A Creative 2018

It's good to look back and reflect over what I have achieved in 2018.  I have such a lot on the go that I so often feel I haven't completed anything.  But I did finish some things.

Some though are from workshops like this one from Unlocking the Mystery of Creative Play.

Fragments from a Shelley Rhodes workshop.

All the things I made at a Debbie Lyddon workshop

A finished piece from a Steph Redfern workshop

Pages from A Book of Trees - an online workshop

And then there were my Traverse exhibition pieces.
Pathways

 

 Venice Hanging

Venice Tiles

Admittedly most of the work for these last 3 pieces were done in 2017 but I'm going to claim them for 2018, because that's when they were exhibited.

I'm hoping to finish more pieces this year.  But as I said in a previous post, I really need to cut down on the number of workshops I attend.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

2018 in pictures

In the photography group I belong to our theme for January was 2018 in pictures.  This ended up being quite difficult as I didn't want to include anything hand related and a good proportion of my photos in 2018 were about my creative work.  This is what I came up with:

 March walk

Canal trip in April

April

April

Trip to Liverpool in May

On the way home from Liverpool

Chinese Garden, Central Sydney, October

Along the Great Ocean Road, Australia in October

Stratford Canal, late December

I'll maybe do a post of all the work I finished last year.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

B is for Believe

In our Living Your Word of the Year group we are using a fortnightly (bi-weekly) A-Z challenge throughout the year to help us focus on our word and live it out.

Because of the way I have made my journal it's a case of going with the flow of what background the pages have when I turn to them.

I chose Believe for my B word.  I thought it went well with my word of the year {commit}.  Valerie's suggestion for this letter was to draw around your hand.  I can't get my right hand to lie flat yet so I drew round my left.

I wrote the words from the definitions I found for believe that best fitted {commit}.  I thought it would be good to put what I believe.  I love the Hillsong version of The Apostles Creed so I found the lyrics and a font I like (Crushed) and printed most of the lyrics.  I cut them up and stuck them on my pages.

There was a small page in the middle of the double page spread so I found a Scripture to put there. I used a Gelato and a stencil to add the half circles.

On the reverse I wrote some of the dictionary definitions.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Join Our Inspirational Facebook Group: Living Your Word of the Year

Join Mary Brack, Valerie Sjodin and I in our Facebook group where we are giving participants the opportunity to live out an A-Z of their own word throughout 2019.  Mary explains what we are doing in her blog post.  We don't like a lot of rules, so we will have suggestions and options to spark creativity, and to help in recording and exploring our word’s meaning in visual and fun ways. We will each blog about our experiences and our art.

 Living Your Word of the Year 2019

Hashtags on Instagram:  #livingyourword2019

Check out the other blogs:
Mary: www.foundonbrighton.com
Valerie: www.valeriesjodin.com/blog

To ensure you get updates from Valerie, Mary & I why not subscribe to our blogs.

Oops! I've done it again

You may remember that at the beginning of 2018 I told myself to stop signing up for online classes and only do in person workshops.  And mostly I kept to that!  Although I did do rather a lot of in person workshops despite having to cancel a few because of my hand.

By the end of 2018 I felt that for 2019 I should cut back on in person workshops and concentrate on my own work.

Let's see how that worked out!!!!

January
Cas Holmes: From the Land
A mixed media workshop introducing the student to approaches to using paper, textile, print, dye and stitch to create pieces based on the ‘land’ and landscape or a subject of your choice. A focus will be placed on stitching as an extension of mark making and drawing, and various means of layering. We will use photocopies, and build up images, textures and mix materials. The workshop is experimental and intended to provide students with different ideas for development based on the artist’s own practice.

My work from a previous Cas Holmes workshop

January/February
Unlocking the Mystery of Creative Play
‘How do I make better work?’ We will look at simple language and principles of design found in the physical world. Working from a personal starting point, discover tools to create contrast and harmony using colour, value, size, shape, and texture. Bring your curiosity to discover what you like and how to achieve the elements you need to work with your theme and create effective compositions.

