On fire again

So Arts Week is over. I am shattered. We went out with a bang and the last day brought two great sales. The first was my hearts:-

I am quite relieved to see it go, as it wasn't really my style and I was beginning to feel a little awkward about the sentiment in it. But for another person, the French "Je t'aime depuis le moment ou mes yeux ont rencontre les tiens" meant something altogether better and lovelier and more appropriate. I'm not sure I can tell the beautiful story yet as it could spoil a special anniversary surprise if a certain wife reads this, but suffice it to say that I have told the story to 3 people who proceeded to well up in tears.

Then I sold my original flowery picture, the one with the amazing purple mount that my brother had done:-

Weirdly this one was bought by someone I know from school. She said that her daughter told her one of the teachers had said someone's mum was doing Arts Week. She had looked through the brochure but couldn't find a name she recognised. So she flicked through again and out of nearly 100 picked just one she fancied that she would visit - she saw the picture and then saw my name and recognised it. She loved the picture and said she'd just lost her mum and had been left some money and had thought of buying some art, keeping at the back of her mind that her mum had loved flowers and loved purple. She kept looking at it and giggling! It was also odd that some of the flowers were ones I'd seen and photographed at school back in September - she knew the ones I meant. It was meant to be.

So that's it. I have lost count whether I have sold 9 or 10 out of the 21 I took along, which I gather is pretty good going for Arts Week. But more than everything I am greatly encouraged by everything that happened. New leads, new ideas, a better idea of what sells and what people like, but more than anything a big bucket full of encouragement that I can hopefully carry around with me for a while without spilling too much over the sides.

Now on to my next felting challenge. I was worried it would feel really empty this week without Arts Week but I haven't had time to think about that yet. The Great Fire of London is beckoning again and I had promised I would go into the children's school and show them some felting. So yesterday I had around 20 5, 6 and 7 year olds making felted flames. They loved it! I wouldn't say the quality is the best and some of them might disintegrate before they get them home, but for now they look great and they had good fun getting covered in soap suds. I have set aside every afternoon this week so should get through all 85 Key Stage One children by the end of the week. I will try to take some photos to show you if I get a chance (and a moment when the camera won't get covered in soap).





The road to Clevedon Pier

So I think I have finished work on my entry for the Clevedon Pier deckchair competition. How cool to have your own design made into a deckchair! I would so love to be one of the winners and I am so amazed how many of our Arts Week visitors seem to want me to win as well. I leave it out at the exhibition so that people can see one unframed and cop a quick feel if they like. Somebody told me it should be used as the pier logo, never mind anything else, everyone who sees it wishes me well and I already have a buyer for it. I never knew I could sew a pier before but it seems I can. I wonder what else I can do that I don't know about yet. I still have to sort out a really decent high-resolution image of it to send to the pier people but here is the best I can do for the moment...



One more day of Arts Week to go tomorrow and that's it. I fear that my purpose in life will suddenly disappear and I will fall off a cliff. I have lived and breathed it for weeks now. I have adored it even if sales have not been quite as I had hoped if I am honest; I still have all the biggest ones left (maybe that could change tomorrow!) but I have sold 7 out of 21 and got a commission for another, and of course the pier is all but sold. Not bad. And it has been lovely to get such positive feedback directly from customers. Next time I must concentrate on smaller cheaper ones. I could have sold at least 10 of my small beach scenes in "windows". There could be a price threshold for impulse buys and of course the bigger ones need bigger walls. But is a mini production line of beach scenes in little white frames the place I want to be? It would be lovely to sell a biggie tomorrow but I mustn't get my hopes up...  



Success!

