I am a secondary school art teacher, teaching in St. Mark's Community School in Tallaght for the past twenty years. I became interested in textiles when I did my H.dip course in 1986. A key part of my City and Guilds (part one and part two in embroidery) course was the working with and keeping of notebooks. These notebooks became more creative for me than some of the more finished pieces. I have always been interested in keeping diaries and journals from my teenage years. I had heard about the Artist's notebook challenge from a textile friend of mine and I thought I would give it a go! I started off by covering the majority of the pages with handmade paper or a wash of colour dyes. This process takes the scary blank part of the pages away. As I was de-cluttering my studio I came across photos and coloured copies of my textile work spanning many years. So I decided to make this notebook a chronological catalogue of my work and things that have interested me or become a source of inspiration for my work. Looking back over my work it was so interesting to see what themes inspired me, and how my starting process hasn't really changed. My work is heading towards a more mixed media approach. With each new piece/drawing I do, I really try to push out the boundaries of the medium I am using. My main sources of inspiration include: old buildings, rocks/stones, aboriginal art, things found on the beach and rusty objects. One pallet of colour that keeps on occurring in my work is the autumn range of browns to orange, whether it is in my drawings or in my textile work.