Oh bugger. I had just been thinking I should take return a beautiful midcentury West German vase to our home, when I moved a fan and knocked it off the bookshelf. Of course I couldn’t just chuck it in the bin. It’s been around longer than I have, so with the help of sellotape and …
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Wabi Sabi again
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How to make cute gift tags
You’ll need card, thin coloured paper (I used origami paper), scissors, a stamp pad, lino and cutting tools. Carve your stamp from the lino. If you’ve been to one of my workshops on this, you’ll know exactly how to do this! If not, try carving a soft material like an eraser. Cut two circles from …
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Making Friday: Punch needle with Crafters Box
Much earlier this year, I had an email from Morgan at The Crafters Box, asking for my postal address. This US-based company, whose aim is to make it easy for people to bring crafting back into peoples’ lives by providing subscriber-based mail-order kits and online instructional videos around particular crafts. What a great idea! The …
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Making Friday: Blank faces
When you run a creative biz, it’s important to make sure that sometimes the creative part has to be given more space than the business side, cos the inventive cogs get clogged up when the things you make are always purpose- or deadline-driven, and that’s why I spend Fridays in my studio. I thought it …
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Making Friday: Why good style is generosity
I took a sneaky snap of a stylish looking person while having a morning coffee, and then, because I enjoyed her look so much, I spent my Making Friday studio time doing a whole heap of little sketches and paintings inspired by that snap. And this is exactly why I called one of my Pinterest …
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Making Friday: weaving progress
I pinned up all the bits and pieces so far made on my kiddie loom, along with a couple of experiments on my rather clunky second-hand rigid heddle, and all together, they make me feel pretty good about my progress But now that I’m the proud owner of a brand new Ashford knitter’s loom (a …
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Making Friday: Snakes!
Honestly, I don’t know why this is happening, but I keep drawing, weaving and printing snake motifs. Someone said it’s a symbol for change, so I’ll go with that. The snake at the top of this post is one I made at Baobab Batik when I was there in April with Ace Camps. He’s pretty …
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Making Friday: Paint swatch collages
I really like to make paint sample card collages and my studio walls are covered with them. I think it’s because the cutting and assembling shapes and proportions causes me to see new ways colours work together and relate to one another. Also, cutting and glueing is super-relaxing work.
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Making Friday: Getting stitchy
Isn’t it the best when you’ve got a smallish project that you can pick up at any minute and make progress on? The reason for all the stitching I’ve been doing lately is that I’ve been plotting out a couple of new workshops with Bridget Henderson of Cowgirlblues for later this year, so if this is your kind …
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