Easter Time

 Spring time...easter time....flowers, blossom, sunshine, speckled eggs, pretty coloured easter decorations....no wonder it's one of my favourite times of the year.....i do love to get out the box of easter treasures and arrange them each year, and maybe add a new one or two......

 ....this time i have been a bit late getting the house decorated....but gradually the eggs are appearing....

 ....and some chicks and bunnies have hopped into place too.....as i mentioned before, i have been busy painting and drawing book illustrations,  and though i can't show them until they are published, i can show you this little watercolour i did of two of my favourite bunnies, flora and little maisie..........

 ............we often get together with family over easter and this year my sister ruby is having a  party on easter day   :-).........we also love to garden of course and have already had a visit to a beautiful garden centre today and bought some new plants...........i picked a few flowers for this tin in the potting shed......

 ....just need the weather to warm up and the sun to peek out a bit more and we'll be happily planting seeds...

 ....below are some of my beautiful new blocks from fee at chipper nelly....i really love these birds' egg ones, and they decorate my studio so well especially combined with lots of things i've collected, like the tiny hen in the chipped flower pot nest i've had for years....these blocks are so pretty i love finding different ways of displaying them......

 .....the sweet gingham ribbon has arrived for my easter hearts and i have almost finished making them now...

              ..........sewing on the last buttons before wrapping them up in coloured tissue paper..........

....last view of the flowery, speckled egg wreath on the potting shed door......before i go i just want to say a big thank you to everyone who contacted me about my little broken bottle with suggestions of where i could buy a replacement....i'll keep you posted...it's looking good so far ;-)
........i'm looking forward to the weekend to come and i hope you are too....thank you for popping in here to see me, i love your visits.......wishing you a wonderful weekend and a very Happy Easter.....back soon xxxxxxxxxx

Bright and Flowery

It's been a bright and flowery week at my house, for several reasons. One is the posy of red anemones, blue iris, white narcissus, orange carnations, and yellow narcissus that was calling my name at the flower shop...

And another reason was that I won this fabulous bright nasturtiums print in the artist Claire Leggett's wonderful giveaway on her lovely blog paint drops keep falling!! I was so excited last weekend when I discovered I was one of three lucky winners! I so admire Claire's fresh, decorative and colourful style - her paintings have a real joy and zest about them, and her blog reflects her work and home beautifully...

This week I needed to send some pictures of my work to someone for a possible commission, and as I was looking through pictures from my books I decided to include this one from Home Sweet Home, in today's bright and flowery post .....

We even have flowery cakes - because Rosie, my younger daughter, will be home this weekend, and we now have a tradition that I always make some homemade cakes for us all to share when she arrives here...

                    I decorated them with roses and daisies as we have one of each in the family....

Here is my posy of bright spring-y flowers - they are also beautifully scented too, just delicious....I'm off to do a bit of my knitting now, having been working very hard the last few days on design commissions, mainly on the computer, but also running up and down to the sewing room stitching things, charting things, cutting out, sewing up, ironing on...what a busy bee I've been trying to meet the deadlines, and no time for day time knitting SO I am looking forward to some now!
I hope you all have a lovely (nearly) weekend - the sunshine is due here I've been told, and I hope it shines on you too. Thanks so much for visiting me and for all your sweet and sunny comments. xxxx

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

Yellow Flowers

 Hello everyone - I'm just stopping by in the middle of a busy Sunday, to post some new pictures...of a new picture. This is a print I recently ordered from Vanessa at Do You Mind If I Knit - a blog you probably all know and love as much as I do! As soon as I first saw Vanessa's work it 'spoke' to me - I loved looking at it, at her unique style and colour sense.

The print I chose is called Yellow Rose and Greys - I love the painted containers that hold the flowers...I love the flowers themselves and the soft grey background colours...

The print was wrapped so beautifully, in dotty tissue, with green stripy string and a delicious little card.

I stood the print up to admire in my sewing room - Lovely! Gorgeous!- and then I took it to the framers and was without it for a little while. I found a new interest in the colour yellow and began stitching a sewing set using this gorgeous yellow Lecien floral fabric....

 I'm still making this little set and will show you the whole thing when it's finished. And here is the Yellow Rose and Greys picture, back from the framers. I photographed it like this because of the reflections making it difficult to see otherwise, but it will be hanging on the pale yellow wall in the (dining) sewing room...You can find Vanessa's beautiful pictures and exciting new paper mache creations at her etsy shop here.

I hope you enjoyed  seeing the real and the painted yellow flowers here today! I've liked looking at the bright fabrics I'm working with at the moment because it's rather bleak outside....But a bright work lamp, some printed cottons and embroidery threads, yellow flowers and the new picture soon chase the gloom away! Now I must go and put some food in the aga as the family are coming here for a meal on their way home from the zoo!!! Hope you have had a happy weekend so far. Thank you for dropping by and for all your sweet comments. Back very soon xxx