Nature journalling

I did a trial nature journaling workshop with friends, then two half day drop-in workshops with Organic Arts at West Town Farm. It all went well and participants seemed to enjoy themselves. I've learnt a lot and I'm looking forward to doing more and developing/adapting them as I go. Here are some pictures of some of the little books that were made.

I'm still not comfortable with the term 'nature jounals', anyone got any other suggestions?

Diary 2013

I have been playing with scanning rather than photographing my diary pages. I think the images come out a bit washed out, but it's more instant, as in I have them on the computer instantly without having to wait for good daylight to photograph them, and then get round to transferring them from the camera. My diary is also a little over A5 size, so it misses off a bit of the edge of the page, but not enough for me to worry about.
I thought I'd try and post each weeks diary pages as the year goes by, which means I'll feel driven to fill each week up, and I might get to post every week this year!
I've filled two weeks so far and have done the first day of week three (my weeks start on a Monday)
(and I've just discovered I can do coloured fonts, though it might look silly on the blog?!)
Click on the images for a larger view.







January week 1







January week 2



January week 3 (just started)

New workshops for next year

I've been teaching book making workshops for a while and I've noticed that people are increasingly interested in my personal sketchbooks and diaries. Here are my 8 most recent diaries, I think I scrapped 2004, and you may notice I didn't get round to covering  2010, it spent a whole year thrown in and out of my bag  and survived very well, which shows how sturdy my stitching technique is!

2003 to 2007 (2004 missing)

2003 to 2007 inside

2008 to 2011

2008 to 2011 inside
(and yes, I've chosen the prettiest pages!)

Because of this interest, and because I'd love to encourage others to keep journals / diaries / sketchbooks, whatever you want to call them, I'm planning extend my workshop repertoire into teaching creative journalling/sketchbooks/diaries/notebooks.

In January I've been asked to do some one hour workshops for  Organic Arts who are having a big re-launch, so I'm going to do 'nature journalling'. Click here for information about the free workshops on offer in January

I'm also hoping to tempt some friends around before then to 'practice' on them in the same way that I practised on some friends with marbling and paste papers earlier this year. I learn a huge amount from trying things out on friends, and hopefully my friend have some fun, and my official punters get a better quality of workshop as a result.
So, here is a little autumn themed book I've made as an example of what we might do on a workshop

Autumn book

 And then I got carried away and made this Haberdashery book which isn't full yet. 

Haberdashery book

This took a bit longer, sewing all those buttons and ribbons on, but it did get me to sort my button collection out.
I can see I'm going to get into making these little theme books, I've got a stash of stuff waiting to be put into more books, and they'd make lovely little presents.