Workshops December and March

Christmas Cards and Gifts workshop 3 December
I'm holding a workshop at my home on Wednesday 3rd December and it will cover making paper with a Christmas theme and making gift boxes and a couple of simple books. The pictures here are of cards I've made over the years, I need to come up with a theme for this year but inspiration hasn't struck as yet.
Last year's cards:-


The year before:- I didn't make a lot of this one, just some for very special people.

Another year

Another year

Christmas 1999

Some early cards

The papermaking techniques we will cover will include embossing, pulp painting and paper with inclusions.

Here are some examples of the packages we'll make.

The books:-



Share the Journey - Plant fibre book workshop 21 March 2009
I spent a bit of time yesterday working on the sample book for the workshop I’m running in March next year. I had made a mock up using some cedar blind but it was time to make one close to how the workshop book will be, it has taken me a while to find the time but yesterday everyone was out and I could make a good start.

The mock up.
Marianne’s husband Rex has made a range of timber pieces from different Australian plants.



For the mock up two I chose a cedar pine, there were two pieces of that and it was one of the less interesting timbers. When drilling the holes I also discovered it was quite a hard timber and I slipped when drilling the first couple of holes, I worked out it was a good idea to use an awl to make a starting hole for the drill. I’ll be pre-drilling all the holes for the workshop so participants won’t need to be concerned.




While I was doing the preparation I was also preparing the notes for the workshop and keeping a bit of a note about the time it takes for each step. I haven’t started sewing yet, that will have to wait for another day soon, I’m still deciding on what thread to use. For the outside I’d quite like to use sky blue to tone in with the blue sky and to contrast with the timber but I feel that it would look wrong on the inside, so I might settle for off white.


The the picture on the cover is of one of the lights on Princes bridge and it has Victoria University in the background. The workshop will be held on the 16th floor of that building and the the exhibition Shared Journeys will be in the gallery on the 17th from 3rd - 21 st March 2009, there is more information at http://www.gailstiffe.info/ once you click on workshops.

Cyanotypes and Canberra

I have just returned from attending a workshop at the National Library which was held as part of the Community Heritage Grants Scheme. Women's Art Register of which I am coordinator has been awarded a grant for significance assesment. The workshop was great and I learned lots of things about preserving and documenting. I spent a day on digitisation and the picture below shows a simple set up for photographing pictures.

I even learned a lot about my camera that I didn't know and it has prompted me to plan to go back and read the manual again instead of just pointing and shooting with the camera on automatic. Mind you when I took the photos today for this blog and the postcard one I did it the old way with me climbing up a ladder and shooting onto the kitchen bench.
I stayed with my cousin in Fadden and here is a picture from their front balcony, great views across the valley to the Brindabellas.


On Monday before I left for Canberra, Zoe and I got together to do some more cyanotypes, this is one I did last time we got together, the paper is kozo and the image was made with a positive and a negative of the pardelote photo we took at Mt Hotham.

I then had a play around with toning the cyanotypes, I had done it before by soaking the cyan in dilute washing soda but when I googled it I discovered that if you then dip in tea you get a much browner result.

These are the backs of some pulp paintings dipped in washing soda and tea for a short time, the cyanotypes are of very loose nests.

These are on some Korean paper that I was testing to see if it would hold together for some larger pieces, the darker one was left in the tea for at least 20 minutes and the lighter one for about 5 mins.


This is a photo of one of the nests I made, it would have worked better if I'd inverted the colours and used the negative instead of positive image however I do like the effect of just some of the blue being toned.