A 7th Week of Happiness...

It's obviously going to take me longer than a year to get through this as some weeks I don't feel well enough to blog, but I don't think that really matters - its about changing the way you think, its about looking for things that make you smile, even if they are small things and sometimes even in the face of adversity!  I think those are the times when it's even more important to find something positive to be thankful for.

This week, it's been pretty easy to find things to be happy about - it was my birthday a few days ago and I've been overwhelmed by the kindness of others, especially as I haven't been very good at keeping track of other peoples birthdays over the past few years, which is something I really need to work on.  The two shelves above my television are crowded with beautiful birthday cards which make me smile every time I look at them, they are a reminder that I am fortunate to have some wonderful friends and family.  :)

On my birthday I had lunch with two friends I've known since I was 8 years old, we went to a lovely little cafe in an ex-coastguard station perched on top of the cliffs in the village where we grew up.  It was pretty cold and blustery so I took a photo of our view across the English Channel through the window from the comfort of our table in the tearoom...

I've noticed that every few years, I go down to the Bay on my birthday, so here is a photo from this year's visit...

It's the first time I've been out with my "big camera" for ages and it actually felt pretty good to be taking proper photos again  :)

I've completed my bear for January thanks to a small piece of pale green sheer fabric from one of my friends which I used for one side of the wings.  The bear is going in an exhibition at my local library next week which is being put on by the craft club I attend there once a fortnight.  Being a library based group we took some of our inspiration from books and this little bear is my take on Tinkerbell from Peter Pan...

Yesterday, I went to a morning workshop on making fused glass jewellery.  It's a shame that I can't find any cool courses like this locally but this one took place in the town where my sister lives so it was a great opportunity to spend some time with family.  It was a long and tiring day but absolutely wonderful and I don't even care that I can barely move today!

Years ago, I used to enjoy making things from stained glass until my hands started playing up to much, but was pleased to discover yesterday that I remembered how to cut glass successfully and as I've found with my bear-making, cutting small pieces is a lot easier.  It'll probably be a few weeks before I get my finished pieces back as firing glass takes too long to have got our pieces back the same day so I'm waiting very impatiently and with great excitement to see what the finished result will look like.

The photo above shows one of the pieces I'm most excited about.  The tutor told us that pieces of copper turn a beautiful deep burnished red when sandwiched between two pieces of glass.  I wanted to try this and chose a piece of white glass for the background, with a piece of "fracture and streamer" glass on top.  I thought the top piece I cut reminded me of reeds or tall grasses so I cut some tiny leaf shapes from the copper.  I'll post more pictures once I get my finished pieces back.

Printing Workshop 1 - Image Transfer

A few weeks ago, I attended a one day workshop at Broadstairs Adult Education Centre - "Screen Printing and Image Transfer".

I'd started glancing through the available courses because partly I was feeling a little lost after realising I needed to take another year out before going back to University, but I've also been suffering from a major case of creative block lately, so I was looking for some inspiration too.  One of the modules I've already studied as part of my photography degree was called "Photography in Context" it was a brilliant module which really encouraged the students to think outside the box and made me realise you could do an awful lot of different and creative things with photography - and we didn't even do anything like this either!

We started off working on the image transfer part of the workshop as this would take longer to dry, it's also the part of the workshop I took the most photos of...

1.  We first stapled the calico fabric to a drawing board, then cut out the photocopy the tutor gave us, right up to the edge of the picture  (everyone had the same image)

2.  Drawing corner guide marks on the fabric with the image face down as it will be stuck to the fabric that way.

3.  Painting an undercoat of watered down white matt emulsion onto the fabric - I chose to make mine a little rough and ready so the fabric would show through here and there.

4.  Speeding up the drying process a little!

5.  Tracing out some of the features of the photocopy - not forgetting to add corner guide marks so everything will line up later on.

6.  Positioned using the guide marks, then transferring the traced lines onto the fabric.

7.  Hopefully you can see the traced lines in this photo  (sorry about the picture quality but these were taken using a mobile phone).

