Journal Workshop

I'm teaching a journal workshop at Queen of Arts Retreat in Melbourne in April this year. There are still a few vacancies in my class if you'd like to join us. Other teachers will be DJ Pettitt and Maha Ghobrial. I'm just finishing off the sample book that I will be teaching and have some photos below.
I'm also having an exhibition in May/June with Patsy, Jacky and Dot and am busy painting and making jewellery. I'll have more details of the exhibition soon.

This is one of my necklaces for the exhibition. I love mixing fabric with metal pieces.

The cover, it's still not completed yet. I will also be adding fabric strips and buttons to the spine.

The inside cover with one of my hand dyed doilies.

we will be making a few stamps and stencils for decorating the pages.

there's a variety of weights of papers, from tissue papers, paper towels and bond paper

the paper on the left is decorated tissue paper on the right is bond paper, slightly heavier

more decorated papers

we will also be using pages from an old novel

the pages waiting to be assembled and stitched into the spine.

I'll have more photos of the finished journal shortly.

All of the pages will be hand decorated by the students. The journals can be used for writing, sketching, as a diary or for photos, whatever takes you fancy.

Thanks once more to all of you lovely people who have visited my last post and also thank you to everyone who left comments, they're very much appreciated.

Finished journal

I've completed my latest journal. This has been reserved by a lovely visitor to my blog. I've had a few people comment and also contact me saying that they don't get chance to purchase one of my journals because they sell fairly quickly. I'm amazed and also very humbled by the way they sell. I'm considering taking orders for them as the next two have also been reserved. If you would like one please email me and I'll add your name to the list. They take awhile to make, but I'm working on two at once to speed up the process. Thanks again for your lovely comments and support.

The side view

The cover is a piece of my hand made felt with lots of fabric elements and stitching added.

This is the spine

a pocket on the inside cover

a decorated envelope with a tag

all of the white pages have been stamped with my hand carved stamps

there are lots of my decorated paper pages

this fabric was dyed using my flour resist

some pages have my original graphics, drawn on the inside of envelopes (love the patterns),

then cut out and stuck down

Some of the many pages - there are over 150 including the fabric pages.

More books

I'm working on another fabric/paper journal, this was going on my etsy but has been reserved by a lovely visitor to my blog. I'm also making some altered books to teach in a workshop from home. The kitchen's still progressing nicely. The stone benches go in this Saturday. I'll have photos soon.

A completed page in my sample altered book. I painted the vase and candle stick.

This is a smaller book. I painted the lady, her dress is made using papers inspired by Anne Bagby.

This is a page in progress.

My new journal in progress.

one of the fabric pages

more fabric pages

I love dyeing doilies. The other page is sun dyed fabric.

a bit of everything

a collaged and stamped page

more sun printed fabric

Thanks for all of the lovely comments on my previous post, they are much appreciated.

Earrings and hand carved stamps

I've just added a range of hand carved stamps and some earrings to my etsy store. I hope to have some photos of the kitchen soon. The ovens working, we have new cupboards, or should I say drawers, we don't have any cupboards and a new huge double sink with a Darth Vader tap, or that's what I call it. It was more expensive than the sink. I also have a fabulous sink in my studio now, what a difference a sink makes, love it.

This pair features vintage white and mother of pearl buttons.

The earrings all the details or on my etsy store.

The hand carved stamps.

Pages

Our little art group, Jacky, Dot and Patsy had our get together on Saturday and had a wonderful time, talking, eating and journalling. We've been doing a book swap for sometime now and I've been working in Patsy's book. Here's the results below. The style was very influenced by the workshop I took with Flora Bowley.

This is how two of the pages started.

This was the end result. The camera reflected off the right hand page so you can't see all of the detail.

This was the second page, before

and after, I love this technique and am going to do Flora's on-line workshop too for more tips.

Thanks everyone for your lovely comments in my last post and also for visiting my guest post on Crescendoh blog.

Crescendoh Guest Curator

I was very honoured some time back to be asked as a guest curator on Jenny Doh's Crescendoh blog under the title Art Saves. This is the week and there are also daily links to some of the blogs I frequent. Here's the link to the post and to today's links

The kitchen is progressing along nicely, I'll have some photos soon. I'll also have some more stamps on etsy by the end of the week.

I can't do a post without a photo so here's a piece of felt I made recently that will become two journal covers once I add some hand stitching.

This is the piece laid out before the felting process.

The finished piece awaiting some hand stitching.

Thanks for all the lovely comments about my journal in the last post, they are much appreciated.

It's now on its way to a new home in the US

New Journal

The kitchen saga continues. We now have our fabulous oven installed, we have an electric oven with gas hotplates. I've never had gas before and was terrified the first time I used them, but I survived, I almost singed my eyebrows on the wok burner though, I think I could do some serious soldering with that flame.

Between building I've managed to finish my latest journal. I hope to have it in my Etsy store tomorrow. Here's a preview.

SOLD before being listed on Etsy - Thank you Deb

the cover

the spine

total view

following are just a few of the pages, there are lots of white watercolour pages for you to work on. They just have some of my stamps, painted and stamped across the bottom.

Hopefully if I'm not stuck to the wall or in a cupboard, this will be on Etsy tomorrow.