She makes stuff...

Sad news, good news.... a day of halves

Its been a funny old time of late. Lots stuff happening. Not all good and not all bad. Guess thats just life.

Work has been stressful. We have sadly lost 3 of our residents over the past couple of days. Now when you are a nurse, and especially a nurse working in elderly care, you kind of get used to these things happening. People get old and they die. Sad but true. But once in a while you get to nurse people that you really connect with. They touch you in a special way. You get to build up lovely, lovely relationships with them and their families.

And when they die it really gets to you. I am actually feeling bereft about the death of one of my residents. I had the pleasure of nursing this former artist. He encouraged and inspired me. His artist sons did the same. I will miss our arty chats. However I do have one thing to remember him by. He gave me his easel. I will treasure it forever.

Rest in peace J and may you find arty goodness wherever you are x

But I did hear some good news today that has left me smiling through the sadness. One of my dearest friends had some great news today... and that deserves celebrating! I've cracked open a bottle of Becks and am raising a glass to A&R.... cheers!!!!!

Tomorrow I'm hoping normal service will be resumed and I may have some pics to share!

Til then

Maria x

PS Anyone else have a cat who loves beer? Am fighting with Ziggy over the bottle haha

Busy times....

So life has been a little hectic of late.

Lots of hours have worked but also a little time to kick back and chill which is good. It's all about balance I guess.

Last week we had the most glorious weather and off into the country we ventured. Over to Penrith to be more precise! Ah a drive in the country...drinking in the stunning scenery and relaxing. I quite like being a passenger sometimes lol. You get to see lots and float off into day dream land.

 

Sigh... I LOVE the countryside. We are so so lucky to live in a beautiful country.

Driving round corners and stumbling upon views like this!

And then it's back to work lol. Work has been a bit crazy! LOTS going on but it pays the bills so it's a necessary evil.

Didn't manage to get any arty stuff last week which was sad. But I've made up for it this week and have now completed my second Goddess. Am not over the moon with her, but given that it's probably the difficult piece I've done so far, will live with her.

This was a monochromatic piece. It's much trickier than I thought it would be to stick to one colour. I realised how much I use different colours to bring shape and form to life! My next piece will be saturated in colour to compensate for the lack in this one lol

Right I'm off to get sorted...BB starts tonight and I plan to chill with a glass of wine and some crochet :-)

Maria x

Ta daaaaaaa!!!

She is finished!

Lots of hours of work.

I actually LIKE her!

So she went from this.....

To this....

I stamped a texture to the background, inked a little, added some butterflies and some text to her dress.

If you click on her you should be able to see a larger image of her.

Ok I'm off to chill. I am tired. Working too many hours. I need a massage and some sleep!

Maria x

Ah Happy Days....

Yup the sun it is a shining and that quite frankly is enough to make me happy.... but when I have a whole day off work to spend doing arty stuff in the sunshine then it's double happiness all round! This morning I dug out the shorts (they still fit...yay!!!), slapped on generous amounts of sunscreen (obsessive about protecting my skin in the sun) and moved the laptop, my art supplies and my cup of tea (sooo English!) into the garden.

Earlier in the week I did a little more work to Faith... my Goddess of hope!

I blocked in a rough background and did a whole heap more on her face. Am pretty happy with how she is turning out.

So the plan today was to work on her hair. Now I am not great at hair! Nor at painting!!!! I set up a kind of art camp in the garden....

And set to work.... with some music to drown out the sound of next doors COD ..... grrrrrrr! My neighbour loves his Xbox.... I, on the other hand, do not! 

So painting, supping cups of tea, sending lots of emails in between and a happy day was had.

Well until the clear gesso incident!

i have learned today that clear gesso isn't actually totally clear. Which is a bit of a bugger. I had wanted to cover up a little patch of shading that I wasn't quite happy with so added a layer of clear gesso... to the whole thing. Yup... ended up with a kind white-ish hue to the whole piece of work!!! Sighs... so back to the drawing board and ended up having to add ALL the colour again! One lesson learned the hard way :-)

Anyhoos... so here is how she is looking now...

