Day in the studio

Open studios is getting scarily close now and I haven't even started thinking about it thanks to work suddenly picking up in recents weeks, so I thought I would start setting aside some time to concentrate on my paintings. With the little one starting playgroup two days a week this is becoming easier, plus I have given myself a kick start by spending the whole day in my little studio working on my canvases.

I am reworking old canvases as well as starting new ones, I think the fog has started to clear finally. I had to be strict with myself and make a few difficult decisions about my work - what I want to do and where I see myself in five years time and which means letting go of a few things and clearing out a lot of old stock and projects I am frankly never going to get around to doing. Scary but essential if I am going to succeed :D

And again...

These are my third attempt at these pendants, the second ones were too pale so I tried different images this time. I've changed the type of knife I've used to cut them and rolled them a little thinner too. Just got to sand and varnish them and attach a chain of some sort and they will be finished. I'm doing a kids workshop for a charity event in Newmarket next month so I will taking some along with me if I'm happy with these. A neat way of bring my art and jewellery together!

Happy Birthday Beautiful!

Blooming

I hesitate to comment on the weather because the last time I suggested spring was here it snowed again, but a lovely warm afternoon in the garden with my two little helpers it really looks like the weather has turned finally.

The lawn was mowed, flowers water, weeds pulled, the greenhouse washed to remove the green slime that was covering it.

And this time we ventured round into the front garden to see it awash with beautiful forget me nots and left it well alone.

Pendants

I've been thinking of doing these for a while now as I already sell jewellery locally and thought it nice to sell pieces with my art on too. Trouble is they were not as easy as I thought so bought this fab little tutorial from Analiese Designs. Et voila! Still need a bit of practise to get it perfect but I'm pretty pleased with the result so far.

In the Pink

Two weeks of Easter holidays have flown by so it's back to work for me (but who can complain when work means doing the thing I love the most and getting paid for it!) I have been sorting through my stock and either getting rid of stuff I have been hanging on to 'just in case' or actually finishing off things I intended to do but never got round to. Such as this pretty little notebook, made from an album I made yonks ago when I was first learning bookbinding. The book itself was a disaster but the pages still good so out they came and were rebound. I actually got two out of it, one has gone into my new chalkhillstudio.etsy.com shop, the other into Chalk Hill Studio proper. Why two shops?

My main website is for UK customers only as 90% of my business is for custom work and dealing with people in a different time zone is tricky when you need answers quick or have a large wedding order to complete so I opened an etsy shop for those wanting Chalk Hill products without the complications. In fact it has made me rethink what I sell and as a result am developing new exciting ranges as we speak. All I need are a few more hours in the day!

Snow!

Think I spoke too soon when I said yesterday the cold spell was over, look what we woke up to this morning! Just two days ago we were sweltering in bright sunshine round London, good old British weather :D

Pressie

A quick thanks to my brother who bought me an early birthday pressie - he knows all the best bookshops in London! I've put more pics on the Chalk Hill blog.

Tales from the greenhouse

Now the cold spell seems to be over (maybe) our seedlings have come up in leaps and bounds since last time, now we have cherry tomatoes....

pepper plants....

lots and lots of carrots.....

sweetcorn.....

rocket and coriander in abundance. Still waiting on a few more herbs and the courgettes but looking good so far!

London

The easter holidays are nearly over *sob* so we took a quick trip on the train to the natural history museum in London to see the dinosaur exhibition.

Spent so long round this little bit we didn't get time to look round the rest of it but did spot this beautiful fossil.

After lunch we did a bit of shopping and sightseeing, here is Big Bill (ask my daughter)

and two tired but happy faces on the train home :D

A blank canvas...

...or rather lots of them turned up today. Only 2 whole months left before Open Studios so I really need to knuckle down and get painting. I've been brave and ordered large 80 x 60 cm ones as well as my usual, plus three natural linen ones, but what I am going to do on these I don't know, they are just too nice to touch!

Happy Easter!

Yup we woke up to snow this morning, big fat fluffy snowflakes that settled quickly. The kids wanted to go straight out in it but we though 7.30 in the morning was a bit early, not sure the neighbours would have appreciated it. By 10 it was thick enough for a snowman! Hope everyone is having a good easter!

