We Love ... Mucha!

Most of the time I'm engaged with commissions for people, which means I do very little art of myself sometimes!! And as much as I love doing them, sometimes I just want them to finish too!!

Here is a commission I did last year before Christmas ( I still have my massive fairy painting to be going on with, and as I'm getting a brand new shiny camara soon, I will post some pics! )

I absolutely love Art Nouveau, so this work was really a labour of love. One of my favourite artists is Alphonse Mucha, and his works are now out of copywrite. (Which is probably why we see so much of them in Past Times and things nowdays! )  He was a Czech artist born in 1860, and is widely known for his distinctive illustrations of stylised women. Sadly, like many artists, Mucha has achieved far more fame now than during his lifetime. I copied four of his paintings 'The Times of Day' - They were drawn freehand and handpainted too, I used gouche as this is my favourite medium for achieving a vibrant colour. . 

 The originals are about 1 metre high! Anyway I have some very limited edition prints of these now, in both A4 and A3 formats. They are printed on the best quality fadeproof inks, on watercolour paper so they look remarkably like the originals. Once I get them mounted and packaged up they will be winging their way over to my long neglected Folksy and Etsy shops!

I do love Art Nouveau though, my other favourites of the period being Charles Rene Mackintosh and Antoni Gaudi. (  I have a thing for architecture too! ) This is a room in the Mackintosh Willow Tearooms...

And a nave from Gaudi's labour of love, the Sagrada Familia catherdral in Barcelona... if you ever make it over there, Gaudi's naturalistic architecture is wonderful and hard to miss...

I promise to blog again soon , possibly about my new buisness cards which sound exciting and should be arriving any day now !!

Weddings and Favours!

Hello everyone! Now my cousin's wedding is offically over, I can show you what I have been doing with myself for the last month!

A few months back my cousin emailed me to ask if I knew where to get individual tea-bag holders. Rather unwisely, I said I had no idea but sewing up a batch would be easy. My cousin was rather excited at this, she had only seen some cheapish looking plastic ones from America. See the rather sweet idea was to have teabags and china cups as Wedding favours. Anyway a month and 80 individually sewn bags later - here are the results. 

Make a little more sense now? My cousin chose the message -

 'Lizzy & Tom'

'Love is Brewing'

6th May 202

So that part was handstitched in a variety of colours, the bag was made up on the machine, and a drawstring ribbon and handpainted heart tag was added. Phew! They looked gorgeous on the day and all the guests got a china cup and bag gift!

Just to wet yor appetite, here are some more wedding pics

The room had beautiful drapes and fairy lights, and the flower table decorations...And my favourite part...

the desert trio!

I won't post a pic of the bride and groom in case they get embarrased! But both looked stunning and it was an absolutely fabulous day :)

Introducing the Furbabies

In case anyone out there was wondering, there isn't actually any (shh, whisper it) REAL mice or bunnies in Natsnest. There was a bunny, but he was gone a long time ago. Natsnest does have some furbabies though, and I'd like to introduce them all. You see, ever since I was quite small, I've had a passion for hamsters. Fabric hamsters are something I'm planning to introduce to the nest, once I can get the head shape right (and they have tiny little limbs, must not overbalance them!) There are three real live hamsters in the nest right now...

  The first is Mr. Hope, my chubby golden syrian boy... 

 

Mind the Washing on the Line!!

 If I can just chew through this...

Cage Escape!

Mr. Hope is a lovely 14 month old hammy. He was bought from the adoption bit in Pets at Home, and has quite the story to tell. When he first came to the petstore he escaped and got out into the warehouse. He lived there for two whole months before someone finally caught him. After a lot of fattening up, he was put on sale, but nobody wanted him next to the sleak shiny baby hams. So I went in, picked him up and he snuggled right into my arm and wouldn't let go. So really he had to come home with me. He has been a little angel from the start, although he is a rather lazy hammy, and I doubt he would be seen if it wasn't for me waking him up to play! 

The other occupants of the nest are two roborovski hamsters called Shakespeare and Hamlet...

 

Hamlet

We can still see you Shakespeare!

Shakespeare on his wheel.

Roborovski hamsters are quite new to be kept as pets. They are the tiniest hamsters you can buy, measuring only 4-5cm when fully grown. My two are babies, only 7 weeks old! They are super fast hamsters, and are very nervous, though rarely bite. They are not recommended for children as they are so fast and small! Shakepeare happily likes being stroked in his cage, but gets a little bit upset when being picked up. (He gets picked up anyway, poor wee man!) Hamlet instead likes to play a game where he rushes around the cage so you can't grab him, but when he is finally in your arms he is placid as anything. 

So they are the real furbabies of the nest, hope you enjoyed the photos!

Fairy-ality...

Once again I've been neglecting this blog! I have a good reason though, I lost my camara which ment pictures of my work were a little hard to take! I've been painting a very large watercolour as a commission, and as I think pictures of half finished work are sometimes just as lovely as the finished article, I though you might like to see some images of it. Its taken two months so far. Its of fairies having a party...

Here are the mice looking on ...

 

The buffet table with butterfly ( you can see the unpainted sections here, mostly I'm leaving the fairies till last)

 

Another butterfly, some mushrooms, and some half finished fairies..

A couple of bluetits....

At the moment I don't have a full sized picture of it as its rather large altogether! ( I'll just let the suspence build up a bit!)

The problem with me is that I take on half a dozen projects at once, which means nothing gets finished! ( Well, actually I do tend to finish things, they must just take slightly longer!) So alongside my big painting, I have been doing several fabric projects, which you might like.

Here is my Cath Kitson style tapestry cushion...

A cross stitch I have entitled 'Watership Down' ( after re-reading Richard Adam's fantastic book, it really does have beautiful descriptions of the countryside)

And a embroidery cushion of a bluetit

Phew! As you can see I've got a busy few months ahead of me. On top of all this, I have been organising my artwork and getting some professional prints made up, so hopefully my prints will be listed in both my etsy 

and Folksy shops very soon. They will be all absolutely limited edition, so please watch this space!