Hochanda

Introduce yourself! Hello, my name is Bee Morrison.   I am a self employed artist, designer and art tutor living and working in Eccles, Manchester. Tell us how you got into the art industry, was it something that you had always wanted to do? Since leaving school, I had drifted into office work but I yearned to go to art school.   Then I saw someone on the television being accepted for art school and I knew that I had a lot more to offer.   So I immediately applied for Bolton foundation course and have never looked back. Four years later I had completed the design course with an honours degree in Art and Design. When you are not painting, what else do you like doing for fun? I love listening to classical music and gardening.   If I had not gone into art I would have been a gardener. What was your “first” when I grow up I want to be….? From the age of 8 I wanted to be a fabric designer and this stayed with me for a very long time.   ...

An array of everyday items are your simple key to creating elegant statement pieces out of your ordinary candles. From tealights to candlesticks, here are five simple ways to help you take any candle from dull to delightful! 1. Spices that you may find in your kitchen pantry are an ideal way to decorate a plain candle, as well as adding an extra scent to create a diverse and layered smell. Carefully glue cinnamon sticks around the outside of a wide vanilla candle for a rich depth of flavour that may just catch some guests by surprise. This could also be a perfect gift, and the combinations are endless, meaning you can mix and match different scents for a varied trio of candles. Citrus fan? Glue dried orange slices around the outside of a candle! 2. Do you have a set of teacups that are out of use? Make use of your old china by creating kitsch candles that would look great in any home. Melt down wax chips and add an essential oil of your choice if you want to fully commit, or yo...

Kim & Debbie are back once again to keep us up to date on all of their adventures in their regular guest blog! We can't believe that on the last Sunday of May we are up to the penultimate pattern in Florries Sampler Quilt!  Last month we tackled the blocks featuring Needle Turned Appliqué and Bears Paw.  The extra project was a lovely little pot holder using one block of the Bears Paw. To top things off, Our Sewing at the Manor book proved really popular and a lovely pack of half metres from the Mill Shirtings Collection were also on the show! We have some extra shows in May, on the 2nd we brought a Free Motion Sewing Pack and the rotating 12 inch board which is in inches, Happy Days! Also, on Friday 13th we are looking forward to sunnier days with a pack of fabric called 'Vacation' and some useful bag accessories... oh! And an LED night in a choice of colours. Florries Sampler Quilt Pattern 5 has the wow factor with a foundation pieced Spinning Bl...

Making your own backgrounds for your projects is all part of the creative process, plus it is a lot of fun playing with inks and paints and experimenting with colour combinations. So this month I want to show you how to create two different types of backgrounds that can be the basis for stamping, used as part of a home décor or card project; or even adapted to journaling.  Both these techniques use greyboard, but you could easily substitute this for strong card, an MDF plaque or frame, a wooden art block or a journal page. Masking Tape 1. Take a piece of greyboard cut to the required size, tear a strip of masking tape to a random length and stick it horizontally on to the board. Continue to cover the board with random lengths of tape, adding them both vertically and horizontally. You can use a combination 1” and 2” wide tape, but it is fine to just use one size if that is all you have. Overlap the tape in some areas and don’t worry about jagged edges, this all ad...

We're so excited to be bringing you this brilliant die cleaning tool from Craft Obsessions , which will relieve all of the frustrations that come with cleaning intricate dies, featuring on Hochanda on Wednesday 4th May at 10AM and 1PM & 6PM. Anyone who has ever used an intricate die suffers the frustrating job of having to clear out the dozens of waste bits of paper or card before they can use it again. Existing die cleaning brushes work up to a point, but as die designs become ever more intricate, manufacturers are having to reduce the size of the openings in the back of the die to allow more intricate features to form part of the design.   This results in upwards of 60 or more individual holes through which you can poke out the waste with a pin or craft pick or roll a brush over the back of the die and wait for just one bristle to find its way into the hole you need it to go through to force the waste out…..that is until now! Introducing Roll Away: ...