Spring Sunshine to celebrate Norooz and the Vernal Equinox!

Spring Sunshine Repeating Pattern and some coordinates

What a change in our weather! 

The interminably long and stormy winter has given way, at last, to warm, dry sunny days with brilliant blue skies. Spring has definitely arrived here in Wales!

It’s already our ‘meteorological spring’ – that one began on March 1st. But there’s another week to go before the Spring Equinox on March 20th, which most people regard as the start of Spring. And that falls around the same time as the Persian New Year, Norooz, which you can read all about here.

Chic Turquoise Lumbar Pillow: Daffodils Polka Dots by poshandpainterly
 

The start of spring seems like a very good time to celebrate a new year, with all the new beginnings in Nature appearing! 

But it’s a very busy time for the greeting card designer! Not only do we have St David’s Day Cards, Easter Cards and Mother’s Day cards to work on, as well as, maybe, March Birthday Cards – it’s also time for our St Patrick’s Day Cards . . .  and then there’s Norooz to think about as well! 

Custom Front St David's Day Daffodils Card by poshnpainterlycymru

Daffodils Norooz Card From Our Home to Yours by poshandpainterly

Mother's Day Card, Daffodils and Check Gingham by poshandpainterly

  

Daffodils and Polka Dots, Easter Card by poshandpainterly

Mother's Day Card, Daffodils and Polka Dots by poshandpainterly

Daffodils, March Birthday Card to Personalize by poshandpainterly

St Patrick's Day Shamrocks Card to Personalize  
   

    

Just as well I designed mine while the weather was still wintry, before I was tempted out into my garden! 

Chic Jumbo Coffee Mug: White Polkas on Green Jumbo Mugs by poshandpainterly
 

   

But it was only when the rain eased off and the temperature began to rise that I thought about making a Spring Door Wreath! 

It would never have occurred to me if it weren’t for Pinterest and it was only because I found an old wreath base amongst my Christmas decorations that I began to take the idea seriously. 

When I looked more closely at the base I’d found, I decided it would be a shame to remove the dried flowers from it and, with a bit of refurbishing, it looks quite at home against the white boards on my landing.

So, having decided not to use this wreath base after all, I set about looking online to see where I could buy a new similar base – and immediately came across some excellent instructions for making my own!

How to make your own wreath base

(instructions from 'Modern Country' a blog that I'll definitely be returning to!)

I have plenty of honeysuckle and ivy in my garden to provide the materials. 

The honeysuckle opposite my kitchen window is where the sparrows congregate for a gossip and the blackbirds have even nested in it a couple of times so I would have preferred to take what I needed from the ivy!

But knowing how tough ivy is when I try to remove it from places where it shouldn’t be spreading to, I was really surprised to find that it was more inclined to snap than the honeysuckle. 

Here are a few photos of the various stages to prove I did actually make it from scratch - which still amazes me!

Sorry about the difference in colours - it is the same wreath
but I changed to using my 'proper' camera for the final pics
because I'm not yet very good at taking photos with my phone!

Wrapping the last ‘binding’ round was slightly scary – I was sure the stems would break. But I found that as long as I bent them gently, a little at the time, they cooperated perfectly. (I also talked soothingly to them and I'm sure that helped!)

When I tried to photograph the (almost) finished wreath on my front door,
the flash made the Edwardian glass panels sparkle so much it really detracted from the
wreath - so here it is, hanging from a picture hook in my bedroom!

(A florist in town, where I bought some of the silk flowers, told me that Old Man's Beard (clematis vitalba) from the hedgerows is excellent for wreaths too.)

So have I inspired you to make your own Spring Wreath - from scratch? I hope so and if you do, THIS is where you need to begin. 

I'm sure you all know by now that I'm no perfectionist and patience isn't my strong point; I lose interest in anything that can't be completed in a day or so - painting, dress-making, wreath-making . . . so if I can do it, I'm sure you can too!

