Amazing day with Preston Embroiderers Guild

Another early start and this time I was heading back over to Preston. On arrival the ladies were already setting up the hall ready for my workbook workshop. Once the meeting was underway and the announcements were over everyone gathered around my portable studio. I have been working in my workbook for 4 years now and began by sharing some of the work out of my own books.
We began with the scary white page...

Once the scary paper had  gone and everyone was busy we began experimenting with stencils, rollers, stamps etc. 

After lunch everyone had the choice of turning their practice sheet in to a book or to jump in and start their own workbook. Developing techniques covered in the morning and I introduced other elements during the afternoon to vary and add to the pages. Everyone worked really hard and produced some fabulous work.

At the end of a very busy day we had a gallery session to admire everyone's work. I would like to thank everyone for making me so welcome. I had a lovely day and am looking forward to coming back in 2016.

Mad March Challenge

I decided to set myself a challenge to work in my sketchbook and kick start this years development of my work. So I have decided to try and work in my book for 30 minutes every day for a month...hence the Mad March challenge. This has coincided with the publication of my first booklet on working on your workbook (available on my folksy site). I will post some pictures on my facebook page of my progress and every few days will post here in a more detail.

DAY 1

For day one I decided to start off fairly simply and chose my favorite water soluble pen to work with.

Not really sure on what to do I started with a border and wrote about the challenge. After drawing some more boxes I began to doodle patterns in the boxes. As I worked I realised they would make good hand made stamps so continued to design 8 stamps.

DAY 2

On a Monday I wait at the local Rock climbing place while my daughter is climbing. So I got a basic kit together and decamped to the Pub that is linked to the club (only for a coffee of course) and got Artist block again AHHHHHHHH

I had a look in my bag and had the waste from the reinforcement rings I have used for my booklets. So I stuck these in and began with writing again. I then started doodling one of my favorite seed heads and slowly the page began to pull together. This time I expanded the amount of equipment I used. A mixture of text and doodling always works well especially when you fit the text around the doodling.

DAY 3

After suffering from artists block I decided that the focus today would be creating some background pages that I could then work on over the next few days. I had put together the mini rolling pins I designed on day 1 so decided to use them. I choose 3 colours to work with and added bubble wrap to my collection of equipment.

I began painting sections of the bubble wrap and printed the edges of the pages. Then using one of the rollers I added further detail to the page.

When I work I always have a sheet of paper to clean my rollers and stamps off on.This usually ends up being an interesting piece at the end and can be used in your book at a later date...so don't throw it away.

After embellishing with other stamps I finished the first double page and decided that as I had all the equipment out I may as well do 2 more.

 ...next pages

                            

So I now have 4 pages ready to work on. This is a good idea as sometimes the blank page can put you off and make your mind go blank.

Hopefully I have inspired you to have a go in your own book. If so I would love to see your work and if it is ok with you, post here on my blog...

Have fun

Anne xx