Triptych Wallhanging
Three panels that will be mounted on a canvas that can be attached together or presented adjoining each other. Each panel will be a different felting technique and you will be encouraged to use an array of mixed media, metal, stone, fabric, gold leaf for added interest and surface texture, stenciling paints. Cutting and revealing hidden surfaces to building up 3 dimensional tassels, tubes or multiple level craters

May
Eco Dyeing and Botanical Prints
n this course we will cover;
•fabric preparation with mordants in order to develop the richest colour, an essential foundation
•immerse dyeing to achieve beautiful colours and shades
•modifying and enhancing shades and tones
•botanical print direct leaf contact transferring colour from leaf to cloth
•solar dyeing, an effective way to simply allow colour to transfer to fabric
•happa-zome, a quick and satisfying experience of creating pattern and print

In Detail: Inspiration for stitching from sources hardly noticed
Many wonderful inspirational design opportunities exist around us if we take time to discover them. The aim of this workshop will be to begin with the study of examples of small details from natural objects, leading to the development of different personal ideas for work in stitched textiles. Structured experimental design exercises, investigating the scope offered by changes of scale, tone, texture and colour, together with demonstrations, will encourage students to choose ways to develop their ideas both 2 and 3 dimensionally.  Throughout the course, emphasis will be placed on making notes and sampling in fabric and thread in order for work to continue later if wished

June
Tactile Notebooks and the Written Word
This workshop will help you to find your own living language through the creation of a vibrant notebook practice. Motivated by ‘haptic’ considerations we will use the sense of touch to stimulate and awaken perception to guide the making process, and to revive sensitivity to the way we communicate both visually and verbally.

July
Leah Higgins: Breakdown Your Palette
This five-day, focussed, workshop combines an in-depth exploration of breakdown printing and the study of colour to create a palette of beautiful, co-ordinated cloth. Working from your own inspirational images or objects you will extract colours to use as you work with a range of breakdown printing techniques. We will also investigate the use of discharge paste in breakdown and how your printed fabrics can be enhanced by other surface design techniques.

Breakdown printing from a Committed to Cloth workshop

So that's 7 major 2,3 or 5 day workshops booked into the first 6 months of 2019.   Not to mention the on going Art Textile Group at Littleheath Barn,  the exhibitions with Traverse and the Master Practitioner course.

It's just as well I'm retired, have no dependants and never do housework!

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

My sketchbook or whatever you call it!

The problem with calling something a sketchbook is that you feel you should be sketching in it.  And I don't sketch.  Or draw.  Or even doodle.  However, a bought sketchbook can become a repository of ideas, a workbook, even a diary of how your work is progressing.   So whatever it is you choose to call it, I am going to share some of the pages form the book I'm recording my ideas for the Master Practitioner course I'm doing with the School of Stitched Textiles.

Finding which poem to use for inspiration.

Collage pages having chosen The Road Not Taken.

Leaf printing with birch leaves

Using the music 'Summertime' as inspiration.

At this point I was beginning to get ideas for what I wanted to make from all this inspiration.  I'll show you that in another post.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

70 books

I came across this reading challenge website, Hotchpot Cafe.  In amongst several challenges there is one to read books that were published in the year you were born.  I thought it sounded intriguing so I looked up those books which were published in 1949.

So that's let the cat out of the bag!  Yes I will be 70 this year so I thought I would challenge myself to read 70 books off the published in 1949 list.

There are 200 books on the Goodreads list for the year so I chose the following 70.

