Pen and ink doodles for Dad's birthday

This week I've taken inspiration from an incredible doodle artist, Kerby Rosanes of Sketchy Stories. I've been following his Facebook page for a while and am constantly taken aback by the new 'doodles' he creates by hand.

They seem very organic, each tiny gap filled with little creatures and doodles. He also incorporates animals and larger forms within his work.

This is my attempt at a doodle for my Dad's birthday.

 It's centred around a birthday cake which appears to have attracted a lot of little critters!

I drew everything our roughly first, then outlined it with a 0.5mm fine line pen.

I still don't think there's enough going on though! I'd like to see every little gap on the page covered up.

This is my favourite section, I'm particularly pleased with the round wooden door.

Here's another one that I did at the beginning of the week. No specific focus, I was just practising building up the detail.

This is it before the shading and details were added.

And a few more angles, I got a bit carried away with the camera!

That's all on the doodle front. This week's project is going to be another one of these, but more detailed and elaborate, just as a challenge!

Bye for now, have a great week!

I'm sharing today's post on the following blogs: Handmade Harbour, Be Different Act Normal, Tatertots and Jello, Nifty Thrifty Things and Paper Saturdays.

Handmade mosaic mirror

I was invited to take part in a blogger competition (my first ever!) by Topps Tiles who kindly sent me some small bathroom tiles and glue to make a mosaic creation.

The brief was very loose, simply to make a mosaic from the materials provided. After browsing Pinterest for some ideas I settled on making a mosaic mirror as it'll be both functional and pretty!

The tiles came in sheets like this...

 ...so I got Sam involved to break them up for me. It wasn't hard to split them, but it sped the process up a bit having him doing it!

I marked out a simple wave design on the mirror in biro and labelled which colour they were going to be so I wouldn't forget!

Then I picked a spot to start sticking the pieces down.

Slowly (very slowly!) I built it up, picking the right size and shape tiles for the gaps. It was a very hot day to be sitting out in the garden!

Finally it ended up completely covered.

Et voilà, it's finished!

I'm sharing this post on the following blogs: Seasoned Homemaker, Made to be a Momma and Savvy Southern Style.

The end of the 'World Cut'

As England's chance of success in the World Cup came abruptly to an end this week, so did my latest paper cut! I'm rather more cheerful about the latter though, as it's been on my to-do list for quite some time.

I can't deny that it was the trickiest cut I've ever done. All those teeny circles seemed like a good idea when I sketched out the design, but cutting them was a pig!

I've called it 'World Cut' but it was actually made for the transportation challenge for the Facebook group 'Papercutting Workshop'. Each little detail was sketched and cut out by hand. The paper cut design evolved as I drew it, I hadn't originally planned the night and day halves but thought it would add a bit of interest to the sky.

 The fiddliest bit by far was the bicycle, look how tiny it is next to my index finger!

The sun's rays had to be added in to support everything in the sky.

In the 'day' half, the images are positive, in the 'night' half they're negative ie. cut out as holes.

Here's the final piece with my paw to give it some scale.



I'm thinking of doing prints of this one, but as I've never had any done before, I'd like to gauge interest before I go ahead. Please email me or contact me via my Facebook page if you're interested in buying a print, if I enough people would like one, I'll look into it! 

I'm sharing today's post on the following blogs: Handmade Harbour, Be Different Act Normal, Tatertots and Jello and Paper Saturdays.

3D paper cut buildings

We've had a very busy and enjoyable weekend down in South Devon seeing family and friends, but Sunday evening has, yet again, arrived too soon. It has a horrible habit of turning up when it's least wanted!

It's not been a quiet week craft-wise either.

I'm so happy to have finally framed this paper cut. From finding the perfect shade of olive green to tracking down a suitable-size frame, it took the whole of Saturday morning but I think it was worth it.

It turns out Sainsbury's is a good place for frame shopping! The raised layered mount really suits the paper cut.

I have a to-do list in my bedside table which is where I record ideas for art and crafts which fleetingly pop into my head. I write them down because I'm bound to forget about them if I don't, and when I have some spare time, I work on one.

This idea was for a paper cut resembling knitted fabric. Although I trawled the internet for knitted folds falling in just the right way, I couldn't find anything which matched the image in my head, so I grabbed a jumper, threw it down and took my own reference photo!

