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.
