Making and painting...

I've been busy the last couple of days.  Making and painting.  I've been fighting a headache on and off since Monday morning, so I gave up on housework and when it subsided in the afternoons I decided to do something fun rather than cleaning.  And I have a good reason to get moving on the creative front, I've committed to this Art Expo in a month, so need to get some smaller works done for my booth/stall.  I've never had an art stall before, so this will be a learning experience.  I'm keeping expectations fairly low, I hope I can cover my costs and learn some useful things about running a stall, and anything on top of that will be icing on the cake.

I've taken the smallest booth available, so have room for 3 large paintings, a few smaller works, some wood hangers, and I think I'll have a small selection of prints for sale, though I haven't decided which ones yet.

If anyone has any brilliant advice on what to take, what not to take, even what to wear (!) please don't hesitate to leave a comment!

Anyway, here's what I've been working on.

Two more olive wood hangers.  Beloved has just cut me a whole STACK of them, so I will be busy!

Having fun with teabags!  An ink sketch of a leaf skeleton, on an opened tea bag (post cuppa!), hand sewn to an old book page.  Biggest munchkin found the tattered book with pages falling out and brought it home because she knows mummy likes stuff like that (though she's told me in no uncertain terms that she found it so it's HER book, but I can have a few pages!)  It's in Russian, but that's all I can tell you, it could be a book of hymns or the Communist Manifesto, I wouldn't have a clue!  All neatly mounted and packaged in cello...gosh, I'm so organised!

And acrylic painting of an ornamental pear leaf on tea bag paper, with metal (gold) leaf, hand sewn to an old dictionary page.  This one is my favourite so far, it has a little bit of magic in it, because I didn't notice the words on the right until I was almost finished!  So it now has a little poem for a name.

The red 

season

harvest

the full

autumnal heart

Another pear leaf.  No mount yet (ooh, I must remember to sign it!)

A closer view

And finally, a couple of things that are not for the stall.  Do you remember this?  I think it's finished now, though I still don't know what it is or what to use it for!

And this is a choker for moi!  Well, unless someone offers me oodles of dosh for it!

We have actually had rain, REAL rain, but it's far too little.  And maximum temperatures for the next week are all around the 20ºC, so not very wintery.  Everything in my garden is topsy turvy, all my bulbs are coming up, my apricot tree hasn't lost it's leaves yet (they're just starting to yellow a little now), meanwhile my almond tree has lost its leaves, started flowering, and now has all its new 'spring' leaves!  Mad!