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Good morning,

I just wanted to make you all aware of something about leaving comments on my blog.  If you are a no-reply blogger, or are on Wordpress, I can't see your email address to reply to you.  Since the European Data Protection law came in, I also can't see who you are by clicking on your name, so I can't reply on your blog (if you have one).  I used to have the email addresses of Wordpress bloggers who commented often (Alex, Jane, Chris...), but I changed email programmes recently (my previous messages used to go into your spam!) and no longer have them.

So, what would you like me to do?  I can reply to your comments on my blog, but that relies on you remembering you left a comment and coming back to see if I've replied yet.  You could also give me your email address in a comment (I'd suggest leaving a comment, then leaving your email address in another comment, then I won't publish that to the blog).  Any other suggestions?

UPDATE: It seems that if you are no-reply, if you tick the box for "email me follow up comments", I can reply on the post and you will get an email notification.  HOWEVER, I don't know that you've done that unless you tell me!

UPDATE: Sarah found a link to tell you if you're a no-reply blogger and how to fix it:  CLICK HERE.  Thanks Sarah!  Feel free to share far and wide people!

Festival of Quilts

It was the Festival of Quilts at Birmingham NEC last weekend.  I didn't go last year so as I had no plans for the weekend, I thought I'd take myself off there.  It's only about an hour and a quarter drive - but it gets expensive.  The ticket is £16, but then they charge an additional £12 for parking!  Add to that all the shopping you end up doing...

I took loads of pictures of quilts, but I can't show you any of them as I didn't take pictures of the name of the maker...  I'm afraid you'll have to go elsewhere if you want to see quilt pictures - I'd try instagram.  

I am, however, going to show you what I bought.  It wasn't much compared to usual show hauls for me!  I couldn't really justify buying much as I have done almost no crafting recently!

This is a half metre of bicycle fabric to make a new strap for Z's bag.  Long overdue!  I had ordered some online, but when it arrived the bicycles were about 4" tall, so too big!

I've been itching to embroider recently, but everything is still packed away (news on that next week).  I thought I could remedy that with a piece of fabric and some nice threads for a simple embroidery.  The fabric is Riley Blake something or other (sorry, I'm rubbish at knowing what fabric is!).  The threads are: (left) a sparkly rayon by Stef Francis, a Finca pearl 12 in variegated pink, a green silk from a stall whose name I have forgotten.  I looked at some DMC embroidery cottons, but thought I knew where my boxes of threads were at home.  I had a look.  I don't.  

This meant I needed a small piece of muslin to back the embroidery.  The olive oil soap is for felting which I've been itching to do for a while.

A couple of pretty fabrics.  The one on the left is very familiar but I forgot to pull it out and look at the selvedge.  The one on the right was a possible contender for embroidering.

Pre-printed Sashiko fabric which I'll do with normal embroidery cotton, probably in a rainbow.  

And this teddy-bunny kit.  I could not resist it.  There was a sample on the stall and I fell in love - so I splashed out.  Ah well, teddy-bear making is on my list of things to try, so I might as well!

Copper Embossing - craft class

A short walk from my house is an old wholesale market.  It has been regenerated and boasts a pub, a brewery and tap room, cafe, Vietnamese cooking school, artisan chocolate maker, a shop full of hand-made goods (where I did the lampwork class) and a coffee roaster, among other things.  It's a lovely area and a great destination as they've been hosting a lot of events.  I've been to night markets and outdoor cinema there recently.  Anyway, there is also a craft shop.  It's called Curious? and although I've seen it, this was my first class there.

The tutor was Dawn Feeney who I have seen around at craft fairs and admired her work.  We were doing copper embossing.  

We were given a mouse mat, a selection of tools and a small piece of copper to practice on.  Dawn did a demonstration and showed us what kind of textures can be created using the various tools.  We got to work experimenting.

Then we had a go with the colours.  These are faux enamel paints - Pebeo Fantasy Moon and Pebeo Prism.  I have had a go with these before when I did a mixed media class at the Bead Shop, and I have some at home.  

The paints sit nicely in the little wells made by embossing from the back using a metal stylus and then flattening down the front with a wooden tool.  This was just a trial piece, so I tried a few colours out and experimented with running the colours together or layer blobs of one colour over the other.

Then we got to work on our main piece, which was a copper blank about 20cm square.  I'd sketched out an idea.  Being crap at drawing, I had to stick to patterns!  I started with a heart (I drew round a paper template for that) and filled it with boxes to put paint into.

Some radiating lines to section off the background, and I experimented with different patterns.  The line based patterns are embossed from the back and debossed, by embossing on the front.  I love the texture this creates, with three different depths.

For the circles, I embossed from the back, and then went round them from the front to make the stand out more.

Time for the colour!  I wanted to use teal/turquoise/blue/green as these are my favourite colours.  I added in a bit of pink for contrast.  Originally I only painted the one section in the heart pink, but then felt it was a bit unbalanced, so added pink in some of the circles too.

I took some close up shots, but I didn't think to take a picture of the finished object framed.  In a lovely touch, we each got an IKEA box frame to take away!  Dawn lightly mounted my picture with masking tape, but as the paint was still wet, I have to re-mount it more securely before I hang it.

You can make out the different textures of the paint in some of these pictures.  The Fantasy Moon looks like the surface of the moon with tiny craters, and the Prism is more abstract - the pink paint is Prism.

I thoroughly enjoyed this class.  Great venue with coffee and cake provided, and Dawn was a good teacher (much better than my last craft class experience!).  I'd love to take another class with her, but alas, there's not really much more to learn!  It's more a case of practice and experimenting.  You can also cut out the images and shape them, but that's something to try at home.  She did say she could do a class at her home using heat to create colour effects (there's a great example here on her home page, scroll down).  We weren't allowed to do that at the venue due to health and safety restrictions!

I can see me doing more of this, it was relaxing and enjoyable.  I just need to get some more work done on the house (studio nearly done!) and finish off summer really.  There are too many festivals/gigs/events to go to during the summer for me to get much craft done!