October Work in Progress

The only real signs of Autumn in my little back garden!

When I started selling my greeting cards online, a 'marketing guru' friend warned me that I would spend 80% of my time promoting and only 20% creating.

She was just about right, except for the fact that the 20% has turned out to necessarily include a lot of other tedious tasks in order to get my designs on products for sale! In recent months, this has been particularly true of Zazzle, where my sales are greatest. There have been changes to the 'rules' and changes to the website that all entail hours of work for the designers. All part and parcel of selling online but it means that time in my attic studio has been very limited again.

Thankfully though, there is some creative work that I can carry on with in spite of spending so much of my time on my laptop doing necessary 'house-keeping' jobs!

I've just finished reading Andrew Marr's 'A Short Book About Drawing'.  In fact, although it certainly is a 'short' book, it covers a lot more than drawing. I suppose that's inevitable because of the blurred line between drawing and painting. 

For instance, even in a 'painterly' soft pastel like this one of Hereford Cathedral in the Autumn, I feel I am drawing rather than painting throughout the whole process:

The most important thing I took from this very interesting book was the reminder to draw something every day! 

And because my drawing doesn't always consist of trying to make an accurate representation, but often it's something more like doodling, as long as I have plenty of paper and pencils to hand, that is something I can happily catch up with while I'm watching tv - especially if it's the World Cup Rugby as it helps to relieve the tension!

Here's one of my recent 'doodles'! 

Of course, if I'd set out to draw a village, I'd have gone about it totally differently. 

For one thing, I wouldn't have started with the church. I'd have begun with the school in the foreground and built up everything else behind it. That would at least have helped me get the perspective right and avoid paths and roads that go nowhere! And what on earth is that bush doing, growing out over the pavement (top right) and into the road?! 

But it's in the nature of a 'doodle' that it isn't planned, it kind of grows organically and takes on a life of its own, ignoring constraints of things like perspective and practicalities. That bush - or is it a pile of manure? - could become the starting point for a story about village life! 

My 'village' will get filed away with all my other doodles and maybe one day it'll be the starting point for a design - maybe not! The main thing is that I enjoyed it - and it lowered my stress levels during a nail-biting rugby match on tv!

Meanwhile, it's still incredibly mild for the time of year and the trees are late changing their colours. 

Trees across the road from my house changing colour at last

We had a very wet August and September and now, in October, there's hardly been any frost so I expect that has something to do with it.

My walk to the shops through Bailey Park is lined with beech and oak trees and in other years, the oaks have begun to change in late August, the magnificent beeches in September. 

This year they've only just got going!

If you click on the 'Thanksgiving' collection below, you'll see some of the cards and invitations I made from photos of those trees in previous years -

Thanksgiving
by Posh and Painterly

One of the very positive changes this year has been Zazzle's introduction of 'Collections'. 

I tend to design patterns in 'collections' in any case. But it's great to be able to break down my collections even further, grouping them according to products or occasions! I still haven't finished my 'Periwinkles' collection - greeting cards still to be added - but here are all the coordinating periwinkle patterns on 'Periwinkle Gifts for a Bathroom and Bedroom' -

Periwinkles Bedroom and Bathroom Collection
by Posh and Painterly

It's impossible to walk through the shopping areas of Abergavenny this Autumn without noticing that plaids and checks are still filling the windows of the clothing shops and boutiques. 

On a sunny day, it's hard to get a photo of a shop window without reflections but here are a couple that didn't do too badly -

Inspired by this continuing trend, I've gathered together all my fashion products with plaids and checks in this 'collection'. (Zazzle have just introduced canvas shoes for us to decorate with our designs so I hope to add some of them - as soon as I find the time!)

Plaid Ties, Tees and Tank Tops
by Posh and Painterly

Although I haven't had time to create much new art this month, I have been busy creating 'Collections' and building up my other blog, now called 'Posh & Painterly' to avoid any confusion. 

Each day, I'm posting a new Zazzle Collection in the hope that the blog can become a useful shopping resource for anyone who likes my style of Art and Design. Six days a week I'm hoping to provice a new 'Collection' to browse! 

Posh & Painterly

blog 

- it's all about style!

So please pop over and take a look - you might even find some ideas for Christmas presents amongst them (even though the flowers in my back garden make it seem as if Christmas is still a long way off!). 

Annual Godetias and Pot Marigolds, grown from seed
- nearly November and still in bloom!

September Work in Progress

September Anemones and Montbretia in my garden

August was wet and decidedly chilly and most of September has been wet and even chillier! But finally, we have the warm, sunny days we expect in September and no sign of rain all week - though the nights have become decidedly autumnal.

