My mothers day

Before Sunday my husband was asking me what I wanted to do for mothers day, I think he was hoping I would want to go on a trip somewhere, visit something, DO something, but my wish for the day was simple.  I wanted some flowers, some chocolates and to be on my own for a bit.  

Does that sound terrible?  I love my baby so much, and my husband of course, but for the last year I could probably count on one hand the number of hours I have spent truly alone, and I missed it.  

Of course the chocolates and the flowers were an instant win, it is kind of a tradition in my family to give/receive daffodils on Mother's Day ever since as children we had to go up to the front in church and collect a little bunch of them to take back to our mothers, (I always loved how my mum had loads of flowers because she had four children.)

I enjoyed a tasty breakfast of pastries then lunch out I had about two wonderful hours to myself and I used it to do a painting, my first since Orren was born.  I didn't write finish it unfortunately, but I did get some nice textures, layers and shapes down.  It was great to sit for a while, to not have to talk and to let the paper, glue, brushes and paint do the talking.  Here are some details.

I hope at some point I will be able to finish it, it's still out, along with all my paints, waiting for some words and a symbolic image, I am not sure what they will be yet, I will have to see where it takes me. 

One the Monday following Mothers Day, I was in the bathroom and Orren was crawling around upstairs, I thought I had packed all my paints away, then Orren crawled through onto the landing and I noticed his hands and feet had white emulsion on them, NOT good. I went into the spare room where I had been working on the floor and there was a puddle of white emulsion on the carpet.  I spent the next 40 minutes scrubbing the carpet to get it up, my hands look like an old lady's now!! Not a great start to the week, but I can laugh about it now thankfully.

What did you do for mothers day, did you see your mum?  Did you have something special to celebrate being a mum?

Etsy Feature

I am feeling fired up about art this week and just itching to get my paints and collage stuff out and get making, time is tight at the moment now though with a new baby, a house and a husband to look after so in the mean time I will just have to drool over these gorgeous artworks on Etsy:

Love the colours, the glitter, the texture and the use of circles,

Love the sort colours and shapes, the collaged cups, the use of text,

Love the layering, the variety of shapes, the colour pallet,

Love the stencilled letters, the loose paintwork, the balanced composition,

Love the character, the black outlines, which highlights,

Love the broad  strokes contrasting with the delicate black lines, 

Love the angular shapes, the bright colours, the pattern,

Love the blocks of colour against the fields of colours, love the variety of sized of squares.

Click on each artwork to view each artists shop.

Wooden trolley makeover

I had this wooden trolley that came with a set of shelves my husband and I bought years ago.  It was totally unfit for purpose because it was supposed to slot in between the legs of the shelves under the bottom shelf and it was too wide. The shelves became a shoe rack and over the years the trolley has served many purposes.  It now takes on a new guise as a toy box for our baby's bedroom.
You might remember these test pots of paint that I bought from B&Q to match in with our colour scheme?  Well I used them to create a sort of colour wash over the bare pine wood.  I am pleased with the result, it is now bright and cheery and much more appropriate for a child's bedroom.  It was a bit difficult to do because I worked on it on the bedroom floor and all the getting up and down was a strain, not to mention the bump getting in the way!  But I did it!  What do you think?

Before - boring old pine

 After - bright and colourful

Recent artwork

I am finally feeling like I can be creative again, the artistic juices are flowing and rather than giving up when things don't turn out perfect, or not even starting out to begin with, as I have done in the past, I am just having a go anyway, making art for myself and not even thinking about selling and not worrying that some of it is quite bad.
So here are some recent artworks that I have created just in my small journals, I drew ideas from how I was feeling at the time of paintings them.  They are certainly not the best things I have ever done, but they are "something"; paint to paper, creativity, and something of my spirit on paper.  I would love to know what you think.