Scuse the graininess of the photo... it's late here and the ISO was very high! Need to take some pics in better light i think... but you get the general idea!

And here she is in all her glory. Not finished... but getting there. Now I need some pretty embellishments and a little text.

Unfortunately that will have to wait as back to work tomorrow for a long run of shifts.

Sheesh....

Maria x

A little Suzi lurve....

So this semester I am doing Suzi Blu's Goddess & Poet workshop. More realistic faces, but still a little stylised. I also enrolled in Piety & Passion. Piety looks at the Tudor era and concentrates on the 3/4 facial view. It looks tough. I'll just stick to the full frontal until I have mastered that...lol

One thing that totally shocked me when starting up this art malarkey was that it isn't like riding a bike! You have to retrain your hands to recreate what your eyes and brain see. I used to be able to sit down and sketch almost anything. Not brilliantly, mind you, but it was ok. NOW... well now nothing seems to work anymore. Or is that just me getting older? Whatever it is, it's pretty frustrating. I have sheets and sheets of practice features, shading practice, gray scale values and am now looking at everything working out where the highlights lie and where the darkest points are!!!

This was my first attempt at a more realistic face. Not great. Mucho mucho wrong with her. But she will have lots of colour added. She has a coat of clear gesso and stuck into my journal. I can fix the bad bits so I just decided to go with it! It'll be good to look back and see how she has progressed. And if it all goes horribly wrong I can rip out the page hahaha

Much happier with this sketch. Again she needs colour. She is on wood and will be finished in the last lesson. That's one thing that slightly freaks me out about the Suzi workshops. We start something and then have to put it to one side and start working on something else. It messes with my methodical brain! I like things to be in the correct order. I start working on something and I like to finish it before making a start on the next project. But I'm embracing this new method of working (well trying to!!!) and I'll go with the flow. Even if that flow is disordered and freaking me out...ha!

Next we have the twins... strange and stranger! This piece is all about working with colour and graphite. No clear gesso on this so the colour will merge with the graphite to create a lovely grey hue. This photo shows the graphite and a little cream coloured pencil.

By adding in some brown shading and some red lips they are starting to come to life. They need a lot more colours to be added but in true Suzi form we leave them and move onto something else....WAAAAAAHHHHH!

Meet Faith. She will have LOTS of colour and minimal amounts of graphite. Here I have started the shading with pink. I think we may actually get to finish her without moving onto something else. I hope so. My brain is struggling lol

She's starting to look like a real Goddess isn't she? I work much easier with predominately coloured pencil. It's right in my comfort zone.

She has some flowing locks. I don't do hair too well. Something to add to my practice list!!!

And this is more or less where she is right now. Hair and body blocked in with paint. I have worked on the eyes a little. So I'm now at the point where my comfort zone is gone and we're working with paint. paint scares me. I think its because its pretty new to me and I haven't quite figured out how to control the dratted paint brush. MORE practice!!!

Til next time

Maria x

What a couple of weeks!

I've been on a bit of a journey these past couple of weeks. Highs, lows, laughs and a few tears along the way.

Thankfully things have calmed down at last and I'm happily plodding along once more!

Where to begin? Well lets start with the good. April 30th saw me hopping on plane over to Holland to help Anita celebrate her 40th Birthday. Ah good times. We all had a lovely time. Lots of fun and laughter. Even some cycling!!! See? I have a photo to prove it!!!!

Looking a little wind swept here! We took the ferry over to Ameland on the Sunday (Anita's big day!). The weather was very kind and it was only at the end of the day did it rain. The weekend just flew by and before I knew it, it was monday and time to go home.... sighs

Tuesday was spent packing and kit making for the Scrapajack retreat where I was due to teach a class. I say due to, as things went downhill rapidly from there!!! The car *utters a few choice words here* well the car had other ideas!!! Stressy wednesday, as it is now called, was a day I would rather not repeat in a hurry.