At last my little tomatoes are ripening and the flavour is worth the wait!

And finally, too, Zazzle have agreed to refund the tax that they withheld incorrectly, so life is gradually returning to something approaching normal. 

However, in the meantime, Zazzle have completely reorganised their website and this has involved us all in mountains of extra work, getting our online Zazzle stores up to scratch and simply finding our way around the site, when I really wanted to get back to some designing.

But I have managed to get my new 'Little Mice' Christmas Card finished and uploaded to Greeting Card Universe and Zazzle. 

Here's the custom front version -

(It's also available with the greeting in Non-English languages)

What with the Rugby World Cup and spring bulbs and home-grown wallflowers urgently needing planting, time has been at a premium. 

So I decided to use the Periwinkle design I made a while back to create a new collection on Zazzle. I still need to find time to work on a border pattern and phone case templates for personalization, but here are the fifteen coordinating patterns I've worked with so far - on the new all-over print Tank Tops that Zazzle have recently introduced.

Click on the image to see them all -

Periwinkles Tank Tops
by helikettle

But what about the new pattern I wanted to make from the photos of the pretty little Phlox plants in the photo I shared last month? 

I have actually made a start!

I find it really helpful to make a lot of little drawings of plants and flowers I'm going to use for a pattern - I need to draw them over and over to get to know them. It feels almost like getting to know a new friend! And I almost always find that drawing throws up some surprises. At first glance, the petals of all these pretty little flowers appear to be the same shape.

But once I start to draw them, I realise there are several different petal shapes.

As the plants have matured, more of them have started to 'trail'. And the curve of their stems has made me wonder whether they would be a suitable candidate for an 'ogee' pattern, like the periwinkle pattern that I used to illustrate how to make an Ogee Repeat pattern. Not sure yet and I'll probably try out several arrangements before I decide.

Planting out the 160+ seedlings in the spring was a bit of a chore but they've been worth it. They've flowered for months and they are still going strong when most of the other flowers in my garden are well past their best. 

And now the Marigolds and Godetias I sowed in pots are really coming into their own now and brightening up the shadowy corners of the garden.

Pot Marigold and Godetias

Not a very good photo - a quick snap with my phone camera - but perfectly adequate as inspiration for a future pattern. I love the combination of pink and orange and I made a pattern of Pot Marigolds and bright pink Busy Lizzies a couple of years ago.

The humble Marigold is one of the birth month flowers for October so I've put together a collection of October Birthday Cards and Gifts -

October Birthday Marigolds
by helikettle

With so much going on these past few months, a lot of things have had to be put on hold! 

My decorating ground to a halt in July, I'm having to tie my hair back because I haven't had time to get it cut and as for cleaning the house, it's had to be reduced to the bare essentials! But it's a question of priorities and if there has to be a choice, housework will always give way to making patterns!

And anyway, I don't know whether this is true or not but I choose to believe it is!

Fun Dry Erase Board with Quote: 'Dull Women . . .' by helikettle

(Also available as a Fridge Magnet and a T-Shirt)

August Work in Progress - on various fronts!

Like last weekend's thunderstorm that crashed and banged overhead then faded away into the distance, only to return hours later, the IRS tax withholding issue at Zazzle rumbles on!

This is the third month that I've had very little art work in progress to show 
because so much of my time has been taken up with trying to make sense of the legalese of tax treaties and IRS instructions, writing emails to Zazzle and generally trying to persuade them to drop the 'burdensome' ITIN (International Tax Identification Number) requirement which they have told us throughout comes from the IRS. 

Of course, I haven't by any means been working alone on this. 

Click to enlarge

We have more than 200 members in the International Zazzlers United facebook group and by putting our heads together, we have the HMRC Tax Treaty team taking this issue up with their US counterparts and have recently obtained a letter on IRS headed notepaper that states clearly that the IRS do not insist on us getting an ITIN.


We are currently waiting for Zazzle to respond to this, having sent them a copy of the letter last week. (see update below)

In the meantime the group has been helping members get their updated W-BEN forms approved - no simple matter! - so that they can get paid at all! And now we are trying to spread the word to all the international designers/artists who had 30% tax incorrectly withheld from their August earnings, that they can reclaim the money from Zazzle directly and do not have to get it back from the IRS, a process that would require them to get the dreaded ITIN! (Scroll down to Adjustment for Overwithholding.)


But I haven't been totally idle on the art and design front.

