Big Fish

Up the A49 to Shrewsbury today with a stop en route at Scrappies, Church Stretton for supplies and to catch up with crafting colleagues Lesley and Liz.

Then onto Severndale School, not sure what to expect. Numbers? Ability? Hard to plan without the information. Had settled on a fish puppet, cut out of a large sheet of card with 2 handles attached so that the children could make it swim around. To be decorated with lots of sparkly bits, colourful papers, textures. Wanted to avoid pva glue if possible so went armed with double sided tape and glue dots. Plus lots of lovely scrap materials; sequin waste, coloured card, cellophane and some wonderful scrunchy stuff that has no name but sounds great when it moves.

We had 10 children in all with various disabilities and lots of helpers. All loved the fish and it was flexible enough to complete quickly or spend longer on if they were happy to do so. Really enjoyed the session and looking forward to the next workshop at Ludlow Junior School where I can develop the fishy theme and go 'under the sea'.

Sunflowers in February

Textile Art workshop for Year 2 at St Martins, Hereford

Year 2 had been studying famous people as a topic and had been introduced to Van Gogh. We took the sunflowers pictures as inspiration and made a wall hanging to decorate the reception hallway.

It was quite a challenge to work with all 48 children, involve them in the process and still come up with a respectable piece of artwork to display at the end of the day!

The children were divided into groups of 8 and then we split the day into half hour sessions. The idea for this wall hanging has evolved over 3 weeks, I really wanted the children to work with fabric and would have loved to have included some sewing. Reality check meant that we swopped stitches for glue but we were all very happy with the effect from using lots of different fabrics.

There's more photos on the Make and Take Away Facebook page click HERE to see

Had an email back from the school......

Thanks so much for the work that you did with our year two children.
The wallhanging looks fantastic and many people have sought me out to
tell me how much they love it.....so thanks

Review of 2010

ECHO

It was difficult to know how much we had achieved at ECHO until just before Christmas. The shop looked wonderful and comparing it too what we had for sale the previous year demonstrated just how far we had come.

There is so much happening all the time we don't always record all the achievements, brilliant ideas and moments of genius that go into making it the special place it is.

Looking ahead we need to become more sustainable and I'm currently writing a report for the board looking at our online options.

Make and Take Away

Elsewhere workshops happened for Shropshire Short Breaks, Leominster Youth Centre, Surestart and Queenswood. However, even Make and Take Away will not escape the funding cuts as the current climate has caused every department of local authority to examine how spend every penny which will bring about changes this year. Last year many clients would not commit to spending as they were unsure just what their budgets were going to be until late into the year. But bring on the change there are always opportunities.

On a very positive note the studio is up and running with power, heating and nearly everything in the right place. Can't wait to spend more time in there very soon.