It would seem that the starter motor on the car had packed in, caused by something much more serious that I really can't discuss as it's still making my blood boil! Sooo no car = no trip to Stratford = one very upset Maria. I boxed up my class kits and supplies and Dad came to the rescue by driving me to a courier depot to ensure that my class could go ahead.... without me :-(

Whilst boxing up the kits there was another little incident. Remember my cool little fan heater that I bought only a few weeks ago? Well..... there I was unhappily packing the box of goodies when a loud bang and a flashy blue light came from the heater, followed by a rather unpleasant smell of burning. Yup the heater had expired. You just gotta laugh. Or cry. I did both. Actually I think I was a giggling/crying mess. Oh and here's the nice burn in my living room carpet that the heater made....

It looks a little like a sleeping eye doesn't it? Shame it's in the middle of the floor and about 6 inches long grrrrr.... I will be visiting Argos when I have a spare hour to spare and "discussing" the heater and resulting burn!

So no car... long story... haven't got the heart to relive it all in total. There is a plan. Always good to have a plan! In the meantime... meet Vera :-)

She has come to stay with me for a couple of months until the plan has been carried out! And yes! I am aware of the unfortunate number plate!!! Only I could buy a car with a plate like that ;-P

She's taking a little getting used to. A one litre engine is no match for the MG! But I'll get there... in the end... with a strong tail wind lol

I've even polished her! Now that shocked the neighbours lol

So back to work now. Things have settled. I am a happy squirrel once more.

I am doing arty stuff. That makes me happy. Even when it's tough going.

This term I'm doing some more Suzi Blu classes. The Goddess & the Poet and Piety & Passion. Sheesh they are tough. Petite Dolls was sooo easy compared to this. Am having to practice, practice, practice. Lots of practice sketching. Lots of swearing. A little wine. It's all good!

Back soon with arty pics!

Maria x

 

Sick cat, a little gardening, a little painting, eye stuff.....

oh yes its been a hectic few days. No time to blog. Sorry.

My baby has been real poorly. Poor Ziggy. He is NEVER ill. He is a happy little, mischievious scamp. He had a high temperature, wasn't eating or drinking and had the runs. Nasty. No purrs, didn't want to be touched and just sleeping. Soooo off to the vets we went. Soulful cat yowling all the way in the car! Ziggy is NOT impressed with the vets. Especially since he got a thermometer up his bum and then stabbed 4 times with needles. You can't really blame him for not revelling in the experience can you? Anyway the vet thinks he has an infection ( they're pretty perceptive these vets aren't they???) So a long acting antibiotic injection, half for ziggy and half in my face....cheers matey! And then the other half for ziggy again, an anti-inflammatory and an antacid and that'll be £30 please. I just KNEW I should have trained as a vet!!!

Instructed to keep an eye on him and take him back for admission if no improvement the next day. So much praying to God ensued and tempting of poorly boy to eat and drink. He is on the mend I think. drinking well, eating a little, purring heaps and demanding snuggles. PHEW!!!!!! 

I've actually had some days off from work... and days off together too rather than being split up!!! So what to do? Well my garden is in a sorry state. It's been sadly neglected in favour of work, painting, crochet...oh and sleep!

 

See? Pretty messy huh? I have a lovely little courtyard garden leading from my living room. It's a real sun trap and a lovely place to spend time during the summer. Well it is when it's not so messy that is! At the moment it's just annoying. So I donned my very practical and not so pretty gardening gloves and got to work. 4 binliners later, only quarter of the garden was tidied! I think this is going to be a bigger task than first anticipated. I'm looking on it as work in progress as I simply don't have enough free time to get it sorted in one go. But it's looking a whole lot better now.....

I have some days off after my holland and stratford trips... hopefully it should be completely tidied then. Which will tie in nicely with pot and basket planting. As we're "up north", we still get the occasional sneaky frosts until mid to late may. Oooh I do like garden planning :-) ETA... today has been a lovely day so out in the garden I went. The grand total of bin liners filled = 9!!!!!

Not much has been done on the painting front I'm afraid. I've been having a little "trouble" with my eyesight (haha old age....don't ya love it?). After close up work I was getting awful headaches and blurry vision so off to the opticians I went. Pleased that I did go.... not only do I now have a natty little pair of reading/close up glasses but also an appointment with the glaucoma diagnostic clinic!!! They picked up a problem with eyes so I need to get them checked out. What do you think of my glasses?

