Such a long time since I looked at a blog let alone wrote something on mine! Hopefully the worst is over, work wise, and I can concentrate on being more creative for (at least) the rest of the year.

The picture on the left is a close up of a piece I finished recently based on landscapes which are increasingly fascinating me. I walk a lot around the fields locally when I take my dog out each morning and love looking at the fields and trees and how everything changes over the course of the year.

I've been invited to take part in Oxfordshire Arts Week again (did I say?) - this time in a nearby village with a potter and a ceramic sculptor. It should be a good mix and we're only going to open for 3 days (instead of this year's 9!) which is more manageable, and hopefully a lot less tiring.

After that we have a Guild Branch exhibition next October at Wantage museum, which is a lovely little venue. We've decided to keep all exhibits to a uniform size which should work well within a small space.

The other week I took part in a fabulous workshop with Jacky Russell. Jacky did the Diploma at Windsor and Maidenhead with Jan and Jean, finishing a couple of years ago. She 'specialised' in lutradur which is a product I have heard of but never used. This workshop was all about lutradur and we had a great day. We painted it and printed on it, burnt it, sewed with it, put gesso on - the list was endless. The great thing is that if you put acrilyic paints on or gesso (either splashed on or carefully printed on with a stamp) this acts as a resist so that you can then get out your heat gun and burn away as much as you like around the resist. The picture above shows some of the samples I came home with. The small dots you can see were made with a fine soldering iron (on my Christmas list!). The picture further above is a close up of one of my favourite samples done with gesso and then machined and painted with silk paints after I used the heat gun.

Am having problems these days finding time for anything creative, so I've decided to make myself do 30 minutes a day - that shouldn't be too hard! Anything where I'm looking at colour, texture, shape etc, which means most things are happening in my sketchbook but it's good background for something - eventually!

I have been following Maggie Grey's online lessons at http://www.d4daisy.com/maggiete.htm as I bought her latest book at the Knitting and Stitching Show. Here you can see my part-finished 'book'. I loved making the squirly design using a foam stencil and water soluble paper which was layered and dampened and then left overnight on top of the boiler before I could peel it off and stick it on the pelmet vilene. The lovely purply mauve colour came from gesso being put on the vilene quite thickly with salt sprinkled over and then painted with watered down Quink ink. Fantastic - I'd never have thought of it. Maggie comes up with some great tips.

Here's a close up (bit fuzzy, sorry).