I spent an evening this week baking enough Christmas cookies to sink a ship (or host a Finishing School Christmas party). If you’d like to have a go at making your own, here’s my nan’s recipe. You might want to kit yourself out with a nice set of cookie cutters before you start and these vintage metal ones I found on Etsy are absolutely perfect. The Cakes, Cookies and Craft Shop also do a great set in the shape of Christmas baubles.
Preparation time: 20 minutes – or more if you’re singing along to a Christmas compilation Cooking time: 10 minutes Total time: 30 minutes – or more if you’re like me and get carried away and baking several batches! Makes: 25 gingerbread figures
Ingredients
125g unsalted butter
100g dark muscovado sugar
4 tbsp golden syrup
325g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamonMethod
Preheat the oven to 170°C, gas mark 3. Line baking trays with baking paper. Melt the butter, sugar and syrup in a medium saucepan, stirring occasionally, then remove from the heat.
Sieve the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ginger into a bowl and stir the melted ingredients into the dry ingredients to make a stiff dough.
Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and roll to a thickness of about 5mm. Dip biscuit cutters into flour before cutting the dough. Place the shapes onto the lined baking trays and bake, in batches, for 9-10 minutes until light golden brown.
Remove from the oven. While still warm, and using a skewer or chopstick, make any holes that you will need to hang up the biscuits with ribbon or to make a yuletide garland. If you are decorating your Christmas cake with gingerbread people, make the holes in their arms so that ribbon can be threaded through at a later stage.
When completely cool, decorate with the icing. The gingerbread biscuits can be stored in an airtight container for up to two weeks.
And for the finishing touches: Writing Icing; sweets; sparkles; and ribbon.
Here are some statistics from Finishing School’s lesson in lino-cutting and fabric printing night that took place at our brand new venue the Island Queen on 26th October.
Teacher = 1. East London printmaker Catherine Walsh was on hand to suggest block carving techniques and provide design inspiration for all. Head over to her webpage for details of her upcoming classes if you want to hone your skills further.
Attendees = just the right number (to allow for elbow room and no arguments over paint rollers).
Injuries = 2. There are many dangers in this world and it turns out that lino cutting is one of them. For other crafting dangers click here (at your peril).
Plasters used = 8. Gougers are sharp, kids.
Litres of fabric paint = 1.5. The messiest session so far!
Successful nights = 1. Everyone took home a tea towel and tote bag decorated with their own stamp (or a stamp nabbed from another student as everyone had such great ideas it was a shame not to share!). Check out our flickr for more pictures of the evening.
Thanks to everyone who turned up and had a go at creating some really original prints. I went out the following day and purchased my own set of tools from a lovely art shop in Clerkenwell and I know for a fact that Atlantis Arts does a good range of lino so that’s Christmas sorted then.
If you had as much fun as we did (or frustratingly missed out on space this time) do keep a keen eye on our facebook page and our events page for details of November’s session. See you soon x
Firstly, Social Knitworking is an awesome name. Secondly, it’s the title of a really interesting project belonging to design graduate Hilary Grant and creative research organisation Distance Lab.
Amazingly, these smarty pants people have developed a computer programme that analyzes online text and detects conversational patterns (for example, frequently used phrases or sentiments) and outputs an abstract knitting pattern which is downloaded into a computer-controlled knitting machine. Find out more here. Social Knitworking turns key words and phrases from online social messages and translates them into different patterns that can become personal textile keepsakes for friends and family. I love the idea that ephemeral comments made on twitter or taken from email can be turned into colours and designs that create meaningful items of clothing – like wearing a secret diary and only you can understand the coded entries. The pattern generation concept involved means that ‘sentences’ could be woven into pretty much any accessory, dress, top or bag. We update our online status publicly on a daily basis so why not celebrate this by wearing your thoughts on your sleeve?
Finishing School lesson three (needle felting) was a great success thanks to Susanna Wallis and, of course, our ever-expanding band of eager students.Thanks to everyone who turned up and vented their frustrations by repeatedly stabbing a tiny ball of wool. I’m sure it was 90% creativity, 10% therapy for most!
There were some really interesting creations from tiny teacups, to felty-beads to badges featuring all manner of animal, vegetable and robot.
We had such a great time and hope you did too. Actually, we’ve heard that many of you have caught the needle felting bug and are pursuing your own projects with the materials we sent you away with. This is really exciting and, of course, what Finishing School is all about. Feel free to bring in/wear/show off any finished trinkets at our next session! And, if you’re after more wool or needles – or any other textile craft odds’n'ends for that matter – you might want to check out Susanna’s recommendations of the Handweaver’s Studio (which opens the doors to its charming new premises on 140 Seven Sisters Road, N7 7NS on 21 August) and Wingham Wool.
As usual, keep an eye on our facebook page and our events page for photos of the evening and details of September’s session.
My current craft project is making pendants and brooches from a recently re-discovered stamp collection and an industrial-sized box of microscope slides. It turns out I was a secret geek as a child and gathered stamps on all subjects from Russian space exploration, to figures from children’s stories, to the animals of the Galapagos.
