Christmas Crafts and Learning to Lino Print

Still a little under the weather here. How’s your week been? In the latest creative update (you can find previous posts here) I’m sharing some Christmas crafts as well as my first experience of lino printing.

Creative Inspiration

I’ve been to our community arts and crafts group this week but had to cancel almost everything else as I’ve not been feeling too good. However, I’ve been keeping a little ‘ideas’ notepad next to the bed for jotting down creative ideas that have come to me whilst reading poetry. I hope to put some of the ideas into practise soon and share with you. Do you read poetry? Have a read of my blog post A Poem a Day in December for families here.

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Lino Printing Workshop

For my Mom’s birthday I’d booked us both onto a lino printing workshop. It was a Hobbycraft online workshop where you get sent the materials in advance. My health can be up and down so being able to do this at home was perfect for me.

Above you can see my basic finished design. It left me really wanting to keep going with lino cutting as I could see that my cutting technique was improving the more I did. As you can tell from my print I need a lot of practise on the printing. I was surprised that it was the printing that felt much trickier. I’d love to explore more colours of ink too.

We both had a great time lino printing and the teacher Rugile was so lovely and enthusiastic. I particularly enjoyed the cutting element and it was a little easier than I thought it would be. I didn’t get on well with using the hand guard but Rugile showed a variation to still keep my hands safe that worked very well.

Hobbycraft have several YouTube videos that you might find helpful. The one below is a basic tutorial.

The next shows how to use dual colours. From what I’ve researched you can colour mix the inks but unless you have a specialist bit of kit you can’t colour match exactly each time so each batch may be slightly different.

It’s worth looking in the new year to see if Hobbycraft have the workshop back on either instore or online. They have a few lino resources that you can find here. I’ve added a few links below to other starter kits. I do love the look of the stamp kit and the metallic inks.

Kids Christmas Crafts for Adults

Needle Felting Christmas Pudding

This week was another needle felting session in the community arts and crafts group; this time making 3D Christmas puddings.

Here’s my Mom’s Christmas pudding. I’m not as confident with 3D needle felting. I’m going to have a go at making a 2D needle felted Christmas pudding. I’ll write some instructions when I do.

Needle Felting Supplies

• Needle felting kits
• Needle felting needle – these are specific needles
• Needle felting base
• Felt/ roving (I get roving from various places. One of my favourite places for mixed fibers is Marie Redding on Etsy. You can find her gorgeous fibres here)
• Water soluble paper
• Paper and pencil to draw templates for 2D felting

Christmas Tin Art

If you’ve not seen my Mom’s tin art before you may be surprised to discover they’re made from recycled aluminium cans. Then she paints them with nail varnishes and POSCA pens.

Free Watercolour Birds Tutorials

Each video is around 10-15 minutes long. I’ll let you know what how I get on. From an initial look they look suitable for complete beginners.

Well that’s all for now, I’ll be back soon with more arts and crafts updates.

Creative wishes, Lisa x