New Arrivals!

Please meet the new additions to our family, Charlie and Echo, 5 month old kittens we adopted from the Blue Cross Center

Little monkeys have already escaped the kitchen and found my office and I have a funny feeling they are going to spending a lot of time in here, lots of cubby holes and fun things to play with.

Signs of Spring

Was amazed to discover the nestbox that hangs outside our dining room window was busy being emptied by a blue tit - no idea if he has a mate inside it yet but hopefully it would be long before we find out!

Charmed

www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=34811
adorapop.etsy.com
eclecticeccentricity.etsy.com
PaisleyChainsaw.etsy.com
allthosethrees.etsy.com
Champignons.etsy.com
etincelledesign.etsy.com
hoolala.etsy.com
luxedeluxe.etsy.com
Jackdaw.etsy.com
TheUrbanObjects.etsy.com
MrsGibson.etsy.com
HedgelandsGlassLass.etsy.com

Tales from the greenhouse - Carrots!

Yeah, I know you need a microscope to see them but we have two teeny tiny carrot seedlings...

Amigurumi - part deux

Had another go at the head and was only one stitch out this time so carried on with the body and 2 arms. Easy peasy this time. Already have an idea rattling round my head for my own designs but I will get this little ted finished first before it ends up in the 'to be finished later' box.

Feeding the addiction...

Bought another moleskine from the Devil's Wallpaper in her new incarnation as Champignons to add to my collection. I shall probably never use it but I don't care. I love books, reading them looking at them, making them, owning them. Old new, whatever. Talking of which I have a few ordered to finish stitching, better get on with it...

Beads

After spending the best part of 3 days doing computer related work I decided to take a break to tidy up my beads. I've got lots of odd packets lying around that needed to go away and I'm one of those odd people that like things ordered. If I had the time to not be messy I would have everything ordered; there is something immensly satisfying about the mere act of filing everything away according to size or colour or letter of the alphabet. I'm not compulsive about it, just find the process theraputic. A way of controling the chaos.

Of course I can't get beads out without help; my little artist in resident was there to 'assist' but of course she ended up getting distracted making her own creation and chucking the rest on the floor, but who am I to stop creativity in progress?

Tales from the greenhouse

We went to check on our new little seeds in the greehouse this morning, which Anya lovingly gave a generous amount of water (I really hope they germinate!!)

The strawberries are thankfully loving the attention they are getting, will be ready for bigger pots soon, and the other seedlings are doing well. We are just waiting for the first little shoot from one of the seed trays!

Illustration Friday - Garden

Thought I'd use this weeks IF theme of garden to finish this painting to add to the kids section in my shop that will hopefully translate on to cards as well as canvases.

My daughter has already claimed this as her own so will have to paint another, but it is good to do something completely different for a change. Let's hope our own garden will look as bright and pretty after we have finshed with it!

Amigurumi

Well so much for the instructions being in english, this didn't turn out to be as simple as it first looked! Unfortunately the instructions assumed that you already knew how to crochet in a round and didn't explain how to get started, so after a few failed attempts and a fair bit of swearing I had to look in another book to see what to do. So once I got going I thought it was fine until I realised I had misread something somewhere and was doing a rib stitch not single crochet - bah! So what you see in the picture is attempt number.... er actually I've lost count, plus I gained 10 stitches somewhere so although the stitch is right the shape is wrong. Oh well. Might just leave it as it is and give it Anya to use as a hat for her dolls.

Sowing seeds

Took a trip to the garden centre Saturday to buy seeds for our little greenhouse. Anya decided we needed strawberry plants (always thinking of her stomach that one) so we got two baby strawberry plants, chilli, mini cucumber and aubergine and packets and packets of veggie and herb seeds

Then came the fun bit of planting them. Really have no idea whether we did it right or not but the kids had fun getting their hands mucky and we had fun afterwards cleaning the mud out of the carpet! (It was a bit too cold and windy to do it outside.)

These little baby cacti are mine for the kitchen windowsill, guaranteed not to die in a hurry!

