Today is the first day of my course with the lovely and talented Frances Pickering and we dive right in. I've never done anything like this before so the world of transfer dyes, making a book and layering ideas is all new to me.

I have seen many examples of work people have done after a course with Frances, which is what inspired me to book, but still have no idea where my hands and ideas will take me this week.

The theme of the course is 'A Devon hedgerow' but being a Londoner, and not confident that I can work in such a colour palette, or with the delicacy and intricacy I think is required, I have asked if I can just be inspired by colour and pattern. Also I had no reference sources etc to bring with me so panicked and packed what I had. Fortunately Frances is cool with this and right from the start my book veers off in a different direction to everyone else's.

We begin by painting with transfer dyes and then turning our painting onto some pelmet vilene and transforming it into our book over through the magic of heat.

Next up is more fun painting this time to create our book pages.

By the end of the day I have had a lot of fun but am not happy with what I have created. If you look at Frances' work on her website you'll see it is beautiful and intricate, whereas at the moment mine just looks like a blurry, smudgy mess.

But I am being good and patient and trying not to stress myself out about this. I vow to take my book back to my room and work on it for a few hours adding detail and colour and coming back to it afresh tomorrow...