Even if you fall on your face, you're still moving forward.

Well, this past week I've been in Manchester, house hunting! Eeek :) Looking forward to moving in July. It's getting close now! A brand new beginning.

As well as this, I've been having a gander at places to possibly sell work in the future. I stumbled across an absolute gem, the Manchester Craft and Design Centre. There was some gorgeous work there, and so many opportunities. Two floors of stunning little boutiquey-workshops, as well as an arty coffee shop sat right in the middle, soaking up that buzzing atmosphere. Such an inspiring place, with so much going on! I'm so glad I found it!

So I thought the evenings in the hotel would be a good time to cram work in for my dissertation, so I spent most of my evenings spread out on the bed, typing away and trying to remember where I found the bits of information floating around my head! It was definitely well needed, and I managed to get so much done, I can't quite believe it! 

And of course having our student style, make-shift dinner from sneaked breakfast muffins and butter, with the cheapest ham known to man, and of course popcorn, haha.

At the end of everything we decided to take a lovely country route home, seeing all the natural world again, and finding a fabulous place to have lunch - which did the most amazing puddings! We had to share one and bring a couple home, they were just too good!

And with Easter literally hours away, I'm sure there is only going to be more caloricious indulgence! Especially as I could hardly not make Easter nest cakes now could I!

Happy Easter!

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

So I started this beautifully grotty half term by being asked to help run a free roller printing workshop in Castle Quay in Banbury with my old drawing, book binding and stamp making teacher Stephen Fowler.

Having not done nearly as much art since graduating as I would have liked, I jumped at the chance, and now knowing I've been accepted onto the top-up BA starting in September, I was desperate to get back into as much creative being as possible.

The day was a blast (and I didn't even mind getting up nice and early on my day off), so many people turned up and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

I'd not done roller printing before, but had done many fairly similar things to it in my time so I got into it really quickly. By using scaffolding padding, a craft knife (or stick on strip padding for the younger ones) and a painting roller, every age and ability managed to leave their mark all over the shop walls!

Although loving getting messy and having such a fun-filled, silly day, I have to admit my favourite part was seeing Dad's desperately trying to get their children to 'try somewhere different now' or asking 'why don't we leave that bit for someone else?' when of course they were having none of it, and had no plan to stop. As well as the wife and children going off to do what they'd come to town to do and leaving dad making rollers and drawing designs for people.

Every artist was first an amateur.

 

So as I've been having plenty of spare time recently, I decided to try and teach myself something new.

I've always really wanted to be able to crochet as it looked fun (and more modern than knitting), and my mom had tried once to no avail, so I thought out of the hundreds of crochet videos on youtube, one of them had to work for me!

So after watching a few videos, and reading a couple of intro's to 'beginners crochet' books, I just couldn't tell if I was doing it right or not. I mean something was happening...I just didn't know if it was crochet!?

Then I found the one! It was an American guy (without the patronizing/overly excited voice that the others seemed to have) who seems to do videos for a couple of channels ('GoodKnitKisses' and 'The Crochet Crowd'), that were sooooooooooo simple to understand, I got hooked on just watching them all, and started to practice, and finally got it!

So I attempted to do the octagonal motif in one of the books, although it looked a tad different in the pictures in the book, so something wasn't quite right.

So I thought I'd try something a little more difficult, and I noticed it had a stitch in it that I hadn't learnt, so I tried to find the same guy on youtube doing it, but couldn't, so I went to the next best looking video (videojugartscrafts), who right at the beginning mentioned this was the UK stitch, and said what to look up if you wanted the US version.

So I ended up re-learning the names of each stitch (which wasn't so bad as I hardly knew to start), but thankfully all the stitches were the same, just called different things. So I crocheted this rose :)

FINALLY! I think I got it. Now, just got to practice till it's perfect.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to liveforever.

So seeing as I have now graduated with a foundation degree in art, and have a full year to wait for the top up, I decided to learn more about art therapy as a possible pathway for the future, so have taken on evening classes in it.

As you might guess the first night was full of bonding tasks and observation tasks which ended up in these two stunning newspaper, tape and staple outfits (including shoes, jewellery, handbag and hats), which was a good laugh and a lot of fun.

I can deffinately imagine some of the kids from summer school loving this!