I'm excited to share my new stock just listed in my Etsy store - some colourful blank greetings cards with my bird, wildlife and nature artworks...

My greetings cards have been very popular in recent weeks - cheerful, colourful and blank for your own message inside so suitable for every occasion - birthdays, get well soon, or just to say 'thinking of you' or 'miss you'...

I've now just a handful left of the old designs, so I decided to re-stock with some new colourful card designs to help you send love and cheer to those you can't be with...

• It’s a celebration of a year of trees - a calendar idea that allocates a tree to a month (or period of time) similar to the zodiac idea that we’re all familiar with.

• The months are actually based around lunar months of 28 days so there are 13 months and 13 corresponding trees in each year.​

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• The Celtic Tree Calendar that’s widely used is based on Robert Graves’ idea of a Celtic Tree Calendar put forward in his book ‘The White Goddess’.

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The Celtic Tree Calendar is actually a beautiful idea – focusing our attention on our different trees and appreciating their beauty as well as their natural history and the parts they’ve played in our own social and cultural story…

I love the idea and I’ve based my latest Celtic Tree Project around the 13 tree months – although I also intend including other favourite trees later (so hopefully your own favourite tree will be there before too long, as well…).

​I'll show you my Celtic Tree Calendar artworks project at the end of the post (or you can scroll down now if you can't wait!!)...

It’s certainly a wonderful idea and it’s really captured the public imagination. I think it’s a great way for us all to feel more connected with nature…

Basic colour wheel colour theory explained – keeping it simple – put the ideas into practice straight away.

Do people keep referring to the colour wheel or colour theory without explaining what it is, why it’s helpful, or what it’s got to do with you? …confusing, right?

Only until it’s explained properly! When you understand basic colour wheel ideas, it’s like you’ve been let into a special artists’ club and get to find out all the colour secrets!

I didn’t properly understand about the artist’s colour wheel until I started training in interior design… it was a big ‘a-ha’ moment and suddenly everything ‘clicked’…

That’s what I want to share with you – how basic colour wheel colour theory can improve your art!

We’ll look together at the basic colour wheel – we’ll understand what it’s for and understand some simple colour terms before going on to see how basic colour wheel colour theory can help us choose colours for our drawings and artworks.

In this blog post, we’ll cover:

• Understanding the colour wheel
• Understanding ‘warm’ and ‘cool’ colours and why they’re important
• Using the colour wheel
• How colour mixing works
• Mixing colours for drawing

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My Celtic hare art – plus I take a dive into hare meaning, myth, folklore, stories, and hare symbolism…

The hare is one of my favourite wild animals – and I’m lucky that I get to see them relatively often as they seem to love the large flat fields we have here in the east of Yorkshire.

I’ve watched them boxing in fields in March, loping across grassy stretches, hunkering down with a flick of the ear, and one summer, I was fortunate enough to regularly see a family of young leverets playing in the early mornings in a field near my home.

Mysterious, swift, wild, otherworldly… the hare is one of our most cherished countryside animals – and far more than just a big rabbit!

If you watch a hare run, it’s almost impossible to mistake her for a rabbit – a hare runs more like a dog or deer, where a rabbit simply hops.

The hare has the ​air of something fleeting – fleet of foot, but also something ephemeral – a wildness that can’t be tamed, a creature that’s not quite of this world…

So the myths, stories and folklore around the beautiful hare are in many ways perfectly understandable and only add to our intrigue with this creature of the wild as we try to entice her through our stories to become a part of our world.
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My Celtic oak art – plus oak meaning, symbolism, myth and stories…

The oak is traditionally seen as the ‘King of the Forest’ or the ‘Father of Trees’. It’s a native British tree that at one time was incredibly widespread – in the time of King Henry VIII one third of Britain was covered in oak forests.

The trees are slow growing - producing hard, valuable timber – and can live to over 700 years old, sometimes 1000 years or more.

The oak is called ‘a garden and a country’ as it provides a whole ecosystem of life from small ferns and other plants growing in its nooks and crannies to fungi, lichen and (rarely) mistletoe – as well as being home to numerous insects, birds, and even small mammals.

Acorns are said to be ‘man’s first food’ in the legends of several different cultures – and humans have used this tree for building, furniture, healing, and food, as well as the tree having symbolic, social, and cultural importance throughout the ages.

Let’s explore our relationship with the oak tree…

Exploring drawing and painting on fabric - inspired by the beautiful blendings of colours that watercolour artists create, I decided to explore the effects of ink on wet fabric....
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A small handful have become artworks in their own right, whereas others become part of a pattern, or composite artwork, combined with my drawings, and many are just a very faint background, you would hardly notice.

​This is actually a technique I use in very many of my digital artworks to create an interesting, colourful and textured background for my artwork...

Learn how to draw anything by seeking out shapes - basic drawing skills to help beginners get started drawing quickly and easily...

I want to get you started drawing by sketching nature. The objective of the drawing lesson in this blog post is to understand how to sketch out the basic shapes of your drawing so that your drawing is recognisable and accurate.

This is important because although art doesn’t have to look ‘realistic’ you do want your drawing to look recognisable (unless you choose to play with the shapes and proportions for style and effect)…

It’s important not to give your viewer the sensation that “there’s just something wrong about it” which can often be the case when we get things even subtly wrong.

My Celtic hawthorn art plus a look at hawthorn meaning, symbolism, stories, folklore and traditions...

Hawthorn, commonly known as whitethorn or may, is one of our most beautiful spring trees in the countryside, where you will often see it in hedgerows festooned with tiny, white, pungently-scented blossoms, during the month of May.

Hawthorn is a native tree to the British Isles and in Irish Brehon law, dating from early Celtic times, the hawthorn was known as a ‘peasant tree’.

Historic pollen records show hawthorn was in Britain at least as early as 6000BC.

The Gaelic name for hawthorn is ‘huath’ – which may also relate to the Anglo-Saxon word ‘haw’ which is believed to mean ‘hedge’.

Hawthorn is now widely used as a hedging plant after the 19th century General Enclosures Act, but in earlier times, the wood was used to make small personal items such as knife handles, combs and trinket boxes.

It’s a tree that grows alongside people and has become a part of our lives and traditions…

Fabric face mask sets of 4 are launching today in my Contrado store...
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• 4 different designs per set
• different sizes available (all the same size per set)
• child-size available (select 'small')
• machine-washable up to 60C, re-usable, fast-drying
• thick quilted-jersey 3-ply -OR- lightweight 'airflow' fabric
• elastic loops to fit

Here are just some of the face mask designs available in my store...
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DIY fabric face mask kits to sew at home are now available in my Spoonflower store...

The DIY face mask kit includes everything you need to make two fabric face masks at home:

• patterned fabric 
• unprinted fabric for lining 
• elastic or twill tape for securing mask behind the ears

​The finished masks are washable and re-usable.