Mini Handmade Books

Another of my Christmas present creations-sets of small colourful handmade A6 notebooks with my screen-printed design on the front, After many struggles with hand sewing books together, I've decided for the time being (while I keep practicing) that these look pretty good. All I needed was A5 paper, card, a guillotine and a long arm stapler.

I think I would be pleased if I received a set.

It's almost that time of year again!

I  can't believe how quickly Christmas comes round every year, it seems like only a couple of days ago I was planning to be much more organised and pace myself, and now I'm doing the last minute (almost) make again! So here are a few photos of what I've been up to recently, I've been using my local FAB LAB to laser cut Christmas tree decorations, and jewellery, then painting them up with acrylic and giving some a touch more personalisation with Sharpies (extra fine nib), working on a design to screen print onto origami Christmas cards and binding my own notebooks (photos to follow). Lots of fun.

Collagraph Printing

Collagraph Printing

My first attempt at collagraph printing in about ten years, so I'm quite pleased with the result. Made this just cutting and sticking card onto other card, with pritt stick, only did a couple of prints so no need to seal it, then inked it up and put it through the press. Really nice technique, sure I will be playing around with this lots in the coming weeks.

Barafundle Bay, Pembrokeshire

Screen Printing with Thermofax screens

Dawn recommended this company to me for buying pre-exposed screens without the hassle of doing them myself. I have to say I was pretty impressed with their service, all I had to do was send a jpeg and pay, and up it turned about 48hours later! This extremely speedy turnaround may well have been a serious of lucky events that might not always be repeated but I found them pretty good, and was pleased with their customer service. Further to this, I didn't use the inks from their site but instead used my own acrylics mixed with Print Medium. It all worked really well, no crisp prints and no problems with blocked screens = a very happy wellywearer! I'm planning on using these prints for creating wrapping paper and also hand-bound books (watch this space!)

Screen printing with a stencil

So this is my first attempt at screen printing with a stencil since my visit to London to work with Dawn Dupree. I borrowed a screen, and cut a simple geometric image out of paper. This technique uses acrylic paint mixed with a printing medium. I think this will work out as more cost effective for me as I do a bit of printing and a bit of painting. Looking forward to seeing if it is as successful with linocut.

Tile decorating

I recently went down to Jackfield Tile Museum, Shropshire and had a go at tube-lining my own tile design onto this teapot stand for my grandmother's birthday

. I'm pretty pleased with the result.

January textile art

Hurray! I've finally found an internet connection that will cope with me uploading multiple photos so here we go. I had a fantastic opportunity WAY BACK in January to go down to London and spend a couple of day with the textile artist Dawn Dupree in her studio. She gave me a fantastic insight into her processes an gave me the chance to have a go myself. Below are some of the photos I took of the techniques I used and the results I achieved. The experience has sent me off in a wild flurry of ideas and made me very excited to invest in some silk screen equipment and resources....I just need to find the means and the space now!!....oh and also commit to some images (very tricky!)