Category Archives: Original Designs

These are pieces of art that are entirely from my own creativity.

College Week 6 – a complete basket case

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I’ve just finished work on my jewellery project! And I have a very big blister on my thumb to prove how much work I did on it too… The brief was to make a wire basket using natural form as our reference. The wire had to be designed around a repeating motif and for bonus marks we could attach pierced and hammered metal pieces. And here it is:

I think it has taken around 20 hours to make, with the binding of the inch and a bit square motifs taking about half of that. Each of the five metal sections took around 40 minutes to pierce using a jeweller’s saw, and the blister resulted from hand sanding them this morning. And it all started from my drawing of a hollyhock seed head in Week 1.

Unique Giveaway #1 – round 4

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Dear readers –

I have been spectacularly unsuccessful in trying to give away this fabulous handmade book of my tangle patterns in honour of my 10,000th blog view! The idea was that a subscriber would win it, but I have now emailed three of them using the addresses submitted during subscription, and none have replied. Not sure if that’s their spam software playing up or what.

So, just a reminder of what’s available:

The cover is hand-tangled with my own designs [it’s taken ages!] and will be personalised with the initial letter of the winner’s choosing before being sealed with a gloss varnish finish. It’s a hand-crafted book [which took ages too!], with hard cover and sewn and glued spine.

Inside are colour copies of all my tangle patterns from January to June 2011, and the eight tags contain hand-drawn tangles, with tips on shading, creating patterns and a unique and unpublished, exclusive tangle pattern.

This time, please reply to this post, stating why you would like to win this fabulous prize. I’ll pick the most ‘deserving’ and post the winner on 31st August, so you have plenty of time. Hopefully this way I can actually give it away!

Summer assignment – ‘about me’ postcard

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There’s just a week to go before I finally start my extended diploma in art and design course at Leicester College, and I must admit looking forward to it. We were set a summer assignment to create an A5 size postcard, with the front being a collage describing ourselves, and the reverse carrying the college address and a description of what we’d been doing over the summer.

I started work on it last week, and yesterday I finished my submission:

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25,000 blog views – and unique giveaway #2

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Ok, so I’m guessing it will be at some point while I’m asleep tonight, but I couldn’t wait a moment longer before sharing my celebratory prize with you! In recognition of a fantastic 25,000 views in less than six months, I have created my largest zentangle-inspired artwork (ZIA) to date. And it’s a giveaway!

Entitled ’71’, this A3-sized pen and pencil ZIA contains all seventy one tangle patterns I’ve published on this blog. This unique prize can be yours!

To have a chance of winning this one-of-a-kind prize, all you need to do is to create your own ZIA incorporating only patterns from my blog and share it with me by posting a link to your blog entry (preferred) or emailing a scan/photo of your creation via the link at the top of the sidebar (if you don’t have a blog). I don’t mind how many of my patterns you use, nor what size of ZIA you create. I hope to be able to create a gallery on my blog of all the entries to this challenge, celebrating your artistic exuberance. And to be fair to all-comers, I’ll select the winner by random draw of all entries. Entries close at 23:59 GMT on Saturday 10th September.

And thank you all for your interest, encouragement and for following my blog for the last five months 🙂

Mini Travel Journal – Maspalomas 2011

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As promised, here are pics of my handmade travel journal. I decided that I would take an art journal with me on holiday and I’d keep to a plan of drawing/writing daily – after all, I’d have the time! Well, that didn’t quite work out between sun and sangria and nights of cards and local honey rum, but I have finished it:

I’ll be showing the group at the Craft Club on Saturday how to make the journal, and there will probably be a tutorial coming on here later.

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Sharpie versatility – customising inflatables

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So, what do you do when all the rings and inflatable dolphins are the same at the poolside? You ask your artistic uncle to customise yours for you. And so it was I was thankful for taking my collection of Sharpies with me on holiday! I created a dragon for Josh and tattooed eyebrows for Dan’s dolphin. I’m pleased to say that both stood up pretty well in use, and the black Sharpie was far more resilient than the colours. It helped that the surface was grainy on the ring and on the white printed areas of the dolphin.

A little bit of history…

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Whilst sorting out the dining room, I had to go under the floorboards and found sections of the Leicester Mail and a Daily Express from Wednesday, 5th May 1937. The country was gearing up for the coronation of King Edward VIII a week later, and it was the day before the Hindenburg disaster. Fascinating reading! And whilst changing the radiator, I scraped off several historical layers of wallpaper. I’ve incorporated both, and the new wallpaper, into three art pieces to adorn the newly painted walls:

  

Each canvas panel is 12×12 inches, with the centre area painted in the room colour (Dulux Barley White) and edged with quarter inch brass tape from Ranger. The ageing was done with brown Neocolor II wax soluble crayon. Each section of newspaper was scanned and stuck down with matte multi-medium. The same was done with the wallpaper samples. The flowers are cut from the new wallpaper, Sanderson’s ‘Sweet Bay’ (Pattern No. DPFWSW102).

Unique Giveaway #2 – spoiler alert ;)

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Dear readers,

I’m about to reach 25,000 views of my blog

In honour of the phenomenal hit rate to my blog, I’m creating another unique zentangle-inspired artwork to give away. In less than six months since I started, I’m about to reach 25,000 views of my blog, with a current record of 624 views in a single day! Now in the grand scheme of things that’s not a lot of hits compared to say, Google, but it’s exciting to me!

So… the spoiler alert? I’m going to create my biggest tangle to date, incorporating all of my tangle patterns – and then I’m going to give it away. Watch out for the pictures, and I’ll launch the give away proper when the blog counter reaches 25,000 🙂

And hopefully by then I’ll have got the hang of actually handing on the give away!