Hi there how are you all doing?

I thought I would just do a quick Blog to show you my Clarity DT Samples for the HOCHANDA shows on Friday 26th Feb 9am and 1pm – in case you don’t know, you can see these shows on…….

Sky 673 – Freesat 817 – Freeview 85

And if I don’t get this post out on time you can watch them on Catch up on the HOCHANDA App or via the Website.

I am very busy at the moment and trying to stay focussed on my TO DO list……… I keep prioritising jobs so that I meet my deadlines, (some of them self imposed) but the trouble is, 90% of the list is priority 1 and 2. So I am trying not to get distrac

I made a few cards for the Cherry Green Butterfly designs. I love the collage sets. It’s funny though, if I have a collage Stamp I break it up, if I have a set of interchangeable stamps, I collage them? I think that you can see by my samples that I got a bit carried away with one Butterfly in particular.

Now I think I have told you before that I often work backwards. To me it seems the right way to work though. So I made a backing paper with a Gel Print and some structure paste and then coloured the Butterfly to match. I do like making 5”by7” cards, I love the shape of them, I think this one ended up slightly bigger but hey I don’t need to find an envelope for it to fit into so it doesn’t matter what size it is.

I think I have a thing about working backwards from my Teacher at College, I went back in my late 30’s early 40’s to do an Interior Design & Soft Furnishings Course. Well, I didn’t feel very inspired by the Teacher, she was far too specific for my liking. The day I realised this Woman could do nothing for me and I would have to teach myself was the day she told me to go and pick a leaf up off the ground and design a pattern using the leaf as INSPIRATION? What???? How about I just design a pattern from my head and then let you know what the relevance is of the Pattern and how I think influences over my lifetime brought me to that Design??? Pick a leaf???? Didn’t we do that in the Infants school. I was waiting for her to ask me to cut up a potatoe at any moment. Come on this was a course potentially leading to a Degree? Pick a leaf!

If you pick a leaf and make it into a pattern wouldn’t it be a LEAF pattern?

I mean how about telling us at least to “pick something from nature”? Why did we all have to just pick a leaf? I have never gotten over this as you might have guessed. It knocked my confidence because after this she became very picky at everything I did, just because I told her I could draw a pattern much better from my head than I could from being influenced by a Leaf, because Leaves Don’t influence me to want to draw anything I said, leaves are already doing it for themselves!!.

That was the moment she labelled me in her head I think? Things were never the same after that, and I was with her for a full six years in all.
Each year I prayed we got a different teacher but it was always Mrs No Imagination! To be fair I think her better subject was the Soft Furnishings, she came into her own a bit on that score, even though she forgot to tell me that not all materials are suitable for making Quilt Covers, save that one for another day!

You are totally missing the point she said! You have to be able to work by the criteria written in the Projects towards the final exam. “OK” I said, I will go and pick a leaf.

How I managed to get a Mackintosh Stencil Design from a leaf which I later painted onto a College Door for my Exam, and have her believe that I did actually design it via an initial inspiration of a LEAF leading to a Love of Mackintosh, I will never know. Either she DID ACTUALLY BELIEVE ME or She couldn’t be bothered to argue about the Leaf anymore!

How I work it – design a pattern, make a frame, turn that frame into a Stencil and Paint a Door in College, then go out and look for a Leaf that looks like it may have been the inspiration for me to do all of that and stick it in the front of my Folder so it looks like I started from THE LEAF!

Today if say, Barbara Gray, told me to go and pick a leaf and make a design from it, I would pick MANY leaves and put them in Resin to make a pattern or stick them to a canvas with Glossy Accents or just semi paint them into a Tag Design (actually have done that one).

I think what I learnt from that is what I always believed anyway. If you make an Art Student of any Subject, do something too specific and not let them run freely with their own ideas on things it will take them up to 10 years to find they are actually as arty as the other leaf pickers but just have a different outlook on Art & Design than the person who set up the course!!! Really shouldn’t the course say pick a Medium, paint, ink, blood crayons anything? And design a pattern using it, in the theme of ………

Bitter and twisted, never, look what a brilliant job I have right now with Claritystamp!. And I love all the Leaf Stamps, because Leaves are still doing it for themselves!

Thanks for being here

See your soon.

Sam Crowe