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.

"Bon Voyage" card

Before I had baby Orren and had time for things like craft I made this card for some friends who were travelling to America to live and work for 6 months.  I was really pleased with it as were my friends so thought I would share it with you.

I began by creating a background with brown parcel paper.  I placed small strips of masking tape in places on the packing paper to make the front of the card look like a parcel. Then I cut out three circles from vintage maps to give them impression of globes.  Next I stuck on some stamps I had saves, some from America and one British one.  Then I cut out the words "Bon Voyage" from brown paper, written with black pen and stuck them on top.  Finally I stitched a line in black embroidery thread on the sewing machine with a drawing of an aeroplane at the end of it so it looked like the plane was flying round the globes (or something like that!) I liked it anyway and thought it had a bit of a vintage feel to it.

What do you think?

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.

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.

New scrapbooking pages

I think I might be getting the hang of this now, I just need to not go crazy in Hobby Craft because I can't afford it!

Two pages about organising the flowers for our wedding, still have lots of flower pages to go and have ordered a load of embelishments from K and Company from a range called Poppy seeds, so just waiting for these before I really get stuck in. Am I doing it right?

My "Studio"

When I am not teaching, taking photographs, working on my allotment, scrapbooking or making stuff for my Etsy shop I like to do the one thing that really brings me joy, the thing I am trained for and the thing that I most want to do in the future, and that is my art. Sadly my darling husband and I do not have a lot of money and thus no space for a permanent studio. To get by I have a sort of "get-it-out-when-you-want-it" studio that normally lives in the corner of our living room come dining room, and when it is out it resides on our dining room table. Like today for instance. I am currently working on some artwork for a friend of mine's partner who is a musician; he has commissioned me to produce some mixed media paintings that might work well on the cover of his next catalogue of sheet music. The music is all about different types of flowers with the lyrics to famous floral poems, so I am trying to make the artworks flower related. Anyhow, here is what my "get-it-out-when-you-want-it" studio looks like today, followed by some photos of the artworks:

I like to have my laptop with me when I am working so I can look online at different techniques and styles for inspiration.  I am fairly pleased with the artworks although I felt the second one was too pink, and the first one could have had a larger group of flowers in the middle.

Now what to do for the rest of the day?  It's a lovely summer day here in Berkshire, and I am being draw outside, maybe I will go for a walk.  Only two more days of my summer holiday left after today, and i am trying to live each one as if it were my last day on earth, thinking, "what would I want to do today if I was going to die tomorrow"  and not in a crazy kind of "I am going to do a bungee jump" sort of thing, but in a "living each day to the full" sort of way.
What are you doing today?

Hels
x

The things I do for teaching

This is a box I made a few weeks ago for one of my classes, this is actually a photograph of it in it's unfinished state, don't know why I didn't photograph it when it was finished.  It's at school now so will have to photograph it tomorrow and post the finished item. 

The theme of the project is identity and pupils choose a role model and create a box that shows their identity and what it is about them that you look up to. 

I chose my mum.

Tune in again soon to see Captain Jack Sparrow's head made from a milk bottle! (you think I am kidding!?)

Looking up

Entered this small painting for an exhibition last week, unfortunately it wasn't accepted, but I thought I would share it with you lovely people anyway.  Hope you like it, please do let me know what you think.  I am not too pleased with her face, she looks a bit cross eyed!

Well anyway, I haven't had a very happy week this week, but hopefully this weekend I will get loads of art done because I have no plans.  Mmmmm excited just at the thought of getting all my art bits out and gluing and sticking and cutting and choosing and painting and drawing.

I have been evry inspired by images on other people's blogs recently, and have really enjoyed looking at the ones on my blog list.  I am going to redecorate my living room in the Easter holiday so have been looking for inspiration, I will try to share some of my ideas soon.

Take care everyone

Hels

x

the tower is finished

Hi bloggers,
Tonight I finally finished this "tower" that I have been working on for ages.  There are a couple of reasons why I made this, firstly I was inspired by the artist Hundertwasser, I am reading a book about him which talked about trying to think like a child when making art, it made me think about when I was at nursery and we made towns and crazy houses out of cereal boxes and toilet roll tubes and things all stuck together.  Then my brain made a connection between these and the collage work I have been doing in my little books, it's been a problem because it's so difficult to display them, only one person can see them at a time and they would get damaged if a lot of people handled them, so I though, I know I will do my collages onto boxes, that way I can display my collages in a way that many people can see them without having to touch them.  So here is my first attempt, its quite meaningful to me, but not perfect, but then its my first one, hopefully there will be more to come. Hope you like it.

Have a great evening everyone.

Hels

xxx

New collage piece

Had a pretty terrible day at work today, including being sworn at by at least two pupils, losing my lunch and traveling to a meeting which had been cancelled.  However yesterday I made this lovely collage page in my journal which now seems quite poigniant considering my current emotional state. 
Well here it is, hope you like it.