It's raised in places because it's not stuck down yet. I can never make up my mind about finishing touches and once an idea's been ticked off my list I move onto the next without spending time on boring bits like mounting and framing!

Another idea is this 3D architectural paper cut, inspired by the amazing creations of by Marc Hagan-Guirey of Paper Dandy. This style of paper cut involving folding is known as 'kirigami'. My first one was small and a little rough (you can see the lines from incorrect folds in the top two small buildings), but it left me full of ideas for more.

The next one I cut was a little more ambitious, but my measuring let me down, making it a bit wonky!

Can you see the cuts extending from the tops of the buildings on the right hand side? Well, they shouldn't be there!

They look lovely with light coming from behind them. Here's a photo including my mitt for scale.

 Below is how they start life, on a flat sheet of paper with lots of measuring involved!

I'm not finished with them yet though, watch this space for more!

While at Mum and Dad's this weekend I 'borrowed' their scanner and printer to prepare my next design ready for paper cutting. I drew it out by hand on a piece of white A4 paper, scanned it in, and printed it out on dark blue. I find it easier to draw designs out first on rough paper so that any rubbings out don't damage the good quality paper. If they're A4, it's then easy to copy them onto the chosen paper for cutting.

Finally, I'll leave you to ponder what I could possibly do with these tiles and glue! As an art and craft blogger I've been invited to take part in a mosaic competition by Topps Tiles who sent these materials out to me to play with. I'll be working on my entry this week and hopefully including it in next week's blog post!

I'm linking to today's post on the following blogs: Handmade Harbour, Weekend Doings, Be Different Act Normal and Manon Popje's Illustrations.

All good things come to an end...

...so the saying goes, and holidays are no exception! We arrived home at 3am this morning after a week in beautiful, sunny Praia da Luz in Portugal. True to good old English form, it rained as we drove home.

The tan is already fading and it's back to work tomorrow; it's beginning to feel like the last week was just a lovely dream!

We stayed with friends in an incredible villa on a hill overlooking the beach at Praia da Luz. I would definitely recommend James Villas, the villa was extremely clean, service was excellent and there was always someone on hand to help (if, like us, you're silly enough to lock yourself out for example).

I painted this watercolour from the balcony. I wanted to capture the subtle colours of the terracotta rooves and cool white buildings against the backdrop of lush green trees and gorgeous blue sea.

Just to prove it did happen and it isn't just a figment of my imagination, here I am, painting.

Here's the painting and view for comparison. I tried to be accurate but used a little artistic license!

I didn't quite get round to finishing this one, a painting of the contents of my suitcase.

I have to admit there were a few more clothes than pictured here!

This little drawing contains all our memories from our holiday. I thought it might look nice with a bit of colour and framed, but I expect I'll get too caught up in new projects to finish this one!

Today I finished sketching out a paper cut which I hope to start next weekend as I need to borrow my Mum and Dad's scanner to transfer it to the cutting paper!

It'll be the most intricate one I've done yet but I'm really excited about getting started.

I designed it for the Papercutting Workshop 'transportation' challenge on Facebook. The following photos show a bit more of the detail.

The pencil gives a bit of perspective to show how teeny it is!

I'll leave you with a few more of my holiday snaps, hope you've all had a lovely week! Don't forget you can also find me on Facebook and Twitter which I update in between blogs :)

PS. Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you're interested in commissioning a paper cut; I've finished a couple for other people now and really enjoy them!

I'm sharing this post on the following blogs: Manon Popje's Illustrations, Be Different Act Normal, Handmade Harbour and Sunny Simple Life.

Paper cut Scottie dogs

By now, I am hopefully sunning myself on holiday in Portugal, so this is a scheduled post to show what I've finished this week!

I had started this Scottie dog paper cut last time I wrote. It's now finished but I'm not quite sure of the colour yet so I've not stuck it down so I can ponder what's best to do.

Hamish, apparently, was very partial to chicken and sticks, but didn't have so much of a penchant for tennis balls!

I guessed he may have liked sausages and bones too!

Hamish will be on his way to his new home in Scotland very soon.

I've also started designing another very intricate paper cut, which I'm not sure I'll even be able to cut at all! No photos yet but that'll be my next project when I get back.

See you next week!