Well today has been a good one. Arts Week has hotted up today after a lull yesterday and I sold 4 (well alright, if I am being honest, I sold 3 and bartered one for 2 sets of earrings!). And yes today I sold two to strangers (and one of them a fellow Arts Weeker). So I am not beating myself up so much. They were not big money but it is a definite start. And a very positive day indeed. Lovely to know that people out there are reading this and appreciating and remembering it. But my high point? Today I met the great Conny Ridge. You might not have heard of her. But I have. A couple of years ago I bought some of her cards; they were prints of batiks she had made. Every time it's someone's birthday and I need an emergency card, I go to them to find one to use, and I can't bring myself to give them to anyone else. This is one of her pictures (I do hope she doesn't mind me using it):-

She did a fabulous one called "Footsteps in the sand" that I really adore, and that has quietly been a big inspiration for me. And today she came to see us! The others already know her but I didn't until today. I did get a little too gushy and felt a bit like an overexcited labrador; I hope it wasn't too obvious. She was lovely and very enthusiastic. But the best bit of all was that SHE bought some of MY cards!!!

In my spare time (!) this week I have been working hard on an entry for a competition run by Clevedon Pier. Artists have to submit an A4 photo of an artwork by email, and 24 winners will have their design printed and made into 2 deckchairs, one to be auctioned and one for the artist to keep. How cool does that sound? The end date has been extended which leads me to believe they haven't got many entries and I might have a chance. I thought one of my usual beach scenes would be great and then got persuaded to incorporate Clevedon Pier into it. A little artistic licence is needed as the beach is a little too yellow and sandy and the angle isn't quite right but I am quietly pleased with it and people who were around today for Arts Week were nicely appreciative. I told Conny about the competition and she is going to give it a go as well; wouldn't it be great if we both won? Once the ends are all sewn in I will take photos of my entry and show you. Shouldn't be long now...



First day over with...

Our first day of Arts Week over and done with! I am exhausted but pleased; we have had the loveliest comments from people, for me in every way from opinions on pricing, on frames and on the work itself. It amazes me how different people are and the different things they like. Hours went by with people focusing on one or two obvious ones and then out of the blue someone would make a comment about something I had forgotten even existed. So far my long beach scene (below) is by far the star of the show (not the meadowy ones I was expecting) and people were even gasping and saying "Look at that!". It is heartwarming. And is it really coincidence that the sea pictures (that are the ones I most love doing) are the ones that seem most popular? Does my heart show?





I sold a few cards and two of my very small long thin beach scene "windows". My only dilemma with that is this: does a sale to a friend count as a real sale? Both were to friends and it was very special to wheel out my first ever red dots but somehow I feel I cannot rest on my laurels until I make sale to a stranger. I came pretty close, I think, and I don't think it will be long, but until then I will feel ever so slightly fraudulent.

Day two tomorrow, I wonder what it will bring...

The Dairy at Netherton Wood

Well it's almost there. Arts week starts tomorrow and our venue, the Dairy at Netherton Wood, opens on Saturday. I suddenly got nerves yesterday as I was wondering where on earth all the pictures were going to go, but with a lot of help and the gladness that comes when you see a picture looking lovely in its surroundings, we got there and the room is almost ready to go:-

Pricing has been interesting and difficult. I started off making my own price list with a delicate balance of making enough money to justify a) the hours of work and b) to cover framing costs, and not charging so much that I look too arrogant for a completely unknown name, working in a medium that I know is not everyone's cup of tea. I then asked a few friends to come and do a pricing exercise without letting them see my list or know how much frames cost, or the time I'd taken on them (thank you to those who did it for your honesty, not so sure about the one who valued one picture at less than the cost of the frame, but hey it's all subjective and we are still good friends! Lucky I didn't have PMT that day...). People's ideas varied by over £100 in some instances. Some prices have changed slightly as a result. It shows that it's all in the eye of the beholder; let's hope some love affairs start in the Dairy over the next week. 

As I am sitting here typing, I am messing about with working very hard on an Arts Week playlist on my ipod. It is quite a good challenge: some background music that will drown out the silence so that potential punters feel comfortable, a good variety of things that will not alienate older people or sound too stuffy for younger ones. Classical music is good of course but not too much of the sadder stuff (it has been pointed out that some of my very favourite classical music is the stuff that always crops up in films about the Holocaust). I am considering some of Brian Eno's Music For Airports, some Spanish guitar; I have included some other things in there to make it a bit more upbeat: a couple of Buena Vista Social Club songs, Paolo Conte's 'S Wonderful, one or two things from the soundtrack to Amelie, and I am toying with a little bit of REM and Paloma Faith but these might get deleted before too long. Anything with too much of a beat is falling by the wayside. I felt duty bound to include a tongue-in-cheek "Cavatina" as anyone British of a certain age will recognise it from Tony Hart's Gallery. But I wonder if there has ever been any research done on what sort of music makes people want to get their money out and buy some art? Any suggestions are more than welcome.

