skate board design. crazy rabbit

My little girl will be nine tomorow and she wanted a skateboard for her birthday.  She has never spent more than five minutes on a skateboard in her life so we didn't want to buy an expensive one.  Neither did we want to buy a cheap thing that would fall apart in a week.  So we got one off Trademe, it was a little grubby with some mould on it, but I quite liked the skateboardy decorations on it.

so I gave it a sand and a clean and the paper under the varnish sanded off and most of the varnish.  I designed some little cartoons of my daughter,  with inspiration from my big girl (angels and devils). I wanted to keep the original picture as a background.

I used vivid to outline the pictures, some cute rabbit girls, japanese clouds and crazy rabbit written at the ends, as she does a good crazy rabbit impression.

And then I painted it.  I was really pleased with how it turned out.  I have to go and varnish it now in the cold dark garage.

flowers

 Lovely cow-parsely found at casa pinka

 beautiful wild colour

 branches and balloon jars at southern living

 It's not flower arranging as such but I loved the Pre-Raphealite moment.

pretty things at my design chic

and a wild and beautiful teapot of flowers at tea for joy.  divine!

It's that time of year when flowers are popping up all over the garden and everywhere around town.  I do love it.  My garden flowers tend toward the more wild and weedy variety, forget-me-nots, pink jasmine, and some old plants that have been there for eons, wisteria, magnolia, blossom and the occasional rose.  and at a certain time of year the hydrangeas go mental.  I love having flowers in the house and so now there are little jars and op-shop vases sprinkled around.  My arranging is not good though.  I can spend quite some time trying very hard to make things look pretty, or I can give them to my husband who will plonk them in a vase and they look fabulous.  I have tried this method also, but it doesn't work for me. It's not fair!

10 minute sketch, jasmine

Jasmine time of year, hooray!  Actually there are lots of lovely smelly pretty things around at the moment.  When we walk to and from school I often find myself sniffing around trying to find the origins of some delicious perfume or other.  We have jasmine, fresias, wisteria, magnolias, mexican orange blossom and other things of what I know not the name. 

 I picked some of this Jasmine and put some in the kitchen and some in the living room, and it is so fab. 

And I couldn't resist painting it having had a remarkably un-creative day.   The sketch book was calling me.

Have a bit of a Terry Pratchett thing going on at the moment.  Have just read "The Wee Free Men" trilogy to my elder daughter and consequently myself, and am now reading "Going Postal".  Interesting things about letters and un-read words, and very clever and funny.

10 minute sketch, daughter

I had been for a run, done my stretches, eaten my porridge, spent some quality time looking at the computer, and my younger child was still asleep.  So I drew a picture of her to wake her up.  It didn't work, she slept on, but I got a picture of her, cheeks and all.  Her face is softer and sweeter than this in reality. 

10 minute sketch, fern and small leaves.

I went for a little walk in the bush and took my daughter, my sketchpad and mini watercolour box.  Nobody came along the path thank fully, I am not sure about people seeing me in the process of trying to be artistic, I might be a little embarassed to be caught in the act.

I love all the different shapes, sizes and shades of the native plants, and how they manage to place themselves in such good combinations.  I always try to remember these for my own garden.  Trouble is there are too many good plants and combinations and I get completely over-whelmed.

 these little leaved plants are so pretty

This last one was more of a 25 minute sketch. I didn't time it.

Air Graffiti

How to spend those dark spring evenings without a tele.  Camera, tripod (optional, but useful unless you have a steady hand), lights, we used cheap two dollar-shop colour torches and a bike torch.

 rather artistic by the kids.

 I tried to write Sweet Dust, rather unsucessfuly.

My husband found the idea for this from this balls of light link.  He was also much better at this than the rest of us. 

lots of pretty things

More photos of the Nelson Lakes.  There were so many things to take photos of, my family mocked me taking so many pictures of trees and not them.  I get to see them every day so they are not so interesting.  

Big things and little tiny things.

bach utensils

WE have spent three lovely relaxing lazy days and nights in a sweet litle bach in St Arnaud in the Nelson Lakes in the South island.  It rained a little but we still did a little walking in the beautiful tracks.  

IN the bach were some nice old utensils with a nice patina, and I had to photo them against the old wooden floor.

I don't know what this is.  Any ideas?

Kowhai 10 minute sketch

These Kowhai are out in the garden at the moment. They are a New Zealand native plant and there are meant to be leaves as well but I think the friendly garden possum ate them all.  

I tried to draw some today, they don't quite have the freshness of the original flowers, not a springy picture.

I found a kowhai sketch from a thousand sketches, there are lots of lovely sketches of flowers to peruse.

cloudy, rainy, windy, sunny day

sometimes you just need to get out of the house and get some fresh air and oxygen in your blood.  This usually entails dragging the children out kicking and screaming to some local area of natural beauty.  After about five minutes at said "torture area of natural beauty"  they are very happy and never want to leave.  And my husband and I are left shivering in the sand, wind etc.  

 this day was no different, the weather could not decide what to do, it was cold and windy, it was almost sunny, then it warmed up considerably and poured with rain.

 consequently there were a good range of cloud shapes, forms and colours.

circus dress design

if your interested here are some things I did to make my circus dress.

 I cut out a little stripe stencil for the straps and waistband of my pinafore dress.  And stencilled them in black and white.  I've not stencilled before so it was fun and not very exact.

 I tie-dyed, not something I have done since the 80's, when every dress I made was tie-dyed (shudder) and maybe swore I would never do it again.  It has a very "past it" tick box in my head.   But the children, not having such skeletons in their closets were quite impressed with the process.

 I stencilled hearts over carefully measured out tie-dye circles.

 I enlarged some circus type letters and cut them up to fit.

 I love how the LOVE turned out.  Can you read it?

And the finished back view.