So now I can paint, crochet, read etc to my hearts content without the horrible headaches!

Talking of crochet.... look what arrived in the post this morning

 All the way from Holland... more yarn for my shawl :-) Am over the moon as we were panicking slightly that it may never arrive. It was posted almost a month ago via priority mail!!! Either the dutch post or Royal Mail has been a little slow.... I know ho my money's on!!! Whilst I was waiting for this yarn to arrive I made a start on my biggest project yet. A HUGE ripple bedspread. It's coming along lovely. Alas I have almost run out of yarn. And since I'm unbelievably skint it will have to wait until a more wealthy month before yarn can be purchased. Thank god I've got my shawl to keep me going :-)

Look at all those yummy colours! It's going to be just beautiful when its finished. One 50g ball of yarn works only 2 and a half rows!!!! 

Right I'm off to soak my aching bones in the bath. This gardening is hard work :-)

Maria x

Bank holiday = PJ day!!!!

Yes for once I am not working. I have had a whole day of nothingness and boy I needed it. I had to sort some paperwork this morning, (money rubbish... or extreme lack of it!) pay some bills and then REST!

And rest I have done. I went back to bed and slept... and slept....and slept!  Woke feeling much brighter.

Still not out of pjs.... but who cares!!! Am back to work tomorrow so am making the most of my free time. Tonight I am planning doing some of this....

Made a start on a new project! I wasn't happy with the Granny Square blankie so am transforming it into a ripple bedspread. 12 cheerful colours.

I shall be drinking and munching on this....

Port and chocolate... my favourite combination of the moment! And watching crappy TV. Happy days!!!

The weather outside is rubbish. I still have no heating. I have no money to fix the blasted heating! BUT, I have crochet, port and chocolate. Sometimes its the simple things in life that give the most pleasure.

Like earlier... I was giving my work handbag a much needed clean out. How I collect so much crap in one handbag is beyond me! Anyway, I digress.... I came upon these....

A bag of mint imperials! They made me smile..... and sniff a little. This little bag of mint imperials holds a whole heap of lovely memories that I had forgotten about. 

Happy Bank Holiday Monday People and Squirrels all over the world!

Maria x

Long time no blog....

Sorry. Life has just kind of got in the way of blogging recently. I have had car nightmares, heating nightmares and MORE heating nightmares!!! On top of that work and finishing off projects left little time to sleep nevermind blog!!!!!

Sooooo today has been a mixed bag. Heating man came out again this morning and sorted out my non-existent hot water. Apparently it was just a simple air lock and took 2 mins to sort. As I type I have heating AND hot water!!! This afternoon the heating went off again and I lost the plot, hot footed over to argos and picked me up one of these.....

 

The weather here has been a little unpredictable (to say the least!!!) and I'm determined that I will not suffer the cold again. So came home and the blummin heating started again....grrrrrr. Nevermind. I WILL smile :-)

On top of that I have an icky tummy. Feeling pukey and a little fragile. However this didn't stop the creativity! Oh no.... I have finished a project, photographed step by step and ordered all the little bits that I need. Can't share just yet.... it's a secret ;-) But will as soon as I can. Inky messy goodness!!!!

Once that was all sorted I eventually got round to a little painting....

It seems like an age since I did any Suzi stuff. Remember this little girly?

She looks a little different now! Oh and her eyes are not different shades in real life...I've used a pearlescent paint and it really does not like the camera!

All she needs are a few words and maybe a flower.... in her hair :-) I'll maybes get her finished on saturday.

Also been doing a lot of work on the angel.... now bear with me.... this is very much work in progress! Soooo much left to do. Her wings are in the beginning stages and her neck, hair, halo and dress have been blocked in and need details. LOTS of details... but I'll let you have a peek at how she is progressing

Am pretty happy with her so far. LOVE the serene look on her face. Soooo much fun this painting malarkey! I need to win the lottery...buy a little place in the country with a lovely art/scrap studio and just create. Well we can dream can't we???

