Sweet Peas in April?

Some of the ‘official’ Birth Month flowers have really surprised me!

They don’t seem to be in quite the right months - at least not for part of the UK, where I live. But the one that has really made me wonder who decided each month's flowers, and where they live, is the Sweet Pea – one of the April Birth Month flowers.

Customizable April Birthday Card, Sweet Peas by helikettle
   

I love Sweet Peas! 

They are one of my favourite flowers. They represent everything I love about flowers: the fragrance, the colours and the diaphanous, almost ethereal look of their petals!

To me they seem as if they were designed especially for painting in watercolours and my Sweet Pea greeting cards and gifts have been very popular.

Sweet Pea Bookplate Round Stickers by helikettle

But April is far too early in the year for Sweet Peas in my garden. According to the seed packets, April is the month for sowing them outdoors. 

In the past I have sown them outdoors in the Autumn, just like the Broad Beans, and that has produced slightly earlier blooms. But the past couple of years I’ve been so busy in the run-up to Christmas that sowing the Sweet Peas was the last thing on my mind!

This year, I experimented with sowing them indoors (in March) in biodegradable egg boxes and toilet roll tubes to make planting out easier and less of a shock to their systems. 

And it seems to be working well. They look as if they’ll be ready to plant outside by the end of the month, ready to flower in July.

While I think that watercolour is generally the best medium for painting Sweet Peas, back in the 1980s I screenprinted a Sweet Pea pattern in a slightly Art Nouveau style and made a roller blind for my kitchen door to the garden.

Later I painted the design in gouache and used it for a bookmark in my Zazzle store. 

Sweet Pea Bookmark Business Card Templates by helikettle
 

An American bride-to-be with a particular liking for blue Sweet Peas came across it when she searched online for blue Sweet Peas for her Wedding Invitations. Apparently mine was the only design with a Blue Sweet Pea! Together, by email, we worked out the layout for her invitations, which I felt was a tremendous honour and a reminder of how thankful I am for the wonders of modern technology!

An alternative Birth Month Flower for April is the humble Daisy. 

And when I gave my lawn its first haircut of the year, back in March, there were already daisies amongst the grass  - and other weeds. So watch out for my new pattern for April – Daisies! 

In the meantime, you might like to take a look at some more of my many 'Sweet Pea' greeting cards and gifts: here's the link -

Sweet Pea Greeting Cards and Gifts

'Sweet Peas' Budget Tote Bag by helikettle
 

July Garden Update

With the change in the month came a change in the weather - our first real rain for weeks! In Wales, usually known to be unrelentingly wet, this first half of 2010 has been the driest since 1929 and the second driest for 100 years! So the heavy rain at the end of last week was welcome for the garden and fortunately it came in the night and  brought to an end the really hot weather, though it's still been pleasantly warm.

It's also brought with it a noticeable change in my garden with many of the flowers that made late May and June so glorious, past now their best and the later flowering plants not quite reaching their peak. I look upon it as the garden taking a bit of a rest after the abundant, almost extravagant displays of June. 

My Alchemist climbing rose went from this:

through various colour stages,

 - to this:

- and is now in dire need of dead-heading! But it's really earned its keep, not only in terms of the pleasure it brings but it started me thinking about occasionally using photos for greeting cards, something I hadn't previously done very much.

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that the predominant colours of the garden change with the seasons? We begin with the yellows of primroses, daffodils and crocuses and the purples of bluebells and yellow and blue irises in Spring.

Then the early summer flowering plants seems to be predominantly pink, blue and white,

while the later flowers tend to be bright reds and oranges.

 These nasturtiums in my kitchen window-box are just beginning to peep out from behind their rather over-sized leaves.

And my organic runner beans, planted rather late in a tub, are just beginning to flower - red again!

It's been really difficult to photograph flowers this year because we've had such a windy few months and the plants tend to sway around vigorously, which my camera doesn't much like!

The big white daisies are getting going -

Mine never stand up straight because the high walls mean they have to lean forwards to get the light - but I rather like the way their stems curve!

I moved my lilies last Autumn and they seem to be sulking, producing mostly just one bloom at the time -

And the self-seeded Californian Poppies are a bit thin on the ground this year.

