I am a Princess...

...all girls are.

Have a wonderful weekend my friends.

(All photos from We Heart It, quote from A Little Princess)

New Mixed media paintings for the shop

Steadily producing about 2 painting a week now.  I need to step this up a gear though really.  Hoping to add some prints to the shop really soon.  Here are the latest, I am trying to include a photo of the painting with an object to get a better sense of scale:

Would love some feedback on these, why haven;t I had any sales yet?!

Wedding Scrapbook

On Sunday my lovely sister came over and we did a couple of hours scrapbooking.  She was making a scrapbook for her friend and I was doing another page for my very slow developing wedding scrapbook. I have come to the conclusion that scrapbooking is definitely better with someone else.  We chatted and had a laugh and reminisced, it was lovely.  One thing that I found quite amusing was that in the two hours of scrapbooking, I completed one, yes one painful, excruciating,  page of my wedding scrapbook, and my sister did 20 layouts!! She certainly didn't fret over every tiny scrap of paper or embellishment.  Anyway, I was pleased with my 2 hours work, here is the result:

The page is about the colours of the flowers and the photos are when we had bought a few flowers as a tester to put together some bouquets as a try out.  Here they are all still wrapped in their cellophane before we spread them out on the floor and played about with some arrangements.  As you can see I have not yet journalled on the tag, so I am going to have to do that.  Hope you are all having a good week.  My day off tomorrow1!  yippee, lots of painting hopefully!

Stylish Blogger Award

I was absolutely thrilled yesterday to receive the Stylish Blogger Award from Tabbyroo.  How wonderful!  I had seen people getting this award for their blog in the past and thought how delightful it would be to get it myself, but never thought it would happen, so I really am very happy to have been give it.

As a receiver of this prestigious award I have several responsibilities:

1. Thank and link back to the person to gave me this award,
2. Share 7 things about yourself,
3. Award 15 Bloggers,
4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award.

So, 7 things about me!  Here goes:

1. I met my husband on the internet in 2000 when I was 17!  I was planning on going to the Reading Music Festival with my friends and visited the chat room on the Reading Music Festival website with my friend at school.  She started chatting to someone in the chat room and added him to her MSN.  One day when I was at my friend's house I chatted with the boy she had met on the Reading Music Festival website on her MSN, and later on added him to mine.  We chatted loads over the internet, and exchanged phone numbers.  One crazy day when my friend was over braiding my hair we decided to give him a ring.  I chatted to him a few times on the phone after that and we decide to meet up at the Festival.  I wasn't looking for a relationship, I mean I was only 17 and still at school.  But my friend and I thought it would be fun! (We planned on meeting a few other boys we had met on the internet at the Festival...the world was a different place then, I certainly wouldn't do it now and I must point out that we went as a group to visit these people and were not on our own!)
So we met at the festival, we hit it off instantly, I knew there was something special about him because we hugged and I let go first.  That had almost never happened before. Nearly 11 years later we are married and I am more in love with him than ever.

2. After finishing University I worked as a photographer for 6 months for a portrait photography chain called Olan Mills.  It was incredibly stressful, the hours were bad and the pay was appalling so I decided to leave and do a normal job. I worked for the accounts department of a catering company for about a year and a half as an accounts assistant.  I really enjoyed the job, the office banter, and pay and the normal hours but I really wanted to use my fine art degree and do something creative.  That is when I decided to be a teacher.

3. Actually I have almost had too many jobs to count, here is a list:
             Worked in an old peoples home, doing tea and washing dishes,
             Worked in a green grocers,
             Coached gymnastics,
             Cleaned canal boats,
             Worked at a primary school running a breakfast club,
             Worked in a chemist as a counter assistant, (two different chemists)
             Worked in a bakery,
             Worked in TKMAXX
             Waitressing,
             Worked behind a bar,
             Photographer,
             Accounts assistant,
             Art teacher.

You better believe it!

4. I love doilies, I mean I really really love doilies.  Especially vintage ones, or lace ones, or crotched ones, or paper ones or coloured ones or, or or......

5. I am a Christian and have been a Christian for my whole life.  I am afraid I didn't have a "born again" moment or a day when I could say I "became" a Christian.  It has been a very gradual thing where over time I have become closer to God and developed a thirst for knowledge and truth about Him.  I have finally come to a point in my life where I feel it is time to confirm my faith and am going to be taking confirmation classes at my church, I will be confirmed in March which I am excited and nervous about but looking forward to.  I feel it is something I need to do, not because it makes me an official Christian, the change has already occoured in my heart, but because I was to stand up and say to people "yes, I want God to be in charge of my life" and that is not always something that I could have said.

6. I play the Clarinet, the Piano and the Drums and when I was in high school, the orchestra I was in toured Prague in the Czech republic and Florence in Italy, it was brilliant and such a fun time, I was officially a band geek and hung out in the music room at break and lunch times.  My best school friends were all in the Orchestra or Choir, so we had a great time together.  At university I played the drums in the Christian Union Band but I no longer play my instruments any more.  That probably sounds really sad but I don't mind, I have got plenty of other creative things to keep me busy.

7. On Saturday I have my very first back, neck and shoulder massage.  Hubby gave me a massage voucher for valentines day last year and I finally decided to cash it it.  The massage was wonderful and I am now with lovely oils, candles relaxed music and a very lovely massage lady.  Slightly worried that I will want more, which I clearly can't afford!



So now I am passing this award on to:

Sweet Bee Buzzing

Blighty Boutique

Scraps the City and Me

Ruby's Mamma Made it

Erin Kenepp

Amanda Makes

Lotties Artful Journey

Little Owl Arts

Concrete and Honey

Istar Olivera

Emma Lamb

Bella Bag's Blog

Gemmipop Designs

Tales of  junkaholic

Belle and Burger

Hope you can check them all out they are all fab and stylish blogs.

