Reflecting Winter and Spring

This small Moleskine journal is the third of my designs that I have hand screenprinted onto notebooks in the studio:

This original design, drawn by me, was inspired by the ferns and icicles of a small frozen waterfall in the Welsh village of Llanarmon DC:

In the spring of 2009 I was asked to participate in an outside exhibition in the village and therefore screenprinted my Reflecting Winter and Spring design onto aluminium:

It seemed quite natural to play around with the scale of my design and first I printed it onto cards and then onto the Moleskine. The journal is quite handy, easy to carry and is perfect for note taking and making lists in - it can be found in my etsy shop here

Celia Birtwell's Artisan Printers

This video shows some amazing printing by one of England's last remaining Artisan Printers for the textile designer Celia Birtwell. I would love to spend some time in there watching them print:

Jervaulx Abbey, North Yorkshire

A few weeks ago we spent a week in North Yorkshire and were truly blessed with good weather. On one of our excursions out we visited Jervaulx Abbey which is a 12th Century Cistercian abbey and has to be one of the most enchanting places I have visited. The abbey is privately owned and the grounds are immaculately kept (whilst losing non of its charm) and is wonderful to walk through with so many lovely vistas and walkways:

Beautiful flora and fauna everywhere:





There were so many beautiful views and these are just a handful of my photos here. It is such a peaceful place, I can't wait to go back again sometime:





If you do however become tired of this tranquil setting you can always relocate to the abbey tea rooms or the ice cream parlour next door at High Jervaulx Farm.

Florentine Lilies - hand screenprinted Moleskine notebook

I have started adding these screen printed Moleskine journals to the range of goods that I print by hand using water based inks in the studio:


I previously printed my Florentine Lilies design onto cards using white cardstock. However, I am really pleased with how different my design looks when printed onto the brown craft paper of the Moleskine journal. These are available in my Etsy shop here.

Inky.Prints.Two Treasury - 'Bridge of Sighs, Venice' card

The lovely Hannah from Hanmade has featured my 'Bridge of Sighs, Venice' card in her Etsy Treasury Inky.Prints.Two. I love all the colours that she has used in the Treasury and think that the contrasts between the blues and the oranges and reds are great. Thank you Hannah :-)

Indian Block Printing Video

Found this amazing Indian block printing video via Cozy Homemaking blog. I really had not thought about all the skillful carving that goes into making these printing blocks.

They make the printing look so easy but it must take lots of practice to get it right:

Pink Lilies in the garden

These gorgeous pink lilies that my Mum bought me a few years ago flower every year and are a perfect colour match for my limited edition 'Florentine Lilies' screen print. I will be making this print available in my Etsy and Folksy shops soon, in the meantime you can buy my cards with the same 'Florentine Lilies' design hand screen printed here and here.

'Flax A Natural Beauty' Etsy Treasury

My Ditherington Flax Mill print has been featured in this lovely natural Etsy treasury curated by Bloomsburygroup please click here for more details.

Snowdrop Season

The past few weeks the snowdrops have been slowly coming out here in Shropshire. They are a little late this year because of the cold weather earlier in the year. Snowdrops are one of the most beautiful flowers; the flower heads seem to defy logic as they appear too heavy for the stalk that holds them.

I have hand screenprinted printed my original 'Snowdrops' design onto this Moleskine notebook which can be seen above and it is now for sale in my Etsy shop here.

I have been out and about in Shropshire the last few weeks eagerly awaiting the snowdrops so I can photo them. I was lucky enough to take these few photos in my garden:

For some reason I felt reluctant to cut some of these lovely flowers and bring them inside, although I wanted to use them to photograph closer and also with my printed notebook. I only cut a couple and was amazed at how they started to open when I brought them inside. They revealed little striped 'hearts':

As I was taking photographs in my garden my neighbour's son-in-law came to ask what I was doing and then offered some of his mother-in-laws snowdrops for me to photograph too. These are different again and he told me about some with pink in the middle so I will have to look into these. (I can see a new hobby starting up in searching out different snowdrop varieties!). Here are the ones from their garden:

On Tuesday I was lucky enough to be able to photograph some snowdrops at Wightwick Manor where I am involved in an art project - will post more on this later. There were a few near the bases of trees:

More snowdrops at Wightwick Manor, I am also loving the long shadows at this time of the year:

New printing projects!

I have been meaning to print my Florentine Lilies design onto fabric ever since I took this textile screenprinting course last year. My idea was to print it onto fabric and then make it up into an eco- friendly shopping bag. However, for some reason I have been procrastinating on this little project - maybe because I wasn't sure how the printing onto fabric would turn out, also other projects took precedent. Last week I finally took the plunge and I am really pleased with how it looks above.
Another project that I have been wanting to explore for a while is printing my designs onto notebooks. Again I went ahead last week and printed my Snowdrop design onto this small notebook:

I think the colours work well on the brown background (which I have explored before here) and am going to print up more little notebooks and wrapping paper with some designs that I already have and also some new ones that are in the pipeline.

Florentine Lilies on Etsy Treasury

After waking up to quite a dull cloudy day this morning I received an email from Stacey of Lucky Urchin Vintage to say that she had included my Florentine Lilies card on her Etsy Treasury. This treasury is titled 'Spring Time Florals UK' and looking at this lovely selection I can believe that after all this cold weather we have been having in the UK, Spring will be on its way soon!

You can find my Florentine Lilies card and others for sale if you visit my Etsy shop here.