Illustrator

Last year I was given a copy of Adobe's Illustrator CS3 for my birthday and it has taken me nearly a year to find time to even look at it properly let alone how to figure out how to use it. But a couple of weeks ago I stayed up extra late after the kidlets had gone to bed to tackle it. The first attempt was the little birdy above - looks simple enough but it took the best part of two hours and I wasn't sure I knew how I did it!

Next I tried the cake. These, by the way, are card ideas I scanned straight out of my sketchbook, used the trace feature in Illustrator to redraw the lines (I love that bit) then filled with patterns I imported as jpegs. Hence the complication - too many steps to learn in one go!

The drawing for this last one was too broken and sketchy (as I found out after playing around with it for over an hour) so I redrew it by hand and tried again. I actually think I prefer the sketchier look of the first two pics but at least I am working out how the program works and what it'll do for me. The next step is to learn how to create my own patterns in Ilustrator, very exciting!

Collaboration

This super chunky little A6 book was made at the request of the fabulous Moopf. A full one and a half inches thick handstitched watercolour paper are adorned by Moopf's own printed fabric covers. I am in the process of making more, in the meantime this one is available in his etsy shop!

Mother's Day

I think I must be the luckiest mum in the world, cards, breakfast in bed and daffodils plucked from the garden :D

Fun and funky

I'm loving this new batch of yuzen papers, there are some fantastic patterns! This one is particularly cool, I nearly didn't list it but it's in my etsy shop if someone wants it before I change my mind!

Sanctuary

You know when there are days you have so much on you just don't see daylight? Ok that's an exxageration, I see plenty of daylight but I just don't get time to go out and enjoy it as much as I would like. We have been in our new little house 4 months today and the sun is getting warmer and the garden is starting to bloom and I am getting itchy feet. As anyone who knows me will attest to I am not the domestic type - although my family is well cared for I am not one for baking and gardening and housework in general. I do it because it has to be done, I would much rather be making things with paper than eggs and flour.

But there is something about this house that reminds my of my own childhood, hours spent at my nan's baking fairy cakes, the taste of fresh veg that my dad grew (except for the marrows, never understood why he insisted on growing marrows ugh), memories that I want my own children to have. As I grew older I quicky lost interest in these kind of things, I wanted to move away and go out with friends, but now find myself in possesion of a beautiful garden and no idea what to do with it!

So although I have no expectations of suddenly transforming myself into a domestic goddess I do feel the need to enrich our lives a little more and give my children an understanding of the world they live in, eating our own vegetables (no marrows kids, I promise) and seeing if I can actually grow a few flowers without killing them! After a wander round our local garden centre I came out with these two pretty little hydrangea, a book on attracting butterflies to your garden and an indian cookbook. Nigella watch out!

Wander

Think I am slowly perfecting my technique - I've found if you get the timing right between drying layers and the consistency of the gel medium is not too thin, not too thick you can overlay transfer on top of transfer and build up the layers to get wonderful depth and textures. I love playing around with layers on photoshop but there's nothing like producing a real painting.

(Oh and thanks to Bunny for the use of her photo, you can see the original here and while you are at it go check out her wonderful shop!)

Oops!

Time ran away from me and I forgot to most my valentine swap postcards - so sorry, they are on their way!

New books are being added to Chalk Hill and my etsy shop - go see!

Linen

Mmmm 12 sumptuous metres of sheer natural linen to go up at our windows. A very good reason to road test my new sewing machine :D

In the Garden

We haven't really touched the garden since moving in last October and it was starting to look a bit sorry for itself with a lot of dried and dead foliage filling the borders, so we got our gardening gloves on and got stuck in.

I must confess to having very little gardening know-how so it's possible I pulled up things I shouldn't but it's looking much better, even our family of robins and blackbirds flew in after we'd gone back in to warm up and started foraging for worms which they were never able to do before.

I am really looking forward to the next few weeks when we can start to plan what veggies to grow in the greenhouse and I also want a little wildflower patch somewhere. We did uncover a few little gems already growing amongst the weeds and dead stuff, two large blacurrant bushes, a gooseberry bush and this pretty little iris. Who'd have thought last october, with all the stress and worry we were coping with, in just less than 6 months we would be owners of such a gorgeous home. Life is good.

Happy Valentine's Day!