1. 1984   George Orwell
2. The Intelligent Investor   Benjamin Graham
3. The Lottery and Other Stories   Shirley Jackson
4. The Hero With a Thousand Faces   Joseph Campbell
5. Crooked House   Agatha Christie
6. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There   Aldo Leopold
7. The Weight of Glory   C.S. Lewis
8. Arabella   Georgette Heyer
9. Selected Poems   William Carlos Williams
10. The Third Man   Graham Greene
11. The Little Sister (Philip Marlowe, #5)    Raymond Chandler
12. Sexus (The Rosy Crucifixion, #1)    Henry Miller
13. Tales from the Perilous Realm   J.R.R. Tolkien
14. Upper Fourth at Malory Towers (Malory Towers, #4)    Enid Blyton
15. Diaries, 1910-1923    Franz Kafka
16. Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret    F. Howard Taylor
17. Paroles   Jacques Prévert
18. A Short History of Decay   Emil M. Cioran
19. The Black Stallion and Satan (The Black Stallion, #5)   Walter Farley
20. To Hell and Back   Audie Murphy
21. The Emigrants (The Emigrants, #1)   Vilhelm Moberg
22. In a Dark Wood Wandering: A Novel of the Middle Ages    Hella S. Haasse
23. And Both Were Young    Madeleine L'Engle
24. The Myth of the Eternal Return or, Cosmos and History    Mircea Eliade
25. The Origins and History of Consciousness   Erich Neumann
26. Green-Eyed Monster (The Prada Plan, #3)    Ashley Antoinette
27. Brat Farrar   Josephine Tey
28. The Fuzzy Duckling   Jane Werner Watson
29. King Solomon's Ring   Konrad Lorenz
30. Jesus and the Disinherited   Howard Thurman
31. The Skin    Curzio Malaparte
32. Love and War (The Prada Plan, #4)   Ashley Antoinette
33. The Mountain of Adventure (Adventure, #5)  Enid Blyton
34. Unto a Good Land (The Emigrants, #2)    Vilhelm Moberg
35. The Important Book    Margaret Wise Brown
36. The Second Confession (Nero Wolfe, #15)    Rex Stout
37. The Historian's Craft: Reflections on the Nature and Uses of History and the Techniques and Methods of Those Who Write It.   Marc Bloch
38. Trouble in Triplicate (Nero Wolfe, #14)   Rex Stout
39. The Third Man & The Fallen Idol   Graham Greene
40. Movie Shoes (Shoes, #6)   Noel Streatfeild
41. The Sweet Science   A.J. Liebling
42. Eastern Approaches   Fitzroy MacLean
43. Men of Maize   Miguel Ángel Asturias
44. Funeral Rites   Jean Genet
45. Happy Times in Noisy Village   Astrid Lindgren
46. Miss Silver Comes to Stay (Miss Silver, #16)    Patricia Wentworth
47. A Wreath for Rivera (Roderick Alleyn, #15)    Ngaio Marsh
48. Little Boy Lost   Marghanita Laski
49. The Wooden Horse   Eric Williams
50. Kinfolk: A Novel of China (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck)   Pearl S. Buck
51. Jeeves & Wooster Omnibus: The Mating Season/The Code of the Woosters/Right Ho, Jeeves (Jeeves #9,7 & 6    P G Wodehouse
52. The Thread That Runs So True   Jesse Stuart
53. Vittoria Cottage (Dering Family, #1)    D.E. Stevenson
54. My Friend Maigret (Maigret #31)    Georges Simenon
55. Tales of Deltora   Emily Rodda
56. The Little Mermaid and Other Tales    Hans Christian Andersen
57. The Portable Voltaire   Voltaire
58. The Rockingdown Mystery (Barney Mysteries, #1)    Enid Blyton
59. The Lady's Not for Burning   Christopher Fry
60. The God That Failed    Richard Crossman (Editor)
61. The Secret Seven Collection    Enid Blyton
62. Complete Poems Of Robert Frost, 1949     Robert Frost
63. Poor Man's Orange    Ruth Park
64. Killers of the Dream     Lillian E. Smith
65. The Best of Wodehouse: An Anthology    P.G. Wodehouse
66. The Wanderer    Mika Waltari
67. Brief Lives   John Aubrey
68. Coral and Brass    Holland M. Smith
69. Complete Poems    Edith Södergran
70. A Writer's Notebook     W. Somerset Maugham
71. This I Remember    Eleanor Roosevelt
72. The Bells of Nagasaki    Takashi Nagai

I actually own the Robert Frost poems so will have to start there.  When I eventually find my library ticket I'll see what books I can download and then visit the library.  I haven't been there for a while.

