In the middle of July I reached the milestone of blogging for 14 years! I started in 2010 and although I blog a lot less now, and most artists do their sharing on Instagram, I have no desire to stop any time soon. I love having a record of my projects and writing about what I've been doing. I also process a lot of my thinking and keep note of inspiration. You will see that this post has turned out to be long because I am thinking about Fodder School 4 alongside other inspirations.
I always start my monthly review with progress on my #52cards2024 : to create a card that reflects the past week (ending Sunday). I must include stitch, the colour turquoise and a word. These are my July cards :
I post details about the inspiration for these on my Facebook Artist's page.
My Uncle had an important birthday in July and I had to make him a unique card. So great to have lovely handmade papers ready for this.
Last month's teacher for Fodder School 3 was Kecia Deveney. While I didn't have time to attempt her amazing book project, I had a lot of fun making shrink plastic charms and some layered tags
These will definitely fit in well with future projects.
This month's teacher is Alison Bomber. She creates beautiful projects and has a fabulous YouTube channel HERE where she shares heaps of free lessons and inspiration. I love her voice and her beautiful soft techniques often inspired by Nature.
Fodder School 4 is coming and there are a few changes.
The teachers are currently being revealed through August on Instagram and the Fodder Challenge will take place in October, but it is no longer free. You can buy just the challenge lessons, but they are only available until mid-November UNLESS you sign up for the whole course and get the Fodder Challenge and the other 11 months of teachers. Read all the information and sign up with the early bird price HERE. I have LOVED my time with Fodder School - been in it for the full 3 years. But I am currently considering whether I want to keep going with this since I have so many projects uncompleted and other challenges I want to do. Will keep you posted and I'm sure you won't ever regret signing up. I always find that each year there are several projects that would be worth the price of admission by themselves. And I have learned something from every single teacher.
If you've never done Fodder School before, you could go to Willa Workshops and check out her taster options
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Lots of food for thought there....
July contained 2 weeks of school holidays and I was really excited to spend some of that time with inspiration from Francisca Nunes in her collaborative Flowers Magic Art Fest 2024.
I loved the flower lesson from Lisa Goddard which I incorporated into my weekly card and will soon appear as a page or more in my journal
And there are a few lessons I've watched but not yet been motivated to action. It has still been very cold here. Looking towards September and the promise of Spring...
These are a couple of other FREE inspirations which I may incorporate as I go along :
Roxy's Journal of Stitchery current play list for their Volume 6 Field Notes prompts via YouTube are HERE. They release inspiration and guidance every fortnight and the idea is to create a stitched accordian journal by the end.
And while I didn't participate in Junk Journal July - those lessons remain up on YouTube HERE.
Other free inspirations this month : Helen Colebrook has free printables on her site HERE. Includes goal and habit tracking, envelopes and doodles. This is my fav - so cute
And I adore these book inspiration from Giogio Craft : Seahorses, Shaped altered books, and Klimt. She says she has some tutorials on her YouTube channel. This is a blog post about her Everything Circles Book
She also does amazing slow stitching and I keep thinking about her E-book available on Etsy. 
I hope you don't mind going down that rabbit hole with me! It's good to be saved for my future reference - I adore Klimt, want to do more slow stitching, and her colours sing to me! Also an example of how you can get completely distracted from actually creating by looking at others' work! And a good example of why I am wondering if I need to drop Fodder School in favour of some new opportunities.
August is a very busy month ahead for me - 2 birthdays (husband and eldest son), trip to Welly to watch the All Blacks play Argentina, and at school we are celebrating the NZ children's book awards and our own library Book Week with a lit quiz (designed by me) and dress up day. I've also been invited by a local quilt guild to give a talk about my mixed media work. Hopefully there'll be time for some creativity too. I will try and post more regularly on my Instagram and Facebook Artist's page.
