Linocuts with Left Handed Lucy in Lancashire

We had a super day at a workshop with Lucy Bishop of lefthandedcrafter and "Woad Butterfly" as our fabulously good tutor in Rochdale, Lancashire.

It was organised for us by Lynn of Doodly Birds and, as Lynn had already been on Lucy's course, she spent most of the day looking after the class, kindly providing us with  tea, coffee, her delicious home made cinnamon swirls and even run to the bakery for some wonderful hot pies for our lunch.

So Thanks to both Lucy and Lynn!

It was far easier to create exciting things with the help of Lucy's expertise than I ever remember when doing linocuts at school. First, I chose to make a sketch of an Olive wood angel figure that I love, then I recreated it to print. I was so excited and pleased with my initial attempt. 

Lucy demonstrated the rudiments of cutting, inking and printing along with the important safety factors, so we didn't lose parts of our fingers. She then expertly guided us through our own endeavours.

She had some super examples for inspiration and a library of books on the subject for us to browse.

I moved on to design and create a quirky dragonfly which I coloured at random

Here's my lino cut and the first magic print.

I love the somewhat imperfect effect when we printed on fabric

The rest of the class were such good company and they all produced some excellent prints.

Carol of carolcsstuff and stampattack cut and printed a super house and a lovely little bird in a cage....

Anna's seed heads, above.

Below,Annette's lovely butterfly made a really effective shopping bag.

Here are Lynn's famous Doodly Birds and the texture panels she made last week.

Barbara made lots of  fabulous gift tags.

Falling leaves on Barbara's Tea Towel

John's classy trees worked so well

John even made a cute little owl

Line up with Lynn, Annette, Carol,Barbara, Jo, Lucy, John

and here with Anna on the left....

I thoroughly enjoyed the day course, one of the best I've been to in ages, and I am really inspired to continue and hopefully increase my skills. Lucy is an excellent teacher and I would recommend her classes if it's something you'd like to learn. Good fun, good results and a most enjoyable day was had by all.

Amazingly FIVE of us were lefthanded... just like Lucy!!

Last, but certainly not least, here is the ATC I made for last month's Vicky Stampers challenge. I waited until the 11th day of the 11th month to post it! We all have someone in our families who should be remembered today so here's my poppy in REMEMBRANCE....

Lest we forget

I stamped the poppy onto vellum, distressed it, then attached it to suitably worded old dictionary print. I must admit that, after the photograph was taken,I did write in the missing letter "r" on the word "remember"! 

I drew this poppy as one of the designs as part of a plate of Japanese stamps for stampattack, a couple of years ago.