A Day of Preparation

Hi there!

Hope you've had a good couple of days.

I seem to have spent a lot of time walking with Betty as well as friends old and new. The snow is becoming less attractive now, brown and slushy. I very nearly fell over after dropping the girls at school this morning. I'm wholly relieved I managed to stay upright, especially as we are new to this school and one of the dad's was walking parallel to me. I would've been tres embarrassing!

I've spent a fair chunk of my time since getting home taking photographs and trying, (emphasis on the trying) to get my banner for my Etsy shop sorted. Still, I'm getting there and I certainly hope to have something on there by next week.

Here are some snaps of some of the pictures I'll be putting in my little shop window. I've been working out ways to make them look pretty and appealing. I think I prefer these snaps to the ones I took for the purpose.

I've also added a few more sections to my blog. They include three "My Inspirations" sections and some new photographs of me taken by my daughter Zoe, made especially funny by my youngest, Annie, crossing her eyes and pulling faces at me from behind her. Family life, eh!

Have a great evening. Mine will involve me twisting my husband's arm to get him to help me with aforementioned banner.

Jo x

Poppy Fields 1 and 2, inspired by a view I saw last summer near Rushall in Wiltshire & painting of a Silver Birch.

Silver Birch paintings. I noticed last Autumn that the leaves, vivid in their fading glory appeared to be floating and suspended mid-air under the branches. I tried to capture this effect in this painting. I think it looks like a Japanese garden. I love the way that sometimes, nearly always in fact, a painting becomes what it wants to be. It finds its own destination. I often embark on a painting with little idea of how it will end up, I just listen and it tells me where it wants to go. I love that.

Poppy Fields & a little painting of a hare that I did a few months ago. I rather like him. The colours are quite bright and cheery, lovely for a child's bedroom.