WOYWW #156

It's time again for Whats On Your Workdesk Wednesday.  This week I have an old printers tray that I am trying to fill up so it will go on my bathroom wall.  I'ts been sitting in a corner for months - we had the bathroom re-done way back last summer - and I finally felt it was time to get on with it!

It's taken me quite a time to collect all the little bits and bobs and I still have a couple more segments to fill, but at least I'm nearly there.

Why not nip over to Julia at the Stamping Ground and visit many more desks - it's great fun nosy-ing around!

TAG TUESDAY AND BUNTING

The theme for Tag Tuesday this week is bunting.  With all the preparations for the Jubilee going on I think I have rather over-dosed on red, white and blue lately, so I decided to keep the colours simple and neutral.  I wanted to make a summery tag using grey, beige and black - a colour combination I particularly like but isn't very summery!   Here's the result, and there are many more tags over at Tag Tuesday.  

  

DANDELION CLOCKS

 I love dandelion clocks, and seeds, and seed heads and pollen......!

Most summers I attempt to photograph a few dandelion clocks in the vain hope I will get the 'perfect' photo of one - I probably never will, but it doesn't stop me trying!  This years attempts have been put together for

 Colour Me Weekly and Mosaic Monday.

After destroying quite a few in my attempt to photograph a whole one I put the remaining tatty ones in a glass bottle and photographed them as they disintegrated.

I thought I'd also show a couple of my favourite art installations with seed heads as the inspiration.

Isn't this beautiful - it's by Regine Ramseier and I found the image over at the Jealous Curator.  There are more fab pictures over there of this amazing  installation. 

This is the incredible Seed Cathedral by Thomas Heatherwick, built for the 2010 Shanghai Expo.  It's six stories high and studded with 60,000 translucent rods.  It was built as a platform to show the work of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and their Millenium seed bank.  Each filament contains seeds from the bank.  There is more information over on his website 

WOYWW #155

It's time for What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday again, and on mine this week is my new-ish glue gun that I use for wax.  I often include wax seals on work and I have a collection of seals and metal buttons that I use to decorate and personalise cards and art.  After many years of using matches and the old fashioned sealing wax I found some wax in thin sticks and a mini glue gun that takes them.  The wax comes in many colours and I particularly like the copper, gold and pewter, but the red I find a little bright compared to the old fashioned stuff.   

This week's subject for Tag Tuesday was Found Objects.  For the tag I used a pair of antique spectacles found when clearing my late father-in-laws loft, a background text from an old letter, and I added a feather and a pen nib and completed the tag with a gold wax seal of a fleur de lys.

WATTS CHAPEL

Last week we took a trip out to visit the beautiful Watts Chapel in Compton, Surrey, just a stones throw from Guildford.

This exquisite little Art Nouveau chapel was designed by Mary Watts for her husband George Frederick Watts, the renowned Victorian artist.

Some of the inside decoration  - a lot of the symbols representing the Tree of Life

Some of the outside decoration - over 70 local villagers helped decorate the chapel

Part of the ceiling inside the chapel

There's a website here about the Chapel, and also the Watts Gallery, which is just a few hundred yards down the lane from the Chapel.

I am linking this to Color Me Weekly and Mosaic Monday.  

DOODLY BIRDS AND GREETINGS CARDS

Isn't blogland wonderful - my dear blog friend Lynn sent me a beautiful card she had found because she knew it was right up my street - a lovely piece of inspiration!  I also received one of her fabulous Doodly Bird postcards with it, which now has pride of place in my studio to brighten each day!  Why not pop along to Lynn's lovely blog One I Made  Earlier Today and Doodly Bird store - it's well worth a visit.

Thank you so much Lynn.

POLLEN TIME AND WOYWW #154

I don't quite know what's happening out there but when I went to photograph my desk for WOYWW this morning I found bright sunlight streaming through the window - highly unusual but very welcome.

On the desk this week is  my just-finished sketch and also on the back of the desk is a large furnishing fabric book - I was wondering if the swirly patterns of the fabric were pollen-like!

Here's the finished sketch - the beautiful little clock image is from my super-talented blog friend Terri over at Art-Life-Rust - thank you Terri!

ANTIQUE SPECTACLES

We inherited a large bag of antique spectacles from my late father-in-law.  We have no idea where they came from or why he had them, but I decided they were not going to be thrown out!  I knew I would find a use for them eventually.

Here's one pair being used as a photographic prop for this weeks

 Texture Tuesday.

I used Kim Klassen's Lightpaper3 and Lightpaper 4 textures.

GARDENING AND TAG TUESDAY

This weeks theme for Tag Tuesday is gardening.

I made two tags using a water-colour base, stamped images and gold embossed highlights to each of the seed heads and torn flowers.

I ended up making two because the first tag didn't quite work - the stalks were too thin to edge in ink, but I felt they needed something more to make them stand out.  Also, the image wasn't stamped straight.

The close up photo is the only one I managed to take where the gold embossing actually looks metallic and shiny.   

