I'm so excited for this new garden

Each time I design a garden I do a through examination of my client and my client's space. This time I'm lucky because my client is also my very good friend Catherine.Catherine lives on the chalk downs in Oxfordshire and has this spectacular view over the fields and gentle hills.However, since her garden is the only garden around, all the slugs and snails in the neighbourhood make a bee line for the garden plants.And they have perfect homing instincts! I actually accidentally knocked a couple into the garden pond and I'm like, " Oh my god I'm so sorry!" and they just came sliming out of there 10 minutes later!So the plants I chose had to be bullet proof and slug and snail resistant.Today was the day that I look forward to the most; the day of plant buying!I went to the Burford Garden Centre, and one has to walk thru the "pretties" to get to the plants.Oh my gosh, look what I saw on my way thru!!! Assorted mismatched tea cups and saucers holding beautiful little orchids!You know, this would be the best and easiest little project to do at home. The problem with this set up was that there was no drainage hole in the bottom of the tea cup.I know the secret to drilling a hole into china. You have to drill with an appropriate drill bit for ceramic and drill the tea cup while it is immersed in a pot of water and drill thru it into a hockey puck. (I'll show you when I get back to Vancouver because there's a definite lack of hockey pucks here in England...lol)But wouldn't that be a lovely way to display all our orphaned cups?But I was there on my clients time so off I went to do my plant selection and this is what the car looks like just now!After a while all my cars end up being gardener's cars...lolEven the passenger seat is taken with plants. You can just see the steering wheel thru the crocosmia.Anyway, I'm so looking forward to planting up this garden tomorrow and then Catherine is having a garden party this weekend! It's going to be so beautiful. :)If you have some tree, which roots ruins you flowers, use tree loppers in Perth.

The last two Sundays at races with the turbo mini

Oh my gosh time is just flying so fast! I've designed and am installing a rather large garden for my friend and client Catherine, that I haven't had much time to update.But things are starting to slow a little and here's my chance to show you our last two Sundays out with the turbo mini. We had a terrific couple of Sundays hooning cross country, over hill and dale and thru quaint little Cotswold villages in the turbo mini. People couldn't help but turn their heads at the sound of the powerful side pipe exhaust. Mostly we had smiles and nods from people and loads of thumbs-up and waves from little boys, and we always smiled and waved back. We were happy about that because driving the powerful mini on a Sunday morning thru sleepy little villages, well, you could just imagine. :)The races were at a hill climb called Prescott, (home of the Bugatti club), and Prescott Hill is in the middle of the beautiful Cotswolds in our neighbouring county Gloucestershire.Two Sunday's ago: This was a Sunday of new things.The first new was this beautiful bespoke car. This was a Salmson. (Never heard of it and I'm a car nut!) We spent a long time talking to the builder and I photographed it in detail as reference for Robert's crazy wonderful new innovation Medusa, which he's building at the moment.The next new was this: a Marcos! Such a beautiful car, like a piece of sculpture. I thought I loved Jag E-types the most but I might be changing my mind!And then, a new friend. This is Trudi and she paints the loveliest acrylics.She loves to paint around her home in the Gloucestershire hills. Her lovely website is here.We parked up the mini and revealed the engine and, in no time, the beautiful beastie started attracting attention.The the race announcer came by and spent twice as long interviewing Robert than any of the other car owners around. This was broadcast over the loudspeakers thru the whole venue and soon the mini had loads of admirers. And no wonder, the beastie has 248 bhp and is the third fastest five port A series road going turbo mini in the world!While this was going on I found this beautiful TVR. R has a deep ruby red one and one day soon we'll take it racing too.Then I found more Marcos!Last Sunday it was back to Prescott Hill for a Retro Rides get together and I was really excited because a lot of our turbo mini club was going to be there and a lot of the minis would be parked up together in a club stand.We soon met up with our friends and caught up with everyone's adventures.The minis and honoured guest cars were parked up, bonnets removed, engines exposed for all to admire.There was a lot of car talk and innovative information was shared.And we went to watch the hill climbs.There was a small parade of very special low riders and then the cars started racing up the hill. This car was a bit of an oddity. It was an American racing car called a Chaparral with some terrific improvements. :)We had a couple of the loveliest Sundays this summer and enjoyed ourselves to the max.

