Firing my imagination

My latest piece, Fiery Heart, is so called because of the bright, tropical-coloured beads I've used in its creation.



Inspiration for the colours used in its design came from a magazine advert for paint. I thought that the combination of brights in the room set just looked so gorgeous together that I needed to use them in my work.





Its so colourful that I almost want to keep it for myself. I won't though - you can buy it now on Folksy - just click the image below:

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:

My first art cards

I've just listed a new ACEO diptych in my DaWanda shop. It looks like this:



and is for sale here.

It's a mini version of a favourite composition of mine, which I've used here and here. It depicts a tree spreading across two cards. The first card shows one side of this tree in daylight, and the other shows the other side of the tree at sunset. The tree on the daylight side has been painted using a mixture of copper poster paint and black acrylic, giving it a metallic sheen that looks different in varying light. The sunset tree is in silhouette, painted in black acrylic, a striking contrast to the bright acrylic colours of the setting sun. As I believe is standard with ACEOs (I did say these were my first!), both of my cards measure 6.5cm (2.5") by 9cm (3.5").

I've also painted a circular art card, on display here:

New painting - Red Sky at Night

This piece came about from a desire to mix two elements of what I do, the painting and the wire sculpture. It is a representation of a tree in silhouette against a red sunset, created using a mixture of acrylic paints and copper-coloured poster paint. I've also used copper wire, which forms part of the structure of the tree. This wire also goes behind the canvas, to attach itself there, and forms a loop at the top for hanging the painting.

For more information, go to the listing at DaWanda.