Poppies and Cornflowers, Blue Bubbles and Art Nouveau

I made so many products from last week’s Poppies and Cornflowers design that I haven’t had time to make any cards from it yet!

Customizable Poppies and Cornflowers Travel Mug by helikettle

More Poppy and Cornflower products

Poppies and Cornflowers - Out and About:
HERE
and

Poppies and Cornflowers - At Home
HERE

But I have made some cards from one of my ‘Bubbles’ screenprints.

I think everyone agrees that finding suitable greeting cards for men isn’t easy. I sell a lot of cards for older men, the ones with the almost cartoon-like characters, dancing and jogging and doing altogether unlikely things! But younger and middle-aged men are even more difficult, unless they have a particular hobby or interest that you can build on. Jokey ones are another possibility but I’m no good at that at all.

So sometimes a design that is purely decorative in a non-flowery way, is a solution. Which is where my screenprints come in! A Bubbly Birthday Card -

And here’s another screenprint  - the same design but in different colours. This one will probably find its way on to some customizable smartphone cases and skins sometime soon.

But not this week, if I can find time to develop the design I’ve just painted into a repeating pattern.

It’s based on the tiles in the lovely old, original, early 20th century fireplace in one of my bedrooms, a genuine Art Nouveau design.

I’ve changed the colours slightly but I do like blue, green and white together for a particularly clean, ‘fresh’ look.

The challenge I’ve set myself is to use this tile design to make a pattern that doesn’t look too much like tiles. Not sure at the moment how I can do that so I expect I’ll have to play around with it quite a lot . . . results next time!

Water Soluble Wax Crayons - ideal for letting one's Inner Child out to play!

If you thought I didn't post on my blog last week was because I was taking a summer holiday, you couldn’t have been more mistaken!

Firstly because our ‘summer’ weather has been more like November, not only disappointingly wet but cold and windy as well! At one point I looked out at the frenetically waving bushes and trees and it could have been the autumn, except that, instead of leaves, it was rose petals swirling in the wind!

And I’ve been tremendously busy!

When I sold a relatively huge amount of Father’s Day Cards through CardGnome, I made a start on doodling some ideas on scrap paper for the next upcoming holidays . . .

For Grandparents Day

 For Halloween

But the very next day, CardGnome announced that they will be cutting our artists’ commission from 15% to 5% from July 1st. 

Not good news!

And that decided me to spend less of my time working on greeting cards and more on creating products, which earn a better return. I’ve been moving in this direction ever since Greeting Card Universe announced that they would withhold 30% tax from non-US artists who don’t have an ITIN, followed by their ‘cull’ of cards that they deem ‘un-marketable’, in spite of the fact that they sell well!

I shall still design greeting cards but they won’t be my priority once I can get my head around this shift in emphasis. I’m not finding that easy, in spite of the fact that I very much enjoy creating tea pots and phonecases, coffee mugs and necklaces! 

So I’ve been devising a work schedule that reflects this rejigging of my priorities – and I rather overestimated the number of ‘products’ I could create in a week!

I took last week’s Vintage Roses design and made a new, slightly 'Laura Ashley', design from the little rosebuds -
 

Customizable Pink Rosebuds iPhone 4 Barely There by helikettle

- and made more than 60 'Rosebud' products!

HERE 

are some of them!

Then I came across a treasure trove of screenprints I had made more than 20 years ago. I had printed them in almost 50 different colour-ways so I'll never be short of a design for my week's new products!

Customizable Blue Magenta Abstract Speck Case iPad by helikettle

 HERE

is a selection of them!

As creating nearly 60 products from this one design didn’t leave any time for a new painting last weekend, I uploaded a design from the backlog of cards waiting in the queue. 

Another one of the Cool Cats Collection -

Singing Cats Fun 13th Birthday Card for a Nephew by helikettle

This weekend I was determined to set aside at least a little time for painting and finally tried out my Water Soluble Wax Crayons that I bought months ago with a Christmas Artifolk Voucher. 

I absolutely loved using them – it’s true what they say about them releasing one’s Inner Child! - and I’m sure they will play a big part in my art and design from now on!

This week I'll be working on creating 'products' from this design - and maybe some more of the screenprints if there's time. But I couldn't resist trying out this rather 'loud' design on a Messenger bag straight away:

Poppies and Cornflowers Messenger Bag by helikettle
 

Quite a contrast in style to this week's greeting card upload - 

- but then that's me all over; I'd get bored if I stuck to one style!

Roses, a Squirrel and Confidence!

My little back garden is overflowing with climbing roses – Alchemist, Albertine, Metanoia and two Dreaming Spires!

Those, together with  the Honeysuckle, Lavender and Mock Orange, make just nipping outside to my dustbin a hazardous experience for me with my sensitivity to perfumed flowers!

But that doesn’t stop me enjoying this time of year when all my favourite flowers are valiantly blooming in spite of weather that would be more typical of November! The view of the Albertine from my dining room where I work is magnificent at the moment, even through the tightly closed French Doors!