Scriptum in Oxford

There is a store in Oxford I love more than anything else.It's called Scriptum, and it is a writer's dream.You find it at the end of a small lane and if you didn't know it's there, you'd walk right by it.Because there's only a very small front window and an unassuming wooden door, but inside there's a narrow, two story, funny shaped space full of fantasy and whimsy.There is so much imagination there that I could spend a week discovering new things and still not see everything.Among the fine stationery, ink wells, feather quills and hand crafted papers are the most unexpected things like scruffy, loved-to-death teddy bears, stuffed owls and Venetian masks.But the things which bring me back every year are the most exquisite leather bound journals and notebooks, many with gilded edges and marbled papers.This summer I found this! A working praxinoscope! (Wonder if I can make one...how hard can that be?)There are also books. Not just ordinary books. Scriptum carries the most beautiful, special editions of the most beloved books.But the real reason I come here is for my most favourite journals. I love these larger leather strap wrapped beauties in the rich, dark brown leather. I love these to pieces. They are filled with beautiful paper which is an absolute pleasure to draw and write on. You know how some journals grab the ink and the pen scrapes over the paper? These papers are so smooth and the pen/ink/pencil just glides making each important mark just perfect.

Random Friday five, what a week!

Here's Theo in the morning. I've been feeling under the weather this week and I'm sure the mega doses on vitamin C have held what ever this is at bay, but T isn't helping by coming in yowling at 12am with a mouse in his mouth and depositing it by my bed. I threw him and mouse outside and closed my door and so he stashed the mouse behind the living room sofa and brought me another at 4am which he deposited in front of the bedroom door. I need my sleep! Then in the morning he's like, "Oh man, you can't mean me, I had the night shift!"Yeah, laugh it up fuzzball!This money I've got in my hot little hand is £150. One hundred and fifty Great Britain Pounds Sterling. I've made a decision! Our lovely friend Brian is willing to sell me his mini shell for us to build me a new mini. After the loss of my beautiful old mini I didn't think I could ever move on, and I know I've talked about it ad infinitum et ultra, but this is it. This is the end of grief. I have. It's a good thing. :) (In other words: Illiegitimi non carborundum!)This morning I drove out of the driveway and waited for these girlies to walk by and I got to thinking. You know, it's wonderfully fantastic to live in rural England where girls ride their horses in the mornings and lanes are so bucolic with hedgerows and bower trees, but really, our lane is a single track lane with passing places and cars, trucks and public buses zoom by at 50 miles/hour. Also people park where ever and which ever way they want to (unless there's a double line at the side, which is just never the case in the country), and there is very little wiggle room to get past horses and pushbikes and avoid oncoming traffic. God one has to be brave to drive here, (on the wrong side of the road on the wrong side of the car) No wonder everyone drives little Fiat, Seat, Kia pod cars.Oh, and don't even talk to me of villages like Marcham, below, where one time someone said, "oh, lets just build a road between these two houses and never mind that it narrows to 10 ft in places, and never mind that it's a bit of a blind corner and never mind that we'll let trucks and buses drive this way, I'm sure everyone will fit just fine."I've been having an easy couple of days yesterday and today because of this something I've got. Isn't it funny? You just go around minding your own business and then you touch something someone else touched and inadvertently rub an itch near your eye and you've got germs...ugh. So I've spent a lot of time sat at my art table drawing. I really wanted to do some more linocuts but it's too difficult to think right now, so doing something without too much thinking is the best way to be and drawing is usually the auto-function my brain is set to. I started this map, (as well as a long forgotten promised sketch for a friend).I love drawing on old papers. I also love late summer meadows with all the seed heads. I also love goldfinches. There are a couple goldfinches here at West Cottage and they sing beautifully right the way thru spring into late summer. I love how they hang upside down on the teasel and thistle to pick out the seeds.Linking with Nancy at A Rural Journal for Friday randomness. :)

Getting better at it

I've been studying linocuts on the net. I've been looking at other artist's work and comparing it to my two attempts. (By the way, this is a path to disaster and I highly recommend not doing that, and soon I might even begin to listen to my own advice...lol)So it occurs to me that the two designs I made are a bit flat and have no energy, no movement.I know, I've only just started, but before you start to shake your head at me, let me explain. You see I strive for movement and energy in my paintings. If I can't get movement in the subject them I go for light and the movement of light over the subject, so the linocuts feel a bit "flat" to me because I've only got that one colour ink to play with.So Monday I took some time to draw some seed heads and weeds from the lane with a view to maybe cutting another piece of lino, and then posted this little pic on FB :) :While I'm waiting for some lino and tools I ordered to arrive form a London company called Intaglio, I still had that difficult to cut larger piece I bought form the art supply store in Oxford and so took it to the Printmakers Cooperative and spent Tuesday there.I sketched out elements of the design on the lino and borrowed some good tools and went to work.This lino did get easier to cut on the hot plate, but it took me four and a half hours to cut the design and it's really unrealistic to sit over a hot plate for that time, so it was the hard way.After one hour...nope, still don't like this lino but it isn't going to get the better of me!After four hours and a cramped hand! Almost done.After four and a half hours I really had to get going and so walked out of Oxford shaking my hand and flexing my fingers. Had to show you this photo...lol, seems like spandex has caught on big time round here.So finally home and I ran up to the studio and inked my design and quickly printed it to see what I got.I LIKE IT!Needs more finishing and needs more ink, but the idea of movement is there. I'm really happy with this third attempt and now I'll play with that for a little while. :)

Annie Sloan's home store in Oxford

About one block from the Oxford Print Cooperative, which I went to visit yesterday, is the home store of the world famous Annie Sloan! How lucky am I to live so close to Oxford?Did I hear someone say, "Who is Annie Sloan?"She is the creator of the absolutely fantastic chalk paint and is one of the main forces behind the painted furniture revolution and the atomic rise of shabby chic.Her charming, tiny hole-in-the-wall shop sells her line of paints, her line of fabrics, and found objects (like these giant French grain sacks, which only cost £10)Just now her store is filled with treasures from a recent buying trip to France. There are little jars, and plates, and drawer pulls, and tea towels, and all sorts of charming little French home accents.One wall is dedicated to huge swatches of paint. You can come feel the paint, look at it from all directions, hold samples up against it, play with your ideas.Although I'm not in the market for Annie's chalk paint just now, and since there are stockists in Vancouver, I'm not going to buy any this summer, but I can't get these beautiful grain sacks out of my thoughts.I love that they're darned with heavy wool and large, course stitches.Hmm, what can I do with rustic, printed and darned fabric? I'm really tempted to buy one and think about it later.I'm also tempted by these buttons. Chloe has been making beautiful owls filled with lavender and using large vintage buttons for the eyes. Maybe some owl eyes. :)Any way, I hope to go back to the Printmakers guild on Tuesday and I'll stop in at Annie Sloan's shop again. I wanted to check out her work book but was too rushed for time last Saturday.Linking with Mary at Little Red House for Mosaic Monday. :)

Where she's on a roll with printmaking!

Do you remember when I wrote the post about cutting my first linocut a few days ago? I pondered about better tools and better equipment, and I emailed the Oxford Printmakers Cooperative and got a lovely email back from instructor Catriona Brodribb inviting me to come round this Saturday for a look and a play with some tools. How could I resist?Oxford on a summer Saturday is a nightmare and is completely stuffed with tourists on the weekends, and the Printmakers building was right thru the heart of tourist central and down High street! But then the five mile walk from the park and ride did afford me a lovely hot chocolate from Costa coffee and a butter croissant from Pret a Manger, so crowd surfing while sipping a sugary hot chocolate and munching a buttery croissant was just about tolerable. :) (I may have accidentally photobombed a few holiday shots though...lol)I met Catriona at the studio and we talked for a long time and she answered a lot of questions I had. I showed her my work up to date, and, even though students are required to take a mandatory beginner's course, she felt I had done enough work and knew enough technique that I could just build on my knowledge without a course.I felt really wonderful about that.Catriona explained the carving tools and let me use them all to see which ones felt the best to my hands.She gave me a small piece of lino...far superior to the lino I bought at the art store, and I sketched a small simple field mouse on a scrap paper and then onto the lino.As soon as I made the first cut with these superior tools and as soon as I found my rhythm, it was such a pleasure to carve this design.These tools are fantastically smooth and sharp and wonderful to work with. I much preferred this lino to the art store lino, but there is a trick to the art store lino. Apparently it works a bit like butter and must be heated. Many artists work this lino on a heating pad! (Tricks of the trade)I carved this little field mouse and as I carved the design changed somewhat from what my original idea was, but isn't that the way it always is?When I thought I was finished, and when I used and tried all the tools available, I decided that these woodcarving tools felt good in my hands and were manoeuvrable enough for me to make fine cuts with. These, and a very expensive small wedge shaped tool from Japan.By this time two hours had simply vanished and I decided I had to get back to the car and out of Oxford before I hit rush hour and so thanked Catriona for her help and headed back.When I got home I couldn't wait to run upstairs to my studio and ink this little linocut to see what I got.And here is my little field mouse overlooking the Oxfordshire fields!I'm so excited to have so much more knowledge and a friend who I can ask more questions of. If anyone has any questions about linocuts, I know so much more than before and would be happy to tell all, and, if I don't know I'll find out. :)

How I learned to batik...AKA Zen and the art of batik

One of the practical courses I signed up for at Art in Action was the how to batik course. Anything where I get to draw with a medium and use colour is of interest and so I very eagerly anticipated learning this ancient technique.Unfortunately I ran into a small glitch. :(Have you ever had a teacher so bad, I mean SO BAD, that it turned you completely off the subject? I'm sorry to say that this was the case in this practical class. This particular teacher treated me as if I couldn't draw a stick figure, took the brush out of my hand and started touching up my project and, at one point, smudged the wax with her hand to prove that my project wasn't sufficiently dry, and then dismissed me as "a foreigner" as in "not British". While the foreigner label is something which, unfortunately, sometimes I have to handle with a very small minority of the population, her terrible manner was a bit unforgivable. And, she seemed to behave like this to the other students at my work station.So it has taken me this long to get over associating this teacher with my prayer flag, let my Zen training prevail, let it go and remember how much I enjoyed the process.It's really quite easy. Here's what it looks like:The process requires a piece of fabric, we used cotton. It was stressed that sizing in new fabric would resist the dye so a good wash beforehand is important.A heating pad with a metal pot of wax was on the table and the wax was hot but not burning hot. Implements like sticks and funky metal cups with small dribbly nozzles were in the hot wax but so were brushes and I found I had the most manageability with the brushes.The students were told that for the purposes of this class everyone was supposed to draw a bunch of simple flowers because anything else would be too time consuming. I'd been carrying a small branch of beech from class to class, because it was easier for me to have a small botanical example with me for trying all the different art mediums, and that's what I chose to draw. (OK, maybe that's where I went wrong with this teacher)After sketching the design, a wooden frame was used to stretch the fabric for the dyeing. The fabric was held in place with a few push pins and then I drew the first resist pattern on my fabric with the hot wax.Each student was given a small palette of dye colours and a big brush. The trick was to paint a light colour on, dry the fabric, paint more resist wax onto the design, paint a second, slightly darker dye colour on, paint more resist wax onto the design, dry the fabric again, more wax, darker dye, and so on, each time covering more bits of dye and getting that multi-dimensional look.Here is my design after about three coats of wax/dye and drying in between.Now here's something that the teacher did not mention till too late that you should know:1. The students were told, in the interest of saving time, to use a hair dryer to dry the material. THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS THING TO DO! The hot air melts the wax which then seeps and absorbs into the material where you had no intention for it to be. This is something plenty of students found out the hard way.2. Start with very light colour washes first and try to imagine your design from lightest to darkest colours, just like a reverse painting on glass where you have to paint your lights first. Once you wash with a dark colour you will lose all the lights if they are not protected with wax.3. When you complete your design, iron the fabric spreading the wax everywhere, use an old iron. Later, boil some water, pour the boiling water into a pot and quickly dip your fabric into it, immediately take it out and rinse in cold. Hang it to dry. This will remove most of the rest of the wax and make the dye colourfast.Well, that's about what I learned. I'm sure there are other, maybe even better methods and very soon I'll figure those out. I'm glad I have my little prayer flag though. It seems a just symbol for this little practical class which took so much of my Zen training to complete...lol.

Mix and match for tea cup Tuesday

It's 4pm in England and I'm having my tea, thinking about mix and match and hanging out in the garden.For my tea I made a lovely mixed up bowl of fresh Greek yogourt, dried fruit and nuts and fresh peach slices drizzled with a little Agave syrup. It tastes even better for being in this beautiful Alfred Meakin celadon green desert plate.I've bought some lovely glass beads and silver bracelets for my daughters to mix and match. These are not Pandora or Troll beads or any other type of that expensive "of the moment" jewellery, but these are silver and hand blown glass and affordable fun.And the beads remind me of special little treasures, like this little Foley Tulip tea cup.The thing I really love about this combination is that the cup is pale blue while the saucer is pale green and together they reflect off each other giving depth and unusual colouring. A sort of deliberate mix and match.I'm thinking about taking out my oils and painting a small canvas later this week and so brought this little painting of the chalk downs and fields to contemplate. I painted this a couple of years ago now.I'm looking at my sketches in my sketch book, these done with watercolour. I know I love to sketch on odd bits of paper but a pure white piece of paper in a beautiful sketchbook is so lovely to work on sometimes, isn't it?And guess what fell out of my sketchbook! My friend Dodi's beautiful photograph which she gave me for my birthday a few years ago...And my friend Matt's beautiful photograph which he gave me for Christmas. Isn't that shot amazing?I love other artist's work, and I especially love collecting works from my friends.And, speaking of mix and match, this might be the ultimate mix and match. I saved this orphaned tea cup and saucer from the mixed porcelain bin at the little antique store in Burford. They have nothing to do with each other at all. The cup is Royal Doulton and the saucer is marked with a blue M and an embossed "Minton" dating the saucer to 1926.But don't they look lovely together?Not linking with Terri today because the brave girl is having a whole month off from blogging, but linking with Martha who is showing the most exquisite black lacy and red rose tea cup I've ever seen! Way to hit the mother load Martha!

I did it! This is my first original lino print.

I can't believe I did this! Ever since Art in Action I've been fascinated with printing. With the transfer of ink from a design onto paper.At Art in Action I saw and met amazingly talented people who carved and printed the most exquisite prints and ever since I saw that I wanted to give it a try.The other day, when I was in our market town, I stopped by the art store and bought a small piece of lino and some tools for cutting.Of course what I wanted to carve is a lino cut which looks like this:But I decided that might be jumping the gun a little...lol, so I drew some simple stylised seed heads on a piece of paper and drew that simple design onto the piece of lino.Then I started trying the tools. Ok, let me tell you this: If you want to cut a piece of lino, DON'T BUY ART STORE TOOLS!!!Those tools slip and skid and tear at the lino edge and you need the strength of Hercules to wield them.It was only when Robbie gave me his utility knife that I really started to make progress. (There must be a source of good lino cutting tools for me to find)But finally my printing block was complete and I was so excited to start the inking.One thing's for sure, lino takes a lot more ink to make a successful transfer than the metal blocks I was printing.So, after a couple of tries, I think I got a pretty good print from my first ever lino design.From concept to pattern to block to print. This was such a very fulfilling bit of work for me and now I really want to cut a bigger and more complicated design. :)