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.

A craft fair

This Saturday, 6th June, I will be at a craft fair at the Trinity Centre in Sutton Coldfield. It's on from 12pm to 3pm, and there's sure to be some gorgeous things there! Including my work of course ;)



The Trinity Centre is part of Holy Trinity Church, and is just up the road from this beautiful landmark (click here for a map of the area). I grew up just down the road from Holy Trinity, searching for conkers in its grounds in the autumn, looking at the light shining through its stained-glass windows as I walked past in the evening, and watching people having their wedding photos taken in its garden. It's a really lovely location. So, if you live nearby, or you happen to be in the Birmingham/ South Staffs area, why not come along? :)

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:

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! ;)