New painting

The idea for this latest painting came from seeing a photo when looking through old camp photos for this post about my last painting.

The photo had a really Turner/Constable-esque sky so I thought it should be painted.

It's oil on canvas and measures 12 x 9".

Here are some of the other photos from the same time.

They were taken in 1992 by my Dad.

I wasn't there because I didn't start going to Quaker camp until I was three, the next year, but that's my sister in the bottom left photo.

My Dad helpfully labelled some of the photos so we know that it was 1992 in Swanage.

A pretty good year for camping by the looks of it.

Bright Beads

Here's a new necklace I made for fun.

I love the bright colours and the pink chain. I need more pink chain!

The blue beads came from an old necklace that was my Grandmas. Some of the beads were flaking but I picked out the good ones.

I think they look like candy...

The star of it is this bead covered bead.

I got the idea from this blog but ended up doing it slightly differently.

I started by making to rings of beads for either end and then connecting them with strings of each colour bead.

The necklace isn't exactly my style, so I might try to sell it.

But it was fun to try out a new technique.

This Week I...

...made this large bow hairclip for my Etsy shop.

People seem to really like the bow necklace I've made in the same fabric so I thought I'd make something else with it.

That fabric was such a good buy. I got it from a jumble sale for mere pennies and it's gone a long way.

I even made a pair of shorts out of it.

I also have a Folksy shop now and made my first sale through it this week!

This week I also made a Tardis pen topper into a necklace for my sister.

First a special cupcake and now a necklace. I'm such a good sister.

On Friday I had another dentist appointment in London (I now have an elastic band connecting my top braces with the bottom. Not cool). My parents came with me and we visited the Tower Bridge exhibition which is actually in the bridge.

If you love bridges (who doesn't!) I recommend it, but I suggest you wait for a sunnier day.

How was your week?

Pearl Ears

Have you noticed that decorative cat ears are now a thing?

Taylor even wears some in her 22 video.

I got the inspiration to make my own from a tutorial on Cut out and Keep.

It's pretty simple really; bead some wire into ears, thread on beads, attach to a hair band by wrapping around ribbon.

It took me ages to find both beads and ribbon that matched and were the right size.

My ear turned out a little wonky but I don't mind.

It adds character.

Cupcake for One

Last week my sister spent a long time helping me with my CV and things so to say thank you I made her this cupcake!

You know that bit in Bridesmaids where Kristen Wiig makes and decorates a single cupcake.

Well I wanted to do that, so I googled single cupcake recipes and came across a recipe for a single funfetti cupcake on Chocolate Covered Katie

There's loads of single serving cupcakes and other desserts on there. Well worth checking out.

Everything is measured in tablespoons and the key is using oil instead of egg, because it doesn't make sense to just use a bit of any egg.

When I was mixing the ingredients it was looking a bit doughy so I added more milk so get a better batter consistency. 

Then I tried making it again, following the recipe exactly and I think the cupcakes came out pretty much the same. This just meant that I could have one as well as my sister.

Putting sprinkles in a cupcake is awesome.

The taste is different to a regular cupcake, but still delicious.

I'm excited to try out some of the other recipes on the website.

This Week I...

...made some cupcakes! And had fun with different kinds of icing/decorations.

The pinks ones are strawberry flavour!

I went to a quiz with my family and we came joint 2nd.

We were pretty happy with that since my sister said we weren't even trying, cos we spent a lot of time working on this doodle masterpiece.

And on Saturday we watched the Eurovision Song Contest!

Me and my sister liked Malta's entry; the singing doctor with a song about Jeremy from I.T.
He just looks so happy!

How was your week?

New painting, not a self-portrait

This is my latest painting.

It's from a photo I took whilst camping in 2008 when Rebecca, the girl in the picture, was five.

What I like about the photo is how much she looks like me when I was that age.

In fact my sister thought I was painting myself.

Here's the original photo, and below is the closest example I could find of me looking similar, in 1993.

Yup, they call me 'two biscuits Lisa'.

(No one has ever called me that)

Beads

I bought these two beads back in 2008 from a bead shop in New Zealand, which I talked about here.

I've only just got round to doing something with them. Well, one of them.

The little black beads I used for this necklace came from a bead shop in New York.

So well travelled.

I made it so that the three strands are different lengths, but now I'm not sure if I'd prefer them all the same length.

Oh well, too late now, the ends are all glued together.

The necklace also doubles up as a pretty cool bracelet when wrapped around my wrist.

This Week I...

...went to Cambridge to check out some galleries.

In between the rain showers it was actually sunny!

My friends and I finally got round to watching Pitch Perfect after no managing it last week.

Rebel Wilson is the best thing about that movie.

And I've been delving into my big bucket of beads. More on that soon.

Spring time swap

Last month Dawn from Candidly Clyde organized a May day spring time swap.

It was in a round-robin style so we gave to different people than we received packages from.

I had Twinkle from twinklevanwinkle.com to send something to.

I thought a painting would be nice so I searched through the photos on her site for inspiration and came across this instagram photo which had the caption, 'Happy Hour | The Lemon Drop - pretend like it's Spring :)' which seemed appropriate for a springtime swap so I painted it.

I also made a little strawberry fridge magnet out of Sculpey.

I received these goodies from Franca from Oranges and Apples.

A set of notecards with Franca's own photography and a cute flower hairclip.

Lovely.

New painting - Beach feet

Here's my latest painting. It's a big'un.

I knew all that detailed sea would be a challenge so I decided to draw out the image using the grid method (which you can kinda see in this photo).

When I was doing art at school lots of people did this with their paintings, but I preferred to free hand it.

The grid was useful for drawing out the picture, but when it came to painting I didn't really use it.

At least I know not to bother next time.

The painting is a cropped version of this photos of my friend Natalie being pushed into the sea. Nice.

This Week I...

...hung out with my girls, and Lizzi (yeah, her from all the paintings) made chocolate covered fruit kebabs. Om nom nom.

We had planned to watch Pitch Perfect, but when us girls get to talking there isn't time for anything else.

I took down my exhibition at the Arts Centre on Tuesday which meant I had to rearrange my bedroom to find somewhere to put the models.

The shelves on the left are new (and now contain the models), and my computer has turns a whole 90 degrees so now I'm facing the wall not the window. It's weird y'all.

I had some correspondence with everyone's favourite home diy bloggers this week which resulted in mailing this package off to Virginia. More on that soon!

More bleach

Last summer I spray bleached this top.

I've worn it a couple of time, but  I wasn't totally convinced by the way it looked.

So to change it I thought, 'bleach it all!'

I put the shirt into a washing up bowl of water and bleach, poked at it with a stick to it was all submerged, and then left it for a few hours.

When I took it out and rinsed it, it looked like this. I thought about putting it back and actually making sure every bit got bleached, but I quite liked the pattern caused by the creases.

This is the back.

I've always got the option to change it again if I want, since I've come this far with it.