Well, it’s been a little while since I pitched up here, hasn’t it?

You know how it is… one minute you’re deciding to take a little mini-break from blogging, the next you’re looking at your blog and wondering how on earth it got to be months since you were last here.

Well, all I can say in my defence is that summer got in the way. It passed in a whirl of sunshine, dog-sitting, gardening, Greek-islanding family fun.

And now it is over.

I was feeling all post-holiday-ish, when I realised that back in the mists of the early part of this year I had the foresight to book a workshop at Hope and Elvis. Yay for planning ahead!

So, on Saturday I spent a most pleasurable day admiring the work of artist Serena Partridge and learning how to make tiny miniature shoes.Serena is a visual artist currently based in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, who creates small-scale accessories and garments inspired by historical costume and storytelling. Her works are presented as museum acquisitions, encased with labels that blur boundaries between fact and fiction. She uses a wide range of materials and techniques, but primarily antique leather and silk, which she embroiders and fashions with meticulous hand stitching.

These are some samples of Serena’s work (and believe me, they are even tinier and more exquisite in real life than they appear in these pictures)… Serena also makes amazingly detailed and beautifully stitched miniature stockings and gloves in paper and vintage leather…

We had a wonderful array of raw materials to work with – boxes and boxes of them.

Anyone would think, looking at it all, that we would be making something the size of an elephant, given how much material we had to choose from. But no. Everything was tiny. Thank goodness I remembered to bring my strong specs.

These are some of my classmates’ creations… And here they all are, lined up in size order. Just to give a better sense of scale, the biggest shoes are about four inches long, the smallest just an inch or so…And finally, these are my own creations…I had spent much of the week before the class fretting about not getting on with making things because I was waiting for school to start (and therefore lad to cease requiring feeding and nagging) and then because the dreaded post-holiday procrastination had come upon me like a cloud.

But I can honestly say that a day spent in delightful company fiddling with scissors, glue and tiny bits of printed paper, vintage leather, cardboard, fabric and trims, has done the trick.

I’m all fired up again and raring to go. Talk about developing a shoe fetish!

Bring it on, September… I’ve got my making head on and I’m ready for you!