Salaric

Yesterday I attended the first ever Green Unconference in Long Ashton near Bristol, organised by Daniel Lewis. It was an amazing setting with brilliant speakers – I only wish more of the people I’d invited had turned up but apparently most of them hadn’t seen the FaceBook invite until the event was actually taking place 🙁

I have come away saddened but optermistic and re-energised about the stuff I do to try and be a bit more friendly to the planet. Everything from government policies to how to garden to how to save/use waste food to feed those who are increasingly needing to use the food banks in this country was covered. I myself did an Upcycling and Junk Art workshop – complete with a mini talk and slides.

It was the most gorgous setting for a workshop and I had my visual poetry stuff with me as well which a couple of people stayed on to do as a mini workshop. The workshop was making a vase of flowers out of old magazines.

My little girls were about as well behaved as I think I could realistically expect :/ I think Jeany eat most of the buffet before we officially had stopped for lunch!

I’m glad that people are taking on board that the average family can not afford or percieves at the least that they cannot afford organic food and that steps are being taken towards sorting this out. I wish I had managed to catch a few more of the talks but they clashed with my workshop and we had to leave early due to having triple booked ourselves for the day :/

I am going to attempt write up a few more of my junk art and upcycling projects. In making the slide show I realised I had a lot of material which I may try to collect together into at minimum an ebook. I have had people asking me to do this for a while now but haven’t had time what with all those workshops and other publishing projects on the go 🙂

And talking of e-books don’t forget to download your copy of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry before midnight on the 31st of October! Click the image below for your free PDF.

Image is a link to a free PDF of the book!

A few years ago to entertain my then just turned 4 yr old I wrote a series of kids poems and we made a little book with me handwriting the poems and drawing some quick pictures in felt tip pen. My little girl liked it so much she took it to school with her where to my embarassement the head master saw it and thought it was great.

I typed up the poems and took photos of the book assembly – for this blog and thought that was the end off it all – especially when the book got a cup of water spilt on it (much to my annoyance and the tears of a little one). But I then ended up writing a Little Book of Poetry for all sorts of other events and festivals like christmas and the birth of my second child and to stop the heart ache of the first ones destruction I scanned the pictures I drew.

People kept telling me that I should release the books but I thought I should digitise the pictures so I spent ages trying to draw the pumpkins and things but I found that it just came out looking like a cheap hobbled together image and that was not what I wanted. Then I came to the realisation that this was not needed and that the felt pen look was a good for kids books. So I drew pictures and have run them through a few filters and things to clean them up etc… (I found that different sketch books have slightly different coloured paper in them which needed to be sorted etc…).

But the up shot of all this is that tomorrow I am having a virtual launch party of an e-book (PDF) of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry. I will be giving things away and there will be author interactions etc… The PDF will be available for FREE until midnight on the 31st of October 🙂

Enjoy.

I had my second and final week of running Centre Arts in Cheltenham – and boy did we pack alot of stuff in! We had crotchet, knitting, weaving in the circle, mini pompom making, a fantastic turn out for my story tree, weaving paper to make bags and baskets, creating cards, bookmarks and hanging plant pots. We learnt two different types of stitch in bead work and my cake baking improved drastically with feedback on what worked and what didn’t 🙂

These ones even got mistaken for being an art display!

Recipes and decoration how to for the cakes is here.

Here are some pics of what we got up to 🙂

And of course more cake pics.

My little girls loved it all too and proved time and again that kids really can make a noise with anything!

I spent the last week doing craft and writing with people at Centre Arts. And boy have we crammed it in!

We made cards, Olympic torches and medals, decorated volcanos, made leaf garlands, sock puppets, upcycled skirts out of old t-shirts, beaded rings, made hair bands, pom poms, created cardboard looms and wove, knitted and crotcheted, plaited/braided, worked on story ideas and comic book sketches, we made pencil pots, templates and phones.

Here are the photos 🙂

And of course we had CAKE! The who to of which is on my cooking blog.

