Antique Inspiration

I love old things. I have a few pieces of furniture that I have bought from consignment stores, found in a little country antique shop or saved from a landfill. A couple of weeks ago when I went for my sketch walk one of my neighbours had a small cupboard standing at the road. Upon seeing it, I fell in love with the shape and the age of it immediately. I've refinished one of these once before and it can be a lot of work. I wasn't looking for more work BUT my niece and a friend of hers refinishes old things, giving them new life and reselling them in their business. I thought of her, and texted her a picture of it, noting that it was in rough shape but that I knew she could do something wonderful with it. As I thought, she wanted it. So I took my car up to the house, knocked on the door and asked the owner if he minded that I take the little cupboard. He said, " no problem" and helped me get it into the back of my truck. He told me he was keeping for his daughter, who just never came to get it, so out it went to the curb. He said it was from the 1920's. I can't wait to see what my niece does with it.

Well, then last Saturday, I was invited to the Christie Antique Market at Christie Conservation Area. I convinced my sister to go with me and we had a great time. I missed out on a really nice round aluminum table with four chairs. They were painted white and would have fit perfectly on my back deck and it was reasonably priced. When I got to the owner of the booth she told me it was sold a few minutes before. I shouldn't have thought about it so long!
However, I didn't leave empty handed. I spied a solid wood bookcase with a glass door on it that locked with a really neat old key. It was beautiful! Because it was a bookcase, it wasn't deep and would fit perfectly in my studio to hold all my fabric. Then, instead of taking all my fabric bins out from under my counter when I needed to choose fabric for a project, all I had to do was open the door.
With help from my sister and her husband, I got it into the house and down to the studio. I cleaned it out this week and today I put all my fabric in it. It's fantastic. A really good buy.

Artist Business Cards

I have a really hard time throwing out fabric scraps and so I have drawers full of them (just in case I need them). The other day, I was reading about having business cards made. I thought to myself," A business card for an artist should be hand made by themselves. What better way to make yourself remembered? So I took some of my fabric scraps and made 2"X3" fabric business cards. Admittedly, they take longer to make than printed ones but I really enjoyed making them. They are simple but cute, I think.

Inspired by the Art of Grandchildren

I often have the grandchildren over and their most favourite thing to do is paint in my studio. They are still learning about keeping the paints clean by rinsing your brush in water before putting it into another colour. They are also learning that if you put all the colours on top of each other, you get brown or black. They don't mind when that happens, the just enjoy the activity. They are not worried about the end result, they just love to slop paint all over their papers.

But sometimes, they end up with wonderful blends of colour and then I like to take photos of their paintings and print them on fabric with my colour printer. Then I use that fabric to make my fabric cards. Below are photos of different sections of a painting one of my grandchildren did.

The colours are vibrant and they blend nicely and there are also sections where "line" is used where they used their fingers to spread the paint. There are also places where the paint dripped and ran. This painting is full of movement and excitement and freshness. That's what happens when you are not worried about the end result being perfect. There is expression in it. Below are some fabric cards I made with sections of the painting. You might be able to tell which section of the painting I used in each.

Spring Inspiration

Walking and sketching is becoming more enjoyable as the weather gets nicer and the plants are coming to life again. I am trying to take different routes each time I walk to get a variety of subjects. I'll draw whatever interests me so it won't always be nature but perhaps a fire hydrant or garbage containers. I really love to sketch nature but the other stuff is part of my everyday and so it is important to note. Often, there are things we don't notice as we rush along in our day. So when I'm out for a walk, I try to observe the mundane, normal things of life. Even those can be beautiful. It helps us to be thankful for everything and every day.