Marigold & Spring into Art Exhibition

Finally finished the marigold - it started off as a brooch, but looked so nice with the embroidered leaves I decided to change it to a necklace. It took 3 evenings as I have stitched round the leaves this time, as well as adding a bit more satin stitch to the flower and a little ladybird. This is £20 + P&P SOLD
Two days until the Fleet Art Society 'Spring into Art' exhibition and I have framed four out of five paintings - just a little one to go but I ran out of masking tape. If any of you are in the Fleet area, come to the Harlington Centre to see the exhibition 3rd & 4th May. I shall be 'demonstrating' (well, painting while people walk past!) Sunday morning - I've started another zebra picture, back in the comfort zone!

Buttercups & Daisies...

Here are the latest felt doo-dads. There is a Michaelmas Daisy necklace, with five flowers and some leaves this time. The flowers are slightly larger than the previous wild daisies, well, because they are in real life too! The stems and leaves are in a rather nice blue-green felt that I found, very understated. All painstakingly embroidered too. £20 + P&P

In the centre is a little buttercup brooch, with a flower, a bud and a leaf. Small and cute! £5 + P&P

I'm currently working on a bright orange marigold - would have finished it last night if not for passing out in front of the tv and waking at 11.30 with my needle still in my hand! I also have to frame 5 paintings this week ready for a local exhibition at the weekend - more on that later. I loathe framing, but it's a darn sight cheaper than sending them off to be done at a shop - five would be beyond my means at the moment! So I've taught myself how to cut a proper mount and how not to drop kick the lot across the room when I've taken an hour to frame and seal a painting only to discover a dog hair smack bang in the middle under the glass......

Finally Finished..

Spent a day or so re-working this as I just didn't like it before. This is as far as it goes for this painting - time for something else now.

More Flowers!

As you can see, I'm just churning the flowers out at the moment!
Firstly, there is another daisy-chain necklace - different to the other one as I don't have any more of the thin, smooth white felt I used before and can't find any similar. Goodness knows where it came from! So as a result, the daisies in the second necklace are slightly larger as the felt is fatter, which means there are two less of them. Just as much work involved though! Price, same as before £20 + P&P

Secondly, I have made a brooch and the flower this time is called Cosmos. I grew a big patch of these last year in the garden and they are simply beautiful with their tall stems, delicate lacy green leaves and myriads of cup shaped flowers in various shades of pink. I spent many hours painting and sketching them last summer. The brooch just has the one bloom, embroidered in pink and three leaves. £5 + P&P

I'm not too sure if there will be any more flowers for a couple of days - my SO is coming home tonight for the weekend so I doubt I'll be spending my time sewing!

I'm in the process of re-working the flamingo painting - I simply hated the background and was not happy to leave it that way so there has been some serious over-painting going on. Watch this space...

African Violet

Carrying on with the felt flowers, a little African Violet brooch, with embroidered leaves.
£5 + p&P SOLD

Daisy-Chain

Which one of you doesn't remember when you were small and summers seemed endless, sitting on the grass in the sunshine making daisy-chain necklaces, bracelets, and circlets then decking yourself out like Titania? Even now as a 40-something adult I still love making daisy-chains and think they are the simplest and prettiest of adornments. It always shocks me in my job at an infant school how few children have been shown how to do this and it gives me great pleasure to see their faces when they learn and can make themselves such finery - for an hour at least until the blooms wilt!

So a while back when I made a little daisy as a decoration for a teddy, I was so taken with the idea I decided to see if I could expand it into jewellery. First there was a brooch, which was lovely but not enough - it had to be a full-blown necklace. So after two solid 4 hour evenings of sewing, the above is the result. I love it!! Hope you do too - if you'd like it for your very own, it is £20 + p&p Be assured there will be more of this type of thing - after I've given my poor eyes a rest! SOLD!

Flamingoes again....

This is what I've been working on for the past couple of weeks or so. It's based on a load of photographs I took during a visit to Birdworld, Farnham a while back. It's painted in acrylics on canvas and a bit of a change in direction for me - not sure I like it to be honest. Let me know what you think, and in the meantime I'm going back to the safety of painting zebras for a while....