Today I ran a very busy class in Harwich teaching 7.5 ladies (the half was the proprietor Bev who had to pop in and out of class whilst she made us a scrumptious lunch) the art of Enamelling. As you can see from the photo many techniques were covered including swirling, wet packing, applying glass media, adding silver foil, pixie dust and more! A fabulous session, thanks for joining my class ladies.
Enamelling and half term fun
This week has mostly seen me having creative adventures with my daugters: drawing on Walton beach, making creatures from toilet rolls, and generally having fun. However there was still time to squeeze in another class with Deborah, before she goes back to work. Today we looked at Enamelling, http://www.mindanews.com/buy-celebrex/ which it the fusion of glass; in powder form, to metal; in this case copper, using extreme heat. Deborah created 3 lovely pieces in this day class using a mixture of techniques including swirling and applying glass media. Wear them with pride Deborah, you did a great job.
Adventures with Firstsite
Had a very exciting meeting with Firstsite yesterday, I will keep you posted on the outcome. They are soon to have an Andy Warhol exhibition which should bring plenty of people to Colchester. We really need to start celebrating our town – it has a lot going for it!
Encaustic art emergency
I was so pleased to be able to assist Deborah in her emergency today. What can you do when you have some time off and really want to do some crafts? Call me, I’ll happily try and fit you in!
Deborah had bought an Encaustic art kit from me a while ago but just never seemed to get much time to have a go, today we covered various aspects of Encaustic art and I have no doubt she will combine it with her other artistic skills to create some wonderful work. The picture here shows one of the encaustic pieces she painted today, plus you are also guaranteed a cuppa and an opportunity for a crafty chatter!
Gold Star rated!
httpss://www.craftcourses.com/dashboard/certificates/gold
“I’ve just had the following review from Lesley, who attended a one-to-one Needlefelting class yesterday.
Just had a wonderful morning with Toni learning needle-felting. Came home with a lovely owl that I made all my own work! Toni is very friendly, very knowledgeable and has an excellent way of teacher her crafts, the time flew by. I now feel confident to try some at home. Thank you Toni, would recommend you to everyone, and will certainly promote you where I can”. Lesley Collins – 21 hours ago
I now have 42 x 5* ratings from students so I am aiming for the Platinum award, which is only 8 x 5* reviews away! 😉
Making Owls
Today Lesley visited my workshop to learn how to needlefelt. She’d been given a gorgeous owl kit for Christmas but wanted to learn the basics before using it. We had a lot of fun shaping and choosing colours for our owls and then creating just the right faces! We then experimented with the feet by felting around pipe cleaners, I think the results are great. Needlefelting isn’t hard, just watch out for those fingers!
Mice in the workshop
Don’t worry it’s not a live one, I’ve been needlefelting today to make some examples for a class next week. This little chap has been needlefelted with merino wool tops and I have used a little wire to keep the structure of his arms. Squeak, squeak.
Sorting out silver clay issues
I really enjoyed teaching Kathy silver clay on Saturday. She’d given me a list of things that she wanted to learn to take her silver clay to the next level but I discovered our main area of troubleshooting was why her work cracked. A few hours later and many tips handed over, Kathy left with some lovely pieces of silver jewellery and the knowledge of how to build her skills further. Job done well, I think.
Always running out of time
Today I helped Nick with soldering a Raspberry Pi that he is working on – had to put on my thinking cap to recall soldering all those circuit boards one summer back when I was at Uni but it works, so between us we got there! Continuing to work on my website, trying to condense how many pages I have is an issue but I’ve decided to concentrate on the training and add on other bits once I see how well the website is working. I’m continuing to add on more links so it should be easier to book directly etc! Hopefully! 😉 Then I promise I can get this blog onto what I want it to be…a source of what’s going on in the workshop!