Songs, Sketches and Stitches

"We would be warm, below the storm
In our little hideaway beneath the waves."

What a lovely thought, to be in an octopus's garden, in the shade. My octopus is out of the sea and enjoying the tulips.

When I sewed him together, my main concern was fitting all of his eight chubby legs around his little body. The exciting side-effect of his fat legs is that he stands up. He looks more like one of those enormous alien like squid with giant eyes. A creature I would love to see-though at a safe distance-maybe from my yellow submarine!

Cassie requests that you tip toe, as she is fast asleep.Aren't they lovely? PPA this afternoon, and had to go to the shops on the way home, and couldn't resist them!We had an inset day on Friday-which nursery somehow were not included in at all-which gave us a day to really get going with the packing. We have done almost all of one of our big cupboards. There were a few finds of things that have been in there a long time. Some were thrown away, some kept, and some rehomed by me-a metal dentist's tool (too dangerous for play, but perfect to add to my clay tools), a horseshoe, two giant pinecones (from a large box of them) and two lovely blank paper sample books-donated by our lunchtime supervisor ten years ago apparently. I am afraid the children have been deprived, and I have brought them home to use as sketchbooks. They have glossy paper which I thought would be good for drawing with pen. It turns out it is also good for watercolours.Sometimes, I feel like I am playing 'artist'-like I feel as if I am playing 'house' when I put a vase of flowers on the table. A double whammy today then! My bowl of satsumas.My beach finds from Saturday-flint comes in such a variety of shapes and subtle variations of colour.

Red

I wanted to clear up my messy table, so had to use up the last of the brusho in the palette. I brushed lots of it onto these pages with matte medium. I saw a picture somewhere yesterday where the person had very red cheeks, in half moons below their eyes, so thought of leaving the red background as these and the lips. I used oil pastels which were lovely and smudgy over the plastic like surface of the matte medium.

A bit of my first failed attempt at a handwarmer was already stuck to the other page. It is fun to cut into a crocheted or knitted fabric-you can feel the scissors eating through the stitches. I like the way the colours all work together.

My usual staring at you type of person, not sure if it is a boy or a girl, but it is possibly an assassin in that jumper. (Just watched 'Abduction' tonight. Come back Jason Bourne is all I have to say about that!)

Cassie has had a space especially cleared for her on the window sill this week which unfortunately means her walking over the draining board so I have to keep wiping it-oh well it is only us and I am sure we are pretty immune to cat germs. Here she is posing behind the flowers looking very pretty I thought.

Post Post

In my journal nothing much was happening. Until, that is, the Christmas post started to arrive, with its exciting stamps and postmarks. I scraped some ink onto pages and started to stick in all the things that took my fancy. After the day itself I added some of the tags and ribbon too. This mosaic has the lovely Jessie, on the envelope of the card from Linda and Becky in Greece. Today's post has a recycled princess and the pea bed for her. There are also some Dutch stamps from my friend Sarah who we are off to visit on Saturday.

Pretty and religious stamps-and helpful information in the postmark.

A lovely Canadian stamp from Kat.

A page trying out a tree stamp (of the other kind!) from Clare.

A sticky label from a delicious lunch in Leon in Bluewater.

A handmade tag from Cleo.

Doing this is also good for combating my hoarding instincts-stick in the pretty stuff and recycle the rest-every little helps!

Before I go, have you seen Retronaut? I have subscribed to it, so get at least one fascinating email a day. It is such a great site.
Also this is very sweet. The geese think the microlight man is their mother!

Small Mottoes

School jobs are taking my energy and time. Photoshop is obsessing me. So other art activity has been lacking. The other night I did a load of doodly pages with little phrases that came to mind-after I drew each little face. I worked out how to select and then overlay in a new layer, then rub out whichever bit I needed to to let the new layer show. I got quite confused at the mathematicalness of it all but still enjoyed it.

Report Eve

I have to start reports tomorrow. It is the most time consuming and tedious part of my job. If I had to do a few it would be fine, as I actually quite enjoy writing this kind of thing. I like to make them really personal, with little examples and quotes from the child. I think that is what I would like if I was a parent. I normally have to do about 20 at this time of year, which take me quite some time. This year, due to changes in the intake of children in the year, I have to do 40! I cannot spend as much time on each as I normally do because of the doubling in numbers, but I am not sure if I can write them in any other way. I shall see. At least if I start tomorrow I will feel better! I have been pottering this evening and doing boring old tasks such as washing, in between reading blogs and playing with Cassie. I have also been making journal pages using things I did last night at a great class I went to with Clare. We went to The Make Lounge in Islington, to a class on making your own rubber stamps.

We were taught by Louise, who is a printmaker and book artist. Here is her blog. She was lovely, and squeezed a lot into one evening. I loved using the carveable rubber-so much easier than lino! We had the time to make two or three stamps, to mount them and to try them out. I learnt a number of interesting things-my favourites being how to transfer my design onto the rubber, how to clean your inked stamps-babywipes! and how to use them in interesting ways, using part of your image, or using masks. The whole experience was very relaxing and pleasant. Wine, tea, coffee and snacks were available, and there is a lovely shop where you can buy the materials you have used. I was very excited to be able to buy some of the rubber, as I have not seen it anywhere else yet (though I have seen it online) Lovely examples of it being used here, and here.

This is a snapshot of how my desk looks tonight-glass of wine included-it has been a long week!

I made a face, a tulip and a tree.

