Come Over To My New Blog

See you there!

This Blog Has Now Retired!

Hi All
This blog is now retired. I have decided to keep it here in case anyone stumbles across it in cyberspace. I will get round to changing the links over in all the blogrings in due course as well as adding in all the lovely textile blogs into my blogroll on the new blog. If you want to link to my blog please use this url and paste this code inside your link tags: "http://www.creativeforceonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=1&Itemid=9"target="_blank"

Please go over to my new blog on my website.

Online Community Coming Soon

As mentioned some time ago, I am going to offer some more features on my site to build an online community of creative people. Some of the features will be a creativity forum, ideas/techniques bank, group coaching and a chatroom... Online courses from myself and others are also a possibilty. If anyone out there has any online courses that are relevant then please get in touch as I would love to hear about what you are doing and discuss the possibilty of hosting the course on my site.

All of this is going to take time to build but I am hoping it's going to be really cool when it's all done and ready to go. The idea of the whole thing is to share ideas about all aspects of being a textile artist including marketing and promotion, creativity issues, and ideas on techniques. I'm aiming to have most of this up and running by the end of January on my revamped site which you can register on now.

This Blog Will Cease!

Ok I have decided that due to lack of time and the impracticalities in running two blogs concurrently that I am going to retire this blog by the end of the year.
My new blog is here on my recently revamped website

I will be changing all the links and stuff over soon so I will publish some code you can use to update your blog if you are linked here...

Please visit my new blog! Thanks y'all...

The Sun Has Come Out!

Oh wow! The sun has come out and I feel all warm and fuzzy! I just realised this afternoon that I had inadvertently set all the comments on this blog to be moderated and I couldn't understand until now why no comments were showing up. I kept thinking that no-one was reading this blog and that is why I hadn't had any comments for months. I kept thinking this blog isn't that boring is it? Or maybe it is?
Anyway, I wanted to thank all of you who have left comments and I hope to respond to them all when I get a chance. Thanks especially to all those who left comments of good will about the situation with my son. It's not an easy thing to deal with and having those good thoughts come my way is lovely...:-)) Big hugs to you all!
Here is a nice picture of a rainbow and our house my son painted - it's called The House of Happiness.

More Info on Beta Testing for Online Coaching

Here is some more info about Online Coaching - it's the middle section of the page - sorry I forgot to post it earlier. Do let me know if you are interesting in being a guinea pig as I am sending out instructions to people this week and it starts on the 1st December. Remember this means a whole month's worth of free online coaching!! What have you got to lose?

Info >>

Great Opportunity!! Beta Testers Wanted!

New Online Coaching System!
Well after last week I am trying to get back on track. I am still working on the major revamp of my site and it's going ok(ish). I have implemented a new Online Coaching System and it's ready for testing if anyone is up for it. You will need to be a registered member of the site. Basically I am offering free creativity coaching to anyone who wants to try this out for the next month or so. I appreciate it's probably not the best time of year for this with all the holidays and all that so I would really appreciate your help. The coaching system allows you to login to a secure area (no-one else can see your messages)where you can start a "coaching session". You post a message, I post a response and the dialogue continues on like that until the session closes. As it's just in its testing phase the sessions will remain open for this free month of coaching. After that they will be reviewed and for those who would like to carry on with coaching there will be a payment option set up (paypal subscription). I am planning to offer the online coaching at a much cheaper rate than my normal telephone coaching rate so it's really worth looking into especially if you are in a different time zone/can't invest in the telephone coaching option. If you want to find out more then post a comment or send me an email and I will send you some instructions. Thanks in advance!

Last Week

Hi everyone!
I had a rather stressful week last week, including a car crash involving 4 vehicles driving back from London with my son trying to get to a firework display at his cousin's school. We are ok but I think we both have a bit of whiplash still. Then Sunday last week was horrible because the police were called out when my son refused to return to London with his dad. I don't really want to go into all the details but it was really heartbreaking. I have never got so close to being arrested.
Anyway, suffice to say that I haven't been able to concentrate on much let alone do anything creative. I have tried to do a bit to my new website but I felt so totally drained that to be honest it was an effort to even lift up the remote control. I hope this week will be better but last night was spent writing a letter in response to my ex's letter he sent me via his lawyer...why do I have to spend time on all this crap?

Glitterati Mark II: Showtime

Showtime, originally uploaded by Nicky Perryman.

Well I went to the Hobbycraft show this afternoon after going to a meeting at the convention centre for work. It was totally unexpected and I was quite excited about the idea especially when I was hit by the sight of such glitter and colour when I went in. I realised though after a while that most it was for people who do cardmaking, stamping and scrapbooking. Nothing wrong with that but there wasn't as much as I had hoped for textiles. There were loads of bead suppliers though. The best bit for me was finding a place selling totally over the top Indian embroidered bits and bobs dripping with gold thread, pink jewels and crystals. Talk about Bollywood Bling! It was crazy! I bought this gorgeous piece of gaudy tat (see pic) which is just so rainbow coloured it reminds me of a row of little sweets. I just had to get it. I also got some orange and purple silk, some paisley patterned cotton and two folky patterned fat quarters. I would have liked to have gone mad buying glass beads but instead I bought tons of sequins because I needed them to finish the folkart wallhanging and they were much cheaper than anywhere I had found, well, that was my excuse anyway. I also found some good suppliers for other stuff too. But alas, what usually happens to me at these kind of shows happened: I got an aching back, sore feet, tired, thirsty and fed up with looking at all the cardmaking stuff. So after searching for black felt for ages (which no-one was selling I found out) I beat a quick exit. When I got home I found a package waiting for me which contained some samples of black felt! Wonderful because they do it by the metre in 5mm and 10mm thick which is just what I wanted and at a reasonable price too! So alls well that ends well... and oh the sequins!!!

More bits and pieces

Here is the latest bit of the folkart wallhanging. I still have a hell of a lot to do on it. I tried the yellow flowers on it and I think they work out well. I like the acid yellow and green to balance the richness of the other colours.