Nature's artwork

Life is back to relative normality now the Christmas rush is over. On Christmas day my eighteen month old grand daughter started out dressed as a fairy princess but by lunch time my four year old grandson had traded her his tip truck and was now wearing the fairy costume, the most handsome fairy imagineable. By the end of the day he tired of the wand waving and retrieved his truck - oh for the innocence and simplicity of childhood.

Today we went to the beach and I took some interesting photos of sea weed, the colours were brilliant, the web images don't do the colours justice. After I had downloaded them into my computer I noticed this blue 'eye' shape on the image of the black weed, when I zoomed up on it I saw it was my reflection in a bubble on the weed, nature at work again.

Best Wishes from Down Under

It's Christmas Eve and at last we've had rain to help quell the fires. The temperature has dropped from the high thirties last week to the low twenties this week. Christmas day is predicted to be 16C our coldest Christmas day in over seventy years but we aren't complaining we can sit and eat our roasted turkey in comfort. The grandchildren have arrived, the house is decorated,
the food is being prepared for tomorrow, there is general chaos, I've just completed a necklace for my daughter and I'm about to wrap the presents - isn't Christmas wonderful. Best Wishes to everyone and have a safe, happy time and send love and peace to the less fortunate people around the world.

Altered books

Here are some more pages from my altered books. The bottom photo is of a heavy duty brown paper bag that I painted with Lumiere metallic paint. The stamp is one I carved from an eraser.
We are having very warm weather at the moment 36C which doesn't help the fires that are still burning out of control across the State. The forecast is for cooler weather and maybe some rain if we're lucky over Christmas.

More digital art

Another piece of digital art work using Photoshop and lots of layers. This is for a course I'll be teaching early next year in the basics of using Photoshop. The course will be run at Hann Made Studio Mentone. For details see the contacts details on my web site. I'll be producing more of these over the next few weeks and adding them to my blog as they progress.

My biggest canvas ever

This was my biggest challenge ever. My daughter wanted a mural painted on my grandaughter's bedroom wall. 'You can do it mum' said my daughter, just think of it as a large canvas (a slight exaggeration). I started with trepidation but as it progressed I started to enjoy it and was a bit sad when I came to the end of it. Sienna is only six months old so I hope the painting will be around for a little while.

Digital Art

I've been playing around with Photoshop, I use it every day in my work as a graphic designer but don't get time to play very often. I scanned in one of my face drawings and one of my painted backgrounds. I then did some graphics in Illustrator, added text in Photoshop and this is the end result.

Still the Fires Burn

The fires are still burning across Victoria. This photo was taken from my back deck late this afternoon, there is smoke everywhere and the fires are miles away. Melbourne and the suburbs are covered in a blanket of smoke, the temperature is expected to rise tomorrow with strong winds, that will clear the smoke from here but will fan the fires, it's a no win situation.

New jewellery

My daughter and her family left today for home after a teary farewell from Jack, the four year old, he's such a darling. He knows he'll be back at Christmas but two weeks is a long time to a child.
I've been busy assembling this latest collection of jewellery to take to the gallery during the week. I now have to concentrate on the Christmas cards, I'm a bit late for my English relatives, I hope they receive them before Christmas.

We've been to see the Wiggles, now to work

What a concert, children everywhere. Jack loved it but the noise was too much for him. He spent most of the time with his fingers in his ears. It amazes me how children as young as eighteen months become so animated at the sight of the Wiggles.
They certainly have a captive audience.
We have been in a haze for the past few days with bushfires burning out of control across Victoria. the temperatures have been in the high thirties. We live in a very high fire risk area so we are on constant alert and have our bush fire plan at the ready. The fire season has started very early this year with everything being tinder dry through lack of rain. Now is the time to send the family photos and precious irreplaceable items to my daughter who lives in the suburbs away from the risk - we hope.

We're off to see the Wiggles, the wonderful Wiggles of Oz

My daughter and her family are arriving tonight from the country, they live about a five hour drive from here. Tomorrow she and I are taking my four year old Grandson to see the Wiggles, I can't wait to see his sweet little face when he sees them in person, he's been counting down the days. He's also hoping to get into my studio when he arrives. Our cat must sense they're coming as she has gone into hiding, she's just not used to the boisterous antics of small children, she's sixteen years old so I suppose you can't blame her.

Workshop

I've had a busy weekend filling Christmas jewellery orders and conducting a one day altered book and decorated paper workshop. We all had a great time with a terrific bunch of people, briming over with ideas, I can't wait until the next one early in the new year.
I had a phone call from one of my daughters yesterday telling me my four year old grandson, who did his first painting when he was seven months old, had spread his artistic wings and had painted their Jack Russell dog, bright yellow, the dog didn't mind, luckily it was washable paint, but he still has a yellow glow. The cat is getting very nervous.

I haven't worked in my altered book lately as I've been busy making jewellery and adding to my journal.
Here are a couple of the more recent pages.
I received a book via Amazon today written by English artist Shirley Trevena, the book's called Vibrant Watercolours.
Shirley is as obsessed with colour as I am, her paintings are fabulous.
Another colour guru is Kaffe Fassett, I went to his 2 day workshop when he came to Melbourne, that was mind blowing, he gave colour a new meaning, his philosophy "if in doubt add more color", I have been ever since.

Just two more images from my journal.The ladies dress and crown were made from the inside of an envelope. I'm amazed at the number of different designs there are.
The African image was made using my hand carved stamps from erasers and carved 'meat' trays.
I'm slowly working out how to set up this blog, I've now added a counter, I'm still working on the header.

Beach Finds

I think I must be very lucky, I have the best of both worlds. I live in the hills and work near the beach. I have an hours lunch break so I'm able to go and fossick on the beach to clear the cobwebs from the brain. Today was one such day, the weather was beautiful. I found some lovely treasures in the form of weathered glass, worn painted metal, stone, a seed pod and even a bone.
These will be turned into jewellery similar to the picture shown. I also took a picture of the daisies, I can see a painting eventuating from this photo one day

I had a great find today in the local op shop near where I work, lots of broken jewellery. With tender care, cleaning and remodelling these pieces will become a part of another 'found objects' jewellery item. It's such a thrill to create something from someones discarded treasures.

I also added another lady and flowers to my journal.

I've been adding drawings to my journal that I made from decorated papers. The flowers are one of my latest efforts. I always seem to end up drawing flowers and ladies with colourful clothes as the photos show.

I've just completed my web site and now I've decided to start a blog to show my latest artworks. I created my web site on my Mac where everything is sooo easy, just drag and drop. I'm not finding this quite so user friendly but I'll persevere.
I sell my jewellery and mosaics at a gallery in Olinda in the Dandenong Ranges. If you visit my web site you can see some of my other work. I've included photos of two brooches that I made at the weekend, they are made with some of my hand made beads, wired found objects and glass beads I hope to take them to the gallery next week.