Below are a couple of things from today. It has been beautiful weather this week and the insects are out in full force in the nursery garden. Today we had a lot of hover flies-fascinating little beings that remind me of aliens, the way they hover just in front of you as if they are observing our ways. I think I have successfully explained to about two children what they are and what hover means. Only 83 to go then! No-they are not wasps, no, they are not bees, no, they do not sting. Please stop screaming, they are not going to hurt you. etc, etc.

We also found a dead bee, which led to a good speculative discussion on the cause of death, as well as a sharing of opinions on bees-like, dislike, scared or not. Demi told me that she does not like bees, but adults do. When I asked her why she replied "Because they are big" (adults and bees)

This one obliged me by posing on a bright green leaf.

This is Halimah's amazing drawing of one of the centipedes we found yesterday.

Blackbirds on the tree. There are now tiny buds on it. It is a bit of an unruly tree which our neighbour is always asking us to have trimmed. We are having a tree person round for a quote tomorrow. I hope it is not too pricey. The blackbirds are from yesterday. I was waiting until they had gone to let Lily out. Today Cassie had her second exciting excursion into the garden. I saw a green parrot fly over while we were out there. You always hear them first. They have a very distinctive squeaky squawk.

Trees, Bugs, Beaches and Tulips

I see the tree, the tree sees me.
Oh so many little creatures curled up under this log.
They all disappeared after about five minutes.

Today we imagined days out at the beach, and adventures in boats.

I wish I did!

Lovely charcoal packaging-I went searching for this in my box of mark making materials (that is how organised my art stuff is!) and found it. I am reading a brilliant book at the moment, which I will talk about at another time, and one of the stories in it was of the manufacturer of this charcoal, P.H.Coates.

The surprise for a friend-a little painting on an old postcard, for my friend Chinmoyee. She has these Indian postcards, with little figures painted on the written side, which I really liked, and which gave me the idea for my flower postcards. She likes Auriculas, so that is what I painted. I got the postcards the other day in Rochester, and they are quite good London scenes, but I was looking for the handwriting on the back.

This is the one I painted for myself-I love tulips and they are so lovely in the garden at the moment.

The planes are back now which is good I suppose, but I didn't miss them flying overhead. We have four teachers and one of the nursery nurses stuck abroad. One in Canada, three in Spain and Sarah-who I work with in the nursery-in Thailand. She has been told that her flight will not be until at least May 2nd! That means she will have been out there for a month. I hope she is enjoying the extra time at least!

Miscellaneous Things

Miscellaneous thing number one-my friend Kat, of Poetikat's Invisible Keepsakes, has been busy putting together a book of her poetry and she did me the honour of asking me to take photos that she could use for the cover. I was outside in my dressing gown over the holiday-when the sun was out in the morning, taking lots of photos of my birds. The book is called 'Shadowstalking' and the photos needed shadows-hence the dressing gown-I didn't want to miss the sun! Have a look at Kat's blog to see her design and also to read some of her poetry. Watch this space for news of the book!

Number two-more journal pages.

Number three-more Cassie-she adopts so many sweet poses every day.

Number four-lovely bird stamp-one of three on a little parcel from Hong Kong. It was from an ebay seller but the packaging was worthy of Etsy! I have discovered something called Re-ment-little tiny things suitable for dolls houses-my parcel today was tiny sushi. When I finally get around to doing anything to the dolls houses I will show all the tiny goodies I have been collecting.

Pictures I like.

Old postcard-photocopied, tracing paper in two layers. Trying to recreate the Anthropologie paper sculpture I saw on my day out with Kenda.

Harder than it looks!

Patchwork with some of the fabric I bought in Rochester and some I already had. I have moved from tiny to medium, and square to hexagon. I realised last night that I do not know how to make a regular hexagon-you know-angles and so on. I feel I should know this kind of thing so maybe shouldn't admit it. I had a feeling that a compass would help, but couldn't remember where one was. The faithful internet came to my aid. My tip for quick reproduction of your basic paper shape is to do one sheet then copy it (if you have that kind of printer that is) This may be obvious but just in case it is not.

Final miscellaneous thing-if, like me, you have long wondered how to make a hole in a piece of glass then wonder no more. Mary, of Working Projects, has done a video explaining that very thing. Now all I need is a drill!

Journal Pages

List of really quite mundane tasks. 'handbag' means-'tidy handbag'. Too much stuff in there in too much of a mess. Now it is all beautifully organised. It won't last. One area becomes organised and another goes to pot. Ah well.

I have drunk rather a lot of tea (and coffee) this week. The pret card is from my Tuesday adventure. Those cardboard cup holder thingamies are too good to throw away. Good for printing and also rubbing over to get lines.

Another tea inspired page. The pile of tea cups in the photo is from a really pretty John Lewis advert. It made me think of my tall tea cups painting.

This page is me being inspired by Chris Ofili. My friend Cleo came round tonight to meet Cassie. She went to the exhibition today and loved it too. When Kenda and I got to the end we thought we had missed a room-a room full of Monkey paintings. We had-and it sounds like a really good room, so I am going back in there when my Mum visits on Monday, before going to see Henry Moore with her.

This page has nothing added as I thought this little scene was perfect on its own.

A flask of tea, a quiet bench, good book and friendly robin.

Miniature egg wrappers and picture of great doll inspired table.

The inside of this envelope has a beautiful snaky pattern. Please click on pictures for detail. If you like.