Youth Group painting

I have recently been helping run my church youth group on Sunday evenings and I was given the responsibility of  organising a group painting.  We decided we would create an image similar to that of the church logo which is a tree with people underneath it, the kids at youth group all designed their own logo and we combined them to create a new logo.  I was worried about being too "teachery" in the evening, but the girls who I help run the group with said I was really good.  It gave me a real boost to have people tell me I did really well because positive praise and encouragement like that rarely/never happens at school.  Also all the kids really enjoyed the painting, they tried really hard and were really appreciative, (again another thing that rarely happens in school)  All in all it was a really rewarding experience and is definitely the sort of thing I would like to do more of.

Here are some pics:

And the finished painting:

Beautiful Bird Painting

Added a new painting to the shop today, this is the one I created with my lovely friend Hannah a while back.
I would reeeeeally love to sell one of my paintings to someone out there in the world (hint hint!) This is what I truly want to do in my life and I so want it to be a success, it all feels a bit futile at the moment.  Anyway, none of this "woe is me" nonsense, here is my painting, I hope you like it.

Being creative with others is more fun

My friend Hannah and her husband came over on Saturday; I would have to say that she is probably my best friend, I have known her since I was a baby, we grew up together and even though we sometimes go for quite long periods of time without seeing each other, whenever we are together it is like we have never been apart. I feel like I can talk about anything with her and she won't judge, criticize me or think I am crazy, she is also full of good advice and always looks on the positive side of things.  She really is a lovely and good person and I am so glad to have her in my life, she is every thing that a good friend should be.
I was showing her my decorative letter in my bedroom and she commented on the painting above the bed, she said that she wished she could paint, and excitedly I said "You can!" and then "in fact I have a spare canvas, lets do one now!".  It was a totally spur of the moment thing and it meant we didn't end up eating dinner till about 10.00pm!
It was a really good experience for me because I have never really tutored an adult through a painting before, hopefully I was a good teacher, I thought she came up with a really lovely painting, her are some pics of the process, I made a painting along with her:

Isn't she gorgeous!

It made me think about one day doing an e-course for painting.  

Inside my Parents House

So as you know I was in Wales for the past few days visiting my lovely Ma and Pa, helping them around the house and with the ponies, but more importantly SHOPPING!  Yes we had a wonderful time in the YMCA shop, several fantastic and huge pound shops and of course a range of charity shops.  I got many bargains including some rather wonderful vinyl number stickers for my recycling bins featuring some fishing gnomes!  What could be better?
Anyhow while I was at my mum and dads house I observed some of the lovely artefacts they had round the house and thought it might be lovely to share some of them with you for you all to enjoy.

This is a painting by an artist friend of my parents called Terence Clarke,they have a few of his paintings which are all really beautiful:

An Orchid that I moved to the work surface in the kitchen:

A selection of old artefacts inherited from mu grandparents:

A vase of poppy heads and two small ceramic vases/pots that I made and gave to my mum as a present:

Hope you are all having a good week, I will hopefully have a tutorial for you all to enjoy tomorrow.  Anyone doing anything exciting over Easter?

 

Giveaway!!

As promised I am doing a giveaway today for all my lovely followers and any newcomers.  I am so grateful to have you all, it brings me such joy when I have a comment left on my blog or an email.  I feel like part of such a wonderful community here on the internet and have met so many lovely, like minded people, I feel really blessed.

So today I am doing a giveaway of a set of five of my postcard prints of my own original artworks:

To be in with a chance of winning this set of postcards all you have to do is leave a comment on this post with a way of contacting you.  For extra entries, become a follower and facebook and tweet this post and share the link.

The giveaway ends on Sunday Evening 7.00pm GMT.

Good luck!

p.s. If you can't wait to see if you win the giveaway you can buy this set of postcards from my Etsy Shop Serendipitychild Art.

Vintage Map Bunting and give-away news

I went a bit insane when I made this bunting, normally when I do my vintage music sheet bunting I make two meters with ten flags, but when I made this vintage map bunting I just kept on going and ended up with twenty maps at nearly 6 meters long!!  I wondered why it was taking me longer than usual!  Anyway, I hardly put the price up at all from the price of the two meter bunting so I think this is a real bargain:

The give-away news is that starting from tomorrow I am going to be doing a give-away of a set of five of my painting postcard prints, so be sure to call back soon and be in with a chance of winning these beauties: