Arts and Crafts

There was a "spring" in our step for this workshop! 

What a lovely idea to spring into spring with Pom-Pom sheep & lambs, ready for Easter.    The adorable sheep designs were conjured up by Mary & Julie to show different ways of making a flock.   Together with Mary providing her pom-pom flower expertise - have you noticed the flower displays on the tables at our Coffee Shop on Monday?    All Mary's doing.  

Well done girls on another great workshop. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OUR READERS!

We didn't have a January workshop - as we were meeting to organise all the great workshops we have for 2025!  

So February got us up & running with a watercolour Pen & Wash workshop.  What lovely garden subjects Kate had sourced for us to copy (trace for the non-drawers!).  The colours really got us in the mood for Spring!   Thanks Kate.  

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to all our readers!

Well what a year its been for workshops - both our afternoon and evening workshops have been a great success and many being over subscribed - so get in early if you want to come!  

We saw the year off in superb style by creating some fabulous Xmas Wreaths - thank you Kate for your creative ideas and encouraging us to create some really beautiful wreaths. 

Please note - no workshops in December & January. 

Keep a look out in 2025 for dates of new & inspiring workshops. 

Wow!  This turned out to be our best attended evening workshop this year!  Everyone was keen to start making their Christmas cards early & what an array of fabulous designs Mary had created for us to make.   Thank you Mary, for all your hard work making cutting out all the pieces, making up the packs & passing on your expertise on card making.   

A great time was had by all & the mince pies went down a treat too.  Thank you again Mary.   Merry Christmas to all our evening attendees & we'll keep you posted on 2025 dates in the New Year.

Kimekomi is the Japanese art of doll-making & dressing. The dolls are made of wood. The ancestors of kimekomi dolls are

kamo ("willow-wood") dolls, small dolls carved of willow and

decorated with cloth scraps.  Our efforts were far less elaborate, consisting of marking up polystyrene balls, then pushing shaped, Christmas-themed, material scraps into grooves made in the ball! Then finished off with braid, or ribbon, bows & tassels. Voila!  A Christmas ornament for your tree! 

Thanks to Janet for marking up all the balls & making it a very enjoyable afternoon.

Kate took us on a journey of technique discovery during this workshop.   Even the men who attended were inspired!

Who would have thought clingfilm and credit cards could be used with watercolours! 

The landscape designs were inspired by a day at the beach and took us back to a lovely summer day during a very rainy day! 

Thank you Kate for your expertise and patience. 

Well done Julie for washing & ironing 26 canvas tote bags! 

Again, we used the stencilling techniques acquired from our Evening class the week before.  We even had a bespoke 'Clifton Campville Art & Craft Club' stencil, which was well used. 

Great designs were created and the 'Giraffe Bag' went down well too! 

Thank you Julie 

We all went a bit 'dotty' during this workshop!

Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image.  When it comes to Pointillism and Aboriginal art it’s better to start with the key differences. The Pointillism style of painting dates back to mid-1880s Paris, pioneered by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Aboriginal art, as you can imagine, is the art form of Australia’s indigenous people, and has been for thousands of years.  Our workshop explored the Aboriginal art form of using 'earth' colours to create an image.  Thank you to Helen Paton for her great enthusiasm for this art form. She really encouraged our artistic juices to flow!

 Well, I bought loads of tubes of pastels to scoff on during this workshop.  Ha! Ha! turned out we were using pastel pencil paints! Paints, which are not edible!  Oh well. . . . . Chris did a fantastic job of  showing us examples of how to create our masterpieces, on both white & black paper.  So in the end I enjoyed myself!  Thank you Chris for a very informative, if somewhat messy, workshop. 

Wow!  What an interesting subject this is - we were bowled over by Mary's expert knowledge.  Her guidance meant we all actually managed to create a card - drawn by our own hand. 

The Zentangle design patterns sent us all into a 'Zen' state and introduced us to a great doodling artform.  Our mental health was improved greatly. 

Thank you Mary for all your hard work!

Merry Christmas to all our Readers & Crafters! 

What a great way to wave goodbye to 2023 with a Christmas themed mini-makes workshop.  We had several volunteers demonstrating their crafts, including:  Decoupage, Macramé, Felting, Card Stitching, Card making, Soft Toy Teddy pom-pom and Quilling. 

Thank you to all our volunteers in demonstrating their expertise of their craft throughout the year. 

PS:  keep a look out for our evening workshops starting in March 2024. 

Christmas is coming & we embrace it! 