So here’s a ‘Rose’ repeating pattern I created for a June Birthday Card:

Vintage Pink Roses June Birthday Card for a Friend by helikettle

And it fits quite well on these newly launched ‘Accessory Bags’ –

Vintage Pink Rose Pattern Accessories Bag by helikettle
 

But I think I like this little ‘pitcher’ best of all.

Vintage Pink Roses Small Pitcher by helikettle
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I’ve taken nearly a week off for my birthday! My son came down from York and spent a lot of time 'spring cleaning' my computers and setting up my new A3 scanner for me so this is as far as my next design has progressed – the tracing paper stage:

I’m tempted to try this out in soft pastels to get a furry effect for the squirrel's coat; though I might have to wear a mask to stop the pastel dust getting up my nose!

The squirrels in our local park are the grey variety but in the course of googling 'squirrels', I discovered that there are still some of the red, native variety left in Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Wight (where I was born). There are also some in a kind of 'reserve' in the North of England but sadly the virus carried by the grey squirrels has managed to deplete their numbers.

While I was writing this, my daughter, Louise, sent me a some photos of a family visit to their local Art Museum (in Sweden).

Here’s Hafsah, my only granddaughter (six grandsons!) ‘having a go’!

Apparently the visitors’ artistic endeavours will be displayed in a local hall at Christmas and Hafsah added the price she expects to sell hers for!

I’m really, REALLY hoping that she somehow manages to hang on to that precious confidence!

Father's Day, the Olympics and Holiday Mood!

Our weather has turned very hot indeed!

As a result my attic studio is out of bounds as the heat seems to collect up there, even with the windows open. So my collage box has come downstairs for now and I made this one at my kitchen table with the papers spread out around the worktops – just like when I made my first ever collage!

Fun First Father's Day Card or Birthday Card by helikettle
Create one-of-a-kind

I’ve been wanting to make some more text-based card designs using cut-out painted paper letters for a while. And I’ve finally got around to it!

I find it quite difficult to get in the right frame of mind for designing Father’s Day cards, probably because they weren’t around when my parents were alive. To me it’s one of those ‘new holidays’ that I suspect were dreamed up by the greeting card manufacturers.

But the CardGnomes are talking about doing a special facebook promotion for Father’s Day so I thought I’d better try to come up with something new for the occasion. In fact, considering how hard I find getting into the spirit of it, I’ve actually created quite a selection of cards for various ages and different tastes over the past couple of years:

Father's Day Greeting Cards

I really didn’t feel much like venturing out into the midday sun to see the Olympic Torch come through Abergavenny on Friday.

But once I was in the town centre, the enthusiasm of the crowds lining the route was infectious and I was glad I went – and managed to get a few photos, in spite of yellow-jacketed stewards standing in the way!

The Met Police were in charge of security, but I thought our Welsh ‘heddlu’ looked pretty impressive - if not quite 'fearsome'! - and their slow procession through the crowded streets raised hearty cheers! They weren't driving fast enough to whip up a breeze so they must have been sweltering in their leather trousers!

When the torchbearer finally arrived, I was a bit disappointed to discover that she wasn’t local to Abergavenny. But I later heard that she was a very worthy participant, from Newport, I believe, a 70 year old, recently retired Yoga teacher.

Next week we have two Bank Holidays! One, on Monday, is the usual late May Bank Holiday and the other, on Tuesday, is for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee! And then, on the Wednesday, my son will be coming down from York for my birthday at the end of the week - and to set up my new A3 scanner!

In view of all this and the fact that I feel I should make the most of truly summery weather on the rare occasions that we get it, I won’t be posting on my blog next week.

But, all being well, I’ll be back the following week!

A Snake, a Frog and Man-Flu

Chinese New Year Card Snake 2013, Across the Miles by helikettle

Another rather too busy week, trying to make up for lost time, but at least I finished the Chinese Year of the Snake cards.

The snake did look good against a pitch black background but red seems to be the traditional colour for Chinese Greeting Cards and this really dark red shows up his bright colours almost as well.

Chinese Year of the Snake Necklace by helikettle

I’m amazed at how much general knowledge I’ve picked up since I’ve been designing greeting cards! I had never even thought about the Chinese Zodiac previously, in spite of having a Chinese Malaysian son-in-law. I find it difficult to find, or even design birthday cards for someone of his age and gender so I think that, from now on, some variation on his Chinese Zodiac sign will make that easier!

Born in 1977, Year of the Snake, Birthday Card by helikettle

I still have a huge backlog of floral card designs to upload so this weekend I decided to forego my Saturday painting time to help with the catch-up.

This little poorly frog that I painted a while ago isn’t suitable for as many different cards as the floral ones so I’m hoping that getting those uploaded will give me time to upload at least some of the December Birthday Poinsettia cards as well.

                  A case of Man-Flu, do you think?


BLACKBIRD UPDATE

My resident blackbird parents are doing an excellent job of protecting their second brood of the season from the crows that gather on my chimney pots. This week, it seemed that whenever I heard a lot of commotion and looked out, I saw a crow in retreat! At times it was like watching old footage of war-time fighter plane dogfights, with both parents taking part and the crow invariably coming off worst!

