Last week, I went to Sommerhausen in Germany to meet up with TJ, a member of my altered books Yahoo group. It is so nice meeting up with people in real life that you have met on the Internet. TJ and I have known each other for a bout 3 years but this is the first time we have met in person.
TJ organised the hotel and work room for us, we just had to bring some "toys" and turn up. I decided to travel by train. I have never been under the channel before. We travelled on Thursday January 29th and stayed in Brussels for that afternoon and the following morning. We then travelled from Brussels to Frankfurt and Frankfurt to Wurzberg. TJ picked us up and drove us the 20 minutes or so to Sommerhausen. Sommerhausen is in North Bavaria.
We had an enormous room for us to work in, there were only three of us most of time. TJ's friend Petra came on Saturday.
A lot of what we did was printing be it screen printing (I had taken my print gocco along with me), lino cutting - TJ brought along some fab lino and tools for us, polystyrene "stamps". DH saved some pizza circles for me and I took half of one with me and TJ made this most fabulous print. I also tried some pzcut but it didn't do it for me. Petra and TJ were both pleased to hear my tip for cutting lino, iron it and when it is warm it is a lot easier to cut. Sara, my first art teacher as an adult, taught me that.
Some photos about the area may appear on the blog in due course. The crafty ones which are about to come next are more important though!
This is the inside of the book I took to Sommer-hausen with me. It is a guide from London, printed during the early 70's. I prepared it by cutting pages out and then using matt gel medium to join pages on either side of the cut.
