My winning design for a child's duvet cover

This photo is the copyright of Fou Furnishings and shows my winning design in 2010 for a children's duvet design competition.

This design called "Love to Learn" was inspired by reading, learning and nature so I included letters, numbers, animals and shapes.

Fou Furnishings is a Soil Association certified company specialising in organic bedding. In 2009 during the Soil Association, Organic Fortnight week they held a competition to design a children's duvet and it coincided with their launch of new organic collections for babies and children.  My design was one of two winners.

The company made up my design as a limited edition duvet in 330 thread count organic cotton which means it feels beautifully soft and smooth and it was sold  for £65.
I'm very proud of this design and one of my children still has her duvet on her bed.

Roses

Roses are one of my favourite flowers so it's no surprise I enjoy painting them. Below are examples of some of my mini paintings inspired by roses.

Watercolour 

mixed media 

Acrylic- roses 

watercolour 

Acrylic 

watercolour 

mixed media

this is one of my favourite ACEO sized artworks 

mixed media 

mixed media 

Greeting card, watercolour 

I  will be painting more artwork with roses in the future both on mini canvas and ACEO and will be listing them for sale on my Folksy shop, which I am very excited to be re- opening next month! 

fashion inspired cards and brooches

Last week was London fashion week 2020 and I've been inspired to look through some of the cards and brooches I designed and made using Liberty print fabrics.

I'm planning some more gorgeous little fabric dress cards this year !

Paper roses for Valentine's day

Happy Valentine's Day

My daughter asked me to show her how to make paper roses. She wanted to make four red roses to take to school for her friends. The came out beautifully. We made them look extra special by putting them in piping bags and used gold ribbon. So pretty and professional looking. I'm sure her school friends will be delighted with them.

I've previously made little paper rose magnets and rings made with beautiful floral Italian Carte Varese paper, like these below.

This little paper rose ring was made with a blue spotty design paper

Hand drawn greeting cards

Hand drawing original cards are special. Each is an artwork and can't be reproduced exactly which means each card is one of a kind As well as card, I make laminated placements, here is one, an ink  ink drawing inspired by tea time on card. These are very resilient and  have one I still used. that was made several years ago.

All my greeting cards are unique in this way. I don't use a template or tracing paper, I recreate the design and often it has slight differences, sometimes I just let the pen go with the flow. I enjoy the free style uniqueness of making hand drawn greeting cards. This greeting card was  inspired by a gold sequinned vintage scarf which I purchased twenty years ago. The ink drawing below was done on linen paper and then mounted on pearlescent gold card creating a luxurious card.

Original ink drawings on canvas and card

Recently I was looking through some of the original ink drawings I had designed and created on card and canvas. Here are  some of my favourite fashion and high tea inspired designs.

 This is a designer bag design

I love this frilly shoe design , ink on canvas

another bags and shoe design ink on canvas which I called 'Holiday accessories'

This was a set of drinks mats , ink on card 

pom pom shoes & clutch bag 

Party dresses 

Delicious desserts greeting card, ink on linen paper

Chai Masala greeting card, ink on paper

one of my popular everyday cards 

all my cards were  wrapped in bio-degradable cellophane bags

I am planning some new designs in the coming months will will share them here. 

Art Supplies and planning a painting for exhibition

I visited one of my favourite art supplies warehouses today, Atlantis Art Supplies in Hackney. It's tucked away within walking distance of London Fields overground station and although not as lovely as the original store in Whitechapel which closed down but it had everything I needed for my new painting project

I'm going to be working on a stretched canvas with acrylic paints and creating a painting inspired by having a positive mental attitude.  I like adding a bit of bling in my artworks. Here is a canvas notice board that I created a few years ago for a craft book, as you can see it has gold, red and green glitter on it, although I was hoping to use mica flakes on my canvas, the rules don't allow it so I'll be saving the gold mica flakes for another project.

Hello 2020 : Return to crafting and art inspired by science and personal development

It's been a while since I last blogged or for that matter had the time to handcraft or be creative with painting and drawing but all that is about to change. 2020 is the year I made the decision to work part time as a science teacher and make time for the things that make me happy: handcrafts & artwork inspired by my love of science & personal development.

Below are some of the microbiology and cell biology inspired fabric brooches and a pendant I've designed and made in the past. They were sold in little petri dishes. I used faux leather, beads, buttons felt and Liberty print fabrics to create these wonderful designs.

 This one is one of my favourite designs because of the Liberty fabric, the little cylindrical beads, the bright red felt and the pretty orange vintage button.

 

This is one of my favourites and is made with felt and faux leather and has a very small little blue button with delightful white spots representing  a perfect little nucleolus inside the clear dish like vintage button which represents the cell nucleus.

 These three creations above are my most favourite biology inspired brooches and pendant.  I used a lovely mohair wool and little pink seed beads to create the microbiology agar plate brooch.  The cell in the petri dish has a beautiful vintage button with a crescent shape on it. The pendant is also microbiology inspired and I've used to pieces of a Liberty print cotton pattern to represent some mould growth. 

It's very exciting to get this blog up and running again and I look forward to updating with my new designs and creations.