Summer sun

This is a quick post of garden updates, in what I am hoping was NOT the last of the Summer Sun? The day after I took these photos it rained all day, then turned decidedly cooler, with a bit of a nip in the air!! I am now reaping the rewards of all the seed sowing and growing I mentioned in my earlier posts. I have beans galore, tomatoes, peppers and carrots, which are all delicious. So I am very pleased with myself and enjoying munching them all. My little baskets have done well, particularly the one that is directly under a leak in the gutter :) Hope you like my little bit of sunshine peeps, and heres to a lovely September. fingers crossed.

I will be posting some new artwork tomorrow hopefully, showing a major project I have just completed. It involves snow again! Little woodland creatures this time. So come back soon to see my progress through this work. I shall just include in this post some work by the wonderful Christian Birmingham, his 'Snow Queen' book. I am working in pastel quite a bit lately, he works in this medium, with just the most beautiful effects. I would so love to see this artwork, I think he did have an exhibition in London. I must try and find his website and see if he may be exhibiting again? In the meantime I hope you like his wonderful work? It is such an inspiration.  See you soon.X

Snow forecast.

Ta Dah, All done and dusted with snow! Hope you like them!

I will be back soon. I think it is actually snowing where one of my followers lives! Hope things aren't too bad.

It's about to snow at my house!

Hello again Blog friends. I'm just posting a pic of my latest artworks in the making. I've been doing some snowy sunset cottages. I sometimes find these quite difficult, and if I'm honest I wasn't looking forward to doing these....But,  I have enjoyed doing these artworks, it has taken a while and I had to check out the sunset scene carefully, from some photo reference, and I'm really quite pleased with them. They are not quite finished in this photo and before I send them to the client, I will need to make it snow all over the scene! This is quite fun. So PLEASE come back and see the finished article avec Snow.....:D Yeah! ( The couple in the middle are just out for a stroll...It will snow on them too!. they are to be included in either of the artworks at a smaller size).

Escaping to the hills of Yorkshire

Since the ordeal of my last blog, we have headed out on day trips a few times, when the weather was fine. We went back to the Dales, and did a walk around Malham. There are quite a few lovely villages all around Malham itself, and we did a walk, taking these in. Started out from the village green at Airton. See above.

We walked along the river for the most part to hanlith bridge and then on to Kirkby Malham, all very picturesque. Some of the houses were so gorgeous, sigh.....
The next stage was on to Malham itself, we went through the fields, and had a pretty hairy encounter with some Llamas? in a field we crossed. One stood looking at us it was fairly close, with several others away up on a hill, I suddenly saw them all running down towards us, and I was off, shouting RUN to my husband, (he was busy map reading) it was just like that scene in Jurassic park,Dinosaurs running over the hill, I laughingly told the Son when we got back home.(he looked at me as though I was mad) I think they maybe thought we had food?? Phew, I was over the style soooo quick sharp!

Malham is lovely, but always quite busy.

We decided against visiting the cove as so many people were heading there, we had a good view of it on the way back.

Holiday Hell :(

Hello Folks, I was meant to be on holiday in the lovely Yorkshire Dales last week. We had a cottage booked, it all looked fine. The weather was even promising to be good ALL week, wow. However, things did not turn out too well. When you look at the picture of the cottage, it looks like 1 building, but it is actually a semi. There is another door to the right of the one you can see.

Not a problem really? Well we thought not. Round at the back is the parking area, we were greeted by dogs, barking fairly aggressively at us, over a low stone wall. We entered the house through the 'garden'?(not sure if anyone could call this a garden) and it was not too great. There was a smell, which was a mixture of cigarettes, dogs, and a strong air freshener!? This room was particularly bad, it was meant to be the lounge/dining area.

The rest of the house was ok, it was fairly basic, although the blurb in the description says 'luxury'. The beds were comfortable enough, so although our initial reaction had been to leave, we decided to stay.(the dog had other ideas and tried getting out at every opportunity).
We could be out of the house most of the day, touring around the Dales, and not have to spend much time there. So we had a couple of nice days really. Ribblehead viaduct, Malham cove and tarn, Hawes and Hardraw, then Arncliffe and the lovely Hebden tea rooms.

On Tuesday, when we had had a lovely late lunch at Hebden tea rooms, we went back to the house. There was some post, it was a notice from the bailiffs to say they had called to remove goods from the property, and would call again, with the police to forceably remove goods, including vehicles in the next 48hrs ??? Oh Horror of Horrors, panic stations. I rang the owners, he was quite didmissive and told us to IGNORE the notice! I then tried to contact the bailiffs as they had kindly left contact details? No joy there either. So we packed our bags and came home Tues eve. We couldn't stand the thought of going out, then returning to find things taken, it was too much to take. We were quite relieved to be home. My garden was blooming lovely in comparison!

The big black boggy was happy too! It had been exhausting for him, way too stressful!

So that was that, holiday done?? We are trying to get some money back, but so far, no response? We may need to visit them for a quiet word, we are so mad!!!
I'm hoping to post something lovely next time and I hope if you are holidaying, that you have a fabulous time, unlike us :(
Cheery bye for now X Julie.

Fairy Frenzied

Hello Bloggland,
I've had a couple of frenzied weeks of work, which has been good, but it's kept me away from blogs and writing anything new. I'm just going to show you some of the things I've been working on, hence the title 'Fairy frenzied', which shows some of my creations. I love doing these particular creations, I go off away with the fairies when I'm drawing and then painting them :D Anyway I hope you like them too! I'll be back soon. Holiday in the Yorkshire Dales coming up, so hopefull some nice photos of delicious scenery and food I intend to consume whilst there, Yum !

Busy Busy Bee

Hello there you lovely bloggy friends. It has been a busy time this past month, so sorry I haven't posted anything new for a while. My Son was 21 in the middle of the month, and although I didn't party, he certainly did. We didn't even get a sip of the champers we got him! :(

I have been busy with some new artwork for various companies and I thought you might like to take a little look at what I've been up to. I did some loose watercolour florals that were used to make a selection of beautiful gift wraps and bags,(which I can't show you. I'm hoping to show my progress from sketches to finished artwork on the latest Christmas images, but here are the everyday flowers first.

I do like working in this style, it's very experimental and you can never really judge what the outcome will be, it's great when there are lots of happy 'accidents' that look nice and wishy washy! Sketches first then artwork.

I also did some Christmas florals a while back which I still quite like, it can seem a little strange doing christmassy things at this time of year, but i'm sort of used to it now.

With the seperate loose florals, I need to get to grips with formatting them into gift wrap patterns etc, which I am hoping to do using photoshop and this new toy??!

I love the screensaver image :))) I just have to get to grips with it now? My Son has sort of commandeered it for now, he quickly gets into it.
I'm now doing some cute artwork, a Bear, these are coming back into vogue I think! I love doing cute characters.
Bye for now folks, hope you are enjoying the sunshine, I shall try and be back soon.