Hope you are all having a good week, I have done another page in my wedding scrapbook so will share that with you in the next couple of days.

TTFN
xx

Grab My Button Tutorial

Hi Folks, happy Friday!

You might notice that I have created one of those Grab My Button thingies that the likes of Kelly Rae Roberts have on their blogs, and may I just say, it took a LOT of effort to get this button things to appear correctly on my blog.
So as a result of the tears and tantrums I had with various code generators, HTML's and the like I have decided to do a simplified description of how to create on for your very own blog in 10 easy steps.
It goes like this:

1.  Create an image that you want to use as a button, make it smallish and upload it to photobucket,

2. Go to the design tab in Blogger, and click "Add Gadget"  next click to add html/javascript, add the title "grab my button" or whatever you want it to be.

3. Go to this button generator:  http://www.mycoolrealm.com/sandbox/gbgen/,

4. Enter your blog title, for example I entered "Serendipitychild",

5. Enter your website URL, this is the web address for your blog which appears in the long box at the top of the internet page, (where you type in website addresses) when you are actually on your blog homepage.  For example mine is http://www.serendipitychild.blogspot.com

6. Next you need to enter your image URL.  You get this by going back to photobucket and running the mouse arrow over the image that you want to use as your button.  Underneath the image several boxes will appear.  Click on the the one that says "IMG code" this is the image URL.  It looks like this:

7. By clicking the IMG code, you automatically copy it.  Go back to the code generator and paste the URL code into the box that says image URL.  You will notice that at the start and end of the code you have got this: [IMG].  Delete this from the start and end of the code.

8. Click "preview" to check everything is ok, if it is then click "get code". 

9. Copy the code from the box that appears underneath, it looks like this:

10. Go back to blogger and paste this code into the html/javascript box that you opened in step 2. Click "save"  than "save" on your dashboard.  When you go to view blog you should then find your lovely little button along with the code underneath for others to copy onto their blogs!

And that is all there is to it!!  My problem was that I didn't know what an Image URL code was or how to get one, and couldn't find anywhere that told me.  So now you know.  Hope this is helpful and will stop you from getting cross with your laptop like I did!

Embarrassing things I have done Part 1

Before I begin my story let me remind you of that famous phrase "when in Rome (do as the Roman's do)"  made famous by the film of the same name, but originally inspired by St. Ambrose who said it (or something like it) after a trip to Rome in 387 A.D.  It means that when you are in a place you should try to do as they do so as not to stick out like a tourist.  Remember this phrase as it is intrinsic to the calamity the concludes my first embarrassing story.


I have just watched the lovely film Letters To Juliet, which if filmed in the beautiful country of Italy, it brought back happy memories from my honeymoon back in July 2009, the best and happiest holiday of my life where my new husband and I travelled round Italy from Venice, through Florence and the surrounding cities through to Rome.  On arrival in Rome we travelled to our self catering apartment and were let in by the owner, after handing over our money my husband shook hands with the man, and I, for some peculiar reason which I can only attribute to being overcome by the heat and wanting to feel a bit European, went in for a kiss, and said proudly "When in Spain!".


What a tool!  It wasn't till after he had left that I turned to my new husband and said to him "did I say When in Spain? I meant to say When in Rome!"

More paintings for the shop

Hi everyone, yey!  A sunny day on my Wednesday off!  I have been waiting for this for three weeks.  I have been gagging to go for a walk but have been very disciplined and stayed in and painted.  I also moved all my "studio" from the dining room table up to the spare room which is no going to be my studio, once I get a little table for it. Here are some paintings I finished today.  I started the boat one last week and just finished it today, and the little one I started and finished today. I am trying to make a set of six of the small paintings so I an get some post cards printed to sell in the shop:

Hope you like them, please do leave me a comment, I love love love your feedback.  Also don't forget to visit the shop to see more of my paintings, or look back at these posts,

Woodland walk

Hubby and I are members of the Wildlife Trust, and as such we receive information about nature reserves in our area.  We hadn't been to any yet so decided to give one a go.  We went for Moor Copse towards Pangbourne. We did a lovely mile and a half walk through fields, woodland and along part of the river Pang which is apparently where the author of Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame got his ideas.  At this time of year Moor Copse is famed for it's Catkins, so we enjoyed looking at them, amongst other things:

We will hopefully visit some more of the Wildlife Trust's nature reserves because, apart from the motorway noise, this one was lovely.  There was a quote from Wind in the Willows on one of the information boards, it is so poetic, it read:

"Never in his life had he seen a river before - this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again.  All was a-shake and a-shiver - glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble."

New mixed media painting for the shop

Oh yes I am an art making machine at the moment, can't get enough of it.  Made three of these little ones now and currently working on two larger ones which I will hopefully have up on Wednesday.
Here is the latest:

Also I haven't forgotten that I said I would do a tutorial for making a wreath, haven't had tome yet this week, but is it in the magical diary of my mind as something that needs to be done.

Hope you are looking forward to a week ahead, here's praying for some sun!

New mixed media painting for the shop

Here is my next offering for my new Etsy Art shop.  It is another small mixed media painting like this one.  I am going to get some postcards printed up of these because I think they would work really well as small prints.  What do you think?
This one is called Hand Spun Heart:

Love to hear your feedback as ever.

Hope you are all having a wonderful weekend, what are you getting up to?

The Art of Love - Etsy Treasury

This weeks treasury is courtesy of my Art profile on Etsy which is SerendipitychildArt, here are a few of my absolute favourites from my "The Art of Love" Valentines themed treasury.  Click on the image to link to their Etsy page.  There so many talented artists on Etsy, I wish I could own some of it: