I am extremely lucky to work in the creative industries and have had a couple of days feeding my own creativity. On Tuesday I went with a small group of volunteers from Whitby Museum to visit White Rose Candle Workshop, Wensley, near Leyburn. I love tools, processes and techniques and other peoples workshops so this was a real treat. Mick and Jen made us very welcome and it was great to hear Mick talk about the science of candles and how he works to make sure the candles they produce don’t smoke excessively or dribble wax.

He has devised an ingenious device to help with the dipping process and his warning notice made me smile
Today I attended a class with printmaker Dawn Brooks in Scarborough. I am taking a short 8 week course with her experimenting with a variety of print making techniques. I have never really done any print making before. Today we were introduced to this amazing press at Crescent Arts in Scarborough and were able to print from the Lino cuts we made last week.
I think Dawn said that this is a Columbian press?
I have left my prints in the drying rack but here is a photo of the final attempt
I prefer one of the earlier versions but couldn’t photograph them as they were a layer below on the drying rack.
I work quite slowly but here you can see that the group managed to produce quite a large volume of work in the two hour session. Next week we are doing transfer printing. It is exciting trying out these different techniques and I can already see ways of using Lino printing with my enamels – always good to try something new, get out of my comfort zone (even get a bit messy)!









