Talented Students

Paisley Power

I enjoy teaching textile design to everyone who wants to create their own printed fabrics. Students attend my unique workshops in Southend-on-Sea, Essex. My workshops are titled Designing Printed Textiles and have been running continuously since September 2018. People with very different levels of experience are able to produce professional designs in each class. Beginners with no experience can produce amazing designs equally as beautiful as those produced by designers with years of experience in the fashion and textile industries.

Digital Textile design artwork by Dawn Jeakings at Metal Art School Southend, Essex.

It is very important to use hand-made artisan elements in a textile design. These give the finished fabric a human feel, which is not possible with fabrics made with designs that have been totally created digitally. Here is the painting that Dawn made to achieve her successful final design, which was printed on lightweight cotton twill.

Digital…

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Publicité

Cuckoo Spit and Xylella

rambling ratz

Cuckoos famously herald the start of spring when you first hear one call. Sadly these days the start of spring tends to be heralded by the sound of a neighbour’s lawn mower revving up of a Sunday morning. The cuckoo is in decline. I suspect it is related to the decline of the birds that they parasitise. They are very particular about which other bird nests they lay their eggs in. Not all bird species are fooled by them. Professor Richard Dawkins explains all about it in one of his books – they are all well worth a read. Cuckoos also leap out of clocks to tell you the time. What they don’t do is spit.

So what causes these frothy blobs on plants? It is the nymph stage of the froghopper, a cute little bug with an impressive ability to jump. When the nymph hatches out of the egg…

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URGENCE ECOLOGIE! / Ecology Emergency!

found-in-france

 Two days after seeing this poster on my weekly shopping trip to Narbonne, I saw an announcement in the local paper for a demonstration on the 25th of May. There was no question, I had to be there. 

    

It may appear a bit disorganized but it was very early and people were still arriving. I do apologize for the photos I wanted to share but missed. My phone/camera was showing nothing but a blank, dark, screen. I don’t know how much of that was due to the strong Mediterranean sun but I am grateful to have the few photos I managed to get. The drummers were from two groups, one in Narbonne and the second joined us from nearby Carcassonne. They kept us all in beat and let everyone know we were there. There were close to 100 drummers in total. I can’t begin to imagine how…

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Backyard Healing Salve Recipe with Plantain, Chickweed, and Ground Ivy

Sounds great, easy and funny! I will try it 🙂

The Druid's Garden

One of the great things about fall is that so many of our spring ephemeral plants, those who dominate the springtime, come back to us again before the snows set in. This is the case this year with chickweed, one of my favorite plants for making a healing salve.  I have been seeking her out for medicine making and most of the summer she was a bit elusive. Finally, she is abundant again! So its time to make some green healing salve for gifts for Yule for friends and loved ones–I thought I’d bring you along for the journey.

Healing Salve in Tins (tins purchased from Mountain Rose Herbs)

This post will provide the recipe for my healing salve as well as insight into three plants used in the healing salve, all of which can be found abundant in most lawns and mowed areas (see these twoposts for information…

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When Fashion And Food Collide – We Are What We Eat

One man’s junk is another man’s treasure, so why can’t so called « junk food » give us something that we can really chew on…like fashion? If you’ll notice, all of the things that are generally unhealthy to put inside your body – animal fats, fatty oils, cholesterol – are actually GREAT to put on the body. (Natural soap is nothing but animal fat, fatty oils make the best lotions and cholesterol is good for the hair.) Whether you should use these products or not isn’t the topic of today’s blog post.

My focus for this news update is when fashion and food collide. The same ornate culinary salesmanship that entices you to buy that sorbet pancake wrap or the whip cream pastry provides some beautiful templates for seasonal ensembles. From heartburn to eat your heart out – fast food can become quite elegant when used as a fashion inspiration. Sometimes…

Are…

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The right to just be like we are

I do not know why, but people always give themselves the right to give you their opinion about your appearance.

You have neither the right to be skinny nor fat, big or small. Be tattooed or have colored hair, not to be capped. If you have too big breasts, it’s not good and if you don’t have big, it’s not good either. If you aren’t epiled they tell you it’s disgusting.

People thinks too you need their comments about your outfit. Where is the problem to wear green pants and a red sweater? Or too loose clothes. Or a skirt if your legs are white. As long as your outfit is decent of course, no one wants to see your buttocks or your nipples. ( Breastfeeding women being a different subject! )

We are all like we are, sometimes we choose our corpulence and sometimes not, sometimes we have an illness or a disability, sometimes we just feel good as we are, and other times we suffer from our appearance and comments from bad people really don’t help.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We should all have the right to exist and to be just as we are.
If your opinion is mean, why feel obliged to share it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please just be nice to other people…

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