Gather Ye Rosebuds!

Everything is Coming up Roses

Ok - here we are - already it is April and we seem to be no nearer to the lovely and inspiring season which is Spring in England. I love spring here! The beautiful bulbs with their bright and cheerful colours and heavenly scent!

I grew up in Northern Canada and the thing I most recall about spring there is slush!!! Walking through enormous puddles of slush - half melted snow and ice - wearing me knee high wellies (rubber boots)!

It is so different to be in England in the Spring!

However.............we are having such a cold spring here - very few bulbs are up now, there is a nip in the air unusual for this time of year and the past few days have seen parts of the UK where people are having to deal with more snow than we usually get in the winter.

I feel like we are missing out on Spring, so I have been painting roses lately - roll on summer if we are to be cheated out of spring!

All my signs lately have found roses sneaking into the white bits to brighten up my days!

I should be painting tulips and dafodils, but for the moment it is roses, roses, all the way!

Fingers crossed that we do get summer but if not, I will be painting more of them!

Santa Claus is on his way!

This is the other side of the Snowman in the Meadow set!

Ho, Ho, Ho!

Christmas will soon be here!

Where oh where has the year gone?

I cannot believe it is almost December once again! I had good intentions of spending the year leisurely painting for the Christmas Craft Events, and now here I am again, scrambling to make enough! Nothing changes!

Here is a sneak preview of one of the items I am working on for this year! Every year I make two sided block sitter signs in a distressed fashion! Ok, so we rarely have snow here in the Southend on Sea area, but we can dream about a White Christmas - can't we?

Catching up!

Where to start? It has been literally months since my last post!!! I have had such a busy year, and so many troubles with computers and ---- well no excuses - just time to get back on!

Well I managed to participate in my first Art Trail in the town I live in - The Westcliff Art Trail! This was a great experience, put together by some very hard working people and I am grateful for being accepted and also grateful for all their hard work!

I displayed at a small cafe in town run by a lovely lady and although I did not sell anything, I had some great exposure and thank Lesley frome Chili Peppers for her hospitality!

The other big thing for me this past summer was joining and setting up my shopfront on Not On The High Street! This has been exciting and the site itself is full of beautiful things sourced or handmade by many talented people! I feel humbled to be a part of the group!

I am so happy to be part of it, but have found myself so busy these past months, I have not been able to make the best use of the site up to now. With Christmas looming I am in full swing now making Christmas signs, block sitter signs and ornaments and I will be listing some of these within the week!

If you fancy a peek at what I have up now, here is a link! http://www.notonthehighstreet.com/nosyrosiedesigns

Click to view all products to see what is there! Check back soon to see what I have to offer for the Christmas Holiday period!

At the moment, all my items are garden inspired paintings in the style of a vintage sign with distressed paint effects. I love flowers - so I guess that is what I am gonna paint! Well in the summer anyhow!

The hydrangeas painting above is entitled Amelia's Hortensia's, inspired by my mother and her parents and their lakeside home. I spent many happy holidays there and feel such a wave of nostalgia just thinking about their log cabin style home built on the lakefront of Adams Lake in the beautiful Okanogan/Shuswap Valley of British Columbia, Canada. My collection of twenty paintings were all part of a group of happy memories from that time.

All for now as it is late (story of my life - I seem to get a second wind after 10 pm! ) but I will post more soon! I will add a few more pics of my paintings over time!

Night night!

xx

Let Them Eat Cake - It's Summer!

I love to paint cakes! Cakes are so pretty and painting them does not add inches to the waistline!

These paintings all feature cakes and most were painted for the Westcliff Art Trail I exhibited in during May.

The two large signs painted on cupboard doors feature cakes, teacups,lilacs, and roses as well as words - all of these elements are inspiring to me not only for their visual impact but also because of the memories and meanings they evoke to me personally.

Teacups - well - Connie Parkinson is truly the Queen of Roses and Teacups and I can't help but swoon every time I look at her beautiful paintings! I have a growing collection of teacups of my own - several which belonged to my Mother and her Mother, and a few years ago, I made an altered book titled Granny's Teacups. This book was very personal to me, at the time my Mother was very poorly in Canada and I had not long returned from spending time with her there. As she was unable to return home after that, I brought back her small collection of treasured teacups and these inspired me to make my book about both my mother and my grandmother and the impact they had on me and what is important to me.

Granny's Teacups made me think and reminisce about happy times spent at my Grandparent's Lakeside Home at Adams Lake in British Columbia, Canada, and these memories were the inspiration behind the entire collection of cakes and flower inspired paintings that I painted for the Art Trail.

One memory still vivid in my mind after at least 37 years is an afternoon I spent with my Grandparent's lovely next door neighbour Ina.

Ina was kind and glamorous and very friendly and one day she was decorating cupcakes for the Summer Fair Cake Competition. I was mesmerised with watching her make the most exquisite flowers, bows, loops, and trellis designs on these tiny little cakes in pleated paper wrappers.

I can still picture them to this day and thus my love of them and their pretty forms, and so this is why I love to paint them - that and the fact that I am not, or never will be a Domestic Goddess able to make them myself!

I will leave that to my friend Donna - she makes the most gorgeous cupcakes and is in high demand - thus she has started her own business entitled Let Them Eat Cake!

Summer!

Summer is here and with it are the roses in bloom, warm weather and sunshine and light! I love this time of year and especially when we have warm days and sunshine (but not too hot - like the garden flowers I tend to wilt if it is too hot!)

I have been so busy lately that I haven't posted in ages and I cannot believe how much time has passed since my last post.

I managed to get twenty paintings of flowers and cakes done for the Westcliff Art Trail, in May! I exhibited in a lovely little cafe called Chilli Peppers. Leslie and her staff are friendly and very helpful, and I am very grateful they allowed me to exhibit in their space especially as Leslie was getting married the following weekend! Thank you to all the staff at Chilli Peppers.

The art trail itself was a great experience and although I did not sell any work, it was an honour to be a part of it, and definitely something I would love to participate in again.

In June, the Leigh Art Trial ran for a week. This annual event, which is in it's 13th year, is very well attended, and Southend Adult Community College, where I teach Interior Design and Decorative Painting was one of the sponsers. They held their own exhibition of students work from all the arts and crafts courses run at the college and this was a fabulous showing of very talented student work.