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Chrissy Cottrell
Creative Marketing Manager
Chrissy Cottrell is a creative marketing professional specialising in brand strategy, content marketing and customer engagement. As Creative Marketing Manager at Specialist Crafts, she leads content and brand initiatives that connect products, creativity and learning. Outside of work, she maintains an active creative practice with a particular passion for mixed media and printmaking, exploring materials, techniques and experimental processes, bringing both industry knowledge and hands-on experience to her content.
Our Latest Posts
Exploring Mixed Media Concertina Sketchbooks with Karen Stamper at Kettle's Yard
Recently, we hosted a mixed media concertina sketchbook workshop with artist and former art teacher Karen Stamper at the inspiring Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, bringing together art teachers for a day of experimentation, creativity and practical classroom inspiration.
The workshop focused on building expressive sketchbook pages using layers, ...
Teaching Oil Painting Without Solvents: The Secret Science Behind Water-Mixable Oils
For centuries, every art student has learned the same rule:Oil and water do not mix.Yet today you can buy oil paints that thin with water, clean up with water and often don't require solvents at all.So what changed?Have chemists somehow broken the rules of painting?Not quite.Water-mixable oils are one of the most significant developments in ...
Print Without Limits: Monoprinting in the Secondary Art Room
Layered Linocut: Colour, Process and Possibility in the Print RoomMonoprinting tends to settle into the classroom quite quickly.There’s usually less hesitation. Students get started sooner and the room has a bit more movement to it. It’s not because the process is easier, but because it changes the starting point. Instead of working ...
Layered Linocut: Colour, Process and Possibility in the Print Room
Layered Linocut: Colour, Process and Possibility in the Print Room Explained
Layered linocut is bold, physical and rooted in tradition, yet it feels contemporary in the way it builds colour, texture and narrative through successive impressions.
For GCSE and A-level students, it also answers a persistent challenge: how to move beyond flat, ...
Stretching the Story: How Concertina Sketchbooks Help Students Develop Visual Narratives
Narrative is one of the hardest things to teach well in art. Students often have strong starting points, a feeling, an issue, an image; but struggle to sustain ideas, sequence meaning or show development clearly over time. Pages fill up, but the thinking stays fragmented.Concertina sketchbooks offer a simple structural shift that can radically ...
You’ve Got a Printing Press… Now What?
A practical, confidence-boosting guide for art teachersIf your art department has a printing press, you’re already sitting on one of the most powerful creative tools a school can own. The problem is that presses are often inherited, underused, or quietly intimidating. They can feel technical, time-consuming, or “too ...
From Design to Print: Bringing Screen Printing to Life in the Classroom
Why Screen Printing MattersThere’s something magical about that first pull of a squeegee, the hush before the reveal, when the image appears bold against the paper. Screen printing is one of those techniques that never fails to capture attention. It’s immediate, playful and deeply satisfying; it teaches students that art ...
Art and Social Justice: Creative Activism in the Classroom
From cave paintings to street murals, art has always been a way of speaking when words fall short. For today’s students, facing the realities of climate change, inequality and identity, creative activism offers both a safe space and a powerful platform. When art becomes activism, lessons move beyond skill to meaning, giving young ...
Teaching Colour Intentionally: Moving Beyond the Wheel
Most students meet colour in art through the wheel. They learn their primaries, secondaries, complementaries and it’s a useful tool, but a blunt one. Colour in the classroom too often becomes a set of formulas rather than a vehicle for expression. For students who live in a world saturated with digital colour palettes, teaching colour ...
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