Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

The past few weeks have been very busy for me as I prepare for my very first proper craft fair. It's being organised by a team of my fellow Dorset-based Etsy sellers and there will be over 60 locally based stalls there selling crafts, arts, vintage and antique goods so it all sounds very exciting indeed! There's lots of elements for me to think about as it's my first one; such as how to present my stall, the equipment I need and packaging and marketing materials... and that's even before I've thought about all the stock that I'll need! With three days left to go I'm finally getting there, I've been checking things off my list, ironing tablecloths, etc. and I wanted to share a few of the new products I've been working on that will be featuring on my stall. First of all there's my new stickers: which come in two fabulous space age designs; 'Planet' and 'Cow Abduction', the latter of which is based on my original linocut, whi...

Yesterday I took part in a lino cutting taster class at  Walford Mill  with resident printmaker  Robin Mackenzie . Robin specialises in illustration and printmaking of the wood engraving and linocut variety and is just an all-round tip top bloke and jolly good egg. We started off the class by flipping through some print books for ideas of texture and mark making. Robin welcomes complete newbies to his classes (which is just as well as we nearly all were!); I've done a little bit of  lino printing  before but nothing to get excited about. Everyone brought a photo or sketch to work from but we were provided with all the other essential equipment we needed: I had an original sketch to work from: I wanted to do something fun and in my own unique illustrative style; although I knew that all this detail might be pushing it for a 2 hour class I was up for a little challenge! Once we'd all sketched out our compositions and were happy with the design, we proceede...