Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Handmade Wellington 2012

This weekend just been was a long weekend (for Queens Birthday) and I've decided to take an extra day off giving me a delightful FOUR DAY weekend! I feel like I really need it too - life has been so busy lately.

This last weekend I took part in a couple of courses at Handmade Wellington, which is a festival of all things handmade. Over the weekend there are numerous courses and lectures you can attend. Whilst I would have liked to have gotten the full ticket (8 classes over 2 days) time/money wouldn't really allow for it and I was also a little unsure what I was really getting myself into, so I decided to do two course, one on Saturday and one on Sunday to see what I thought of it and if I'd like to do a full programme in 2013.

The two courses I did were Turkish marbeling paper and hand carved stamps and printing. I chose these two as they are both things I have wanted to try for a while, but have always felt a bit anxious about trying them on my own.

On Saturday I did Turkish marbeling, it didn't start out well as the tutor had been expecting about 4 students and there were 16 student so she felt a bit flustered and worried that she did not have enough stuff for everyone (which I think was understandable).

Overall it was a pretty fun class, but it was a pretty messy process and I'm not sure if teaching it on the ground on a tarpaulin was the best idea as people seemed to be climbing over each other and we didn't really have enough space to dry our work. It was fun, but I really do like order so it was a little chaotic for me.

The final results were pretty amazing though - I only ended up with two pieces of marbling I was happy with, so those were the two I took home with me.

I do think I'd like to try marbeling paper again, but I think it will have to wait until we visit either my or Rich's parents as its messy and you need a lot of space - we just don't have the space in our one bedroom apartment. Maybe we can do it sometime during the Christmas break.

On the Sunday I did a class in hand-carved stamps and printing, I enjoyed this class a lot more, although the tutor again nearly ran out of supplies as there were many more people in the class than she was expecting! I think its really bad planning by the organizers of the event and really bad for those teaching as they can't prepare the right amount of supplies for their classes - I can imagine that would be so frustrating!

The stamp carving turned out to be much more simple than I imagined and I can't wait to do more, I've already ordered some fabric safe ink off the internet. Here's my first stamp, prior to the carving.

Then here it is all cut out - we just cut the stamp out of an eraser, but I am planning on buying some rubber blocks on the internet to do more carving. At $1.50 per eraser, the cost can soon add up so I decided seen as I enjoy it so much I may as well just bite the bullet and get a large rubber block so I can make loads.

The ink that the tutor had could be stamped on paper or fabric - so I decided to stamp both both! First up is the paper stamping.

Second is the fabric stamping, I have decided I want to make a little pouch out of this fabric, I really love the idea of printing my own fabric.

Finally, I had time to make one more stamp, so I decided to make a little buttercup stamp as well.
Overall I really did enjoy my classes and next year I will sign up for a few more I think and try some new crafty things. But I do think that the organizers need to finalise the class numbers a little earlier on so that the tutors can prepare for the correct number of people - it would be kind of horrible expecting to teach 4 people and end up teaching 16.

11 comments:

Camelia Crinoline said...

You have all the fun things going on in Wellington. You stamps look great. I love the leaf pattern on the fabric. Printing on your own fabric and then making a dress or something would be really fun. I think I did stamp making when I was a kid but we used carved potatoes not erasers probably because it was cheaper.

Trees said...

@ Camelia Crinoline - You should come up and join me next Queens Birthday! I'd love to have a friend to go with :D

Julia said...

That sounds like much fun!
I love the end results.

Max said...

Oh they look so cool! I'm contemplating printing some fabrics too at the moment (thinking tea towels to begin with!) using contact paper cut outs, but i prefer the idea of stamps as you can reuse them and use them for all kinds of printing x

Vintage Sweetheart said...

looks like fun bummer they were unorganised!! I love the stamps. xx

Qué Acierto! said...

Really great all your works. Anytime I will try one of them.

alicia said...

so fun! wellington always seems to have cool stuff happening - i love it! <3

cb said...

what a really awesome festival! i would have loved to have attended and stamped my little heart out with you! i love both that you made, sooo cute!
xo,
cb

Vix said...

I'd love to have a go at the fabric stamping, what a great idea to create a really unique handmade frock. The leaf print is lovely. x

Curtise said...

Your stamps look great. Printing your own fabric and then making something out of it would be awesome! xxx

Stacey said...

Wow, that would have been a lot of fun! I'd love to take some classes & learn some new crafty skills.