Twenty Minute Challenge

At the weekend, I had a lot to catch up with after all the printing and posting I'd done during the week; things like my Tax Return, people I needed to get in touch with, the ever-present ironing, the lawn needing mowing and the batteries in my doorbell urgently needing changing - the usual list of tedious tasks that seems to get longer rather than shorter. But I was determined to fit in some painting as well so I decided to see what I could achieve in a very short time in the way that artists on the 'Twenty Minute Challenge' website do.

My wallflowers are coming to an end so I, naturally, wanted to paint them before it's too late and I picked a bunch of assorted colours for my subject, set my timer and got stuck in! By the end of 20 mins I had easily finished the painting part of the exercise and my wet paper was decidely less wet. Unfortunately, I didn't think what I'd produced was worth photographing and it was still too wet to scan; so I can't post the result of the first stage. But after I'd had a quick lunch and done a few more 'odd jobs', I went back to look at what I'd done and decided that, now it was completely dry, there might be something worth salvaging if I defined the shapes of the flowers with a brown fineliner pen.

Not that it would ever be likely to become a greeting card design, but it might have some future on a white mug or even some more shoes! (These are obviously becoming my favourites when it comes to 'creating' products for my Zazzle store!)

Wallflowers Ringer Mug by helikettle
View more Wallflowers Mugs

I'm not sure that I learnt anything from limiting myself to 20 minutes as it is normal for me to work very fast and I never spend much time thinking about what I'm doing. In fact I'd probably have stopped painting sooner if I hadn't set the timer. But I did feel frustrated by the fact that I wasn't able to produce a really transparent but vibrant yellow. I tried several but they all seemed to turn murky and more like yellow ochre when they came up against the reds and merged with them.

My Keds shoes with a photographic image of wallflowers won a Today's Best Award but I actually prefer the slightly riotous look of my watercolour wallflowers -

Wallflowers Keds Shoes by helikettle
Make your own shoes online with zazzle

On the election front, I was beginning to feel a bit better about it when I read that Charles Kennedy had stood by his principles and felt unable to back the LibCon Coalition. But then I was disheartened again last night when it became clear that the women members of the BBC Newsnight's focus group had voted according to the 'fanciability' - they actually used the word! - of TweedleCam and TweedleClegg! And the men had almost all voted for them because they were more 'young and modern'! If this is what the election came down to, obviously Gordon didn't stand a chance!

Fortunately a spell of catching up with The Artistic Curmudgeon's blog, that I had neglected lately, went some way to restore my sense of proportion, as did happening upon these -

The Original Coalition Mug 2010 by Coalition_Mug
View other Coalition mug Mugs

And the jug of wallflowers, even though they are starting to droop, are still giving off a delicious fragrance - pity I have developed some sort of allergic reaction over the years that causes me to lose my voice around my favourite flowers!

Good News and Bad News...

 The little bit of good news is that at the beginning of the week, I achieved a minor milestone - my 100th sale on Greeting Card Universe. And it was followed shortly afterwards by my 101st....then nothing, but that seems to be the way it goes at the moment, like a switch being turned on and off.

The bad news is the outcome of last week's General Election and I've been surprised at how much Tuesday's announcement of a Coalition of the Tories and the LibDems got me down.

Leaving aside the policies and the personalities involved, it's the sense of well-justified betrayal and outrage in the country that I share. Many people were persuaded to vote Libdem who would otherwise have voted Labour, 'To keep the Tories out' and now the two parties have formed a Coalition, with the Libdems trying to deny that they have given  ground on some of their sacred core policies and that what they have done is  'in the national interest'!

To add insult to injury, some politicians are trying to claim that this is what we, the electorate voted for, which is, of course, rubbish. There have been various assaults on the electorate's 'trust' of their politicians, most recently the expenses scandal, and all the party leaders recognised this and promised a 'new politics' to rebuild trust. Instead, the word 'betrayal' is coming up again and again in the media, amongst Tories as well as Libdems and Labour voters who voted tactically for the Libdems. Apparently the Labour Party's website is groaning under the numbers of people defecting to Labour so maybe in the long run this will work in Labour's favour and the Libdems will have shot themselves in the foot. Only time will tell.

And for those who have no idea what I'm talking about, here are a couple of blogs that explain our situation better than I can. First, the BBC's Nick Robinson, - note the way he writes about the two men agreeing with one another. In some of the televised leaders' debates, Gordon Brown used the phrase 'I agree with Nick' so often that someone on Zazzle made T-shirts with those words as the slogan!

And here is Mehdi Hasan of the New Statesman's blog

And if you find all this too depressing, watch this -
.

It made me laugh in spite of everything!

Enough of politics - they say that a country gets the government it deserves! I've had an even busier week than I expected! Just as I was getting started on printing the catalogue and card order for my Norfolk friend, another call came from Norfolk (through another of my old friends there), a lady wanting to order 10 cards.

Both orders involved quite a lot of customisation, which in itself took up time, but also, the two orders between them included seven new collage name-specific cards. I've sometimes managed to make two of the male name cards in a day, but the female ones take longer...all those leaves to cut out and stick down! But this week I ended up making all seven in two days and both packets had been posted by yesterday lunchtime.

I had intended to make more of these cards gradually, whenever I ran out of ideas for new cards (as if!) so it was all to the good that I've now been able to post them on Greeting Card Universe and Zazzle as well, where I made some matching mugs. Here are just a few of the many combinations -

'Oliver' Birthday Card by helikettle
Browse more Birthday Cards

'James' Birthday Card by helikettle
Browse more Birthday Cards

'This Mug Belongs to Miriam' Ringer Mug by helikettle
More Miriam Mugs

'This mug belongs to Oliver' mug by helikettle
Create a customizable stein with zazzle.co.uk

So today I'm spending some time catching up with other things - like the ironing! But my Norfolk friend received her parcel of cards this morning and is so delighted that she rang up first thing to tell me that she's going to order 30 more before she goes to Germany on Monday! At least I can take my time with that order as she'll be away for at least couple of weeks but I do have to spend some time sourcing matte card to print on as my supplier can't get my usual card any longer. So if anyone reading this knows of a good source of coated matte inkjet paper, preferably 260gsm or heavier, PLEASE let me know!