You wouldn't want to miss a brilliant idea because you weren't there.

I'm a bit late posting this for various reasons, not least the hoo-ha surrounding the Embroiderers' Guild and the closing of branches; we have been sorting ourselves out and hopefully you're here because this new Blog has finally appeared on a Google search - I've been fighting with it! If not, then hopefully you have been redirected from our old blog. I can't pretend to be any good at sorting out all this techie stuff so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. It would be great if you could follow us and that might help.

ANYWAY...

Last month we had a great Zoom afternoon with Angie Hughes on "Creative Icebreaking". Getting going can often be a problem and so we learnt about Angie's process. She quoted Phillip Pullman "Resist wandering off, checking social media or making yet another cup of tea. You wouldn't want to miss a brilliant idea because you weren't there to receive it." 

Books are an interesting way of getting started; Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way was something Angie used: write 3 pages of prose every day; write about anything - it gets your brain working.

Another technique she has used successfully is mark making on a large sheet of paper using any tools, Quink ink and bleach. Make a list of words, choose five and use them as inspiration. Bite the bullet and without looking tear the sheet into pieces creating different arrangements.

Other sources of inspiration are Domestika courses - I've done some and they're very good; Laura and Linda Kemshall on sketchbooks; fine artists such as Klimt, Matisse and Hunterwasser; Ruth Issett, Alice Kettle and Bobby Britnell also give her inspiration.

Using a viewfinder to isolate interesting bits of paintings or designs can also be a springboard for a piece.

For our mini workshop Angie showed us how she makes the stamps she uses, along side some Indian carved blocks, and gave us ideas on how to use them.

Photos of Angie's work are from her website and the link is at the top of this post.

She runs lots of Zoom workshops if you're interested in learning more.

Following our mini workshop we made some stamps ourselves; now we need to eat lots of Ferrero Rocher to get some gold foil (Angie uses it a lot) and dig out the velvet, paint, bleach overcome the procrastination and creative block and get going!

Here's some of our practice stamps.