And I'd love to see how they turn out if you'd like to send me your (low-res) photos to include in a future blog post! 

.........

Click

HERE

to browse more of my

Spring Sunshine

greeting cards and gifts

 

Daffodils Pillow or Cushion: Faux-patchwork by poshandpainterly
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Patchwork and Daffodils

The patchwork design I began last week has found its way onto a few products on Zazzle and I intend to create more from it this week.

Denim Patchwork Messenger Bag, Pinks, Blues by helikettle

As planned, I put the ‘blocks’ together on the Zazzle site but it was very slow-going! 

Making all the pieces exactly the same size on Zazzle was time-consuming so I had another try at fitting them together on my computer before uploading the whole piece, keeping my fingers crossed that I wouldn’t run out of memory. At one point I did get a message saying that Windows was increasing my memory and warning that some requests might be denied in the meantime, so I left it alone for a while and went off and did a few jobs around the house.

When I came back I was able to continue and this cushion has the larger pattern on one side and the smaller one on the reverse –

Denim Patchwork Pillow, Pinks, Blues by helikettle

This Ipad case is a good example of what I mentioned last week – I hadn’t anticipated that the pattern, when repeated, would turn out to have such a prominent 'slanted' effect!

Denim Patchwork iPad Case, Pinks, Blues by helikettle

Meanwhile, spring seems to have begun to arrive in my garden. And seeing buds on the daffodils, I felt a strong urge to paint some! The daffodil is the Birth Month Flower for March; it is also the traditional Welsh flower featured on St David’s Day cards, as well as Persian New Year cards.

So I decided that treating myself to a bunch of daffodils when I went shopping would be money well spent. But I was disappointed to find that the only ones left in the shops were the short, straight-stemmed kind with no leaves – really boring and not at all what I was looking for!

One of the things that I love about daffodils is the way they move, ‘tossing their heads in sprightly dance’, as Wordsworth wrote.  Somewhere I have a sketch from long ago of just a couple of long-stemmed daffodils, with their leaves and I remember that it was their ‘gesture’ that appealed to me and compelled me to draw them.

But the nearest I could find in town was a little pot of tiny daffodils – apparently I had left it too late for a bunch! -  so I bought it and began to draw them. I often draw flowers over and over from different angles before I paint them. It’s almost like 'getting to know' them so that when I come to paint, their shapes are really familiar to me.

The trouble with this particular pot of daffodils, the only one left in town, was that all the flowers were facing inwards! So I took a bit of ‘artistic licence’ and  moved the left-hand clump over to the right when I drew them, to make a much better composition.

I had hoped to try out my new water soluble crayons at last and I started out with some lovely blue sugar paper to give a bright sunshiny background. But the colours, dry, weren’t strong enough to show up on the blue background and the paper didn’t respond at all well to being made wet.

So I moved on to some watercolour paper. That worked better, but I felt that the effect of the crayons was too heavy for my ‘tossing their heads’ daffodils and I ended up painting them in ordinary, transparent watercolour, after drawing them with watercolour pencils.

I hadn’t wasted my time with these various experiments, though, as with each attempt, I became more familiar with the 'personalities' of my daffodils. My scanner didn’t do a particularly good job – the yellows came out too pale and the orange was a strident red. But I made some minor corrections digitally and I'm quite pleased with the multi-purpose end result –

 

 

One painting has formed the basis of several ranges of cards. But in case you're thinking that I've saved time by using one design for several occasions, these, with all their variations and their search engine-optimised titles, descriptions and keywords are going to take hours to upload! It will probably take me all week - at least!

But I also have an idea sketched out for a ‘Thank You’ card for the lovely staff at the Endoscopy Unit at Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr, who were so kind and went out of their way to make me feel as comfortable as it's possible to be with such an uncomfortable procedure, a couple of weeks ago. 

I can't wait to get started on it . . .

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