8.  Underpainting the image in colours that should give the finished artwork a Warhol-esque style.

9.  Placing the photocopy onto foil to stop it sticking to the wrong things while painting on the image transfer medium.

10.  I didn't take a photo of the process of painting on the medium and placing the photocopy face down on the fabric, using the corner marks as a guide because I needed both hands for the job.  But here you can see the tutor's hand showing me how to cover the image and gently remove any air bubbles that may have formed as the whole image needs to be in contact with the fabric or the transfer won't work properly.

11.  And now we have to wait patiently until everything is completely dry... Oh look!  It was nearly time for lunch  :)

12.  I chose to remove my piece from the board to speed up the drying process but if have the time to wait, its actually a lot easier to leave it in place for the next stage.

13.  You need to gently wet the paper and VERY gently, using the heel of you hand in light circular movements, rub the surface paper away.  This does take some time, but its better to take it slow and steady as you don't want to do any damage to the picture underneath, which is quite fragile.  I have to say I did cause a little bit of damage to mine as I was impatient (you can see the missing bottom right-hand corner) - but it was very exciting to see the image emerge!  I didn't actually finish this stage at the workshop; after it had dried, you could see more paper fibres so I had a second go at it at home.

14.  After you have removed as much of the paper fibres as you can, you need to seal the finished piece with some matt acrylic varnish - I didn't have any, so I used some PVA glue mixed with water at about a 1:1 ratio and it worked very well.  I also used the PVA mixture to stick my fabric to a piece of mount board which gave more stability to the areas where I'd rubbed too hard, it also means my piece is now ready for a frame, which I hope to get very soon.

So there you have it!  One image transfer with under-painted colour.  I really enjoyed making this and it's given me lots of ideas for doing things with my own photos.  So as soon as I can put together all the equipment I need - watch this space!

It took me the best part of a fortnight to recover from taking part in this workshop, but I got so much out of it, that it was worth it.  I'll post some details about the screen printing part of the workshop another day.

The Three Legged Dog

Having trouble trying to sleep tonight, so I was standing at my bedroom window for a while looking at the stars.  Its a reasonably clear night and I recognised some of the constellations even though I can't remember their names and it made me think of another night when my son was about 8 years old, it must have been winter-time as we were walking home after Beavers and it was dark.  On the way, we stopped to say hello to a lovely old gentleman who lived nearby, who was out walking his dog - we chatted to him for a while and "M" was asking him questions about the stars as he knew a lot more about them than we did; and then finally "M" asked him a question that I'm guessing had been troubling him for quite some time "Why does your dog only have three legs?"

"Well" said our companion, "it's actually a very sad story.  There was once a time, a few years ago, I had no food in the cupboards and no money to be able to go out and buy some.  It got to the stage where I was so hungry that I really had to eat something..." by this point in the tale my son, who'd been listening with great interest, had a look of complete horror on his face - while I was stood there biting my tongue to try and stop myself from laughing and spoiling the effect!

I'm pleased to say that the gentleman did go on and explain to my son that it had actually been an accident, when his dog had been a puppy, it had tried to follow his daughter's dog over a brick wall and his leg had been so badly broken that it couldn't be saved.

I don't know what made me think of that story tonight.  The gentleman died some years ago, his three-legged dog went to live with his daughter and my son and I missed our little chats with the gentleman and tickles with his dog - a very friendly, scruffy looking, medium sized mongrel.  We used to see him often when we were out walking, they were a much loved part of our community.  Back then, we had a great little local shop/Post Office just around the corner that sold newspapers, sweets and groceries - our friends were such regulars and so popular that the shop owners used to keep a tin behind the counter with dog treats in especially our three-legged friend.  I'm feeling very guilty at the moment because I can't remember the names of either the gentleman or his dog even though I can picture them in my mind.  But hopefully they're happy that they still live on in our memories as I know my son still remembers them too.