I have added a new pattern to my 'Egyptian' collection, the rusty red 'Tribal Shields' pattern on the clock -

Egyptian Patterns
by poshandpainterly

And I've made a start on my 2015 Christmas Card, better late than never -

Christmas Mice

And finally, the Annual Phlox I grew from seed, that tried my patience when I was faced with about 160 tiny seedlings to transplant, is flowering and is begging me to make it into a new floral, cottage-style 'mini-print' pattern that I hope to have at least started by the time I write next month's blog post!

It's definitely feeling as if summer is all but over here; I was tempted to put the heating on first thing this morning. Not that I've had much time to enjoy my little garden this summer - the Great Tax Debacle began in early June!

Will it be all over by the time I write my next Work in Progress blog post? The jury's still out on that one but I very much hope so!

Edited at the last minute to say that we've just had this announcement from Zazzle: 

We wanted to let everyone know that Zazzle has reached a temporary resolution with the IRS on the US TIN requirement for non-US resident Designers. Based on this new information, a US TIN will not be required on your appropriate W-8 form for the moment. The requirements may change in the future, in the IRS’s sole discretion, as Zazzle is a US-based company that must abide by the requirements of our governing tax authority, the IRS. 

Zazzle will continue to accept W-8 forms that are correctly-filled-out, and which do not have a US TIN but do provide a foreign TIN, in order to minimize your withholding tax deductions. We are continuing to ask all non-US resident Designers to submit an updated W-8 form as soon as possible in order to avoid the IRS’s default withholding rate of thirty percent (30%). Please submit your updated W-8 form to Zazzle-w8@zazzle.com as soon as possible.

It’s possible that the requirements may change in the future, so we appreciate your flexibility. Zazzle will continue to support and advocate for our international Designers. We are currently working under the assumption that this temporary resolution will remain valid through 2/28/2017 when the current law is set to expire; however, tax requirements may change at any time due to new or updated tax laws and/or IRS requirements. 

There's still the issue of the Refunds to deal with but even so, this is VERY GOOD NEWS! 

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!

December/January W.I.P. and Thoughts on Friendship

Just before Christmas I spent a night in the Clinical Decisions Unit of our local hospital - nothing too serious but initially a bit of a mystery. 

And someone commented that the CDU is where they put people they don't know what to do with.

Which is exactly where, in my mind, I have consigned Finnegan the Fish for the time being, I'm afraid! I could, perhaps, make him into a Pisces birthday card for a start but I think he might benefit from some friends, when I find time - and that could result in a new repeating pattern.

It's not that I've been totally lacking in creativity since my last Work in Progress post. When I took down the Christmas decorations, I realised that I don't have a 'Winter' door decoration so I hastily used the Honeysuckle from my garden to make a little wreath and decorated it with Ivy (also from the garden), some artificial berries and fir cones, a burlap bow I happened to have found in a sale before Christmas and a robin that I've had for years. It's a bit 'rustic' (aka 'rough and ready') but I feel that's somehow appropriate for a Winter wreath to distinguish it from the more festive Christmas door decorations.

I've also been planning birthday cards for three of my family who have birthdays in the next few weeks, starting with one of my grandsons who will turn 15 at the end of January. Always hard to think of something appropriate for teenage boys and I'm wondering whether something with fifteen elephants might work. 

With that in mind, I've been using photos from Google Images as models for drawing as I don't know any real-life elephants, let alone any who are prepared to pose for a portrait.

I'm very fond of all elephants and made 'Heffalump' birthday cards for my family when I was in my teens.
But I particularly love the expression of the one in the bottom left corner !

In between times I've been busy using existing designs to create more gifts for Valentine's Day and St David's Day, for sale in my Zazzle stores.

Zazzle introduce new products most weeks and it's hard to keep up with them all. So it's time to do some catching up to fill the gaps -

Nesting Mugs from my Hearts and Roses Collection

Daisy Chain Hearts Pouf from my Daisy Chains Collection

Welsh Emblems iPhone 6 Plus Case from Posh & Painterly Cymru

Blue Faux Welsh Tapestry Hip Flask to Personalize from my Posh & Painterly Cymru store

During 2014, I noticed that by far the most frequently re-pinned 'pin' from all of my Pinterest boards is a quote about friendship. 

And that's made me think a lot about the concept of friendship for a while; how do we define friendship, especially since facebook widened the definition of 'friends'? What do we expect of a good friend? 

And so on . . .

So I've decided to try to fit in making some illustrated quotes about Friendship of my own. I've begun working on one that has been floating around at the back of my mind for a while. I hope to have it finished to post on the social media later in the week.

There are plenty of 'Friendship' quotes to be found on the internet. But it would be good to have some new, more personalised ones. So I'd also love to hear how you would finish the sentence:

"A good friend is someone who . . . "

(Answers in the Comments of this blog or on facebook/G+/Linkedin/twitter, if you prefer - thank you)

Work in Progress: Best Laid Plans . . .

