a really cool course about a way to make collage master sheets and then turn them into tags which you can get free by signing up for her newsletter HERE. 

Step 2 - fold and cut

Adding stitch and words

Then folding it into a Zine and stitching - I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make lots of pockets for tags

In case it's not obvious, front of tags above, and backs below.

Celebrating my 55th birthday this month creatively