Sorry that this post isn't a craft related one - unless you count the fact that I took these photos out of the same window I was stargazing through tonight.  They were taken a couple of years ago on the night of a "super moon" which was so bright it cast shadows distinct enough to see clearly.  Believe it or not but the photo below was taken of my bedroom wall opposite the window I took the top photo through on the same night!  You can see the silhouette of my cat who was sitting on the window ledge, the pile of books I rested my camera on, and you can almost see the colours of the stained glass panel, I made years ago, that hangs in my window.

I'm sorry too, that it's been so long since I last wrote a blog post.  I've been struggling with my health, have been finding it hard to do any crafting and also coming to terms with not going back to finish my university studies this year.  I didn't want to walk away from my course and in fact I still have the option of going back if I want to, once I feel well enough.  I think maybe I've been letting it all get me down lately so even on the days when my hands haven't been as painful, I haven't been able to persuade myself to pick up my needle and thread, or other crafting tools and get on with something creative unless its been at craft club, or more recently, a couple of printing workshops I've attended - but I'll blog about those another day (with the emphasis on day!).

Crafting is something that does generally make me feel better about myself and those workshops have thankfully given me some much needed inspiration.  I've been catching up on a few of the blogs I usually follow recently too and I really like the idea that some of them follow - 52 weeks of happy - this means that they do one blog a week where they write about 3 things that have made them happy over the past 7 days and I think its something I'd like to try too.  I had planned to start my 52 weeks with the start of 2014 but I don't suppose you really need to wait, its something you can do at anytime, so I'm thinking that I might just start looking for my 3 happy things from now.

But for moment, I think the most sensible thing I could do would be to go back to bed and try to get some sleep, so I wish you all a good night, a great weekend and fingers crossed that the hurricane thats been forecast for Sunday night/Monday morning, blows itself out before it reaches land!

The White Cliffs of Dover

The title I've used for this post always makes me think of that Vera Lynn song that was so popular during WWII - not that I was around back then, but I'm lucky enough to live very close to the cliffs and as a child, I lived even closer.

I grew up in a little village, off the beaten track between Dover and Deal.  We moved there when I was 8 years old and I consider myself very lucky to have grown up in such a beautiful place - in fact I've always wanted to be able to move back there one day, but I can't complain about the town where I currently live and I'm only 5 miles away from my childhood home and about half a mile from my local beach.

I haven't been feeling too well over the past few months, not helped by going down with one virus after another since December, but having not been out for nearly a week, a little bit of sunshine and feeling as though the walls were closing in, I rang one of my friends the other week and after having my friend help me select a button for my new bag which I'll show you in a future post, we took a little drive down to the beach of my childhood and spent a very pleasant couple of hours enjoying the peace and tranquility of the place from the comfort of my car - it was a bitterly cold day!  We did venture out of the car briefly to take a look at the latest cliff fall and take a few photos of it and here is one of mine...

This was just a quick snap with my little compact camera as I wasn't up to hauling my 'proper' camera gear about but I'm happy with the result (apart from the wonky horizon) as it shows some very white Dover cliffs.  I've often heard people say that the cliffs weren't as white as they'd expected, but after a cliff fall like this, the cliffs are amazingly white, and the water had a milky quality from the chalk that had fallen into the sea.

I've often wondered what I would be like to live in one of these houses (there are three) tucked under the cliffs... on one hand I think it would make me nervous, although that part of the cliffs is probably more stable as its not subjected to the waves, but living here must also be a wonderful experience - what a fantastic view!

These houses have had some very famous occupants over the years; Noel Coward lived here for some time, although it is said that he moved away because he found the view too distracting and struggled to get work done here.  Ian Flemming on the other hand seems to have been inspired by the view as he wrote and based the novel "Moonraker" here.  Its also said that the London to Dover coach - which still bears the service number 007 also provided inspiration for a certain character but there is much argument on that subject and sadly we'll never know the truth.  But having travelled on that service a number of times myself when I was younger, I like the idea.