Just spent a fantastic weekend at Guild of Enamellers Conference, Queen Ethelburga's College, Thorpe Underwood Estate, York.  We were first there 4 years ago and the whole place is still very impressive.
I'll add some photos over the next few days but here's one of the plaques I made from a screen at the tutorial given by Dorothy Cockerell.

 

The weekend seemed to fly past but we crammed such a lot in.  The day tutorials are wonderful and so inspiring.  The retiring Chair always gives a theme for the following year and this time it is 'Communication'.  I have so many ideas whizzing round in my head that I can't wait to get to the studio to try them out.

 

The highlight of the weekend for me was being awarded Associate Craftsman of the Guild of Enamellers.  We have to put 6 pieces of enamelling up for selection and 3 selectors look at your work and judge how well you have enamelled the pieces.  There were 4 of us who put in for selection and we all gained Associate leve.  Needless to say we were delighted.  I do have some pics on my 'facebook' page  if you want to pop over and take a look but I will be posting some here on my blog.

 

 

Mam and Me Enamelled

Had a great day in Shrewsbury today at the Enamel Guild. Pat Johnson was doing a riso screen workshop. We saw several of the screen print enamels Pat had made and she showed us how she achieved some of the results. We were then taken through how to make the screens and as we had been asked to bring some pictures that we would like as a screen it was up to us to make our enamelled piece. I had a lovely pic of mam and me when I was up visiting her a couple of years ago so I thought I would give it a try. Unfortunately the photo was quite dark but this is what I achieved and I love it.
I fired a black to the back of the copper and then fired two layers of dove grey to the front. The background was then enamelled with shades of dove grey, lavender and mid blue and then a spring green was added to give a constrast. This was fired again and when cool I sifted a black through the screen to capture our image. The result was better than I expected and I'll certainly be trying out more screens to see what I come up with.