Wordle

I made a Wordle. Looky:



Basically, it's a word cloud made from, in this instance, this blog. Go to http://www.wordle.net to get your own :D

Red Shoes and Resolutions - part 2

In a previous post, I mentioned this year's New Year's resolution - to buy something handmade at least once a month. See that post for the inspiration behind this resolution, and for the first of January's purchases - a print from Champignons which I had been coveting for a while. To continue the red shoes theme from that print, I wanted two more prints, the first of which was this beautiful Ruby Slippers piece from Quite Contrary, which I also bought in January:



This month, I was also able to afford to buy this gorgeous print from Linda Boucher:



The two shoe prints above continue the symbolism that was there in the Champignons print. Although her print is called 'Alice in Wonderland', and is about when Alice grew tall from eating cake marked 'Eat Me', the fact that she is wearing red shoes makes me think of The Wizard of Oz, and Dorothy's ruby slippers. Also, the fact that Dorothy and Alice's clothing are very similar means that this figure could be either of these characters. Plus, there needed to be three prints not only because things look better in threes, but also because Dorothy says "There's no place like home" three times while clicking her ruby-slippered heels. Therefore, the hanging of the Alice/Dorothy print with ruby slippers either side seemed quite natural to me. I searched for red-shoe themed prints from UK Etsy sellers, and found the perfect ones. All three prints now hang in my bedroom:

Snow day!

Followers of my Twitter may have read that I was "Planning to be very creative" today - in other words, intending to spend the day doing a lot of painting and maybe even a bit of wirework. Well, the snow had other ideas. Much of today has been spent either watching the snow out of the window or actually being out playing in the snow, leaving little time for much else. But no matter. Days like this tend to bring a lot of inspiration, which makes up for the lack of actual work :)











I have in fact got some 'actual work' done today - I've made a start to a painting that will eventually look a bit like the last of the above photos:



I've also made a sinister snowman - don't have nightmares! ;)

Kinver Hearts

I've just listed my first printed greetings card - Kinver Hearts. I've been wanting to get this image printed for a while, and it finally exists in the form of a card.



The card has come out a little different to the original in colour, but I prefer it. The greys in the sky that you can see above have turned out more purple, which is great. Visit the listing here.

Just over a year ago, I blogged a little about the series of artworks that inspired this piece - visit the post here. It all started with this photograph, taken at Kinver Edge in the Midlands:



Shortly afterwards, I painted this piece. I opened up the negative space a little, allowing for a colourful sunset to be seen behind the plants:



Using that canvas as inspiration, I painted a similar scene in my art journal in watercolours and acrylics:



I experimented with that a little, adding an extra layer in acetate:





I also edited the photograph of the original, stretching it out:



Then playing with the contrast and adding hearts:



The original painting was originally to be for sale but we (that is, my boyfriend and I) liked it so much that we kept it.



I still wanted it to be for sale in some form though, hence these greetings cards (yes, there will be more!). I'm looking into getting prints of many of my paintings made too, of which Kinver will be one. There will also be a Kinver Hearts print - watch this space.