Made in The Shade

It seems ages! I've been away camping on the North West Coast of scotland. It was superb! I'll post some pics soon as - with or without camera abilities - the landscape is staggering.

Where I live was mentioned in the last posts comments and yes! it is true I live in a place of ridiculous beauty and i'm very grateful for it. Here's the view from the gate.

The island in the distance is Arran.

It's surrounded by animals, we get sheep and lambs obviously, wild deer, rabbits and hares, pheasants, squirrels, foxes, moles (Gigantic mounds all round the house - the little buggers!) and down the road my favourite animal:

When I first moved here 4 years ago (I'm actually from around the Liverpool area) all I did was paint flowers, bumblebees, foxes and things. Very brightly coloured paintings, but unfortunately i'm not sure where they are anymore. Ah well!

Lots has been going on, but the immediate thing i'm looking forward to is attending Made in the Shade,
I had really hoped to be able to do some originals and paint some brooches for this but I originally thought it was next week - hence here I am sans originals. Also, some inks ran out on my printer and I don't have any more...it's one of those snafu situations.

So my plan is to take the few things I have - and also I managed to procure some old antique photos of serious gents and women and i'll paint on them throughout the day- it's a bit different and it gets around this problem of having nothing original there! Should be fun!

If you're around, do pop in and say hi!

Quick update

Thursday night's Glasgow Craft Mafia Party was great. Lots of good things to see and people to talk to. Unfortunately the Paper Forest did get a bit battered after two young men messing around nearby knocked it over ... twice! Fortunately it's fixable. Since then i've been finishing something off for someone and doing some beards...I just couldn't stop myself. One is just literaly a painting of a face with a beard...the, core principle as it were. I haven't scanned that yet but will soon. The other is an art doll of a Mystical Cowboy. He has a beard obviously. He's also vaguely camp looking, which is all to the good. Here's him scanned.




Haven't cut him out yet but will be doing soon and will post photos then. He's going to have a young girl companion, in the fine tradition of Leon.

I'm in love

That's right- in love, but not with a mortal human, oh no...With a trimming shop. Ok, that sounds patehtic, and yet, if you see this place you'll be in love too! The photographs are stunning and are making me desperate to buy supplies and create some kind of bird of paradise head dress...As soon as I get paid..Regard the loveliness:









The place in question is Nicholas Kniel and hopefully something wearable will emerge from me ordering lovely things, and not just me stashing yards of beautfiul ribbon.

Next ace place i've found is Ponoko
It's made quite a splash since it launched a few days ago, and as such the site is practically unusable - well at least you can't log in but you can browse around and find out what it's all about. Essentially it allows you to design and upload eps files to be lasercut from various materials, a local laser cutters (the closest to you) sends you the cut materials....It means it's cheaper and less environmentally damaging for a person to have things produced. If it works out it might just be one of the best services to happen for me...I love to make things from wood, but I am a terrible cutter and I just do not have space or finances for proper tools...This would be a life saver - as soon as I can log in!

Other news is that I joined the Glasgow Craft Mafia yay! They are a great bunch of girls (and one man!) and are getting ready to launch officially in October. I will be helping with the launch as much as possible and will be going to the event, it should be a great evening to see what everyone's doing and do some self-promotion. I will post photos.

Other than that I went out on Friday night and got a bit drunk - well quite drunk actually, and had a great time. Saturday was a tender time which involved a massive lunch with freinds and then a fragile walk up the hill home...It was good to let my hair down though.