In celebration of Valentin’s day the staff and tutors at Heart Space Studios got together to develop mixed media work based upon Paper Cutting. Debby Bird led the session – a chance for everyone to get to know one another better and swap information, materials and ideas. The project was to make selling exhibition of heart pictures or cards for our gift shop.

The tutors had been asked to bring in materials and equipment from their own practice, and so when these came out everyone stared to play with different things..

everyone had very different pieces of inspirational materials…

the characters of the makers was apparent by the things they chose to bring….

Each person has developed stashes of very personal things and now they had a good excuse to use them…..

in fact even the boxes and bags the materials had been brought in were inspirational.

Just as we were getting started we were visited by a camera team to record the workshop for the regional daily news programme on ITV.

Sophie and I were interviewed separately about various aspects of the how Heart Space works, she was fluent and received a round of applause from the group, but I was told by the interviewer that they had lots of ‘sound bites’ from me – I think this is a polite way of saying  I didn’t exactly answer the questions.

But we were all intrigued by the roving miniature camera used to get close-ups of the techniques were using. Back to work after the excitement and after we had given 5 top tips for beginners – more of which later…..

Once the filming was over everyone suddenly seemed to be energised by what they could achieve in the day, they each had to make 1 sample heart picture that would ideally lead to a few other versions when they went home, when framed all this work will make up the Valentine’s exhibition for Heart Space Studios

I was really pleased to see that Libby, who volunteers helping to generate our publicity, used the techniques I had taught at the first session of the Crazy Beading course that run on alternate Saturday mornings – really good to see how simple ideas can be adapted to new materials.

Suddenly hearts started to appear on all the work sites.

a close – up reveals a really strange use of mixed media – now who would have thought that medicine capsules could look so glamorous?

a really interesting idea emerged from Kirsten, she placed hearts and figures either side of a large decorative heart all of which she had cut from maps, I liked the idea that she could make links between the hearts and the figures using the map as a route……..

the simplest hearts are often very successful – these stitched, printed, miniature bunting strips are just so desirable.

When the sampling session was finished everyone set their work out for viewing by everyone – several people were determined to get more work for next week – which apart from St Valentine’s day celebration is the 3rd anniversary of the opening Heart Space Studios.

Well they all promised to send or bring work for exhibition by the end of the week – so the next post will show the results….Oh and the 5 top tips for staring to make with textiles,

1 when threading a needle 1) cut the needle end of the thread at a 45% angle

2 when threading a needle 2) lick both the end of the thread and the eye of the needle

3 use circular needles to knit garments – you only ever have to make the basic knit stitch ( not alternate with rows of purl) and there are fewer seams to stitch up.

4 use the best possible materials you can afford – always.

5 press as you go when making any garments (this is also my own favourite rule)