Birds of a feather and a badger

At the start of the new year I wanted to promise myself that I would draw more this year. I did very little drawing or painting last year. None, in fact. This year (all two months of it) I have 'attempted' to do more. Not as much as I had hoped but something. It seems a shame to have a skill and not use it. So here are the first drawings of the year. I hope there will be more to come. I have a couple of small paintings on the drawing board at the moment too. The trick is finding time to get them finished.

Just a little show and tell

Not much to report on the creative side this week. There has been lots of bead making, of course. Other than that, just a couple of new samples using buttons. A notepad made using grey board as the backing which I covered in K&Co papers and a glass nightlight holder made using ribbons and a bit of bling.

 

Return of the faithful

The title refers to some paper beads I used to sell that were very popular. Each paper bead was hand painted and I had been having problems with the ink going on the paper. Every time I had to change brands of paper the ink behaved differently. So, in the name of reliability, I stopped selling them. For years I played with digital images in an effort to get the same effect. Sadly I never found the look I was searching for. However, by sheer fluke, I was playing around with a vintage style digital image, grabbed the colour controls in my photo processing programme and wiggled a few of them about. Within 30 seconds the perfect image appeared. I printed it out - just to make sure. Perfect indeed. Cue the re-emergence of the old beads. The first lot are the Oriental calligraphy beads - now called Vintage Chinese Calligraphy. The next lot will be the Vintage Word paper beads (I will post about them when they are finally available). I am so pleased. For years people have requested both sets of beads. Now I can offer them for sale again.