Illustration Friday Swarm

Phew! Two posts in 24 hours! Feels good to be super creative again.

Here is my entry for Illustration Friday's 'Swarm'.

For some reason this is the image that came into my head, I wouldn't mind being surrounded by a swarm of butterflies! :0)

Hope you're all having a great weekend! :0)


I'd just like to add that I'm having a giveaway on my facebook page, so just click on the facebook link on the side of my blog to enter! :0)

My first oil painting finished Sunday sketch

Hi guys thought I'd post pics of my finished piece. Because it has been a work in progress from a sketch that I submitted to Sunday Sketches last week I thought I'd submit the finished piece to Sunday Sketches this week :0) As you can tell from my the photos in my last post, I did another layer of colours over my entire painting. After I let the painting dry enough I was able to paint more on top and I love how the oils pop! I think this piece turned out better than I expected and I really enjoyed doing it! Using oils made me slow down alot and think more about what I wanted to do as I couldn't be in a hurry with the drying time.

It's funny I realised this week that I really like the smell of the oil paints and that it brought back a few memories for me. My Bampi (granddad) used to paint in his spare time he was actually very talented but it was something that he used to do now and again when he retired. I think he could have done alot with his talent in another place and time. But I think back when he was growing up being artistic and creative wasn't as encouraged as it is today. Painting with oils reminde me of him :0)



I'm looking forward to doing more of these, I guess my only real problem with oils is the drying time, it's not very convenient to leave paintings out on your desk to dry for days on end. What do you guys who use oils do with your paintings  when you're finished? And how long do they tend to take to dry? My other thought was do I need to varnish it? I find with acrylic paint that varnishing helps make the colours pop alot more but I wasn't sure if I needed to do that with oils. Can you tell that I'm fumbling my way through this one? ;0) Hope you're all having a great weekend :0)

Some work in progress!

I had a very productive day today and finally after about 18months of procrastination, opened my oil paints. I've been wanting to try them for a while but really didn't know where to start. But I have been inspired by my gorgeous blog friend Kelly Berkey's work as she recently started using oils so I thought I would give my second canvas a go. We both seem to be experimenting with flowers at the moment :0) This is from the sketch I did for Sunday Sketches a few days ago.

 I painted my canvas with black acrylic paint and sketched the outline of the painting on top

 I didn't really have a plan or know how different the oils would feel to the acrylics.

 This is as far as I got with the painting today. I felt I had to stop and wait for the paint to dry a bit. I'm not sure what else I'm going to do with this but I know it needs something more. I want to outline the leaves a bit and include more detail. I really love acrylics and find them so user friendly but I have to say the oils are so bright and vibrant. The only thing that bothers me is the drying time, but it might not be such a bad thing as I think I tend to rush my paintings and it might do me good to work on this over a longer period of time.

I'd love to know what everyone else's thoughts on oils are and if you might have any tips for me. I shall post up more pics as I work on it :0)



Lastly I managed to bake these pendants up while I was painting today, I have since varnished them which makes the colour really pop. I drew a couple of designs on some of them too :0)

Hope you're all having a great week :0)

New flower painting!

I managed to work on this one and finish it today! Well I think it's finished. I'm so picky with my work lately I want everything I do to be a 'masterpiece' and stress about it when it doesn't turn out the way I had it in my head. I know I should just stress less and just learn from each piece but it's hard not to spot things  don't like in my work. Having said that I'm pleasantly surprised at how this one turned out. I've not painted many flowers on canvas and I'm glad I perservered with this one. I initially wanted a black background like my rose painting but I thought it looked a bit boring so I went over the black with a light layer of light blue and I quite like the texture it gave it.

I'm going to sign and varnish it! :0)

Now for the next one .......

Sunday sketches

Hi everyone hope you all had a great weekend. I've been so busy doing a massive stock take of all my pendants for my upcoming market. I've been pricing them and practicing my set up. My lovely hubby made me some boards to hang them on which has really made a difference to how it all looks.

This weeks Sunday sketch is just a quickie from my sketch book, i've been wanting to do another flower painting but I've been really struggling, I've painted over one canvas 3 times now as I'm not happy with how it turned out. So I sat down and sketched up some different flower ideas. I'm hoping to work on the paintings in the next few days.

I should have at least 100 pieces by the time I finish my stock take and I plan on making as many as I can before the big day as I bought some really cool clay the the other day.

Here are some shots of my set up with my clay pieces! :0)

I'm off to check out all the other Sunday Sketches :0)

And the winners are.........

Hi everyone well the One World One Heart event is over and I have managed to randomly pick the 3 winners. 132 lovely people entered.

The first one out of the hat was Doreen who just so happens to be from the same city as me! Congratulations Doreen you are the winner of the Japanese paper glass pendant

The winner of the next prize is Saskia. Congratulations Saskia you are the winner of my two glass bobby pins!

And last but not least the third winner is Regina. Congratulations Regina you have won my laminated print fridge magnet 'I curse my sweet tooth'.

Thank you everyone who entered. I enjoyed this give away sooooo much that I am already planning another so stay tuned :0)

I'm off to notify the winners :0)

Illustration Friday 'Sweater' and Sunday Sketch

'May-belle, just LOVED to knit, she didn't really know why she loved it so much because she wasn't particularly good at it, but she enjoyed the challenge of wearing those baggy sweaters!!!' :0)

'May-belle' is a character that I sketched up a few weeks ago for Sunday sketches and I decided to give her a bit more of a personality, perhaps I should take her different places each Illustration Friday and see where it takes me. I like working on this character as it is completely different to the other things I've been working on lately so it's a nice change!

Busy week!

Hi guys!

I realised today that it's been over a week since my last post which is unusual for me. I have to say though that with the OWOH blog hop going on and preparing my next big market in less than a month, as well as both the boys going back to school it's been a bit of a crazy week. Once I get into a routine (my youngest has finally started preschool) I shall be able to post more frequently again and I also plan to paint and draw alot more.

I wanted to show you guys some of the pieces that I have been working on in preparation for this new market I'm trying out. It's a real big country market and very popular in our city so I'm hoping that I'll do well there so that I can keep making these fun pieces.

These are also listed in my shop too :0)

 My current favourite, Japanese paper in a vintage setting!

 Hand drawn design on fimo clay.

 Love these settings, marbel swirls in fimo clay.

 I called this piece 'Jupiter' as it really reminded me of the planet! Love the antique bronze!

This is Japanese paper inside a black gunmetal pendant tray!

So as you can see I have been very busy. I'm currently working on another flower painting. I started painting it yesterday but I just wasn't happy with it at all so I ended up painting over it in black and starting again. Does that ever happen to you?

Hope you're all having a great week!!! :0)

Illustration Friday Surrender

Hi guys this week has been rather busy as I'm one of many people taking part in OWOH which is a massive blog event. Be sure to scroll down to that post as I'm having a giveaway and anyone with an active blog worldwide is able to enter.

So I have had this piece sitting on my desk for a couple of days and thought I'd better show you before I missed this weeks prompt. 'Surrender' for me this week was all about letting my paint brush decide what I wanted to paint and push myself a little and step outside the box. I tend to do alot of figurative paintings and pretty ladies etc and this time I wanted to do something that I wasn't so confident with which is flowers. I took a photo of a beautiful rose in my back yard and used that for reference. And the funny thing is the painting turned out completely different!! I'm now thinking of painting a series of flower paintings!