A Place For Everything And Everything In Its Place

The title of this post refers to my having another mega clearout. This one is even more mega than the last one. I am going through everything with a fine toothed comb and I am being quite ruthless in disposing of things I don't need or use any longer. Life is far too short to spend hours rumaging through items to find something. Hopefully I will soon have everything in its place.

I made a bit of a blog booboo the other day. I pressed publish post instead of save and I had to delete my incomplete post. What a shame you cannot put a post back into draft. It would have saved me a lot of time. I will be very careful with that in future.

This is part II of The Woman Who Planted Trees series. It has been a long time coming and I bet you cannot remember what part I looked like.

I have produced 8 new bird drawings this week. Here are 4 of them. I will probably make them into greetings cards. Hearts are my favourite icon at the moment.
The birds inspired me to do a bit of practice bird embroidery. I found it a lot harder than I expected as my machine kept doing its own thing. You can tell it is a practice piece as I didn't bother to iron out the creases...haha.

This is one of the roses in our garden from summers past when there was a touch of sun and a little moisture. Pretty isn't it?

A greetings card I bought on holiday in Cornwall a couple of years ago. I was very drawn by the beautiful colours and the delicacy of the artwork. It is by Sam Lauren Smith and she is an artist who produces a lot of her work as greetings cards and prints. Her paintings are quite mythic in subject matter with lots of trees and birds (just up my street...haha). Here is her website.

Penny Williams is a designer/maker of handmade jewellery and metal-work. She has some gorgeous quirky pieces on her website here. The majority of her humorous characters are cats, dogs and chickens and she gives them lovely little personalities all of their own.

Leopard Brooch

It's A Dog's Life Pendulum

Flying Chicken Brooch

This beautifully whimsical print is Zebra by Angela Harding. Angela is a painter/printmaker with a beautiful style and a lovely website here.

Now that the rain has abated temporarily and summer has returned, it is once again time for tea in the garden. If you are eating from the chinaware below then you are very lucky indeed. There are so many gorgeous patterns and designs on everything these days but particularly china. These items can be found among many other delights here at Artedona.

This has to be my favourite design. These butterflies are exquisite. This is Filet a Papillons by Alberto Pinto.

A stunning design by Gien called Cherry but you may find it difficult to decide where the pattern ends and the food starts.

and tasting tea from these beauties but always with the little finger extended. This design is Frivole by Bernardaud and is deliciously elegant.

My eldest brother and his partner have gone away for the weekend so we have been kitten and cat sitting. The kittens are not kittens any longer but have reached that lovely sinuously skinny and leggy stage. They are into everything though and are probably the feline equivalent of the human toddler but without the tantrums. They are spending most of their time in the garden racing to the tops of trees, poking frogs in the ponds, jumping over the fences into the neighbours gardens , in fact, all over the shop and behind the counter. Suddenly all is quiet and they are fast asleep.

Abbey just coming awake.

I had to gently dissuade Poppy from taking a pot shot at the bee at the top of this plant. Stung kitty is not pleasant.

Licketty taking a short break from his mischief making.

If you love gardens and you love art you will adore the artistic gardens of David Suff. He is a highly acclaimed and awarded artist who uses the techniques of printmaking and coloured pencil to achieve his stunning results. I didn't realise that coloured pencils could look this vibrant and detailed. The depth of colour he achieves is outstanding. I could be very happy wandering leisurely through his art gardens on a summer evening. He gives his work intriguing titles too. You can see lots more of his work on his website here. Don't forget to click on the numbers below and to enlarge each of the small images to see the entire site, including the commissioned section. It is well worth it. The three images below are David's work.

Conversation In A Shadowed Garden

Where Time And Memory Merge

Strange Boat

Yuri Poberezhny is a Russian graphic pen and ink artist of great talent. I love his style, subject matter and the incredible detail he achieves. As primarily a pen and ink artist myself I can appreciate just how long it must take him to produce the images. His work has the look of stunning Russian fairytale illustrations although it also has a very contemporary feel. He works as a teacher in junior art school and his inspirations are garnered from the children, his town and his country and memories of childhood. You can find ten pages of Yuri's illustrations on the great Artnow.ru website here and he also has a page on the Saatchi website here. A great talent.