May - October

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What can I say? I have travelled through Spring and Summer and now Autumn is coming closer every day.

There has been the most beautiful full moon, during which time I seem to have little need of sleep. I wake very early and catch the world whilst it is sleeping.

I feel constantly peaceful and have little need of other people. Is this a good thing? It seems so to me. I have so many characters inside my imagination from the stories I write, I am never lonely.

I have seen many clear blue skies, listened to innumerable  dawn choruses, sat amongst the sand dunes and watched bees buzzing from flower to flower.

I have taken the colours from around my home this year and painted and made jewellery as is my way.

This year is all about my work.

I have watched the ebb and flow of the tides every day and taken photographs of the changing colours across the river.

I continue to take photographs, though now on my iphone - so much more exciting than my first Box Brownie camera.

I take my images over to RedBubble and make prints on acrylic blocks and canvases and wrap them around very boring white ceramic mugs. This one of compressed cardboard boxes that once contained fruit looks particularly good. I also make cushions there and cards.

Bella was very ill during the summer - she is now 12 and we thought that she was just slowing down as her age increased but no - she had a pyometra - and had 1 and a half kilos of puss and blood removed along with her womb. She was initially misdiagnosed as having arthritis and being excessively fat by the first vet who examined her. The second vet came to her rescue.

She is now like a 5 year old - ready for everything that live has to offer.

Whilst looking after Bella - I found my comfort zone with Jane Austin and Pride and Prejudice.

Sometimes the most inspiring of things show up when walking.

I was asked to make a 3 foot diameter papier mache tray. Traditional methods and hours of work.

 I love my cave of a kitchen.

 And my studio that overlooks the every-day opera of life on the street.

THE GARDEN

I have to take you to a garden.
It is essential that you tell our friends.

I have one lifetime only here.

There is a void and then a vision.
The summer rain is felt as music.

The water and the wind whisper through Eternity, a language that we dream of.

Above the mist, behind the storm, beneath the rain.
Together in a thousand moments.
A delicate symphony of light, like diamonds shine and play.

Shadows fall away. Beauty would be these and death sweet, not sad.

All an elaborate chain of life.
All an elaborate chain of love.

paper mâché jewellery

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I run workshops in private houses around the country and from my own home in Devon from time to time. I also have an active YouTube Channel with many short tutorials and I will shortly be uploading video workshops that will give almost the same experience as my Half Day, One Day and Weekend Workshops. They will cover all of my many different types of papier mâché jewellery techniques.

making jewellery with air dried papier mache, hardening, gilding, scorching

making jewellery with air dried papier mache, hardening, gilding, scorching

making jewellery - papier mache, hardening, gilding, scorching

I have been making and selling my jewellery for over twenty five years, during which time it has been found, sought and collected, much to my delight, by people from around the world. It has been for sale in Craft Selected Galleries, Independent Galleries small and large, Museums and Art Galleries, at Liberty and at my Spitalfields Market stall in London, in Europe and Japan and at the Guggenheim Museum shop in New York. 

making papier mache bowls - textured pulp, painting, gilding, distressing, waxing

papier mache bowls - creased finish - metallic powders and wax

making papier mache platters with paper layers, gilding and distressing

decorating bowls with printed papers - gilding

quickly drying papier mache bowls via microwave - flour and water

making papier mache collars - to be gilded. Also rims for platters + bowls

papier mache gilded and painted bowl

I make necklaces, rings, brooches, pendants and earrings rings that may incorporate papier-mâché beads that resemble baroque pearls, opals, ancient clay, bone, metal or semi-precious stones. I am fascinated by fragments of all kinds and often include pieces of discarded clay pipes stems that I find on the foreshore of the River Thames at lowtide. They sometimes taken on the blue/grey colours of the clay and river silt that has washed over them for hundreds of years and through countless ebbing and flowing of many tides. Also I may add fragments of pottery, glass, plastic and numerous little seaworn treasures that are cast up along the shoreline. I look in antique and flea markets to find beautiful old necklaces that can be broken down and incorporated with my own work. I make impressions from found and natural objects - magnolia seed heads for example - then I cast impressions in papier-mâché clay and or epoxy resin, that are twisted and folded, dried or hardened with wood glue or resin, gilded with gold or silver, distressed or painted. Necklaces, bangles, earrings and brooches, bowls and platters - embellished or incised, painted and gilded, the list goes on.

making necklaces using pressed and folded air dried paper pulp, hardened and gilded

making flexible moulds using natural and found objects

moulded impressions of tiny flowers

mould with pressed fine white papier mache pulp

papier mache impressions of sycamore seeds to be made into necklace

impressed and folded papier mache beads, hardened, painted, gilded, varnished

different ways of finishing papier mache beads - these resembling faience 

making papier mache beads with flour and water

making beads with Tyvek paper and iridescent tissue - heated and compressed

making papier mache beads, discs - hardened & gilded with matt gilders paste

making various papier mache beads, impressed, hardened and gilded with gold leaf

making various papier mache beads, hardening and gilding

looking for inspiration - collecting photos, sketches, objects

collecting inspiration - for example distressed plastic discs from a timber yard

collecting inspiration - driftwood

painting techniques - acrylic inks, gilding, overlays, mixed media

My working methods are to travel and draw, paint, make notes, take lots of photographs and bring back paintings and ideas to work on in my studio, some of which I later develop into paintings, often abstract, from images that hold the key colours and associated ideas of the different places. Then I research, paint, write and make a unique kind of papier-mâché jewellery from fragments of my paintings. They are coated in a clear, hard epoxy resin, gloss or matte varnish.

making papier mache jewellery that resembles enamel

 

painted and gilded papier mache and resin pendant

painted and gilded papier mache and resin earrings

I also experiment by using a combination of things in some pieces - papier-mâché, mixed media, resin, wax and found objects, acrylic ink, gouache, watercolour, pencil, oil pastel, gold, silver and copper leaf, metal foil and powders, pigments, tissue and tracing paper plus interesting commercially produced paper and found paper, Italian sweet wrappers, metro tickets, unusual packaging etc.