Lemonlight

Photo Friday - Fire

The West Pier in Brighton has been in this state for years - luckily there's a back-up pier along the beach a bit if you fancy a cone of chips and a "kiss me quick" hat...

Dirty Diana

Recently I treated myself to a Diana+ camera. It's as far from state-of-the-art as you can get, which ironially gets you much artier results!

It's a film camera, not only that but it takes medium-format film (big 2"x2" square negatives). It's very plasticky and hard to control. But that's good. Light creeps in and and the lens causes untold vignetting. That's good too. You end up with photos that are dreamily-otherworldly, especially if you make a double exposure (just about see Mark's head in this one)...

It's lots of fun and the unexpected results provide surprises and happy coincidences that I would never have dreamed up myself. There's more to see over on my flickr photostream...

Film is fun!

Photo Friday - Professional

This lovely looking train driver was in Alresford (just up the road), waiting for passengers to board his steam train before driving off to Alton on the Watercress Line...

We've survived winter, now it's time to live

I am such a delicate pansy! My total exposure to the sun so far this year is just a few short minutes. Pink and ouchy. Wandering from home to work, then office to canteen and back again, then office to bus stop and on into town (oh the suburban drudgery)! Now I look like the photo of me you can see on the right - freckled hen. That's ok though, freckles mean summer. We can breathe out, relax, it's here now. Today I saw the blue sky by raising my head and squiniting at the sun, rather than by looking down and seeing grey stormclouds reflected in the oily puddles.

Summer breeze, makes me feel fine...

...blowing through the jasmine in my mind.

OK, so it's not jasmine, it's choisya, but it smells nice and it makes me feel summery all the same!

Oxford

Today was a good day. The sun beat down intensly, but it's May so it was balmily pleasant rather than opressive or stifling. Best of all though, I had the good luck (forsight) to not be at work today, so we went on a day trip to Oxford - it's only an hour away but it's ages since we've been there...

Bank Holiday

Up at the crack of mid-morning and came downstairs to be greeted by the most wonderful scent...

Twenty-four hours previously they had been growing quietly away in the lovely garden of my lovely, lovely mother-in-law, but now they are mine!

Out in the garden, tomatoes are lined up, ready for inspection. All looking very good...

Lupins, looking good, well done...

Hang on a minute though, who's that in the marjoram? You look like one of those naughty, alien ladybirds that we're supposed to ethnically cleanse from our shores. You're so pretty though, and you're eating all those nasty aphids, I think I will harbour your illegal little personage and keep my karma feeling good...

It is Sunday

Southampton (the football team), by the skin of their teeth have avoided relegation. I am only thankful that I am not too huge a fan of any sport, as I don't think I could cope with that much stress and emotion in a public arena (literally).

Today we partied, family style, to celebrate Mark's Mum and Dad's 60th wedding anniversay! I sliced the side of my finger off with a scalpel making those cards, but I guess I am not the first person to suffer for their art.

Am itching to get out and take more photos - have resorted to self-portraiture as a medium for the time being.

Photo Friday - My Little Secret

...is that I have a garden gnome! I am a gnome owner. He's had a bit of a rough life, but now has a happy life under the bay tree in the back garden. I have other secrets, of course, but if I told you those they wouldn't be secrets any more!

Exposure

I am feeling well chuffed this Friday as my little pack of thank you cards has made it onto the front page of Etsy (see below - centre top)! I'm dying to create some more designs (and print them, photograph them, package them, etc) but I seem to have about a million irons in a million fires at the moment. Thank goodness for some Bank Holiday weekends coming up soon!

Boo!

Hello again, remember me? I used to write struff on this blog more than once in a blue-moon! Anyway, here I am, back again.

I've been fiddling with the style sheets of this blog again. Thing is, when I'm not restrained by a client brief or Hiltler-style corporate guidelines, I'm find the blank canvas a bit intimidating! As a result, don't be surprised if this look a bit different every time you visit. I can't make my mind up about anything.

Here's what's been happening in my oh so exciting life...