Jeany has really enjoyed this week and has even been looking after the plant! The baby too has been tiring herself out 🙂 The kids and adults who have come along have all enjoyed themselves 🙂 I shall be running it again next week starting on Tuesday!

The next two weeks from Tuesday will see me running Centre Arts in Cheltenham. Apart from the wonderful art work which deserves a visit in it’s own right! There is information about the excellent courses they run during term time and drop in craft workshops run by me 🙂

Tuesdays I will be doing paper craft and beading

Wednesdays I will be doing Fun with Fabrics

Thursdays is Story Time for the little ones at 1 and creative writing for adults 3-5 kids are welcome as I have lots of stuff to keep them occupied

Fridays is yarn craft and the knitting doctor

Saturdays is Upcycling and Junk Art

There will also be cake and drinks 🙂

I made a giant papier mache coral for the Exhibition in Braille – here are the creatures, plants, fungus and life forms in general that occupy it. (It was a take on the tree of life concept!)

Knitted coral, mushroom (not by me but by the lady who run the singing groups at Centre Arts), and rose.

Pompom pals made of pompoms, pipe cleaners and crepe paper – a ladybird, butterfly, spider and carrot.

Wooden carvings out of pine (done by my Leonard Pym – my dad), an egg, fish and hedgehog.

A gypsum sphere I found – it is an evaporite deposite found in desert environments.

Fimo/polymer clay models of a shrimp and penguin.

Sugru (this is funky new stuff which air dries to a rubbery plastic)

I have been making a giant papier mache coral as a piece of textural science art for the Exhibition In Braille which will be on this weekend (Sat 24th September 2011). The idea is that it represents the tree of life and at the end of each zooid or polyp tube is an organism made of different things such as wood, polymer clay, textiles, metal, stone and so on. There is a series of pictures in relief around the base that cannot really be seen but must be felt – these represent the scientific theories of Life’s origin and subsequent evolution. There is also a molecular sand made up of beads which will fit in the pockets built into the sand part of the sculpture and a series of poems which will be played along with it for people to listen too whilst feeling the piece.

In the Summer I took part in the Open Air Art in the Park Exhibition which happens in Cheltenham ever year.

I selected my pictures – mostly acrylics and wrote out tags for them – Alaric my husband made hooks to hang the pictures from on the display grid.

The first day we got up and running in good time but I looked at it and thought…

.. I can fit more pictures on here.

I sold one painting called Vortex which was a green swerl.

Via twitter we found a great local site to us called GlosWhatsOn – they are basically a directory for stuff that is going on in our county and they have been so useful to us with Arts and Crafts (and keeping small children entertained during the holidays!).  They cover many other things too, like sports and business and if you are in the Gloucestershire area (UK) or the Cotswolds I would suggest you give it a look.

I’ve found so many new craft activities, especially childrens’, since discovering the site.  But more than that I found out about the Wychwood Festival and from there managed to get on the team for festival crafts!  This has opened a whole new area of possibilities to me – I hadn’t really considered the craft workshop angle before (other than running kids crafts at the village feast, school and of course Scout camps etc…).

I’m just really happy I’ve found them and that not only can I find out about events on there but I can get my events on there so people can see them and come along.  It is also free which is always good 🙂

Anyway I just basically wanted to say thankyou to them 🙂

p.s. They are also on twitter.

I made this card for mine and my husbands 5th wedding anniversary. I used a card blank from The Works and selected three hearts from a collection of paper shapes cut in different papers. I went for the sort of black, blue, purple feel as they are his favourite colours. I attached these with sticky pads. I also had some wedding stickers which come out as silver out lines which I used one the out side and inside. These stickers are good as you can get writing and things – though peeling them off of the sheet without stretching them can be an issue – they also don’t always say everything you want so I had to write in some of it using a black fine liner pen.

I then composed a poem which I carefully wrote out on the inside of the poem – about our last five years together. I really wish I knew how to do calligraphy but I don’t so it was again just written with my fine liner.