If anyone out there is thinking that I am being callous by neglecting the school's Great Fire of London project and concentrating on my own fripperies, I haven't forgotten it and will be returning to Pudding Lane once Arts Week is nearing its end. I think we are now going along the lines of a couple of smaller pictures that I will make in school so that the children can see the process and help where possible. Watch this space!

Post script: 2 days later I have woken up with bizarrely a different Tony Hart tune in my head. It turns out after a bit of googling that it is The Noveltones with Left Bank Two...





Extinguished

Hmm it is not going terribly well today. I have spent a day and a half (and thirty pounds) on a disaster otherwise known as Pudding Lane. The fantastic vision I had in my head of a felted street scene in which to stage the Great Fire of London, with 85 children's felted flames, looked kind of alright with only a small but nevertheless embarrassing dose of amateurism. It was (and at the moment still is) about eight feet long and two feet tall. Quite an effort. I had worked on it in three separate stages and had to keep rolling it up to work on it as it was too huge for my kitchen table. If truth be told, the novelty had worn off after half-timbered house number three. I took some photos to show you as I was making it. Then I thought I had finished felting it and took it over to the kitchen sink to give it a rinse and that's when it happened: under its own weight (and the weight of the pints and pints of soapy water it contained) it started developing several holes and coming apart where I had been a bit mean with the wool layers (lesson: never try to cut costs by using too little wool). I tried to salvage it with a bit more rubbing and then I was pondering whether I could machine stitch it to sharpen it up and in so doing, patch up the holes. But by this point exhaustion and despair from manhandling such an unwieldy thing set in. Who was this for anyway? Would anyone at school appreciate a cobbled-together woolly oddity they had never asked for in the first place? Was it just a sad attention-seeking exercise? It had literally and metaphorically worn a bit thin. I went for a drive to try and forget it; the car radio was spouting a lot of misery about suicide and chemical weapons and after some tears I have come to the conclusion that what I have made is some interesting pieces of pre-felt that can be chopped up and used in other pictures. The sky had been a (bad) sunset but the colour blends will be handy for something in the future. Just not today. And no, before you ask, I'm not showing you the photos.

Still there has been some positivity in a way too busy week. I have had 4 of my better pieces back from the framers, the lovely Picture Framers Chelvey. Almost everything is ready to go for Arts Week now. Here is another taster or two:-

I am really chuffed with this as I always knew my roses needed a frame to make them complete. The purple frame seems to bring out both the roses and the vase even though it matches neither. 

My dear old familiar friend here is back and looking a bit smarter. For those who suspect it might be a self-portrait, I made it just before I started doing the 5:2 diet (have you heard of it? 5 days eating normally and 2 non-consecutive days of eating just 500 calories, every week) and so far I have lost a stone. Maybe one day I will felt a slightly more svelte version if I ever feel like admitting that it could be me...and if I ever feel like felting again after today's catastrophe.

On fire...

More pieces framed in readiness for North Somerset Arts Week and things are hotting up. I made a facebook page for our venue and we are getting plenty of "likes" from the people we know (we need plenty more though to really spread the word). The room itself has had a good tidy and clean this week too and we are starting to get a vision of how things will look. I have had my September picture back from my brother yesterday and I had forgotten how pleased with it I was:-

In its tiny version in the Arts Week brochure it looks a bit less than impressive but in person I think it packs a punch, especially with the purple mount and amazing frame my brother picked for it. At the other end of the scale I am also pleased with my latest sea pictures in their box frames. Here is a little glimpse of one (again excuse the photography, I think I will need to get some training in this if this blog is to ever get off the ground):-