It’s amazing how closely the pattern of events followed the first time around, with a lot of twittering coming from the nest for a couple of days, then two ‘chubbies’ huddling together on the side of the nest, followed by a day of Father Blackbird broadcasting warnings all day, from the time I opened my curtains in the morning to his solitary watch from his sentry post up high on my garage roof as the sun went down.

I haven’t seen the young ones out on my lawn yet, but I’m sure they’re down in the bushes, judging by the way the parents are keeping an eye out for them and heading off any likely danger.

It’s wonderful to have such a drama unfolding before my eyes!

Greeting Cards for Eid and Chinese New Year

Here are a couple of the Eid and Ramadan Cards I made from the mosque in the moonlight.

Moonlit Mosque Eid Card From Our Home to Yours by helikettle

Mosque by Moonlight Ramadan Card, Across the miles by helikettle

And I’m afraid that, despite resorting to a set-square at one point, my straight lines are still not as straight as maybe they should be! I can’t explain how they come to be a bit wobbly so there’s nothing much I can do about it, short of avoiding designs that involve buildings! I’m not too bothered, though, by the slightly upward-sloping ‘horizontals’  - who’s to say that this mosque wasn’t built on sloping ground?

Just after I published last week’s blog post, my laptop started doing all sorts of strange and worrying things. My computer-savvy neighbour ran out of ideas and gave up trying to sort it for me, suggesting I might need a new laptop. ARRRGGGGHHHH! 

But luckily, my son came to the rescue in the evening and, although he lives more than 200 miles away, he was able to sort out most of the mayhem, though he only managed to get Outlook Express working again yesterday.

Later I discovered that Monday's problems weren’t the direct result of Sunday’s ‘Daonol’ Trojan but were caused by a new piece of ‘Scare-ware’ – it certainly scared the living daylights out of me! - called ‘FakeSysdef’. I spent the rest of the week scanning and re-scanning with various antivirus and malware programs until I was completely  confident that it was out of my system!

So it’s been a very ‘interesting’ week!

Instead of uploading designs in between more phonecalls and visits from the Community Police and the real police about the graffiti, I’ve been working on new designs while the scanners were doing their work. And it has felt like luxury to take my time, in the knowledge that I couldn’t rush on to the uploading stage as I usually do! In fact, it’s pretty boring watching a scanner’s progress so I was glad to have some other work to get on with in the meantime!

Even though I tend to work quite fast, I could never have drawn and painted this Chinese New Year card design for the Year of the Snake in my usual Saturday afternoon painting slot! So it was a good opportunity to tackle something with a lot of detail - though no straight lines! - while I had time on my side.

It still needs a fair bit of tidying up and I still have to decide on a background colour and font. I’ll have a lot of computer work to catch up with this week but I’ll try to have Sammy Snake finished for my next post.

Yesterday morning a group of young lads, from the Youth Offenders Programme, I think, came and painted over the graffiti and I now have a nice bright white side wall, instead of the grey roughcast that I’d never got around to painting when my extension was built. So things are looking up!

I'm really much more comfortable painting big - the bigger, the better. So, when the council didn't appear to be dealing with it, I was sorely tempted to go out and paint some sort of graffiti of my own on this inviting expanse of wall! A view of the mountains, maybe . . . ?

Little Mice and a Mosque

I still have a huge backlog of floral greeting cards to upload and I haven’t been able to make as big an inroad into them this week as I would have liked. 

Not just because I had an overnight guest, Thurs/Fri – a rare occurrence for me and one that required a fair amount of tidying up and some food preparation; but also, on Wednesday, a builder arrived to start painting the high up woodwork on the outside of my house, and I had community police officers visiting and phoning, along with the local council and various neighbours, all because someone scrawled some graffiti along the side wall of my house. Then another Graduation 'customer request' late on Friday and today, a nasty Trojan, revealed by my anti-virus scan!

Time, then, to call a temporary halt to the floral repeat patterns and dig out a non-floral design that I painted a while back but hadn’t yet got around to making into cards –

Little Mouse New School Good Luck Card, Grandson by helikettle

This one has only given rise to half a dozen cards, plus a custom front one, in case customers would like to add the recipient’s name. So I hope I'll have time to attack the backlog of florals as well this week.

Surprisingly, amidst all the chaos of the past few days, I have made a start on a new Eid card for 2012, though I haven't got very far. There are a few months to go till Eid but it’s always worthwhile uploading well ahead of each special holiday or festival to give the search engines time to find them.

So here's my rather faint tracing of the famous 'Blue Mosque' - which I hope to turn into a card design for Eid by this time next week -

I haven’t yet decided whether to paint this mosque in watercolours or make a collage of it. But either way, I'll need a tracing. I think it would be a very suitable design for a collage but it would require a lot more accurate cutting than a floral design, as so many straight lines are involved and straight lines never were my strong point!

The same primary school teacher who offered to pay a shilling to any pupil who could find a tree with a brown trunk, also offered a reward to anyone who could find a straight line in Nature. Maybe it’s this absence of truly straight lines that usually steers me in the direction of ‘natural’, living things and away from anything remotely ‘architectural?  

But Eleanor Rossevelt apparently said, 'You must do the thing you think you cannot do' - so, I'll give it a try!



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