Creative moments!

I must say that I just love my newly created studio.  I have never really had a separate designated room for creative endeavours...and I am just relishing this space...it makes me happy to spend time in it....which is what I wanted.  It is bright and airy, warm with heating, spacious, I put the Ipod on its speakers, crank up the music and immerse myself into doing...it feels so lovely.

A couple of weeks ago in the studio I ran a beginners introduction workshop to monoprinting.  Three lovely ladies attended and I introduced Anna, Guðrún and Ingibjörg to the joy of playing with different types of monoprinting.  All three ladies could speak a little English which made my job a whole lot easier.

 

 They experimented with the subtractive,

additive 

and transfer methods. 

 

Played with paper stencils

and textured materials to create differing effects,

plus pulled a ghost print from each plate.

The ladies seemed to thoroughly enjoy the afternoon as I did.

I had also intended to run a Japanese bookbinding and decorative paste paper weekend workshop the following week but unfortunately that ended up being cancelled as there were not enough takers.

Hopefully I will get the chance to offer it again in the near future.

Initially the participants would have spent the Saturday afternoon creating their own unique decorative covers and end papers for their book. Paste papers are made from a wheat paste mixture and have been used in bookbinding for over 400 years.

And then the following afternoon spend time creating their book to end up with something like this.

 

A lovely hardcover journal/drawing/guestbook

 

using their own unique original decorative covers 

filling the book with the soft look of torn papers

 and stitching it all together with the Japanese stab binding method

I interspersed a few of my favourite art quotes amongst the blank pages in this example to inspire me to go forth and fill it creatively.