In the meantime I seem to have landed myself a new and enormous project. I was helping out at school on Wednesday as usual and suddenly heard some words coming out of my own mouth before the brain had kicked in to shut them up. Why does that keep happening to me more than ever before? My offspring have started a topic on the Great Fire of London and I found myself suggesting that we could get three classes of children making felted flames that we could put together into a big felted scene of the fire. Originally I had a vision of a simple night scene of a street (black silhouettes of houses with a sunset sky) but as time goes on I am starting to veer towards half-timbered houses. I thought it would be useful to see what the children might be capable of, so after school last night the three of us had a practice at flames. They loved the process and the results look pretty good (of course flames are great to make because they can be any shape and if colours move about while they are being rubbed, so much the better):- 

It turns out that mine was not at all the best one, maybe you need to be seven to be extra good at felting! The only issue with the whole thing is the size it will have to be to fit 85 children's flames on; it could well need to be about 6 feet long and my biggest felting project to date was about half that. Oh and I am happy showing my two what to do but the thought of showing another 83 (under the beady eyes of trained professionals) is pretty daunting if I think about it for more than a couple of seconds at a time. Still, everyone needs a challenge sometimes and my friend Laura has been urging me to do something like this for well over a year. These things are all meant to be...





Cabin fever

So often my children force me to do things I would have never believed possible. This week being chicken pox week number two, I am again under house arrest for more time than I feel comfortable with, for the second time in three weeks. I am having fantasies about driving off into the sunset with music blaring, and of getting some fresh air and exercise (it must be bad, I don't often hanker after getting out of breath!). But enough about me, Spotty Boy has been really very unwell and has done the full range of upset, from downright whiny, to screaming out loud, to slumped in front of television for hours, to a profundity seldom seen in a crying seven-year-old in the middle of the night: "The world is so huge and I am so so so small...".

The confinement has had its bonuses: lots of tidying time, not a stitch of washing left in the dirty washing basket, ironing done and I've managed to do a little bit of felting. The aim was to do a couple of smaller cheaper items for North Somerset Arts Week that I might try to sell unframed. I went back to my favourite subject matter (maybe wishful thinking, I could do with being by the sea):-

The next day I was deliberating whether or not I should get a ruler and rotary cutter and crop them into rectangles when I realised that they have both unintentionally turned into perfect squares, if you were to trim off the frilly bits round the edges. One is 23cm square, the other 20cm. I found it out when I was playing around with an old 25cm Ikea box frame that fitted the bigger one perfectly. And actually not having a mount made the frame look like a cute little window, almost a porthole. It looked great! The old frame looked too tatty (and too Ikea) so I have ordered some new box frames, one in a deep blue for the top one, one in white for the other, and another teeny long thin white one for one more sea scene (in almost bookmark dimensions) I did a while ago. A bit of stitching on the waves and maybe beading and we will have three simple little framed pieces that I know I will be really pleased with, and that I won't have to put a big price on. I am now considering two things:

• If I could lay my hands on a cheap secondhand round porthole mirror, could I open it out, take out the mirror and pop a felted sea and sky inside instead?
• If I did another sea scene and got a deeper box frame, could I put the sea scene at the back and put a few real pebbles in the foreground, as if on the beach? Obviously it would only work when hung on a wall, and could be horribly rattly in transit (and possibly damage the frame or glazing). Would that look good or just cheesy? I have spent too long at home in the company of a sickly seven-year-old, and might just have lost the plot a tiny bit with this one.

So much for making something unframed... 

More readers!

I have noticed a strange phenomenon... Since Wednesday afternoon the number of people looking at my blog has increased noticeably. A friend pointed out that this could be because of the North Somerset Arts Week brochures starting to be distributed but I didn't believe her at first. On day 2 though, I had to start believing as there wasn't any other reason why more people would be coming to have a peek. If you are looking at this as a result of getting an Arts Week brochure, I'd like to thank you very much for your interest; I hope you find something that pleases you (most of the things I'll be exhibiting are on the earlier pages so have a look around), and if so, do please keep coming back to see more. I am honoured. It would be lovely to meet you in person during Arts Week.

