Small Group Workshops

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Looking for something to do with a group of friends? These small group workshops are designed for beginners and artists alike and feature different crafts and techniques. There’s plenty to try from scrapbooking to mixed media, book-making to home decor. For more information, click pics or here.

Bible Journaling: God’s Guidance (BJ-33)

As promised, despite no longer holding Bible journaling sessions at The Studio, I have continued to journal in my own Bible. Here are five more verses, this time on the loose theme of ‘God’s Guidance’. Given there are so few pages left in my journaling Bible, I enlisted the help of ChatGPT to choose verses specifically from these gaps. I cut and pasted the results into my notes and somewhat lazily didn’t check that the translation was the same. Happily, the meanings are identical to my NIV even if the exact wording isn’t the same.

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Art Journaling: Bargello Masterboard

Regular readers of this ‘ere blog know that I am a quilter. This month at the art journal session, we combined mixed media with a quilting technique (which I have yet to try in fabric). We made a watercolour masterboard and then with a lot of slicing and pasting created a bargello-style background in our journals. With some basic stitched panels as a focal point we ended up with this:

Art journal layout using a watercolour masterboard cut and pasted to create a bargello-style background

Rooted in the historical tradition of the Bargello Palace in Florence, Italy, the Bargello quilt pattern is characterized by its use of long, narrow strips of fabric meticulously sewn together. This technique creates an illusion of dynamic movement and depth within the quilt.


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Bible Journaling: Family (BJ-32)

I’ve found five verses that referred to us being God’s children and created templates using my normal combination of inspiration and AI image generation. I’ve not used watercolour pencils for a while, so I decided to get them out for these illustrations. Here are my samples, and below the break you can find the download link for my free PDF template for the ‘family’ themed pieces.

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Art Journaling: Cloth Collage (with step-by-step tutorial)

When I’m looking for potential techniques and ideas for my art journaling sessions, I often reach for analogue sources: books. For this evening’s session, I took inspiration from ‘101 More Mixed Media Techniques’. In the fabrics & fibers [sic] section, there is information on sticking and covering elements and pages. And so my cloth collage theme was born and this is what I came up with:

Fabric collage art journaling tutorial with stamped calico and matte medium.
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Bible Journaling: Watchful hearts

For this month’s Bible journaling theme, I’ve chosen the loose title of ‘watchful hearts’. I’ve tried to collect verses which encourage anticipation of Christ’s return and getting your heart right with God.

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Art Journal Session: ‘Industrial Grunge’

This month’s art journaling session was on the theme of ‘industrial grunge’. I thought it would be a great chance to revisit rust effects, drips and runs and also use up some of the matte black vinyl I seem to have inadvertently collected over the years… I also exercised AI skills using Microsoft Designer to create the graffiti and worked with ChatGPT to develop the colour scheme, selecting the base colours with my Nix Mini 3 digital colourimeter. Here’s what I came up with:

industrial grunge art journal page
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Bible Journaling: a few more pee-pulpit posters

I continue to design Bible journaling posters for display in my church‘s toilets on an (almost) monthly basis. I call it a pee-pulpit and particularly in the gents’, the posters are front and centre. The designs are a combination of AI-generated backgrounds (that take ages to tweak to fit my mental image) and Photoshop techniques I am learning. I think my last update was in June, so here are a few more displayed since then:

Bible Journaling: Renewed Connection

This evening’s Bible Journaling Session used verses loosely based on the theme of ‘renewed connection’. I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but even so, this is a great aim to consider for the year. Alongside coming to the monthly sessions as well, of course…

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Art Journal Session: Twinchies

Back in the day, when there were still many crafting magazines available, free clear stamps were included as a cover gift. Somehow I still have a collection of these, which are all still clear and functional. Finding them in my stash, I came up with this month’s theme for the art journaling session at The Studio: twinchies. For the unfamiliar, twinchies are 2″ square elements for crafting and the giveaway stamps fit perfectly. Using mixed media and appropriate papers, I created this:

Series of 24 twinchies (2" square pictures) arranged in a sketchbook as an art journaling project.
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