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Tag Archives: Arts

xmas stocking sewing project


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My project over the Christmas holidays – I’m making a book!

As avid readers of my blog will know, I’m very keen on thrifty craft projects and on sharing tasty recipes on Pieday Friday. As such, I now have quite a number of articles written on these subjects and I’ve been thinking about summarising my favourite recipes and craft projects from the past couple of years.

xmas stocking sewing project

My hubby suggested writing a book, and although I scoffed at first at the idea of ME writing a book, I realised that this would be the perfect way of sharing my projects and giving something back to my readers. My hubby and I have previously used Blurb.com to publish an art book and found the free software really easy to use – it really is a case of dragging and dropping the images and text into a book layout – you really can’t go wrong! And once you’ve installed the book-making programme on your computer, you can use it again and again to make photobooks – just drop your fave photos in each time you take them for a couple of months and eventually you’ll have all your pics in one place, ready to print – this saves me a lot of time rummaging through albums to find the best ones when I want to do a print out!

steaming shepherds cottage pie recipe pieday friday cooking method

So I’ve decided that my personal ‘project’ over the Christmas holidays will be to dedicate a bit of time to creating my own Blurb cookbook or craft book – or both! At the moment there’s a special offer on making Blurb books – 20% off until end of Dec with discount code “NOEL20” so I’ll definitely be taking advantage of this! I’ll share the finished result with you when it’s done in January and it’ll be available to download as a free e-book! If you fancy having a go at making your own book or even just a photo book of your festive snaps check it out!

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yayoi-kusama-spots


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Interior Design Inspiration – Going dotty for retro spots

One of artist Fabiana Di Mascio’s pieces that I saw recently at the Never Ending Mural exhibition in Ipswich has given me inspiration for an interior design project. Her artwork consisted of a dark painted canvas covered in multi-coloured acrylic dots. Honestly, it looked absolutely beautiful, and I’d love to recreate a paler version over my whole living-room wall.

Obviously,  Damien Hirst has famously made spots ‘his thing’, selling millions of pounds -worth of dotty works of art. However, I’m not after such a uniform look to the spots on my wall – the piece of art that I was inspired by was more like free-hand spots that had been dotted on using the end of a paintbrush.

Here’s another piece of art that has inspired me by Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama. This exhibition named “Look Now, See Forever” took place at the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art until March 2012 and allowed visitors to contribute to the installation to create a room filled with dots – this immersive room was created for kids, called “World of Dots”.

Pretty cool huh? Although a little over-the-top for my living room design! I will certainly be taking inspiration from these artworks to create my very own dotty wall… watch this space!

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Anyone fancy a bit of lamb? …and other art from Nicola Ellis

I don’t own much artwork, in fact I don’t really own many pictures at all, but when I hang something on my wall it’s because I love it, and this is one of my  favourite artworks -”Anyone fancy a bit of lamb?” by Nicola Ellis.

My artist husband studied with Nicola at the University of Central Lancashire and I was lucky enough to become good friends with this amazing artist. When I graduated from my BA, my lovely hubby invested in a piece of Nicola’s art for me and chose this print of  a lamb chop for me, which has had pride of place in every living-room I’ve lived in since.

A lot of Nicola’s artwork is sculpture based, and she experiments with some pretty unusual media (including expanding foam, sieves and wool) to create happy accidents, and often prefers to simply play with her ‘ingredients’ and see what happens rather than setting out with an artwork in mind. Nicola graduated UCLan with a first class BA and has since completed a MA in Manchester and this year she exhibited her artwork in the Fafa Gallery in Helsinki. Her work is definitely something different, and well worth a look so check out her portfolio site and if you’re lucky enough to catch one of her UK exhibitions do make sure you go along, you won’t be disappointed!

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Jess dress worn by Diana Vickers

 X-Factor star Diana Vickers has been papped in one of the dresses designed by Jessica Thompson for her Graduate Fashion Week collection. The first-class fashion graduate from the University of Central Lancashire premiered her cartoon & toy inspired collection at Graduate Fashion Week 2010 and was quickly picked up by London fashionistas as the highlight of the catwalk show.

The talented student was soon after contacted by the fashion stylist for Diana Vickers and she quickly delivered the abstract print dress to be worn by the singer at the Camden Club in London.

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