Cas Holmes

I have just spent 3 days at Littleheath Barn doing a workshop with Cas Holmes called: Stitch-Sketch-Books.

I love Cas' style of teaching.  It's a mix of her demonstrating a technique with her asking participants lots of questions so that we learn to explore alongside her.  We were given some activities to try on the first morning and then we launched into a practice piece to try out Cas' techniques.  I collaged two small pieces.

They dried overnight and the next morning I made two wider pieces.

I machine stitched and handstitched on my pieces and folded them to make a zizgzag book.

I had intended to cut up the narrower pieces and put them in between some of the wider bits.  However in the end I cut up the narrow pieces and sewed them into the main piece to make smaller zigzag books within the main zigzag book.

The back shows the stitches and some of the papers I used.  I can still work into the back if I wish.

Some of Cas' questions are really thought-provoking but some answers are quite simple but you're never sure which is which.

I must admit that several times over those days I was reminded of the old story about a Sunday School class:  A Sunday-school teacher asks the class of young children, "What is little and grey, eats nuts, and has a big bushy tail?"

After a moment one child replies, "I know the answer's probably supposed to be Jesus, but it sure sounds like a squirrel to me."

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

WORD & words

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.

For W I have chosen the WORD and our words.  To start I stamped the letters.

I found various Bible verses to represent God's WORD and the power of our words.

I drew around each set of Bible verses with a different colour and coloured in the stamped words.

Here are the finished pages.

Only X, Y & Z to go!

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

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Module 3: Containers

In my previous post I told you about the memories I have of Venice.   I had made the wire version of the gondola prow.

Next I cut out different sizes of the prow shape in card and taped them to a piece of wire so it could stand up.  I took this photo of it lying down on some lino.

I used an online app to make the background transparent.

On the computer I put the image onto different backgrounds.   The first is a page from the Concertina Sketchbook I did.   The window shape in the background is a bit distracting.

This background is part of a photo I took in Toledo.

I played with the transparent image making patterns.

There is still some work to do with this part of the module but I was also looking at the next part of the course which is about containers.  The final piece for this module is to make a container to hold my Venice memories in.  I might not be able to keep memories in what I make but it will definitely be something in 3D.

I looked through the IKEA online catalogue and downloaded images that caught my eye.  Not all of them are rectangular or square boxes!

When I was doing my original City & Guilds Creative Embroidery course I made this box book from scratch and made 3 small books to go in it.

While I was on holiday in Ireland I saw this cone on a traffic island.  It reminded me of an ice cream cone.  And of course that led to the song 'Just one Cornetto' and on to 'O sole mio' which is associated with gondoliers singing.  I'm not sure why Venetians sing a song from Naples but maybe it's a tourist thing.

I did an internet search for other cone sculptures and art.

I researched the song.

I am going to make some paper cones and see whether I can make a container from a variety of sizes of cone.  I'll let you know how I get on.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice