In My Studio

Finally there is an air of calm here after the muddle of the last couple of weeks...taking everything out of my studio for the new floor to be put down was the only way i would have got round to moving out so much paperwork, magazines and boxes and baskets stuffed with art and crafts materials...now it has all been sorted, lots disposed of or stored up in the attic ...

                       ...the things i use regularly are to hand on the shelves, or in the big white basket...

           ...and the bits and bobs i'm so fond of are stored perfectly in these faux french spice drawers....

 ...here is the studio clock (brought back once from a seaside trip), a rosy pincushion, the contents of one of those little spice drawers, and coloured chalks for message writing.....

 ...a few glimpses around the room.....the little keep calm picture my daughter made me, two of the pictures I enjoy having around me (there are other prints too, and a pinboard with commissions listed on, and another with postcards and cards pinned on but i haven't found places for those yet)....the little fireplace is filled with hydrangeas at the moment as you can see...

 ...one of the two work tables i use, this is the one where i draw, paint and make stitchy projects, the other is where i make cards and papercraft projects....i used to have an actual drawing board but now i prefer working on a flat surface so i removed it to give me more space....

...bunnies and books, garden snippets and sketch pads, the big cupboard which is now TiDy and all the toppling piles of old magazines have gone to other homes so i can store lots of materials in there again....the wooden chair is my computer chair (it belonged to Mr P's granny and i've painted it several times already)..so there it is, a quick view of my workplace, where i do all my writing and designing, creating and blogging...hope you enjoyed a peek at it!
The next magazine craft project has already begun in my new tidy studio, and it's not looking quite so neat as it was... more normal again...but after that bit of life laundry it all feels much nicer now. Thank you so much for dropping by and for your sweet comments and emails. Have a happy weekend, everyone. Back soon xxxx

Sorting Things Out

 That's what I've been doing every spare moment over the last few days...sorting out the contents of the studio....the new grey floor was put down on Monday surprisingly quickly, and we were able to put the work tables and the computer back in so Mr P could get it re connected for me to work again....

....I found so many things buried in boxes and baskets...like the little sketchpads above that I began keeping as a page-a-day visual journal a few years ago, the idea being that you work on one page a day until you are happy with it...

...they were fun to do and did encourage me to think creatively and in a different way from the design work I was engaged in at the time....

 ...a treasure trove of old fashioned stationery supplies, lovely to use for scrapbooking (now that was a hobby which led to the most tremendous amount of hoarding of small objects and ephemera that could one day be extremely useful)...

 ... ..little wooden pegs, essential in my studio for pegging things up on display, and pegging things together....

 ...lots of black and white scrapbooking supplies...the badge was from the Tate Gallery a few years ago...

 ...and so the sorting goes on and only certain things are allowed back in to the new TiDy space....I will have finished soon and then I will show you some pictures of how it looks (while it is still tidy)....

...tonight, after the last two evenings of intense sorting (oh those 'keep or throw' decisions are soo taxing) I am going to watch a movie and do some relaxing crochet!!!
Thank you for visiting me here and for your encouraging comments on my last post about the upheaval of this huge sort out...I'm so glad it's almost at an end now. In a day or so it will be time to bring in the pretty things and arrange a few flowers...have a great week everyone...back soon. xxxxx

Floral

 One way or another my life has been constantly influenced by flowers ever since I first began to notice them as a child, and especially when I went to art college and began to draw them as part of our design training. I have loved them in my garden ever since I had my own garden, and tried very hard to grow all different kinds ....with varying success...

 I always enjoy floral commissions...for embroidery, illustration, applique, patchwork or anything I'm always happy  to create something new whenever the word floral is mentioned ...this is a quick mood board for a future commission that I'm slowly and happily going to work on, around my other work and commissions....

 ...I love making these scrapbooky boards, sitting on the floor with a big pile of clippings and magazines and my trusty scissors, snipping away and seeing how it looks .... does it capture what I have in my head for someone else to get what I mean?? .....usually the answer is yes...

 ...in my actual garden things are not looking quite so rosy this summer, it has to be said...the pots are fine...

...the sweet peas growing up their wigwam are fine (thnaks to Mr P remembering to water both them and the beans each night)....but the rest of the garden is looking more green than flowery and very parched...I think we are paying the price for our hot and sunny weeks now...but at least the pots look pretty and colourful and provide lots of snippets to make posies with, and further down the garden things like mallow, cosmos and daisies give us some colour.... 

 ...these are a set of thrifted coffee cups...sooo cheap and how I love the rosebuds....

...So, I'm going to have a little look through these garden books tonight, and get some more floral inspiration...and also get on with my grannie blanket which is GrOwInG quite fast, as some of you so kindly predicted!! I hope your flowers are growing happily and they and you have just enough rain but not too much, and you have a lovely week....thanks for dropping in to see me here....back soon xxxxx

Painting Flowers All Day

When I first left art college and started up as a freelance designer, that is what I used to do...paint flowers all day long! I loved it. I sold the designs to all kinds of companies for mugs and other china, for textiles, wallpapers, table mats, table cloths....all sorts of products. But the main thing was I got to paint lovely flowers all day long, listening to music or Radio 4...bliss. Sometimes I varied it by adding butterflies and bees and ladybirds, occasionally mushrooms and red spotted toadstools crept in too...

This design is one of my old florals, done for a gift wrap company. I gradually began to design for greetings cards instead of large floral designs in repeat because I liked the variety and the smaller scale ...and one day I began to translate the florals into embroidery which a magazine bought for cross stitch...and slowly I became inspired by colour and design in other areas of embroidery, crafts and stitchy things....

I still paint designs - here is my little painting corner on my drawing board which tends to get piled up with crafts materials of all kinds - I do illustrations for books and the occasional commission, and now and then a flower for old times sake...

And I still LOVE flowers sooo much, I always need some fresh ones to look at, and I love to buy flower pictures from other artists too. This basket of primroses, ivy and tete a tete daffodils is looking bright and beautiful in the kitchen this week, cheering up the grey rainy afternoon we have here today.....
Now I'm going to cut out some gorgeous bright fabrics for a new quilt! Have a lovely week everyone, enjoy some flowers and I hope the sun  is beaming down where you are! Back soon. xxxx