Help from Friends

Thank you Stephanie from My Calico Heart for helping me add websites and blog links! Stephanie makes the most gorgeous fabric items and is a fellow member of the Crows 'n' Roses ebay group. Have a peek thorugh her blog for pictures of what she makes - she has the most gorgeous angels and hearts made for her Christmas craft sale! I am not surprised you had a great sale Stepahnie!

Because of Stephanie's help I was able to add two website links today - St. James Place the webite of Connie Parkinson, and also the link for the online store - Vintage Home.

Connie is an artist from California who paints the most exquisite roses, teacups and cottages! She teaches, designs pattern packs for sale and has five published painting instruction books, as well as a teaching video and CD rom - all available in her on-line shop! Have a peek through and don't forget to look at her gallery and her Rose Gallery. You will be amazed at her talent! Not only mega-talented, Connie is also very nice and extremely helpful! My goal is to get over to America and be in one of the classes she teaches all around the USA and Canada. She is teaching In Las Vegas next week at the creative painting convention.

Vintage Home is the ultimate website for anyone who loves the vintage look and lifestyle. Clare and her husband sell the most wonderful array of fabrics, paintings, china, and homewares through their UK based site - and it too is just a feast for the eyes! Have a peek too at her blog - it has gorgous photos of her home and the treasures they find! I find myself wanting to live in these pictures! Her website is newly updated and is beautiful - I love the colours and the feel to it all.

I myself am in the middle of making lots of distressed signs and block sets for a craft sale this weekend. I am in a mood for coffee and cakes and so this seems to be the running theme - both colour and motif wise, and I hope to put together a few cupcake signs and hearts to take with me on Sunday to sell. (Well that is the intention anyhow!) My own coffee break is at an end and so I will go and get back to the paint!

Roses in May

These roses are so gorgeous and I love all the colours together. They bloomed early in 2005, and the varieties in this shot include Madam Caroline Testout - an old hybrid tea climber (c. 1901), Charles de Mill - a beautiful deep crimson rose of the Gallica family(c. 1790), Constance Spry - the first David Austin English rose and so beautiful (c. 1961)- and it grows so strong it climbs high filling the air with it's gorgeous scent! the one at the topon the left is Zephirine Drouhin (c. 1868), another old climber, this lovely clear pink rose is delightful in bloom.

Roses and Painting

Longing for Summer!

At this time of year my thoughts are preoccupied with the fact that summer is on it's way and with it - my roses will be in bloom. To tide me over until that time, I try to paint as many roses and flowers as I can!

I painted these tissue boxes in 2005 and sold them on eBay to ladies across the pond in America. During 2005 I sold a lot of painted roses and hydrangea articles through eBay - all to ladies in America.

I learned how to paint them by purchasing a video from Ros Stallcup in Virginia. I have had the good fortune to paint with Ros in the UK twice and she is a fabulous teacher and a lovely person, and she is also an amazing painter. I have all of her books and use them often to teach myself new fruits and flowers to paint.

Marie Antoinette would have loved these roses!

I have a fascination and interst in Rococo design - the art, the interiors, the fashions, the decorative items, the china, the fabrics, the paintings - and I can't help but think of Marie Antoinette when I look at these roses. This is another view of the James Galway roses - and all the frilly edges, and the tightly pack blooms, the number of blooms on each stems, and the sheer size of the plant itself (this is a large shrub rose and it climbs on my fence and would take over the whole garden I think, if it just had a chance!) just makes me think of Versaille in the 18th Century and Marie Antoinette on all her finery!!! Imagine a full skirt with roses like this as trim! Fit for a queen.

James Galway Roses - David Austin English Rose

James Galway Cut Roses

Rosie's Rose Garden

I love roses - not only to paint them - I also love to grow them and the roses I love the most are the Old Roses - the vintage roses - Bourbons, Albas, Musks, Damasks, Portlands, Gallicas and Centifolias. The shapes, colours and scents of them in bloom is eye candy on a warm June day!

I also love the English Roses from David Austin and this one is a climbing James Galway rose - and what a lovely sight it is in full bloom! It is a miltitude of colours with a warmer centre paling to the edges, and has a lovely scent too. I love cutting roses and bringing them into the house!

Rosie's Roses!

With my new ambitions to make more of my blog, I am also going to add more picures to my blog - being comfortable with resizing and posting pictures is something I have to come to grips with too, so here is my effort!

These three signs with painted roses are the first three things I posted on eBay way back in May of 2005. All three are in different styles, and this was an important time in my mission to learn to paint roses. At the time, I absorbed every bit of information I could find about how to paint the flowers I love most and at this time I was buying painting books and patterns through eBay from the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK (when the occassional one came up!) and even from Israel! Almost very artist I could find who painted florals or roses - I added to my collection.

These three signs are painted using three different designers patterns from the books I bought between 2004 and 2005. The small rose is adapted from a Jenise Jackson design, and the two roses on the blue sign behind are an adaptation of a Pam Childress design. The roses on the cream ground are from a pattern by Connie Parkinson in her book called A Classy Affair.

Connie is a fabulous painter who paints the most gorgeous roses, and she teaches at conventions and seminars throughout the USA and Canada, as well as publishing books, pattern packs, videos, dvd.s, and articles for painting magazines, and she has been an enormous inspiration and help to me in my quest to learn how to paint. I will try to post a link to her website so you can have a look-see! I am not sure if I can do that here so will check out the options! Prepare to drool when you look through her work -a feast for the eyes!

It is about time I got back to this!

Well, it has been awhile since I posted anything on here and so I am going to make a new effort to do so now! This has been prompted because just a few minutes ago I chanced on an Etsy sellers site and found a lovely digital OOAK Blog Banner from castleandcottage, and I am waiting for it to be sent! How exciting!!!

Impulse buying is usually not a good thing, but having just bought something on a whim means that I now have to do something about my blog - make it look more interesting - and make it have a bit of a personal feel to it. This banner will add WOW factor to it - and I have the task of figuring out how to do that! Just now, I have learned how to make my blog more intersting by changing the background and font colours!!!

2008 ended with big changes in my life with the death of my Mother in Canada and so I made the trip back from the UK for the funeral and to spend some time catching up with my brother. It is just the two of us now, (our father passing 7 years previous, our oldest brother passing 38 years ago), and both of us with our own memories of our parents, brother and childhood.

This year - 2009 - I am determined to accomplish as much as I can on my list of 'Things To Do Before I Die'. Maybe that sounds morbid, and I don't mean for it to be -I just realise that time is tick, tick ticking away, and if I intend to tick (sorry!) off the list of my goals and aspirations, I need to get started now!

One of those ambitions/goals is to get to grips with computer technology and get over my fears of it! A good starting point is for me to pretty up this blog and finding this lovely banner is the perfect place to start!

Keep an eye out for it - I will get it up as soon as I can! I can hardly wait!