News!

www.southpennines.co.uk

I shall be taking part in the South Pennines Making and Doing Festival in October. Not sure where I will be yet but I will be doing a free glass Make and Take activity there :)

www.settlestories.org.uk

I will be at the Makers' Market as part of the Settle Story Telling Festival on 12th October. More details to follow soon. 

www.creativemasham.com 

My last piece of news is that I have been accepted at Crafted By Hand in the Dales village of Masham on 27th October. So excited! 

Glass Paint Experiments

Glass paints before fusing

I love doodling and drawing and, for a while now, I have wanted to combine this with glass fusing. I tried a black glass pen for float glass but the results were too messy and very disappointing so I finally invested in red, blue, yellow, black and gold Glassline pens from Warmglass.co.uk

The colours are chalky when they are applied but the results were surprisingly good. I had to practice quite a bit until I could squeeze the colours through the nib with a steady hand but, fortunately, any mistakes can be wiped off. Also, any large blobs or wobbly lines can be tidied up with a cocktail stick when the colour is dried, before fusing. 

Drawing

The fish was drawn using Glassline pens and a nib on float glass. The periwinkle blue is a bit too pearly and is thicker than the other colours.  I'm going to dilute it slightly and try to get a better flow.

Drawing

Gold, black and red Glassline pens. The gold fires to a lovely shine - I wish there was silver too. 

Fired glass

The glass on the top left hand corner has been painted with Glassline with a brush. I'm not keen - it's too pale.  The glass on the bottom right hand corner has been sponged across masking tape before the tape is removed and then fired. It's a nice effect.

Fused Glass fish

If you are visiting the Saltaire Makers Fair on 5th, 6th, 7th May you will get a free funky fused fish if you spend £30 or over on Glassprimitif products. Hope to see you there. 

Brighton Rocks!

Recently I visited my sister for a weekend and flew down to Southampton to celebrate her birthday.  We had a lot of fun together, including a shopping trip to Brighton. I love Brighton, it just gets better with delightful shops and eating places, the pier, the beach and The Pavilion.

The Royal Pavilion is completely over the top - a pastiche on oriental architecture and a mix of Chinese and Islamic styles - but it is the white stone that stops it becoming tacky and tasteless (mind you, you should see some of the interiors)! 

It's such a striking building, built as a holiday home for George IV when he was Prince Regent (wasn't he the one who died on the toilet)? The gardens are quite pretty - although not very imaginative - and, with the busy road outside, it's not a tranquil place. 

However, it has inspired me enough to make a diorama from watercolour paper of the architecture that epitomises The Royal Pavilion.  If you want to make a diorama of your own please visit Made In The UK and follow the simple steps to creating your own. 

Hooray for UK Handmade

I am thrilled to have been asked by UK Handmade Blog editor Kirsten Miller (Quernus Crafts) to write a piece about craft fairs and arts markets from the organiser's point of view. 
I think UK Handmade is a fabulous website because it works hard to promote hand made artisans and crafters.  The on-line magazine is a brilliant read, the blog is very informative and there is also a Forum to share your work with other makers.  I have started a group on the Forum called Craft Fairs and Hand Made Markets so, if you are attending an event and want to share please join the group. 
I also wrote 10 Top Tips for Craft Fair Traders which you will find here. I have tried to take a different angle rather than saying "bring a pen, money, table cloth etc" that I hope will make traders better business people and get those all-important sales. 

Markets are the Future

I haven't traded at a market for a few years now and, as I now organise arts fairs at work, I thought I'd better get some practice in, selling my own stuff.
Markets and fairs are a great marketing opportunity, a way to meet your customers, test trade your goods and gauge public interest. They can either be really well attended with lots of buyers or spectacularly dismal, like the Great British Weather.



Last weekend I showed my stuff at The Royal Arcade, Keighley as part of a small but select group of crafts people. I was surprised at how well I did, particularly as the footfall wasn't brilliant. We were very lucky with the weather and, although we were competing with a big event at Cliffe Castle, Louise of Blue Ginger worked hard to bring the public into the arcade.



So there I am, writing to artists who take part in our Arts Markets about how to set out an eye catching display but not actually taking my own advice! This display looks a bit jungly although I'm quite pleased with my hand written labels.



There's definitely room for improvement when it comes to display and I'll have another shot at it tomorrow at the Craft Fair in Cavendish Court, Keighley to celebrate Yorkshire Day. I'm booked to do the Saltaire Arts Trail Maker's Fair in September so, by the time that comes around, I should be more experienced at display.



Inside Royal Arcade, Keighley. For more images visit Flickr.