I have picked up in total 2400 brochures (out of 40,000 printed in total) and passed most on to fellow artists to distribute, and between us all they should soon be going viral all over the region in libraries, shops, cafes, schools, surgeries, galleries and various other locations. They look beautiful and it is good to be so involved. I have a few more plans for things to make in preparation, and am in the process of getting my original meadowy picture back home from Norfolk to display at the exhibition. It seemed the right thing to do as it's the picture featured in the brochure.

It's my birthday today and plans were slightly scuppered by a boy waking up with chicken pox this time. It's lucky I have a tiny bit of a hangover and don't feel like doing anything very much. I did have a little time and energy to do some sewing this morning:-

I am feeling good about the definition of the trees now I've stitched round them, and the way the felting process has made them look gnarled and wintry. I just have to work out whether the ground is finished and whether I need to put something else in the background. I think I need a second opinion...



London, back to nature and Arts Week

It's been another busy few days. After nearly a week of being stuck in with chicken-pox-ridden girl and no holiday, we went stir-crazy on Good Friday and booked an apartment in London for the weekend. How different from the shopathons I used to do in London before children! Instead of trying to look cool and not catching anyone's eye on the tube, we had to talk about every little detail of our journey with two fascinated children. All the sights and then the Natural History Museum. But offering treats for children who tried lots of new foods, we managed to get a hint of the old London trips: dim sum in Chinatown, a lovely Bombay-style breakfast in Dishoom and, most enduring in my memory, after children's bedtime, takeaways from Wahaca, burritos, tacos, guacamole and salsa vibrant with flavour and texture and colour and freshness. A new Mexican cookbook and an authentic variety of different chillies and Mexican condiments requested for my birthday treat as a result.

An early but proper birthday treat today from my dear friend Laura: a huge wodge (is that the proper collective noun do you think?) of 4 different natural coloured Shetland wools for felting. We wrestled with thoughts of dragging our children out into the bitter wind to the park but after a while we realised that we were the only ones in need of something to do and we succumbed to our felting urge. The colours of the Shetland wool made me think of a book I have seen by Andrea Hunter with wonderful monochrome felted pictures almost reminiscent of charcoal drawings. I was thinking a lot about her wintry trees. Someone a while ago suggested I did trees but I wasn't sure how until today. Here is what I produced...

I am quite pleased with the dark tree but need to think about what to do with the all too sparse background. A little stitching here or there might go a long way. The Shetland wool is rather endearing too; it felts well, and has a very authentic sheepy smell. Bizarrely after cooking dinner and several hand washes, my hands were still smelling of lanolin and were dramatically well hydrated and smoother than normal. Can I find a way of felting with my face?!

North Somerset Arts Week is going great guns; brochures have been printed and I picked up 28 boxes (1120 brochures in total) this morning to circulate to the other artists; 27 more boxes tomorrow with luck. And the other day I got my cards back from Moo to sell during Arts week:-

I am really pleased with them. And the backs:-

Just a little bit daunted now - the brochures are out with my name in, no backing out now! Not so much Arts Week as Judgement Week...









Arts week preparation, and foxy projects...

Well it has been an eventful week.

One cat less than we began the week with. It was a horrible decision that I had to make at the vets and then I had less than hour to come up with the right words to tell the children about it when I picked them up from school; the fear of their upset was worse than my grief. So imagine my surprise when their response was "Oh OK, have you got anything to eat?". So now my only regret is that I didn't think to get a big handful of his fur to use in my felting. Is that too weird to mention?

The North Somerset Arts Week thing has really taken off and I have very busy meeting all the artists in the Nailsea cluster to get the proofs signed off for the brochure. I have met some wonderful and extremely interesting people, got all sorts of hints and tips and I am just beginning to grasp how helpful this will be in terms of contacts and networking. Encouragingly nobody has sniggered or frowned when they've asked about my art and I've shown them it. As a result of all the people I've met, I now have two people to talk to about framing my pictures for the arts week, a recommendation of some printable fabric sheets (more to come about these below) and a tip-off about the South West Textile Group, sounds like it might be a good group to join.