What a delightful afternoon this was to get us all into the Christmas Spirit.  The cabins looked fabulous, especially when lit with a battery operated tea light, just adorable.  Thank you Mary for doing all the intricate preparation work & making up packs up for us so we could get stuck in straight away.  We were lost in a beautiful winter wonderland of cabins.   

Our second workshop of the month was a felting affair.  

We did not know if an evening workshop would be popular - how wrong we were!   We were fully booked with many bringing friends along to join them for the evening.   Thank you Mary for your expertise - she worked really hard preparing all the wool etc. 

How did that rat creep in - but love his  felt top hat! 

Thank you all for making this such a succesful evening - rest assured, we will be doing another evening workshop in 2024 - so keep a look out for a date!

Wow!  We've had a very busy October with TWO workshops this month, which included our very first evening workshop! More on that later. 

Firstly, we had our 'Poppy Making' workshop to honour our service men & women, of all wars, in time for Remembrance Day.  We had several different crafts.  Including, paper, crochet, felt, watercolour paintings and knitted poppies.   Thank you to all who supplied their craft knowledge to make this a very memorable afternoon. 

Lest we Forget

Another fabulous workshop by Kate & Mary.  The wreaths had been pre-prepared earlier in the year by Kate's husband (Thank you Richard) in readiness for this workshop.  

Kate & Mary had been busy for several weeks before hand making gorgeous felted & material pumpkins, as well as a myriad of "extra" decorations to festoon the wreaths. 

What a lovely afternoon we had creating these wreaths. 

Thank you for all your hard work Richard, Kate & Mary

Wow!  What a fabulous workshop this turned out to be. We shall certainly be doing this again, maybe in our new Evening Workshops starting in October.   

Who knew there were so many things you could do to recycle denim!  Julie really pulled out all the stops on this one.  

The denim feathers & Tassels were a great success & very easy too!  The Wine bottle bag was also a big hit!  

In fact, every bit of a pair of jeans was used to make into somthing. I shall never throw a pair of jeans away again!

Thank you Julie

Stitched Cards or Card-broidery - was a very interesting workshop.  Easy instructions meant that we were stitching away in no time with Jan's brilliant step-by-step instructions. You can sew beautiful, personalised, greeting cards which are great to give to friends, family & loved ones. The craft of pricking & stitching designs onto card or paper, which is sometimes called paper stitching, paper embroidery, or string art, is an excellent way of making attractive, personal, greetings cards. Just prick the pattern onto your card and stitch with cotton or embroidery thread.  Thank you Jan!

Watercolour painting is extremely old, dating perhaps to the cave paintings of Palaeolithic Europe, and has been used for manuscript illustration since at least Egyptian times, with particular prominence in the European Middle Ages. However, its continuous history as an art medium begins with the Renaissance. The German Northern Renaissance artist Albrecht Durer (1471–1528), who painted several fine botanical, wildlife, and landscape watercolours, is generally considered among the earliest examples of watercolour. An important school of watercolour painting in Germany was led by Hans Bol (1534–1593) as part of the Durer Renaissance.

We owe Kate (founding member of the club) for this great workshop.  Thank you Kate for organising sharing your passions with us.  The 'Lock Keepers Cottage' exercise was fun - even for the non-painters in the group!

HAPPY EASTER! 

This was our third felting workshop. Having created some furry animals in the past and a felted  landscape workshop last year.   

But this has been the most enjoyable (albeit a few plasters were required - with only a few drops of blood on the artworks!). 

The mnay designs of Key Rings & Bookmarks was remarkable.  

Thank you Chris for her tuition and hands-on help again for this workshop. 

The art of Paper Cutting dates back to the 2nd Century CE, in China, when paper was invented by Cai Lun (a court official of the Eastern Han Dynasty).  As paper became more affordable,

paper-cutting became one of the most important types of Chinese folk art. Later, this art form spread to other parts of the world, with different regions adopting their own cultural styles.   See our own Easter

inspired designs - with Chris's help using templates, or if you were brave enough your own designs!  

Many thanks to Chris for her tuition & hands-on help. 

Well we certainly had a 'mixed' bag of materials to go at for this Workshop.

From tons of buttons, beautiful little gems & creatures for an underwater scene, as well as wool & materials plus more abstract stuff like bottle tops & plumbing fittings! Basically anything you could think of to stick - we stuck (even ourselves at times)! We all dived in and let our imaginations run wild and had great fun - as can be seen from the photos. Thank you again to Kate (with Julie's help) for organising another enjoyable workshop!