Here's hoping I manage to read all of them.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

A for Authentic

In our Living Your Word of the Year group we are using a fortnightly (bi-weekly) A-Z challenge throughout the year to help us focus on our word and live it out.

Because of the way I have made my journal it's a case of going with the flow of what background the pages have when I turn to them.

 
The first page had lovely lines to write on.  To connect the two pages I drew circles on the left hand page to echo the ones on the right.  I used an alphabet sticker for the A.

I have chosen Authentic for my A word.

I started my study by listen to this podcast on Authenticity - one of my church's culture word.

Through that I found these verses which I thought would be good to write out.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.  Romans 8:1-2

So keep your thoughts continually fixed on all that is authentic and real, honorable and admirable, beautiful and respectful, pure and holy, merciful and kind. And fasten your thoughts on every glorious work of God, praising him always. Philippians 4:8 (TPT)

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect.  1 Cor. 15:10

As I listened to the podcast I also wrote down words that stood out particularly in terms of the definition of authentic.  I wrote these words into the circles.

My finished page:

Thank you for joining me today.
Bernice

Join Our Inspirational Facebook Group: Living Your Word of the Year

Join Mary Brack, Valerie Sjodin and I in our Facebook group where we are giving participants the opportunity to live out an A-Z of their own word throughout 2019.  Mary explains what we are doing in her blog post.  We don't like a lot of rules, so we will have suggestions and options to spark creativity, and to help in recording and exploring our word’s meaning in visual and fun ways. We will each blog about our experiences and our art.

 Living Your Word of the Year 2019

Hashtags on Instagram:  #livingyourword2019

Check out the other blogs:
Mary: www.foundonbrighton.com
Valerie: www.valeriesjodin.com/blog

To ensure you get updates from Valerie, Mary & I why not subscribe to our blogs.

A calendar page in my journal

Whilst I was waiting to be sure of my word for this year I started making the calendar page.  I copied Valerie's idea from her blog post.

I bought Valerie's stencil and as soon as it came had a go with the washi tape - I have a lot of washi tape!

I printed out the calendar for January and auditioned it on the page.   I decided I didn't like the page on the left so painted it.

I used a lime Paper Artsy paint which looked much better.

I tried inking the page with Distress Oxide but didn't make a very good job of it.  I haven't used Distress Inks in a while!  Then I glued it down and made a mess of that also.  However it will do.

I used Valerie's stencil again for the month header and found a suitable quote online. I've written in all the things I know I'm doing already in January.

After a few days I decided to remove the ugly on the right hand page and redo it.  Although to be honest, it isn't much of an improvement!  

Ah well!  It will just have to do.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Join Our Inspirational Facebook Group: Living Your Word of the Year

Join Mary Brack, Valerie Sjodin and I in our Facebook group where we are giving participants the opportunity to live out an A-Z of their own word throughout 2019.  Mary explains what we are doing in her blog post.  We don't like a lot of rules, so we will have suggestions and options to spark creativity, and to help in recording and exploring our word’s meaning in visual and fun ways. We will each blog about our experiences and our art.

 Living Your Word of the Year 2019

Hashtags on Instagram:  #livingyourword2019

Check out the other blogs:
Mary: www.foundonbrighton.com
Valerie: www.valeriesjodin.com/blog

To ensure you get updates from Valerie, Mary & I why not subscribe to our blogs.