Right I'm off to catch up on emails....lots and lots of emails. Oh and then a little TV and some crochet :-)

Til next time

Maria x

Birthday Blog Bash....Home Is Where The Heart Is.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Rebekah!!!! And welcome to my little corner of blogdom for this Birthday Blog Bash celebration :-)

A little home decor project for you to make!!!

You will need:

• ikea malma mirror or small square canvas or canvas board
• gesso (if using the mirror) to prime
• paint colours for the background of your choice (I've used a pale sky blue for the whole background,red for the heart and also some pearlescent lime green to add some shimmer to the grass)
• glimmer mists (these are optional but I've used Electric Blue for the sky, Lime Twist for the grass and Scarlet for the little heart) 
• chipboard letters for the HOME title (mine are Scenic Route... a very old pack that I found in my stash and they just happened to be red!!! You can paint yours red to match the heart)
• Prima felt branch (again I found it in my stash! Try making a branch or tree from brown cardstock)
• scraps of brightly coloured pattered paper and also some creamy white larger pieces for the clouds and insert background
• butterfly punch or chipboard butterflies
• heart punch (or draw a freehand heart for a more folky feel!)
• some tiny flowers in co-ordinating colours or use a small flower punch
• small clear crystals
• length of brown narrow rick rack
• fine doodling pen (mine is brown)
• you usual scrapping tools

How to!

If you are using the untreated pine mirror the first thing you need to do is prime it with gesso. Most woods are pretty porous which means if left untreated they will soak up paint like a sponge! Now if you haven't got gesso fret not! Just use some white paint and cover with a couple of coats to form a base for your background colour. Most canvasses come already primed and ready to be painted on.

Next step is to cover the frame or canvas with your background colour. I've mixed up a pale sky blue colour. Note I've primed and painted straight over the mirror! Oh and don't forget to paint the sides too!!! If you are using paint only and not glimmer mist you will need to paint the bottom panel, underneath the mirror, in your green colour and gently blend upwards into the blue sky.

To add more depth I had a play with some glimmer mists! I lightly sprayed over the sky with blue and then added the grass using the lime green colour. This took a few layers (5 in total!!!) and I dried each layer with a heat gun before spraying the next. Make sure you protect the surrounding area with newspaper or plastic first!!!

I added some pearlescent paint to the green to give more texture and set to one side to dry. A WORD OF CAUTION!!!! Glimmer Mists are water soluble. Which means in layman's terms.... if you get them wet they may streak. I was very careful when adding paint over them and dabbed gently with the paint brush rather than applying the paint with brush strokes.

While your frame is drying you can make the insert or, if you are working on a canvas, a square for the middle. I measured the recess and cut out a square to fit from the creamy white paper. The little house is made up of scraps of paper. I drew a little house shape onto scrap card and cut it into sections to make a template which I cut out of paper scraps and adhered to the background. Be careful to leave enough room for your text underneath! Next I punched out a heart and sprayed with scarlet glimmer mist. Alternatively you can paint it with red paint. Add some doodling if desired around the edges, the text and your insert is complete!

Draw some cloud shapes onto the same background as the insert and cut out. I've done 3 clouds in different sizes.

Now add them to your frame and doodle a border around them. I've used a wet glue but took care not to overload the back of the clouds with glue so that the glimmer mist didn't smudge.

The next step is to add your branch. I found these Prima felt branches in a box of stash. I had forgotten that I had bought them!!! If you haven't got anything similar have a go at making your own. There are heaps of clipart sites that have images of trees and branches. Find a one you like...print it out and make a template. Alternatively you could always be brave and paint a tree directly onto your project. Remember this does have to be perfect and true to life.

Now adhere your insert and add a doodled frame around it.

Onto the final stretch now! Add some butterflies with small crystals to their bodies, some small flowers also with crystal centres and attach your chipboard letters. I finished by adding a little owl cut from a patterned paper scrap!

Have fun creating!!!

Next in line.... the lovely Stephanie Parsloe... you can find her project here!

Maria x