Teaching journal play, and a Christmas song

At the end of October I taught a journaling class to a group of fabulous people, some of whom I'd met at New Wine this summer.  It was an amazing day.

There was a huge range of experience amongst the group of fifteen - some people didn't consider themselves 'crafty' at all, others brought yummy stencils and inks along with them as they were already confident 'crafters'.  Art journaling was new to almost everyone.

Unfortunately I only took a couple of photos.  I get so caught up in teaching I forget to take them!!

I'm sure I've said this before, but one of the things I love about teaching is seeing people move from being fearful of the paint, the white page etc, to having a great time just playing, and discovering how free-ing and relaxing this is.

We all started with an A3 piece of paper which we folded into a little book then journaled on each page.  I worked on a few pages as samples for the day, adding in extra pages and tags [by the way, that coloured 'ribbon' was white, I just sprayed it with Dylusions to get the colour I wanted - much easier than taking lots of different coloured ribbons to a workshop!!]

I still have some pages left to work on... 

...but I've been mad busy at work and I think I'm using all my creative juices up in the classroom!  I've just finished a sheep costume and a spider costume for the song we're singing as part of the nativity play.  Yes, a spider, I'm sure there must have been spiders in the stable.  I wrote new words to Blondie/One Direction's song 'One way or another'

[WARNING: linking these lyrics to the tune may cause that tune to stay in your head for a looooooooooooooooooooooong time!!]

Down in, in the stable

Who will we see there

with baby Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus?

Down in, in the stable

Who will we see there

with baby Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus? (rpt numerous times!!)

Donkey, spider and cat

Dog, mouse, sheep and a rat

Let's see who's around!

Down in, in the stable

Who will we see there

with baby Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus?  etc

Last year I put new words to Mamma Mia, which has taken some matching, but I'm pleased with the result, especially since we can sign a lot of this song easily!!

New Wine North 3:16 Art Exhibition

Sorry for the delay in this post.  When we got back from our hols we discovered the boiler had broken, and a few days later, that it couldn't be fixed and we needed a new one.  I have done an enormous amount of clearing out in the house whilst arranging for all the radiators to be easily accessible.  All done now, although the clearing out still needs to continue!!

 So here, as promised, are some photos from the exhibition of work from New Wine North 2013.  We displayed the work in the areas we'd been teaching in.

My white paper 'tablecloth' had gained some fabulous areas of inkiness over the course of the week so I embellished them a little before displaying all the little books on black card.

 The tags added to the little book above gave such a lovely feel to the whole thing.

As I was putting the above book out on display I noticed the creator of it had made a tiny version using the same fold and added it to a page - such a fab idea!

 The above pictures were displayed within the general art area.  People could come in each afternoon and use materials to create.  There were some fabulous pieces.  The orange piece above is created with a single line.  Below I've shared photos of most of the other areas

willow lanterns

fretwork

copper foiled stained glass

watercolour

upcycling

lino and screen printing

This was my very favourite piece though, drawn by a little girl.  I'd frame this but it wasn't for sale... reminds me of Quentin Blake's illustrations!

What a privilege ...

 ... to teach so many people new to art journaling at New Wine NE 2013.  I taught almost 100 people (some people came back again, and some again again! so I'm not sure of the exact number) over the week and it was one of the most fabulous things I've ever done.  Only one or two had even heard of art journaling.

The 3:16 arts venue was in a large marquee last year but this year we had a whole cattle shed!   It was huge! People had the opportunity to take classes in so many different art activities including watercolour, lino cutting, screen printing, fret cutting, stained glass (copper foiling), sculpture, proddy rug flowers, weave a prayer, stitch a prayer, canvas art, felting, mosaic, willow lanterns, creating from driftwood and sea glass ..... and more...

... including art journaling with me!  This collection of tables, more or less in the middle of the room, was my space for the week.

My maximum of 11 people per class soon stretched to the 13 we could fit around the tables.

And that pristine white paper was soon beautifully coloured with oversprayed ink, paint and stamped images.

One of the things I LoVe about teaching workshops is seeing the colour combinations other people put together.

It was also great to see people just enjoying the freedom to play with paint and ink and rubber stamps.  One young lad said it was the first piece of art he'd done that he actually liked!  Others loved the freedom from rules, although some found this really scary at first!

At the end of the week we held an exhibition of work, which I'll share in my next post :)