Bling Bling!

I've got the jewellery making bug at the moment and am driving my family mad by spreading all my stuff over the table and constantly dropping beads on the floor.




I visited a car boot sale last weekend and picked up this "swag" for a bargain. There are assorted earrings, necklaces and thin chains, mostly broken pieces and I couldn't resist two silver plated tiny spoons (don't know what to do with them yet). I have been "deconstructing" these all week and, with the addition of Swarovski crystals, silver findings, crimp beads and tiget tail I have made a collection of vintage jewellery. (I am particularly) proud of an earrings, bracelet and necklace set that I made out of a fake diamante necklace.
I'll get the camera out and take some photos of the results. I'm hoping to sell these at the Crafts Market in Royal Arcade, Keighley on Saturday July 18.

Folksy - a New UK Site

This week I joined a new hand made selling site from the UK, Folksy.
Folksy is a Beta site (test) and international shipping won't be available until February 2009 but, from what I have seen so far, it looks good. It has a great selection of sellers including some of my favourites - Buri Boo, Fibrespace and Asking for Trouble. I'm also really impressed with the Making section with tutorials and how-tos and I like the graphics and layout.
However, like all new site there are some teething troubles and I would like to be able to batch my items into sections. But it's early days yet.
Watch this space!

As I recently posted a tutorial on making accordian books here are a few of the books I have made. They have all been shown in exhibitions.



"My Son Tom" is an accordian book made from brown paper and plant fibre paper with a wooden toggle as a fastener. It measures 3" (8cm) square. The pages are a long strip of plant fibre paper that has been folded three times to form pockets. I made this book when Tom was nine and each pocket contains an item that means something to him.



The first pocket contained 3 coloring pencils but they were pinched when I took the book into a school where I was teaching book making workshops (!) The text reads, Tom likes to draw. The next pocket contains a rusty washer from his collection - He likes to collect things. Then I made a minitaure version of his favorite book, Shadowmancer - Tom likes to read. I illustrated a cartoon of the cat - and he loves our cat. I made two miniature playing cards - Tom enjoys card games and finally popped in a photo of him with a cheeky face - He hates peas!



It was fun to make although, now he's older, I don't think he's too impressed now!



RATS is a passage from Robert Browning's Pied Piper of Hamelin, a poem I learned at school. The paper is standard cartridge that I dyed with inks on wet paper before cutting and gluing the pages together.




I printed the word RATS with wooden block lettering and made the illustrations in relief by sticking the cut out shapes with sticky fixers. The roofs of the houses are pages from an old book that I dyed with ink. The book was so old that the paper began to disintegrate when wet!




The layout for the lettering took a long time as I had to space it correctly. I attached the pages together with wire so that, if the book is not handled correctly, it scratches you - like rats!





The book below is about walking my dog. We take a long, strenuous walk on the moors every day as he needs a lot of exercise.



I started with an old ordnance survey map that I bought in a charity shop and cut out "windows" for each page. The paper is again dyed but this time I dripped acrylic inks onto the wet dyes. Acrylic inks are wonderful - the colors are so vibrant and, being heavier in body than the dyes, will repel the dyes to leave fuzzy edged bright colors.

As this was about a walk in the autumn I took my camera and got shots of the moors, when the heather is very deep purple and the bracken begins to turn gold. I used these images as thumbnails throughout the book. The silver line running along each page represents the path we took, I created it by sponging silver acrylic paint between two torn strips of masking tape, using a damp sponge.

The book pages are stitched together using silk thread that I dyed and then sponged randomly with silver paint. On the cover I made a tiny book with ordnance survey pages. The book measures 5" (13cm) square.

The wonderful world of glass art

I made my first lens on Squidoo about - guess what - glass.

Squidoo is a site where you can make as many lens as you like and each lens is like a tentacle of information on a subject of your choice. My lens includes a short introduction about myself, 3 articles about glass, a list of glass books available on Amazon, glass photos from my Flickr, a glass fusing video clip, a list of useful glass related websites and a glass artist's poll.

Why not pay a visit to my lens http://www.squidoo.com/Primitiveglass and drop me a comment or vote on the glass poll? I also have another lens, http://www.squidoo.com/kafgallery about the art gallery where I work.

Welcome to DaWanda

I've just joined a European and UK selling site http://en.dawanda.com/shop/Glassprimitif for hand made and hand crafted items. At DaWanda you can buy in euros and meet other European sellers. Please visit my new shop where I am listing glass jewellery and tokens.
Also see DaWanda at http://dawandashopdirectory.blogspot.com and http://indiepublic.ning.com/group/dawanda