It seems to be mostly the orange and red flowers that succumbed to the very low temperatures last winter, though my lovely red salvia that I thought was well and truly dead, has sprung a few new green shoots recently. Probably too late to flower this year, but at least it's alive - as is the Spanish Jasmine in my front porch, which looked thoroughly dead until a couple of weeks ago! I always give plants the benefit of the doubt and don't immediately remove the dead-looking ones for the sake of tidiness -  and I'm invariably rewarded for my patience.

Of course there are exceptions to the colour pattern I've described but it seems to me to be striking enough to make me wonder whether there's a scientific explanation - maybe to do with the amount of daylight available?

Earlier today I enjoyed a picnic lunch in the Linda Vista Gardens (above), celebrating the birthday of one of our Walking Group leaders. It's a beautiful terraced garden, sloping down from the edge of the town to the Castle Meadows, open to the public but as not many people know of its existence, it tends to be little frequented, except when the ABGV Borough Band puts on a concert of a summer evening. (You can see one of my pastel paintings of the audience on Red Bubble.) It's one of the most peaceful spots I know of around these parts, with a view of the Blorenge mountain, and one of my favourites places to go to take photos. Today there were still plenty of roses blooming as well as all sorts of lesser know plants and I had a field day with my camera! So if anyone needs flower photos for reference for a painting, please just ask! It's quite likely that I'll have something suitable on my poor groaning computer!

Sweet Pea Mug by helikettle
Get your own ceramic mug at Zazzle

'Giant Sweet Peas' Tote Bag by helikettle
Browse other Bag Bags

'Giant Sweet Peas' Keds Shoes by helikettle
Make custom shoes with zazzle

Increasing Online Sales

I'm wondering how far to go in order to increase my sales through the online stores.

A newsletter from Zazzle this week listed the following 'Top Searches':

- Personal Business Cards
- Anti-Obama Bumper Stickers
- Bridal Shower invitations
- Wedding Postage
- Wedding Announcements
- Graduation Invitations
- Birthday Cards
- Bachelor Party Invitations
- Funny Posters
- Geek T-shirts

And the top sales through GCU were:

- 4th July cards
- Weddings
- Graduation

Of all those listed, the only categories my designs would fit into are the birthday cards and perhaps the wedding announcements, though I haven't made a lot of those - and even this one was not my idea, but came from a customer who found my sweet pea bookmark and asked me to make it into invitations for her wedding and I adapted it later for GCU -

.

Just as I find it hard to create Christmas Card designs in the summer, I don't find it easy to design for something to which I can't relate and if I try to, I think it comes through in my work. Unfortunately, the subjects of most of the top searches and sales are outside of my experience - for instance, we don't have 'bridal showers' in the UK, as far as I know, nor do we celebrate 'graduation' in quite the same way as in the US. We do have 'Stag Nights' which I presume are what are meant by 'Bachelor Party Invitations' but they are generally very informal affairs and formal invitations would hardly be in keeping with the spirit of the occasion. As for the 'Anti-Obama Bumper Stickers', I'd never have known that there was any demand for such a thing!

So - unless I can somehow get my head around these, to me, quite alien concepts, I'll have to continue with my birthday cards and perhaps take advantage of all the flowers coming out in my garden to make more Wedding Invitations.

There are plenty of roses for inspiration -

- and my first autumn-sown sweet peas are beginning to flower -

And maybe I can make something of the mock orange?

Or these love-in-a-mist might make a pretty design?

But with the flowers in my garden coming out thick and fast at the moment, it's difficult to keep up with them all!

I've just checked on Zazzle and there are a few floral business cards - so maybe that's something to be thinking about, if I can put myself in the shoes of a florist or garden centre owner? I often find that I have my best ideas when I'm not trying to think of something. My son is coming down from York to stay with me next and I expect we'll be out and about in the mountains, weather permitting. So perhaps something will come to me while I'm trying to keep up with him on one of our hikes!

Silkscreen Printing

Late yesterday afternoon my combi-boiler finally started to co-operate, not without a great deal of resistance right up to the end of the six days that I was without central heating and hot water. At about the same time, the weather changed dramatically for the better and today has been a beautiful, almost hot day. But with the clear skies, the evenings and nights are decidely chilly so I'm glad to have my heating system fully functional again, not to mention the instant hot water.

