A flip-through Linda’s hand-bound, plant printed sketchbook with drawing, painting and stamping.

Have a look at the drawings Laura’s been working on this week.

Using photographs in design compositions can be exciting, but also tricky. Join Laura to see lots of examples and discover tips for success.

We love making rubbings, they’re a great way to draw without really drawing. But have you ever considered how you can make transfers from your rubbings? In this video workshop Laura shows you how.

Take a page by page look through Linda’s plant printed artist book. The book is hand made from a variety of plant printed papers. As you’ll see she’s added painted birds and insects, these are worked in watercolour, gouache and acrylic ink.

Take a look at some pages from Linda’s poppy sketchbook.

We love to find inspiration in our gardens and you know we both have used poppies in our work. Take a look at these beautiful examples and maybe use them to draw or paint from in your sketchbook.

So you’ve been working in your sketchbook and are really happy with the pages, but how can you translate that to fabric? In this two-part workshop Linda will show you how she creates a painterly study of poppies in her sketchbook then takes those pages as inspiration to create a quilted panel.

Create your own handprinted collage papers, perfect for sketchbook and mixed media painting. Then explore how you can expand your collage and have fun playing with scale.

Don’t lose your stitched samples! Keep them safe and organised in your sketchbook. In this class Laura will show you how to add your stitched samples successfully into your sketchbook and build a lovely reference of technique.

Join Linda for a look through one of her sketchbooks as she talks about mark making and then how it’s possible to interpret those marks into your textile work, in this case using dimensional fabric paint. 

We always encourage you to save your scraps, but what to do with all those bits of paper? They are perfect for using in a mixed media art journal page. In this video workshop Laura will show you how to quickly colour your sketchbook page using scraped acrylic paint, create a frame, add collage elements and draw linear details. The pages you’ll make will make the perfect home for your art diary writing, photos and collected ephemera.

We’re often asked how to translate successful sketchbook pages into fabric techniques. In this video Laura demonstrates how easily that can be done with a little sampling and experimentation. She’ll work with ink, acrylic paint and hand dyeing to interpret design ideas from her sketchbook pages.

We’re used to working from light to dark in our sketchbooks so let’s mix it up and start with dark backgrounds and add white. Laura will show you how you can use a range of white and light media to add highlights and pattern to your sketchbook pages. 

Considering the Elements of Design can seem daunting, but really they are just the ingredients in any project. In this workshop Linda discusses ideas for creating shape using a variety of lines, but no outlines! She also combines stencils and masks to create pattern within a shape.