• The bedroom is being revamed and will include polyester-free, proper grown-up bedding. 300 thread-count and gorgeous. Not that I need any enouragement to take to or leave my bed.
• I am beginning to realise that I can only 'spring-clean' a room by emptying everything out into another room. This means that at any one time the house is a mixture of organised neatness and out-of-control messiness. What I think what I need is a skip to 'organise' stuff into. Or more rooms.
• I have fallen in love with my slow-cooker - it's fab coming home to a house that smells of lovely dinner - all ready to serve up and eat. (Pea and Ham soup tonight).
• Krispy Kreme Doughnuts seems to be taking over the UK, well, Southampton anyhow. I am amazed they're proving so popular, not because they aren't delish, but because they cost so much! £1.35 for a jam doughnut - thats US$2.70. For ONE. Actually that's probably a good thing, I don't see them represented very prominently on my healthy-food pyramid.
• I now have not one, but two Etsy shops! The first is selling photographs - it's unimaginatively called angiemuldowney (didn't know I was going to have my own little shop there one day when I initially registered). My second shop is called PaperPaper and I am utilising my background in graphic design to illustrate prints and cards. It feels great to be creative again, and has helped me cope with my 'day job' which is becoming increasingly non-creative.

Photo Friday - Fragile

Photo Friday - Far From Home

A monkey in a zoo, far from home (unless Cornwall has monkeys now)?

Belated Easter Wishes!

I hope you all had a happy Easter and weren't troubled by too much snow. We kept the chocolate intake to a minimum (which is still quite a lot) concentrating instead on the presentation - hence the All-Bran* chocolate nests with M&S chocolate eggs. Yummy!

*All-Bran is disgusting without a liberal coating of Cadbury's chocolate buttons. Did you know it's not actually ALL bran? It contains as much sugar and salt as a bowl of Frosties or Coco Pops! I know what I'll be having for breakfast in the future.

Photo Friday - Found Objects

Out and about

I'm having this weekend off work and enjoying doing all the things I think I should be doing when I'm in the office, such as cooking wholseome lovely meals in the slow cooker whilst we go off for adventures in the New Forest...

...and catching up with some of its gorgeous residents...

And today we took advantage of some reasonable weather. Well, 9°C and partly cloudy (I'll take what I can get) and went to the seaside! Nice to feel the sand between my woolly-socked toes...

I have the adventure of cleaning out the kitchen cupboards and sorting out the loft tomorrow. Possibly less photography.   

Photo Friday - The Good Life

Can't wait for the warmth and the heat and the gardening to come back again. Just round the corner though, so Mark needs to get that rake dusted off and ready to go!

Photo Friday - Surreal

Taken on Brighton beach back in the summer. Imagine if the ice cream was real. Just imagine...

Two sorts of plot

This is my reading material at the moment - post-war Paris, rife with murder and mystery on the one hand, then advice about my broccoli and onions on the other...

<

Snow blossom

Is this hawthorn blossom? I'm not sure, I think so, but whatever it is it's very pretty and there is lots of it about at the moment!

I took theses photos on a long family country walk on Sunday (Mother's Day), and I think this will be the closest thing we get to snow this year here on the south coast (a very agreeable alternative though)...

Hold the front page!

I was idly looking at how many people had viewed the items in my little shop and was pleased to see the numbers were a lttle highter than I was expecting. When I came to this one though I saw it had hundreds of hits, and then I saw the reason why - I was on the front page of etsy! Woohoo :)

Photo Friday - Fuzzy

I totally love anything that's fuzzy - in fact I can't think of anything nasty that's fuzzy.

A particular favourite is fuzzy pussy-willow - like stems of bunny noses that are just begging to be stroked...

Phoney

I've been having great fun getting back into doing illustrations again. That makes me sound very accomplished and comfortable with that description of my work, when truth be said what I do is very simplistic.

My latest creations are these little phone cards, to send to people who you feel like chatting with - or to people who love phones! As ever, for sale in my little etsy shop.

Photo Friday - Art

And naked art, at that!

Cute little bean pots

I love my new little Le Creuset bean pots! They were half the price of all the other coloured ones on Amazon, so I got all four for about £17. They'll be lovely with some thick beef stew and a big herby dumpling sat on top, steaming away under that cute little lid...

Lino printing tutorial for absolute beginners (like me)

Fancy doing some lino printing (sometimes called block printing)? I had a go and it was great fun.

These are things you will definitely need...

• lino board
• lino cutting handle and blades
• paper or card (plus some 'scrap' for testing on)
• printing ink (or oil paints and 'printing medium')
• ink roller
• kitchen paper
• vegetable oil (or other cleaning medium, depending on what ink you're using)
• glass or plastic sheet
• rolling pin
• old newspapers
• [nb - I have just discovered there's such a thing as 'extra soft lino' - I've not tried it, but it sounds like a lifesaver]

Recommended extra things you'll need...

