About THE HOUSE of MAD ALCHEMY

Welcome to the House of Mad Alchemy

The House of Mad Alchemy was born from a need to rebuild. It started with my late mum’s magazines and the way she used to draw on record sleeves. It was my first lesson in turning grief into something living.

My own art career taught me the rest. Navigating the failures, the struggles, and the quiet disappointments showed me how to find the beauty in what’s broken. I realised that alchemy isn't just an idea; it’s the key to moving through life. I don’t just teach transformation; I’ve lived every layer of it. We don't just talk about change here. We build it.

The Practice

This is where the alchemy actually happens. In our sessions, we don’t just talk about being stuck; we move through it.

I bring in pieces of my own work. These are artworks and projects that sat in my studio for years and never saw the light of day, along with copies of my mum’s magazines. We take these fragments of mine, along with your own experiences, and we tear them up. We work in layers, just like life and business itself.

Instead of throwing away the things that didn't work, the stalled strategies, or the ideas that felt like failures, we use them as raw material. We scrap what isn’t serving you, reframe the pieces, and rebuild them into something clearer. What looks like friction usually holds the exact insight needed to get moving again.
The Materials & The Stories Behind Them

Every piece of material in the studio has a history, a memory, or a purpose. I collect a vast range of elements so that you have endless options to build deep, rich layers in your work. The aim of providing such an extensive collection is to help you get completely lost in the art. Trawling through the papers, textures, and images becomes its own form of mindfulness and a key part of the creative process.

Vinyl Album Covers: The Original Canvas

We use vintage record sleeves sourced from local charity shops, selecting ones that naturally stand out for their design and character. You are also very welcome to bring your own vinyl covers from home to work on.

Album sleeves make the perfect canvas. Their size, weight, and history offer a ready-made foundation that instantly sparks ideas.

Why Album Covers?

The short answer is my mum. I can still picture her sitting at home, completely lost in creativity, using my Crayola crayons to draw straight onto the vinyl sleeves in our house. I still have a Rolling Stones album sleeve where she drew Jimi Hendrix in crayon. It is framed and hanging in my living room today, a cherished memory and a piece of art that means the world to me.

Vinyl records speak to people. Whenever I tell someone we are creating art on an album sleeve, I see a spark light up in their eyes, and a story almost always follows. There is something about album covers that holds a deep sense of nostalgia for so many of us.

Historic Music Scores

We work with authentic, centuries-old song sheets and music scores. Layering these delicate, historic papers into your collage adds timeless character and subtle texture.

Decades of Music & Fashion Magazines

Our magazine collection spans decades of music culture, including titles like NME, Rolling Stone, Mojo, and Uncut. Many of these belonged to my mum and were left to me when she passed away. To preserve the original copies while breathing new life into them, I photocopy pages to bring into the sessions. It is profoundly beautiful to watch people create new art using pieces of her memory.

Alongside these, we draw from an extensive archive of fashion and culture magazines collected over the years.

A Decade of Studio Artwork & Archives

Before starting House of Mad Alchemy, I worked as a street artist. I have a vast collection of unseen street art, abstract acrylic paintings, spray-painted canvases, and digital prints spanning over ten years. During sessions, we tear up these original pieces, portfolios, and past marketing materials to add raw texture, bold marks, and vivid colour to your work.

Playful Embellishments & Textures

  • Stickers: Everyone loves stickers. Searching through our collection instantly taps into that childhood excitement.
  • Colourful Tapes: A wide variety of decorative and industrial tapes gathered over the years for bold framing and structural lines.
  • Diamantés & Gems: Added to bring a new level of dimensional layering and eye-catching detail to the artwork.
  • Papers, Postcards & Found Ephemera: Vintage wrapping paper, tissue, postcards, and colourful paper fragments that create depth through heavy layering.
  • Pastels & Posca Pens: Perfect for drawing, line work, and adding final details over your paper layers.
The Final Touch: Spray Paint

We finish off our pieces with spray paint, which is often everyone’s favourite part of the workshop. Adding spray paint over your collage introduces rich texture and seals the entire artwork together. I will guide you through the basics of how to hold the can and control the spray. It is incredibly inspiring, completely addictive, and most people walk away ready to spray paint everything they own!