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"Coffee Pot" £225 © Claire Leggett
The Open All Media show at the RBSA began on Thursday night.
"Willow Pattern" £225 © Claire Leggett
I was delighted that these three entries were accepted for the exhibition, which runs until December 24th.
"Alstroemeria" £395 © Claire Leggett
They have put up extra wall space this time because there was such a large quantity of great work to show. It’s well worth a look if you’re in the area. Hope you’re having a good weekend 
Here’s a little tour…
Room to have fake flowers, tins, stained glass and other still life props out to be enjoyed.
I don’t think this chair is staying as it’s needed else where but I’m going to look out for a replacement as it’s lovely to sit up there and dream.
Hope you enjoyed this picture tour, I know I’m the luckiest girl alive to have this space. Thanks for all the lovely comments this week.
The Creative Tuesday theme this time is ‘Heavenly’ and I didn’t find it hard to wonder what would be heavenly right now. We are on a decorating marathon at the moment trying to finish what we so gleefully started back in August. Just today I worked at school for five hours then came home and did another five hours of decorating – you get the picture! So right now it would be heavenly to be somewhere sunny with nothing to do but sit and drink coffee and admire the view. Hop over to Hot Toast and Jam to see what others have come up with for the theme and join in yourself if you fancy
Do you remember this little trip I made earlier in the year?
It seemed like a crazy idea to buy an AO size planchest before moving house but as we watched the removal men lumbering up three flights of stairs with it, we knew we’d made the right decision not to buy it and carry it up ourselves after the event!
Then when it got moved into the studio for the first time, there was a moment when my heart sunk and I thought ‘It’s SO huge – too huge”. It seemed to fill up the light airy space in one go.
That feeling was short-lived once I’d got unpacking and could fit everything I wanted to and more into this beautiful beast. And the top of it makes great work space too. So it was a lot of fun recently to label it up and finish it off. It’s been the biggest but best risk so far and I wouldn’t live without it now.
Thanks for all the birdbox love and comments – really appreciate hearing from you
We recently had a wallpaper sample book on loan from the Pip Studio collection. It was beautiful! Full of gorgeous papers and fabrics and quirky ideas. I will show you the book sometime soon because I photographed every page such was its inspiration! On one page were some paper birdhouses made out of the wallpapers in the collection. And this got me started on a little studio decoration project.
I’m not one for reading or writing instructions much – I prefer to follow the pictures! So I hope you can see the process clearly enough through these photo’s. I covered the inside back wall of the bird house in black paper so that once it was constructed you couldn’t see through the hole to white card. Getting the base and roof on was a bit fiddley and in hindsight I might have fixed the base as much as possible before it became three dimensional.
Like all things that you’re not ‘meant’ to be doing, it was the best fun I’ve had in ages!
It was a great way to put on show some of the lovely papers I’ve hoarded over the years and I look up and remember people who’ve wrapped presents for me in them, or holidays I’ve been on where I’ve bought paper to bring home. It’s a bit like having a wall of photo’s to keep memories alive.
I had to have these vintage birds from eBay one Christmas, which have since sat wrapped in a box waiting for a special moment that has taken 3 or 4 years to come!
It was fun to style them up once I got going, digging out long forgotten treasures.
I read recently that you should follow your instinct to create whatever is making your heart inflate, and I have to say I agree. There is certainly enough to do around here at the moment but to step off the merry-go-round and spend a few hours on a purely fun project was like a little holiday.
As you can see, after all the research and grand ideas for displaying inspirational material, I opted for keeping it large and simple! All we have here is pin board painted white (many times I must tell you :/ ) but it is the largest pinboard I’ve seen outside of the school that I work in, and it’s the size that makes it so great; loads can be put up all at once.
It’s like a visual interpretation of my brain! I can see at least four themes up there that are going on inside my head at the moment. I tend to remember things visually so it was a relief to pin it all up and not have to keep remembering them.
When we moved into this house in July we knew which room we wanted to transform first. Up on the top floor was a large, bright room with a huge skylight window, and it had been earmarked for my new studio space. My excitement drove me to strip the walls two days after we’d moved in! Four months later it has been renovated, had water installed, decorated and been used and lived in for a while. And I’d love to show it to you, beginning with this little project…
This paper bunting came about because I had ‘painting block’ following the house move and because I knew I wanted bunting up in my new studio but wanted something more authentic to me as a painter rather than a sewer (although I love to do both).
I began by doodling some plants and animals out of a favourite old book in order to get some painting going again. Then I stretched a whole sheet of brown paper onto a table top. Once it had dried taut again I cut out the triangles and also some lettering to read “Paint Drops Keep Falling”.
I glued a letter and a few painted motifs to each triangle and then coated it with a layer of PVA glue to ‘varnish’ it. Once it was all dried it wasn’t hard to peel it from the table as it hadn’t stretched tight completely. Then I cut them out and backed them with plain ‘varnished’ triangles.
I bought some bakers twine, which is lovely and soft. Then I folded over each top flap on every triangle making a pocket for the twine, and in this way strung them all together. You could make a paper banner for anything…I’d toyed with a ‘Noel’ one for Christmas. I’ll show you the rest of the display board in a few days. Have a good week
Today we are enjoying gale force winds here in England (you know how we Brits love to talk weather!) but this is quite spectacular (although not quite gale force; I may have over emphasised for dramatic effect).
The weather makes a good methaphor for me today as that is a little how I feel; buffered about from one thing to another. All good, lovely things but lots to do all at once.
I’ve been to the framers with a stack of paintings; three for the Christmas show at the Purple Gallery and another three that I’m going to enter for the upcoming RBSA show. Fingers crossed there. It’s always a risk to invest in framing paintings that may not get selected, but no risk = no gains, so I’ve gone for it.
It takes a long time to size work, price it, send submissions, fill out paperwork and choose paint chips for the framer to work from. It all needs doing but doesn’t necessarily make for great blog photos!
As we are decorating here (I think I may be saying this for a couple of years) I’ve been mooching through wallpaper books. I came across this new range by Designers Guild called Zephirine. I adore these painted flowers. The reproduction of them is amazing and I love the way the artist handled the paint and constructed the blooms. I’m not sure that I could live with the whole shebang (especially as D.G. added a photo of an ugly urn and spoilt it for me) but I love these little close-ups. It inspires me to find some dark, velvety roses to paint.
Got lots of studio decoration projects finishing up and I’m getting ready to show you how my beautiful room has become transformed.
The theme this time around is Little House. I’ve continued to play around with some different materials and a little of my recent Yorkshire trip. This is layered tissue paper which I love using because when it is coated in PVA glue it becomes transparent. I like that you can see other colours and shapes showing through. Just a little sketchbook fun! Check out all the other Little Houses here at Creative Tuesday.
Inspired by my recent trip up North, some landscapes.
Watercolour.
Mixed media and collage, in the Fauvist style.