At the point on Friday morning when I was wondering what to do for the best about my boiler, I received my first ever request through Zazzle for some customisation - a lady in the US wanting me to make that sweet pea design that I used for my bookmark into invitations for her wedding. So in between the phonecalls to plumbers and visits from heating engineers, emails were flying back and forth as we gradually worked out between us how to fit the sweet pea image around the text of the invitation. We finally 'got there' on Tuesday afternoon and now I'm anxiously waiting to hear how the invitations turned out.

While I was about it, I decided to make some more general wedding invitations (see flash panel at the foot of this page) and other products, such as this ringer mug, which has space for the customer to add text around the top, just below the rim -

Sweet Pea Ringer Mug by helikettle
Make a travel coffee mug with Zazzle

And I also managed to dig out and scan an old photo of the roller blind which I made from the fabric I'd screenprinted about 20 years ago, using the original design -

You can just about see that the sweet peas were either blue or pink, not both together as in the watercolour painting that I've been using recently. (and you can also just about see our long-deceased 'Dougal' dog trying to decide whether to go out into the garden - or not!) Fortunately after a lot of ferreting around, I discovered that I had kept the tracing of the sweet peas all that time!

I actually really enjoy screenprinting! I think what appeals to me is that you can change the colours and thereby change the whole look of the thing without having to go back to square one - and it's a medium that gives rise to a lot of 'happy accidents'.

The screenprinting class I joined at the Adult Education Centre in Norwich, Wensum Lodge, was known as the 'therapy class' because almost every week, someone would arrive with some sort of crisis going on and we would all talk it through whilst we were mixing our inks or to-ing and fro-ing with the squeegees and it invariably seemed to help.

But I discovered screenprinting somewhat accidentally! One winter half-term holiday when my two younger children were about 6 and 10 years old, I bought a small screenprinting kit to keep them amused as the weather was bad. They had a lot of fun with the kit for about a day and then moved on to something else. I, however, was hooked!

So I joined an Adult Education class in Sevenoaks, near where we were living at that time. But it was a mixed beginners and 'experienced' class and we found that the 'newbies' got very little attention. That first term we were supposed to produce a Christmas card but not until we had learnt to make a screen from scratch, which took up several weeks. That, by the way, introduced me to using a power jigsaw, something I've been grateful for in later years when I've bought old and decrepit houses to 'do up'!

Unfortunately, the lack of attention from the teacher meant that most of the new students didn't get a Christmas card finished by the end of the Autumn term. But as I had already picked up the basics through the children's kit and because I was very motivated to work at home in between classes, I just managed to complete mine. It was pretty awful as far as the colours were concerned but I've since used the basic design to print at home in other colours and more recently used it again for a gold and silver gouache Christmas Card design -

Which reminds me, I ought to start thinking about the bi-lingual Christmas cards for our local newsagent....

Surprise!

I was amazed to discover that my first ever bookmark won 'Today's Best Award' on Zazzle!

Screenprinted Sweet Peas

One of the blogs that I follow is Carole Barkett's 'Country Mouse Studio' and a couple of days ago, I was delighted to see that Carole had written about making bookmarks for sale on Zazzle because it's something I've often thought I'd like to make, but hadn't been able to find them in the list of 'products' to create.

But now, thanks to Carole, I know that the tall, thin business cards can be used as a bookmark, so I've been able to use a design that I've always thought would make a very nice bookmark.

I originally created the 'sweet peas' design for a repeating pattern on fabric - working out the repeats is something I always find fascinating and sweet peas are one of my favourite flowers. In fact my priorities in my tiny walled garden are colour and fragrance and as well as sweet peas and climbing roses, I have lots of lavender, mock orange (philadelphus) and jasmine (providing the cold spell in January hasn't killed it!).


Devising a system to make sure that the images are printed on the fabric in exactly the right place involved an 8 ft x 4 ft table and several reels of black thread - and wasn't easy! But I succeeded in printing enough fabric to make a roller blind for my glass-panelled kitchen door to the garden of my house in Norwich. It was very pretty but the white background quickly turned a creamy colour, presumably because of the proximity of all the cooking, steam etc. It actually didn't look at all bad - a more 'natural' colour than the stark brilliant white it was originally. But when I moved house, I abandoned it so I am really glad to be able to use that design again now!

I also think it looks attractive on a frosted glass mug in my Zazzle store where you can also see the finished bookmark. (The baby's sweet peas are from a more recent wet-in-wet watercolour painting.)