Happy September!

So it's September, and autumn is on its way. It's starting to get cooler outside, and I'm looking forward to keeping warm in cosy, luxurious clothes.







Images from Elle and arashmazinani.com

Thanks to a typical washout of a British summer, I have in fact been looking forward to autumn since mid-July - wanting the temperatures to match the grey sky. This seems to happen every year. With autumn comes Halloween, so I tend to start looking forward to Halloween in the middle of the summer. Which is rather premature. It's September now though, and, with less than two months to go, I can stop feeling guilty!

Autumn has already arrived in my little Etsy shop - I've had a Spooky Sale on since mid-July (I told you I get Halloweeny around then!), giving you 20% off selected items. Clicky the piccy to go there:



I've opened a Halloween section too, making the rest of my spooks easier to find. Click the Woolly Bat to go there:



Talking of Woolly Bats, I do believe I've mentioned them before in a previous post. As I mentioned there, their design was inspired by Honduran white bats, little flying balls of fluff. They're made of felted balls and wire, and would look gorgeous hanging in your home.



^..^

I got things!

I've done a couple of little swaps lately, and got me some groovy things. The first of the swaps was with Marie of Deviant Candy. I made her a Black Widow pendant:



And she made me a zombie bat pendant, yay:



The next swap, which I got in the post just today, was with Kyra of TheKraftyKreep. I sent her a bat dangle:



And got an awesome TV pendant from her:



Another thing I got today was a Brown Owl Lavender Sachet from the lovely Mel of Inkmeup:



It smells gorgeous, and I got free prints too!



The owl is for my Mum (it's her birthday today), but I think I might have to buy my own Inky sachet. The Smelly Cat ones are particularly cute:

Snowbats

The other day, I was searching online for bats, as I often do, and came across these gorgeous little guys:



They're Honduran white bats, and live in the rainforest. Having seen these cute little snowballs, I of course wanted to make one, and set about designing how that might look:



The basic idea was to have some sort of big pom-pom, and to add wire wings and features to that. My attempts at pom-pom making haven't been too successful though! For example, this one, made from some very fluffy yarn, is just too fluffy, and moults everywhere:



Instead, I've decided that felted balls are the way to go, so I've ordered a few of those. Until those turn up, here's a little Photoshop mock-up of what will be known as a Snowbat:



The Snowbats will be a lot like my Fuzzy Bats, only snowball-sized, and will have a loop with which to hang them from your Christmas tree.

Burtonesque

Dear reader, it may not come as a huge surprise to you that I love Tim Burton. The Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice and others of his are among my favourite films, and a book called Burton on Burton has been one of the most interesting things I have read. My paintings have often been called Burtonesque, even though, in all but the piece below, there hasn't been a direct influence. It must just have filtered through from my subconscious ;)



So I'm very excited about Burton's re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland, to be released next year. Alice has long been one of my favourite stories, and I love seeing various artists' interpretations of scenes and themes from the book. I can't wait to see what he's done with it. With a cast that includes Johnny Depp, Stephen Fry, Matt Lucas and Alan Rickman, it surely can't fail to be awesome.

In celebration of this, an Etsy friend of mine, the fabulous jewellery-maker Gugaw, is having a merry unbirthday giveaway! You can win anything from her shop - just comment about your favourite piece on her blog.

Bat Swaps

I've recently taken part in a couple of swaps - the first was with the fabulous Maya of Static White's Stitchery, in which I got a cute little batling, complete with detachable party hat:





You should so check out her shop, which is full of awesomeness. She has other batling brooches, plus Scrap Bats and more. Do eeet.

In the other swap, the UK Handmade Secret Swap*, I received two adorable sock bats by Dreamknight:



So cute! You should absolutely check out her shop too - dreamknight.etsy.com, for doll clothing and curios :)

I felt the need to journal about these bat swaps (Is journal a verb? It is now.), including the bat sprinkles that came with the batling and a little foam bat sticker that came with the sock bats:





*The UK Secret Swap was organized by UK people on Etsy, and is similar to a secret Santa idea. Basically, all that want to take part tell the organizer, then (s)he finds out from them what type of item they would like to receive. Then, from this information, (s)he works out who should get something from which seller. Each person makes something to send to the person they're allocated, and each person also receives a handmade item for themselves. Yayness ensues.

New things and featurings

After months of a kind of creative block, the past few weeks has seen me creating in wire again. Suncatchers featuring some of my favourite themes - hearts, skulls, the rainbow, stars and bats - have been popping up all over the shop.

















In addition to this, I have also had my work featured in two places - the 'Gift of Art' Gift Guide campaign on Etsy's front page, in which they've used my 'Turquoise Star' piece:



And also on ACEO Showcase, the new blog from the creator of Cuteable, who has featured my 'Midnight Moon' ACEO:

Batty Moon - a mixed-media painting on canvas

In the end, I didn't add bats to that sketchbook piece, but I did draw this, using charcoal pencil and normal HB pencil, to get an idea of how the painting might look:



So, using the above sketch and my previous moon painting as inspiration,



I painted this piece, Batty Moon, using acrylics, silvery poster paint, liquid watercolour and blue glitter glue. It depicts a cloud of bats, silhouetted against a bright full moon, in a dark blue night sky:



The dark colours of the sky continue over the sides of the canvas on which this is painted, as do the shimmer of the blue glitter and the bat detail, to give one continuous block of colour. This means that this piece does not need to be framed. This square box canvas measures 15cm square by just under 4cm deep.



Find it for sale here.