I decided to find others with a similarly nerdy take on arts and crafts and, as always, the internet has thrown up a scary amount of people who combine glitter and glue and geek culture. Indeed, Etsy has an entire section on geekery (which includes these awesome punctuation earrings)! However, there are some corners of the web where a minor geek could be well out of her depth… For example, Alicia Kachmer has crocheted this cute (but extremely educational) Pi cuddly toy. But the geek winner has to be this superb Blade Runner-style origami unicorn that you can make yourself here courtesy of Shigeki Hayashi. Why not give it a go and post your successes/failures to our Facebook group? All these crafters peddling their wares have made me wonder whether some niche collector out there is in the market for a nice set of jewellery featuring stamps from the Queen’s coronation, 1953. Somehow I think there might be!
I’ve noticed a trend on Etsy lately towards filling every piece of unwanted glassware with moss, sticking a lid on it, and letting it grow. I for one, am a massive fan of this move and would love to have a shelf filled with charming vintage glass bottles and jars, each growing its own little garden. It’s not just crafty etsians who are at it either, there’s plenty of gorgeous and fairly high end options too. I love these hanging bubbles in Pigment. (via Oh Joy!)
There’s also quite a few kits on offer over at Etsy (See here, here and here!) and this all got me thinking… how much mess could it possibly create if 20 girls were to plant one of these each, whilst supping a few glasses of a nice wine… Surely not enough to rule it out of a future Finishing School! Perhaps I’ll start collecting glass containers now….
I apologise in advance for this rather self-centred post, however we really wanted to take a moment to thank the glorious and wonderful Wee Birdy for writing a great feature about crafts in London and including us! Wee Birdy is one of my real must-read blogs, full of pretty things and stuff to spend my money on, and I can only encourage you to all add it to your RSS readers.
The post also features some other great crafty happenings, so please head over and check it out, and then part with some cash and support some fantastic people doing things far more professionally than we do!
To anyone who found us via the article, a big hello! and don’t be scared to come down and say hi at the next event (Needle felting! 4th August!) as we’re a friendly bunch who are all about meeting new people and making new friends (as well as the wine of course).
What a fantastic evening! Finishing School was bursting with eager artists at our second lesson: life drawing. Louise Reade managed to calm us down, suppress the giggles and get us to focus on making that first mark and loosening up our personal interpretations of the human body, helped by our superb model Steven Wheeler. It’s clear that Finishing School is home to quite a bit of talent. It was also great for those of us who have limited drawing ability as Louise had a real knack of coaxing something ‘interesting’ out of everybody through the group drawing tasks.
I’ve added a few of our creations here, more photos and news can be found on our Facebook group. I’ve also asked Fiona nicely if she could make another slideshow of images from our Flickr page.
Thanks to everyone for putting up with the heat – we promise to keep the doors open at all future events that don’t include a naked model… Thanks also to the staff at the William IV for allowing us to bring together what could have been a rather dangerous combination of nudity, red wine and sharp pencils in a controlled environment! If Finishing School has inspired you, Broken Arted answers many of the questions posed during the class (including what to do with the rude bits).
Keep an eye on our events page for clues to our next Finishing School event in August. Whether it’s flower arranging, car maintenance or French lessons, we look forward to seeing you there.
The more time I spend on Etsy, on reading blogs, and chatting to people about Finishing School, the more I realise there’s a massive community of crafters out there. The world is full of people making their own things to sell or to enjoy, as well as talking to each other, sharing ideas and basically making craft a pretty cool and enjoyable thing to do.
The great side effect of all this is that it makes it all the more accessible to recovering no-hopers like me. So, I hope you don’t mind me sharing this trailer, but I can’t wait to see this documentary HandmadeNation focused on the DIY crafts scene in America.
These 13 ladies are all photographers. They’re all from different corners of the US, but decided to embark on a trip together, to build relationships, find inspiration and support. As soon as I stumbled upon their blog from the trip I was smitten. Not only do I love the idea and the adventure, the photography is pretty damn spiffing too. Here are a few picks, visit their blog for more and the full story.
Method
Firstly, Social Knitworking is an awesome name. Secondly, it’s the title of a really interesting project belonging to design graduate Hilary Grant and creative research organisation 
Social Knitworking turns key words and phrases from online social messages and translates them into different patterns that can become personal textile keepsakes for friends and family. I love the idea that ephemeral comments made on twitter or taken from email can be turned into colours and designs that create meaningful items of clothing – like wearing a secret diary and only you can understand the coded entries. The pattern generation concept involved means that ‘sentences’ could be woven into pretty much any accessory, dress, top or bag. We update our online status publicly on a daily basis so why not celebrate this by wearing your thoughts on your sleeve?
All images ©Distance Lab.
Thanks to everyone who turned up and vented their frustrations by repeatedly stabbing a tiny ball of wool. I’m sure it was 90% creativity, 10% therapy for most!
There were some really interesting creations from tiny teacups, to felty-beads to badges featuring all manner of animal, vegetable and robot.
We had such a great time and hope you did too. Actually, we’ve heard that many of you have caught the needle felting bug and are pursuing your own projects with the materials we sent you away with. This is really exciting and, of course, what Finishing School is all about. Feel free to bring in/wear/show off any finished trinkets at our next session! And, if you’re after more wool or needles – or any other textile craft odds’n'ends for that matter – you might want to check out Susanna’s recommendations of the 
However, there are some corners of the web where a minor geek could be well out of her depth… For example, 
But the geek winner has to be this superb Blade Runner-style origami unicorn that you can make yourself 
All these crafters peddling their wares have made me wonder whether some niche collector out there is in the market for a nice set of jewellery featuring stamps from the Queen’s coronation, 1953. Somehow I think there might be!
