Work in Progress - March

My top-floor studio is like an ice-box in winter and an oven in the summer, even when it's not particularly hot outside. 

But at this time of year it's just the right temperature so I try to make the most of it, working my way through my list of ideas for designs. For some reason, I seem to have created more patterns and cards with furry or four-legged friends than usual recently.

First there were lots more elephant patterns -

Row of Paisley Elephants on Kids Black T-shirt by poshandpainterly

Fun Paisley Elephants, Jungle Green Leaves Pillow by poshandpainterly
.

Rows of Paisley Elephants on Beige iPad Mini Case by poshandpainterly

Then the fishes, Finnegan and Friends, still ongoing:

Colorful Fun Fish in the Sea Custom Notebook by poshandpainterly

Fun Goldfishes Pisces 100th Birthday Card Greeting Card by poshandpainterly

Orange Fishes on Sea Green, Blue iPhone 5c Case by poshandpainterly

And then there are the hedgehogs I've been working on. 

But I'm not yet at all satisfied that I've found the best way to use them for a birthday card - and this is the ninth attempt!

(I have the feeling I need to leave them alone for a while and then,
 maybe, when I come back to them, I might see them differently.)

But I have been working on other things as well as animals.

A birthday card for a friend -

 - and a faux patchwork tote bag from Red Bubble for the same friend's birthday gift.

Here are some more tote bags I've created for my Red Bubble store -

I'm adding a few each week because I'm so impressed with the one I ordered. 

The colour is great, the fabric strong and the price is very reasonable, even including shipping to the UK. (The only downside was the length of time it took to arrive so I'll order even further in advance the next time!)

Just for a change, inspired by Pinterest, of course, I've been making a 'Fairy House' from a plastic juice bottle, a cardboard toilet roll tube and papier mache! 

 

     

Not quite finished yet but nearly there!

And last but not least, I've been working on another 'Friendship' Quotation with the illustration in hand-painted paper collage. 

Here's how I made the collage and here's the finished Illustrated Quote:

This image is A4 size, 300 dpi so please feel free to save and print it you wish

It's a quote that I have on a fridge magnet.

And my fence did once actually break during a gale - but I was still able to enjoy the flowers in my garden! I just think it's a pity that some people seem to have such highly developed 'flaw-detectors' that the first thing they notice is the 'broken fence'. 

So I plan to put this quote on some Zazzle fridge magnets, hoping it might help some friendships along!

Doodling Hedgehogs!

I'm very fond of hedgehogs!

I think that may be something to do with the fact that one of my earliest memories is of being woken up, late one evening, and carried downstairs and outside, wrapped in a blanket, to see a hedgehog my parents had discovered in the back garden. 

That was so unlike my mother! She was normally pretty strict, having been born while Queen Victoria was still alive - just! She was most definitely all for children sleeping at the proper time, no matter what, so maybe that's why this lapse in my usually highly disciplined upbringing has stuck in my memory.

The 'hedgehog' doodle above is waiting to be tidied up and painted and turned into a greeting card. And I'm thinking maybe these jolly little fellows could even feature on a  repeating pattern for Nursery curtains or something like that.

As ever, I have plenty of doodles but never enough time to make something of them. The Six Nations (rugby) season doesn't help as weekend afternoons are usually my painting time. But these are now on my list of ideas to pursue so they will get done - eventually!

In the meantime, here's a hedgehog scenario that seemed to come out of nowhere - as do most of my doodles!

Hedgehogs - my Naughty Pencil strikes again!

Oh dear! My naughty pencil has been getting up to its old tricks! 

I read somewhere that hedgehogs are trending in the world of design and this is all that my pencil could come up with. I wonder whether anyone can suggest how I could make it into a greeting card suitable for some occasion or other?

But, being the long summer holidays, I thought my pencil might as well make itself useful by keeping some of the littlies amused for five minutes! 

So this Fairy Princess and Pirate are a bit of an experiment, which if it works, I'll repeat from time to time. They are the drawings from some of my most popular children's birthday and get well cards and I've uploaded them  full size (A4) so that they can be printed out and used as colouring sheets.

Fairy Princess

Pirate

You need to click on them to see them full-sized, save them to your computer and print them out ready for colouring in! 

If someone could let me know whether this works OK, or if there are any changes I need to make, I'll post some rabbits, dragons, clowns.... and anything else I can think of that might keep those little hands busy!