• even more kitchen paper
• oven
• bread board
• disposable plastic gloves
• first aid kit

First you need to think of the design you'd like to do - it can 'negative' so you carve out a line drawing and the ink fills the background (easier), or it can be 'positive', so you carve away all the background and the lines of the image are what print (harder).

Obviously I chose to dive right in with the harder approach and began to carve away at the background with a big blade. OH MY GOD it's hard work, and so hard to control! A little googling later I found out that this process becames about seven hundred times easier if you warm the lino board in a low oven for a couple of mins first (and you'll need to keep doing this through the process - oh and don't use the microwave!). Phew, that's better. It's still quite tricky though, so be patient with it, especially with the curves and any fine detail. Oh, and don't forget, you are carving a mirror image of what will actually print - very important if your design includes any lettering!!

Oh, and depending on how fond you are of having a full compliment of fingers and thumbs, carve AWAY from you. Probably best to rest on a bread board or such like too.

Depending on how deep you carve will depend on whether you get those little carving lines showing in the background when you print - sometimes this can be a good thing and adds to the look of the design. Otherwise, dig deeper!

Eventually you'll be happy with your work (or impatient to get the printing started), so now it's time to set up for the messy stuff!

A kitchen worktop is ideal for this, covered in lots of old newspaper. Get a sheet of glass or plastic - something that's very smooth and non-absorbant and that you don't want to use for food preparation ever again.

Squirt your printing ink (in my case one part oil paint to one and a half parts of 'printing medium'). Blend if necessary and spead around with a palette knife. Now, get your roller, roll it slowly to cover with a layer of ink, then speed up so you're going back and forth with it quite quickly (and at different angles too) this will give you a thin and even coating, which is great!

Roll your ink onto your lino, making sure all the raised areas are covered (especially round the edges). Now take some paper or card (you'll want to do some test ones first) and lay it carefully in place. I used a rolling pin to roll over the paper - you'll need to do this really quite firmly and in different directions. If you want to get professional about this, you can invest in the proper tool for this, which is called a baren.

Peel the paper away from a corner (have a peep before you peel it all away - at this stage you can always lay it back down and have another roll). Ta da! You have made your first print! You will need to ink the roller and lino for every print you do, but you'll soon get the knack and be knocking them out at quite a rate after the first couple.

Cleaning up is a pain in the arse and the worst bit of this whole process. If you didn't wear gloves up until this point, you'll want to put some on now - ideally disposable ones. Kitchen paper is the best thing for this job, along with a cleaning solvent (in the case of oil paint and printing medium you can use vegetable oil).

It's worth spending time cleaning your lino carefully as you'll be able to use this again and again.

Depending on the thickness and type of ink you've used you'll need to allow at least 12 hours for drying - possibly more than this.

If you have a go at this I'd love to see your finished results!

Blueberry Muffins

If you ever need a killer recipe for blueberry muffins I can totally recommend this one at allrecipes.com. I would suggest not converting the recipe to metric if this is what you normally work in - when I've done that before the results have been decidedly wonky. I dusted off my old 'cup' measurers and they came out dreamily good...

Photo Friday - Infinity

Flowers

...not because it's valentine's day, but because it feels like spring is springing up all around us

Prints charming

My recent creative urges (must be this spring-like weather) have led me to dig out my old lino-cutting stuff. The knives look like they might still be up to the job, but the actual lino tiles themselves pretty much crumbled to dust in my hands - that's how long it's been since I printed anything! And I was so disappointed when I went to Hobbycraft to replenish supplies - in the whole huge warehouse of craft-related paraphenalia, the only item they could supply me with was a roller! Oh, and paper. Hopeless! Thank goodness for the internet.

My most favouritest thing of all when I was at art college (apart from the cider drinking and the discount at Top Shop) was screen printing, but it's something I've never attempted at home... until now! Well, no, not NOW now, but soon. Probably.

Maybe I can satisfy my urges in the meantime with a spot of potato printing until my supplies arrive.

Oh, and I'm very excited about this book that's due out at the end of the month...

Cozy tea

Did I ever show you my tea cozy? That's not a euphanism by the way, I really did make one. I had the book Bend-the-rules Sewing by Amy Karol for Christmas (which I love) and I used the instructions in there, and now my tea is always piping hot. Hooray!