July Review

In the middle of July I reached the milestone of blogging for 14 years! I started in 2010 and although I blog a lot less now, and most artists do their sharing on Instagram, I have no desire to stop any time soon. I love having a record of my projects and writing about what I've been doing. I also process a lot of my thinking and keep note of inspiration. You will see that this post has turned out to be long because I am thinking about Fodder School 4 alongside other inspirations.

I always start my monthly review with progress on my #52cards2024 : to create a card that reflects the past week (ending Sunday). I must include stitch, the colour turquoise and a word. These are my July cards : 

I post details about the inspiration for these on my Facebook Artist's page.

My Uncle had an important birthday in July and I had to make him a unique card. So great to have lovely handmade papers ready for this.

Last month's teacher for Fodder School 3 was Kecia Deveney. While I didn't have time to attempt her amazing book project, I had a lot of fun making shrink plastic charms and some layered tags

These will definitely fit in well with future projects. 

This month's teacher is Alison Bomber. She creates beautiful projects and has a fabulous YouTube channel HERE where she shares heaps of free lessons and inspiration. I love her voice and her beautiful soft techniques often inspired by Nature.

Fodder School 4 is coming and there are a few changes. 

The teachers are currently being revealed through August on Instagram and the Fodder Challenge will take place in October, but it is no longer free. You can buy just the challenge lessons, but they are only available until mid-November UNLESS you sign up for the whole course and get the Fodder Challenge and the other 11 months of teachers. Read all the information and sign up with the early bird price HERE. I have LOVED my time with Fodder School - been in it for the full 3 years. But I am currently considering whether I want to keep going with this since I have so many projects uncompleted and other challenges I want to do. Will keep you posted and I'm sure you won't ever regret signing up. I always find that each year there are several projects that would be worth the price of admission by themselves. And I have learned something from every single teacher.  

If you've never done Fodder School before, you could go to Willa Workshops and check out her taster options 

Lots of food for thought there....

July contained 2 weeks of school holidays and I was really excited to spend some of that time with inspiration from Francisca Nunes in her collaborative Flowers Magic Art Fest 2024. 

I made the journal above in 2022. Go HERE for my post of making it and you can see more "before" photos. I now have a few completed pages and lots more inspiration to keep going following the flower theme. I have forever access to the lessons and will keep sharing as time goes on. These are the pages I completed in July. This waxed page I added as a flip out to enjoy both translucent sides.

I loved the flower lesson from Lisa Goddard which I incorporated into my weekly card and will soon appear as a page or more in my journal

And there are a few lessons I've watched but not yet been motivated to action. It has still been very cold here. Looking towards September and the promise of Spring...

These are a couple of other FREE inspirations which I may incorporate as I go along : 

Roxy's Journal of Stitchery current play list for their Volume 6 Field Notes prompts via YouTube are HERE. They release inspiration and guidance every fortnight and the idea is to create a stitched accordian journal by the end. 

And while I didn't participate in Junk Journal July - those lessons remain up on YouTube HERE. 

Other free inspirations this month :  Helen Colebrook has free printables on her site HERE. Includes goal and habit tracking, envelopes and doodles. This is my fav  - so cute

And I adore these book inspiration from Giogio Craft : Seahorses, Shaped altered books, and Klimt. She says she has some tutorials on her YouTube channel. This is a blog post about her Everything Circles Book

a Klimt cover 

and a Klimt House Booklet.

She also does amazing slow stitching and I keep thinking about her E-book available on Etsy. 

I hope you don't mind going down that rabbit hole with me! It's good to be saved for my future reference - I adore Klimt, want to do more slow stitching, and her colours sing to me! Also an example of how you can get completely distracted from actually creating by looking at others' work! And a good example of why I am wondering if I need to drop Fodder School in favour of some new opportunities.

August is a very busy month ahead for me - 2 birthdays (husband and eldest son), trip to Welly to watch the All Blacks play Argentina, and at school we are celebrating the NZ children's book awards and our own library Book Week with a lit quiz (designed by me) and dress up day. I've also been invited by a local quilt guild to give a talk about my mixed media work. Hopefully there'll be time for some creativity too. I will try and post more regularly on my Instagram and Facebook Artist's page.

January Fodder School : Part 1

Our January lessons for Fodder School are 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 on the 15th) are to use the fodder. Liz's focus is on using materials easily found and inexpensive and using your creativity to add the 'special sauce'. I took this advice and didn't buy anything new for this project - it's fitting in well with my quest to be more Sustainable this year. I hope you enjoy the photos. I just adore all the papers and fabrics and want to capture them here for later delight. Click on any photo to see the texture up close.

I don't think I'm giving anything away about this technique by letting you know the colour bases for the different effects. First coffee 

These are (expired) food colouring

I had to have another session trying some more delicate colours with Tsukineko inks I had been gifted a couple of years ago.

And then a third session from a bonus lesson with Ricki Midbrod...cos fabric! I used the same inks above combined with the coffee to grunge them up. 

And then we had another bonus lesson with Tiffany Sharpe where she shared more tips I had to try : different fabric play where you get dyed paper and fabric from one process

and I loved the delicate colour of the hibiscus tea. My teabags are a mix of hibiscus and blueberry - so many variations depending on the paper used 

...and then since I had everything out I had one final play before I decided I had more than enough for when the project lesson is delivered mid-month! 

It's great to have so many options with colours that co-ordinate and also have different values of light to dark. So lucky I've been on holiday and could get so deep into these techniques. 

Taking a photo of the tags reminded me of the tag project Liz shared in the Free Fodder challenge in July last year which I didn't have time for. I also modified the lesson from Karen Elaine to make a pocket fodder book that could work with larger tags. All those July lessons are also available if you join Fodder School 2.

Back views

And here's a video of the entire book - I love the sounds of the paper and tags

You may have seen that the title of this post is Part 1. I will share again when I use the piles of goodness to create the project - less than a week until those lessons drop. I'm sure you'll also see these elements appearing in my other work. You can still join us in Fodder School and/or Liz has a class and a book (available Feb 2023 - currently you can pre-order) where you can explore some of these techniques (although lessons in Fodder school had a unique spin I believe). What a fabulous way to start the year with so much inspiring colour and texture.

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