Newsletter

I can't remember if I mentioned it before, but I have a newsletter sign up at the top of my blog now. I am a little nervous about it. Not being one for asking for anything, I don't find it easy to ask people to sign up for things. I always figured people should be able to choose for themselves with me pointing things out. That makes running an online business a bit of a challenge though. With my new web site and shop I am having to expand the way I expose my work to folk - and it's scary!

So, here is my request:

If you would like to see product updates for art, beads and pretty much everything else I sell, photos for inspiration and even special offers that are reserved for newsletter subscribers then please click on the 'Newsletter sign up' link at the top of my blog. You will find it on the green strip below the big header picture. I won't bombard your email account with lots of emails, I promise. I expect to send updates out once a month at most and I won't sell or hand over your personal details to anyone else. It would be lovely to have a few more readers.

Another painted wooden pebble

A quick pic today - a hand painted wooden pebble with a British robin. It might be a bit early for Christmas themes but I have been making samples for Gina-B Silkworks' show next weekend and it is Christmas related. I think it inspired me to think of the robin.

Wooden pebble painting

The spring and early summer flowers are in full bloom in the garden at the moment - even if the sun has forgotten to show itself again. That is only to be expected in the Scottish spring/summer though - one day hot and sunny, the next cold and grey. The flowers inspired me to make a little 'thing' by hand painting some wooden pebbles that I found on Ebay. This type of folk flower reminds me of honeysuckle so I had to paint it in the colours of one of the honeysuckle plants that flowers in the garden during the summer.

However, I started thinking about what else I could paint on a wooden pebble and figured some of my wildlife paintings might work well. The pebbles are about one and a quarter inches wide by one and a half inches tall so it's a small surface area to work on - though not as small as the wooden beads I painted previously (see here and here). But they work really well.

This is a little blue tit that I painted on one. I don't use acrylics very often but they actually work really well on wood.

Of course I could not leave out a badger from my painting experiments. Unsurprisingly this might be my favourite.