As for felting itself, I've not had time for anything but my next project has become clear. World Book Day is looming and like so many other schools, ours has decreed that children should dress up as a book character. My 7-year-old has decided that he would like to be a fox, either Fantastic Mr Fox or the fox out of  the Gruffalo and I have a vision of a headdress complete with ears and long nose. It is an ambitious project to say the least. Yesterday we went to the wonderful Spinning Weal in Clevedon and he helped me pick out the raw materials: orange, white and black wool and a piece of black thong for whiskers:-

On Thursday I saw a very good friend who also loves to felt. We had done some felting together the week before; it was Valentine's Day and something in the air, along with the vibrant colours in her wool stash, got to me and I made something quite out of character:-

I don't like it very much at the moment but we had the idea of printing some words onto fabric, cutting them out and sewing them onto it, so I was really glad to hear a recommendation of EQ Printables inkjet fabric sheets from one of my arts week contacts. They have been ordered and I will give you an update soon. But in the meantime let me just show you the amazing picture my friend Laura started while I was messing about with red and pink kitsch; I had introduced her to the wonderful world of Rosiepink and I think it had a profound effect!

North Somerset Arts Week, and baring my soul

Well this is proving to be an interesting week so far. A few months ago a friend asked me if I would like to exhibit some of my pictures at her beautiful and huge parents' house, along with another friend (three of us with three different things to offer: felting, patchwork and jewellery), during North Somerset Arts Week (in May 2013). It involved paying for copy and photos in the brochure but we all felt this would be worthwhile as it seems to be a bigger thing every year and the brochures (beautiful in themselves) are to be found in lots of outlets. It all went quiet for a while and then last week we had an email to say our local coordinator was now unable to volunteer, and to ask if anyone else had time to devote to it. Without thinking about it, I found myself replying to say I could; and as a result I am getting messages from artists to ask when they can come and check their proof in the brochure! I haven't managed to meet Georgina (the Framing Fairy) yet who will talk me through it all, but it should be an interesting journey...

I was fiddling about with this blog a couple of days ago and my little girl looked at it and started laughing. "Mummy's naked!" she giggled. And yet I had all my clothes on while I was typing! She knew about something that you don't (yet). I have been deliberating a lot over whether to display my last picture to the world (including friends, family and acquaintances who might really not want to see any more of me than they already do). You can see the head on my profile photo at the right but not the rest. Maybe if I write about it to you for a while it might clear my head about it all...

After I wrote to Fizz Gallery in Clevedon and had the distinct and unpleasant impression of having taken all my clothes off and then asking for an opinion, it got me thinking. One Saturday morning I woke up and started thinking about whether a felted nude would be possible. The felting process is an unpredictable journey. In case you don't know about it, it involves getting fluffy dyed wool and placing it into the desired design, then getting soap and warm water and very basically rubbing it like hell. There is a lot of shrinkage as it stops being fluff and joins together to become one piece of fabric. This can make shapes distort, areas get larger or smaller and nothing ever ends up exactly as you were expecting. This could be risky when a naked body is involved! But I had a vision of a slightly portly, amusing Beryl Cook style of lady, in which case distortion and unexpected bulbousnesses would add value rather than look scary. I thought I would give it a go.

And the really weird thing is that this time nothing really distorted; everything stayed where it was meant to be and the lady's proportions remained, well, ladylike. The only thing that changed was that the nipples had shifted a tiny bit upwards, but in reality isn't that something that those of us over a certain age would quite like?! So I started stitching over the top, telling myself that if I got the lines a bit wrong it would add the comedy aspect that I had envisaged. But it didn't happen. And the weirdest bit of all was that one or two of the lines I stitched seemed extremely and uncomfortably familiar to me. Then the children came home from school and asked "Mummy why have you done a naked picture of yourself?". My other half saw it and said "It is you, isn't it?". When I have shown it to a few select friends I have had to cover my face as I have unveiled it. So am I going to show it here?

Maybe I will... sorry if I put you off your lunch. This really isn't something I normally do!