LOVING BLUE

I have just purchased this lovely little bowl from Etsy - it's beautifully handmade by Hodaka Hasebe, and it perfectly matches the little blue bowl I already have (bottom left picture in mosaic).

I am so in love with it at the moment that I had to celebrate it with photographs!

Also on the theme of blue, I have photographed the last of the forget-me-nots in my garden.  I don't think they are the wild ones as they are a more pastel shade of blue - they have given such a wonderful splash of spring colour I shall be sad to see them die back.

I am linking this to Mosaic Monday and Color Me Weekly.

I have also found a new place to play at Blue Monday, so I thought I'd link to that as well - as the name suggests it is all about capturing the colour blue and there are some great pics to go and look at!  

THANK YOU TO SHOSHI

I would like to say a big THANK YOU to Shoshi at shoshiplatypus.blogspot.co.uk who has so kindly written a piece about my blog.  She is a very talented artist  and if you want inspiration or simply to mooch around an interesting blog, this is the place to go!

It's a wonderful feeling knowing that the work we do is enjoyed and appreciated by others, so while I'm at it I would also like to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who leaves such kind and positive comments on my work.

Every comment is totally appreciated and they quite often encourage and spur me on when inspiration is running low!!!

WOYWW #153

   On my desk this week you will find pages covered in cream emulsion drying (ready for card-making) - several cards made and ready to put in bags - my wonderful button box - an old jewellery box that now holds all my precious 'little bits' of collage stuff - more 'little bits' of collage stuff - my paint splattered specs - some very necessary mini chocolate Easter eggs - and under the desk two kitchen rolls to mop paint, dry brushes etc etc!

These are some lovely crafty bits I purchased at the the Needlework Fiesta at Brockenhurst the weekend before last - my friend Jane and I had a great day out there.  I have only just unpacked them as it always involves quite a lot of shuffling things around and re-arranging boxes whenever I have new stuff to add!  

I was so pleased to find some spiral bound square sketchbooks with good quality paper in them - most are rectangular, but I rather like working within a square frame.  I bought some gummed silk, which looks quite textured, almost like bark, and some hand dyed velvet in moth colours!

If you are wondering why I am showing you my work desk it's because it's Wednesday and over at Julia's place (clickk the WOYWW badge on the right) you can visit all sorts of wonderful and interesting work areas - it's great if you are like me and enjoy a good nose around!

TEXTURE TUESDAY AND MORE MACAROON MADNESS

 I decided to join in with Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday this week.  My image of macaroons has had two textures added to it - Paperlove (a texture freebie) and Hello (from the 2011 collection).

If you fancy looking at some fantastic texture photography click the badge to Kim Klassen's cafe on the right and enjoy!

MACAROON MADNESS

I'm often amazed at where inspiration comes from - sometimes the most unremarkable object can lead to an entire series of art works.  While at my favourite farm shop last week I was seduced by a little box of the most beautifully coloured macaroons - raspberry pinks, pistachio greens, creamy whites, chocolate browns and soft inky blues.  

As far as a packet of biscuits goes they were grossly overpriced, tasted of nothing in particular and were too dry and crumbly BUT they were beautiful and I felt a photo coming on - or should I say several!   

  

I am linking this to Color Me Weekly and Mosaic Monday (Little Red House).  Why not hit the links on the right and visit them for some wonderful inspiration.

WOYWW 152 AND TAG TUESDAY

This week I was moaning about the fact that my reels of washi tape were bursting out of the box they were in and the lid wouldn't close.  So, my wonderful husband disappeared into his garage and came out with this tape holder - it fits perfectly on the top of my shelf units and under the sloping ceiling - he even left room for me to buy a few more reels of tape - but I don't think he realised that!

The over-sized teacup is from my favourite book store/coffee shop in San Diego.

   Still in the mood for getting organised I sorted all my plain ribbons onto a wire coat hanger - I was fed up with sorting through a box full of tangled mess each time I wanted ribbon.  It is rather big to live on the notice board so I shall have to find a home for it - but it's a lot easier to use like that!

The little tags on the board are covered in small pieces of lace, patterned ribbons, stickers and tapes that I have -it's a quick reminder of what is hidden away in the bottom of boxes, without having to rummage too much!

For Tag Tuesday this week I decided to stick with the theme of pollen, despite the subject being sewing!   

I printed pollen images onto silk and then sewed them onto tags (so I am being true to the theme!).  I decided on a white background so the pollen could 'float' around.

My current obsession by Rob Kesseler and Madeline Harley

I know a lot of people feel quite negative towards pollen as they suffer from it so badly during the summer.  I get terrible hay fever each year and I find it hard to believe that something that makes my life so horribly miserable can be so utterly beautiful!  What is so wondrous is that life is dependent on each of these exquisite little works of nature!

I'm linking this to WOYWW - if you want to nose around other people's work desks and see what they are up to click on the link on the right.

Also, why not visit Tag Tuesday and see some beautiful tags with this week's theme of 'sewing'.