Recent trip to Eden Project and new camera pics

I visited the Eden Project to take part in a Botanical Painting 3 day course (will post about that soon) whilst there I took some photos with my newly acquired camera, Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark II. It was an ideal place to test it out with a wealth of beautiful flowers and plants.

Beautiful Ranunculus Flower

Echeveria Succulent Plant, I love its geometry.

Climbing Sorrel (Begonia Glabra)

Just love the contrast of this lime and purple foliage

Mysore Clock Vine Flower

Another lovely Orange Ranunculus

Pink Ranunculus Flower with white Ranunculus

Close up macro Pink Ranunculus

Roul Roul birds enjoying a puddle bath

Another lovely contrast between Purple tulip and mint coloured leaves

Some fancy Tulips!

Some more lino prints

You may have seen my previous post where I shared my lino prints, well I decided to try them out again on some different paper stocks, and with two different green colours (although I'm not too sure that you can see the difference here on my scans). It was fun to use the big albion printing press instead of just rolling over the paper with a roller as I had previously done, and also this time I used oil-based inks which can give a deeper and richer colour.

Camellia and Chrysanthemum Flower Screen Prints

My latest Screenprints are of a pretty Camellia and Chrysanthemum flowers in full bloom, in the style of vintage botanical drawings. I used a bright crimson ink for the petals which contrasts with two shades of green for the stem and leaves, and a delicate grey for the darker areas. I found the original drawings in a children's annual, and had quite a job to create the colour separations for the actual screen prints. I am used to drawing and tracing things using vectors in Illustrator, but for these I had to remind myself how to use Photoshop to separate out the right bits but I got there in the end!
I hope you like the results.

Mother's day screen printed card

My latest little screen print project, a cute Mother's Day card, drawn and designed by me. Available for UK mother's day on March 6th in my Etsy shop.

Screenprints of Volkswagen T1 Split Screen Camper Van Micro Bus

A whole load of prints on the drying rack

I've gone back to screen printing lately, and decided to this quite ambitious set of T1 Split screen Volkswagen Camper Van prints. I drew the image myself, scanned in the outline and then created the separations, deciding on a main colour, silver for all the metalwork, and a black outline. I thought it would be cool to use some coloured paper as the main areas for some of the vans, so I set about cutting out the paper for the main parts. Printing on top of these collaged areas proved to be more ardous than I thought, trying to get all of the ink out of the screen on top of the raised paper was difficult! However I am really pleased with the results. I also printed pink, lime and yellow versions, and printed onto some colourful pieces of wall paper that I had from a sample book. I think my favourite is the pink chequered collage one, I think I'll put it up on my wall. The rest of the 'Vans are available to order through my Etsy shop: welaughindoorsuk.

Lino printing

Last weekend I had a go at Lino printing for the first time since I was at school, at a workshop in Frome Cheese & Grain. I had a few ideas in my head before I went but once I began to practice I realised I would have to scale down my ambitions to get finished in one day!

I decided to create a trio of Cacti and Succulents, that I could print all together or seperately. I wanted to print a terrarium shape on the top but I ran out of time, so maybe I'll do this in the future!

The material used is called soft-cut and is a bit easier to gouge out than traditional lino, however it is very easy to go wrong so if I was doing a proper print I would use proper lino I think.

New handmade Lampshades

Having made a few lampshades in the past, I decided I'd like to create some that were a little bit more original, so I have been experimenting a bit with crocheting a weaving tshirt yarn to make some unique shades. More to follow soon.

 

 

 

The following lampshade is a more traditional drum one, just thought I'd add it in to the post to show everyone. I can't remember the name of the fabric design but it is by Riley Blake Designs.