eraser carving class at Brough and Stainmore Art Group

I had a fantastic day yesterday at the Brough and Stainmore Art Group where I taught a workshop on eraser carving. Everyone was so friendly and really enthusiastic, and they created some absolutely amazing art!

This was a beginners’ class, so we started right from the basics, doing a few exercises in order to get to know the tools and materials, and then in the afternoon everyone went on to create larger pieces of work. Some even had a go at printing on fabric. I took photos, and you’ll see the progression everybody made, from their first carvings up to their larger pieces.

I’m going to be hosting some eraser carving workshops in the County Durham and Northumberland areas soon, so if you’re interested please please sign up to my newsletter and I’ll keep you informed of when they are. I’m also happy to travel to Cumbria and North Yorkshire to teach eraser carving workshops (and possibly further afield), so if you would like to arrange one for your art or craft group, then just drop me an email.

In the meantime, enjoy these fabulous creations by my students

P.D.

J.C.

J.C.

B.T.

E.T.

S.C.

K.H.

C.T.

K.Mc.

Unfortunately K.Mc. had to leave early so I didn’t get a chance to photograph her amazing scorpion carving.

Thanks to everyone who came along, I had a great time with you all!

Happy New Year, blog awards and adventure

Happy New Year, everyone! Hope you all had a peaceful and happy time over the festive period. I had a lovely quiet time, staying at home for Christmas and New Year, and visiting my parents in the week in between. Thanks to all my lovely friends who looked after me well over the festive period, you all know who you are

Today is all about catching up on some admin! Way back in August, Anne of Black and White passed on an “Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award” to me, and just this week, Liz of Libroediting passed on a “Kreativ Blogger Award”. Thanks to you both for that, it’s great to feel a connection with other blogs out there! So I’m going to combine the two here.

Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award rules: tell seven interesting things about myself, and pass the award along to some other deserving blogs
Kreativ Blogger Award rules: 1. Share 10 things about yourself that readers may find interesting
2. Pass the award on to 6 other Bloggers. Be sure to leave a comment on their blogs to let them know.

So let’s just go for 10 things about myself:
1. I moved into my current house in 2007. That was house move number 22. It’s a rented house, so there are bound to be plenty more house moves ahead of me yet.
2. I don’t like to see cardboard boxes lying about (see number 1).
3. The first concert I went to by a band that people had actually heard of (instead of local gigs), was Queen at Knebworth in 1986. I was 15, there were 250,000 other people there. It’s still number 1 in my gigs of all time. That gig was unfortunately their last with Mr Mercury.
4. I could quite happily live in a world without chocolate.
5. But not without cake.
6. Or Yorkshire Tea to drink with the cake.
7. Without fail, everyone I meet assumes I am a vegetarian. This has been a constant since my teenage years. I can assure you, I’m not. When it comes to red meat, the rarer, the better
8. My mum is though.
9. I refuse to drive to places that I can walk to in under an hour.
10. Languages I studied at university: German, French, Swedish, Russian, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Danish and ancient Egyptian. German was my degree subject, but I love languages, so tried to study as many as I could.

And I’m going to pass the award along to:

• Slow Lane Blog
• Noo’s Knits and Other Bits
• Papaver Designs
• Lady Catfern
• Claggybitz
• Inkylynn

Have a look around these blogs, there are some beautiful arts and crafts to enjoy!

And now onto the word adventure.
I’ve never picked a word for a year before, although I’ve seen a lot of bloggers do it. But the word “adventure” just kept cropping up in conversations I was having in the run up to the new year, and when the new year came, I decided to nominate it as my word for the year. When new opportunities come up, I’m going to go for it, and not try to make excuses as to why I can’t or shouldn’t do something. I’m a strong, independent woman, I don’t have anyone to answer to, so I should get out there and do some adventuring! My personal friends all know that I already have a big adventure planned for later in the year, but the details of that will have to wait for a bit, not going to reveal them publicly just yet

So here goes… I’m ready for new adventures… bring them on

Yuletide Greetings

Yuletide Greetings 2011

Solstice Greetings to you

Above is the final version of the carving I video-ed in my previous post, which I hope has now made it to the letterboxes of all those I sent it to

Thank you for following my blog this year, it is really appreciated. It’s going to be a quiet festive season for me this year, I intend to curl up in front of the fire with the cats, lots of books, lots of good music and just relax However you spend your time over the next week or so, I wish you a happy and peaceful time.

