What Makes You Happy?

                                                                     ORphotography

Phillip David

ValeriaH

Debbie Carlos

honeytree

slightclutter

irene suchocki

Keri Bevan

Something that always makes me happy is to go walking through the woods and so I've been happily spotting a lot of mysterious, woodsy photographs lately on Etsy. I thought I'd share my favourites. What about you? What is guaranteed to make you feel happy? I'd love to hear.

Little Paintings

I have been doing everything but painting lately and missing it badly so I dragged myself away from the computer yesterday and created these two little pictures. The top one is on illustration board and the other is on canvas. I'm going to play around with some more colour schemes.

My Latest T

To break up all the photos... I love all the colourful beauties in this treasury!!

Commission

Before I go on my little break, I had to finish a commission.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

40 x 16 x 1.5".

Birthday Celebrations!!!

To celebrate my birthday on Friday, my little family is taking a trip here to La Palma. No computers allowed!!!

Who needs 'em when you've got sights like this to see?

I am trying to persuade my boys to come sightseeing on horseback. Hopefully we'll see some of these 'extinct' giant lizards.

 

and we WILL be heading to the almond blossom fiesta as described here. It's MY birthday after all!!haha

If we don't consume too much local wine we'll be doing a lot of walking too.

To celebrate my birthday I'm having a print sale. Head over to my shop for details.

Back soon with lovely photo's.

Etsy Goodness

I am in such a lovely treasury wonderfully curated by wehrhouse. It made me feel all spring like and happy!!

I have also worked back into a painting that I felt needed a little more depth. I added some collage elements. What do you think?

Treasury

 

There is so much good stuff on Etsy. Here's my latest treasury

Cute Critters

This image has failed

No, but really, how cute is this? Take a look here. Thank you so much to Cutiepie Company  for including my Fennec foxes in this supersweet collection! It made me smile ))).

I came across this Sketchbooks in Schools fab website tonight whilst doing some schoolie research. A little bit about the site,

  "Sketchbooks in Schools aims to promote, inspire and enable the creative use of sketchbooks in primary schools. Sketchbooks can be a vital tool to encourage creative and critical thought and action across the whole school, and beyond the art curriculum.

There are lots of great sketchbook ideas and personal sketchbook pages from artists such as Naomi Cotrufo 

  Isabella Whitworth

Yumi Okuda

And plenty of great quotes from schoolchildren as to why they love using sketchbooks...“I like working in my sketchbook because I can learn and test out new skills as well as putting my own take on the world. I love doing my own work in my sketchbook and creating work that I can be proud of" Vanessa Hill

Great fun!

Little Houses

 

I love the aged look of the colourful houses perched on the hills here. I use crackling varnish to create a layered, worn appearance.

I put my work up on the wall a lot so I can check out the composition and colour balance from a distance.

 

I put some bronze highlights in to catch the light.

So Good to be painting again ! :)

Lush

All that walking in forests (and a school holiday!) inspired a painting. Now in the shop. 

Happy Hallowe'en!

Day 13

We just got back from a very short break in the north of the island. We stayed in a beautiful finca which came complete with two seriously cute kittens. It was so hard to leave them behind but they clearly have such a good life there with all the guests feeding them and a wonderful garden to play in.
Check out my new Etsy shop widget on the right there, get your own at craftcult!

The Invitation

Ah Bliss! I spent the afternoon in my studio for the first time in what seemed like ages and came up with this collage. I'd been inspired to create a picture with butterflies landing on me for a while after reading this (love that blog!) however it turned into a sort of garden party picture but that's fine with me!. It's now in the shop. The title of this picture is also the title of this inspirational book by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. 'The Inviatation' begins with a poem...
'It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive..'
I think I'm going to read that book again now.

My Heart on a String

When my son was little he made me this picture. It's us sharing a heart! maybe that's why we look so scared... anyway, I love it so much and many years later it inspired this picture, 'My Heart On A String'



On a similar theme, with my new lace scraps and vintage wallpaper, I've been working on this picture over the weekend. Thanks for the inspiration son shine :)