Tissue paper painted with acrylic - click HERE for tips about making collage

They say that 'Life is what happens when you'd planned something else' and that's certainly been the case for me lately!

Early last month I decided to take a break from my usual routine of uploading my designs to Zazzle and other PODstores to give myself time to catch up with the ever-growing number of designs and patterns in my 'pending' folder. I also wanted to take a step back to ponder the possibilities of a change of direction after Christmas.

So I quickly finished up my new October Birth Month Flower gifts and greeting cards and took myself up to my attic studio to paint and make collages, right away from my laptop where all the tedious uploading, titling, describing and tagging takes place.

Over the first weekend I painted some tissue for the collages and finished the mice for the cheeseboards that Zazzle had recently introduced - I'd been doodling them in the evenings but never seemed to have enough time to paint them.

Cute Dancing Mice on Cheese: Round Cheeseboard by helikettle
 

And then, on the Monday, I made a start on quite an ambitious collage, inspired by the Folk Art Embroidery of Eastern Europe:

As you can see, although I was having fun cutting and sticking little flowers, I only made half of the heart shape because I wanted to be sure that the pattern was symmetrical.

Here's one of the finished 'Folk Heart' cushions -

Folk Art Style Floral Heart on Moody Blue Pillow by poshandpainterly

And I've even got around to making one of my faux patchwork patterns - as I worked with this one, the colours seemed to suggest the Art Deco home furnishing colours of the 1920s and '30s.

Folk Art Style Faux Patchwork Round Pouf by poshandpainterly
 

I'm still adding to my Folk Heart Collection but you can see more than four hundred greeting cards and gifts that I've created from that one collage 

HERE.

By now I was on a roll and on the Wednesday I moved on to making a collage from a hand-drawn Rangoli motif that had been sitting in my 'pending' folder for quite a while - 

The making of Rangoli patterns is part of the Diwali celebrations and you can read about them HERE.

When I drew the Rangoli design, months ago, I had based some of my motifs on traditional elements of Indian Design from my huge 'Grammar of Ornament'. 

And again, I worked out that I didn't need to make the whole pattern in hand-painted paper collage. 

Making just a segment of the pattern saved a lot of time but it also involved a lot of very accurate work in Photoshop afterwards to make sure the segments fitted together properly. Not being a perfectionist, I find this sort of thing very hard work - and tedious! But looking forward to seeing the finished pattern kept me going - and here it is!

And I think I like it even better with a black background!

But I'm afraid that's when my 'creativity break' ground  - or screeched! - to a sudden halt!

I came downstairs from putting the eight segments of the Rangoli together to boil the kettle for coffee and found an email from my neighbours telling me that they had a leak in their bedroom ceiling, close to the party wall that joins our pair of Edwardian houses. 

They asked me if I had a leak too and when I went to look in my guest bedroom (that I only use about once a week to do the ironing) to my horror, this is what confronted me:

It's not actually a leak in the ceiling, 'just' water seeped through from next door I imagine, from just below the picture rail. And I found out later that it had been 'seeping' ever since early on the Monday morning, while I was happily making my Folk Heart collage, in total ignorance of what was happening!

As if the damage to one of my favourite wallpapers, now unavailable, wasn't bad enough, a silly dispute has arisen about which builder to use. Apparently the leak was caused by the lead in the 'valley' between our two roofs being faulty and replacing that is a joint responsibility. Thanks to the internet there's now not much I don't know about repairing a 'valley' and what it should cost! 

But all this has taken up so much of my time and energy, that I abandoned my attempt to make a collage Christmas Angel because I just couldn't concentrate. 

I was becoming completely indecisive about it - which is unusual for me. So I've put her back into the 'pending' folder and gone back to the rather less demanding uploading - hence the hundreds of new 'Folk Heart' products in my Zazzle store! 

And I haven't even begun the November Birth Month flower, the Chrysanthemum.

But the repairs to the roof are due to begin on Tuesday so I hope the end is in sight. And meanwhile, I shall enjoy working with the Rangoli pattern to create lots of greeting cards and gifts. Too late for this year's Diwali but in plenty of time for next year!

(I keep looking at my wallpaper and hoping it's not my imagination that's making it appear slightly better. But I don't think I will ever get rid of the stains and all I can think of is to mix the two shades of green gouache and paint over all the tiny leaves in the pattern. Shouldn't be too difficult for a painter, should it? Watch this space!)

Close-up of an undamaged part of the wallpaper in my spare bedroom.