Cheers!
Carrie

The process of an eraser carving

Over the last week or so I’ve been designing and carving my Yuletide card for this year, and whilst I’ve been doing so, I’ve been videoing the process.

I finally finished the carving and the last of the videos today, so here they all are. Hopefully they will give an insight into the carving process.

Now I just have to get a move on and get these all printed up and in the post

The process of an eraser carving – part one

The process of an eraser carving – part two

The process of an eraser carving – part three

The process of an eraser carving – part four

Sheep on Waskerley Moor – 4 colour reduction lino print

Sheep on Waskerley Moor

On a windy yet sunny day in August 2011, I went for a walk along the nearby Waskerley Moor, and said hello to this young lady. She posed quite happily for me to take a few photos of her, and I was so taken by her, I decided to carve a lino print of her.

If you’ve been following the blog recently, you’ll have seen how this lino print was made, but here’s a quick summary. This is an original four colour reduction lino print, where the lino block is destroyed during the carving process. Starting with the lightest colour, the brown in this case, areas are cut away from the carving material to create the lightest base layer, then a run of prints is taken. The next layer has more cut out from the material, and more prints are taken and so on, and until the final black layer is cut and printed.

The process can be seen in these posts: sheep reduction print process. I would estimate that about 80 hours of work has gone into making these prints!

The originals are available to buy in my etsy shop. If you’re not able to afford that, then I have reproductions available in my Red Bubble store.

This is the final black layer of the carving – as you can see, I won’t get much more out of this carving block

And this was the final layer all printed up and laid out to dry:

Out of the 40 prints, only 20 were registered well enough for me to be happy selling them, hence only 20 in the edition. So I have 20 rejects to do something with – might add them to collages, or alter them in some way – I’ll have to think about it.

A quick wave hello to anyone I met at the Allendale Forge Christmas Fair or the Shotley Bridge Village Fair! Thanks so much for coming along, it was lovely to meet you. I always love doing fairs and chatting to people

And whilst I remember, my hand-printed Yuletide Greetings cards are available in my etsy shop now too There are four different designs available, all of which have been my own Yuletide cards in past years. Must get on with designing my card for this year… anyone else organised and got theirs finished yet?!

Take care, and catch you soon!

Final layer of the sheep reduction print

Fianlly! I will post a proper picture of the completed lino print over the weekend, but for now, you can watch the process of printing the final layer here

(And when I say “brayer” in the film, of course I mean “baren”. Blame the 12C temperature in here muddling my brain!)

Allendale Forge Christmas Fair this weekend

Thanks to everyone for the lovely comments about my vlog in the last post, I shall definitely do some more of those.

This is just a quick post to remind those of you in the north east area that I have a stall at the Allendale Forge Christmas Fair this weekend. Please do come along and say hello if you are in the area, it would be lovely to see you.

Sheep reduction print – layer 3

I did a Vlog! Thought it would be good to show you the print “in action”. As you’ll see, I’m working on layer 3 now.

Let me know if you like the Vlog format – I might do some more if I feel brave

Also, my current newsletter is out, if you’d like to take a read, you can do so here.

Hope you’re well, back soon with layer 4!

sheep reduction print – layers 1 and 2

The first two layers of my sheep reduction print have been carved and printed. My previous two video posts were recorded whilst I was printing the two layers up. I’m afraid my web camera is one of the cheapest around, so the pics aren’t very sharp, but the videos get the idea across.

The first layer was the brown one, and this picture shows the print on the left and the actual carving on the right.

I printed up 40 of these, and let them all dry.

Layer two is the green layer. With reduction printing there is only one block involved, so the areas I wanted to stay brown were cut away from the block, resulting in the rest of the block printing up the areas that are to be green.
This is the actual block after the second round of cutting, followed by the green layer printed up on its own:

As you will have seen in the layer 2 video I took all 40 of the brown prints, and printed the green layer over the top of them, using the guide I cut out in the reduction print preparation.

So now with the two layers, the print looks like this:

And here are all 40 prints, pulled and drying:

Two more layers to go… purple next!

layer 2 of the sheep reduction print

Started work on layer 2 today. I’m struggling with getting the right green at the moment, so I’ve left the prints I’ve done today to dry overnight and see how the colours react with one another. I think you’re right, Anne, 30 prints might be a bit ambitious!

Today’s unintentional background music is Thrillseeker from Fin De Siecle by the ever wonderful Divine Comedy. I’ll have to try and remember to turn my music down when I record these