October 1st’s entry in my calendar reads: “Make Christmas cards by Hallowe’en”. There is a reason for that: although early October seems still to belong to late summer, it takes an abrupt turn half way through and Hallowe’en is definitely the gateway to winter followed by everything associated with Christmas. And I forgot Folktale Week was in November. It’s happening right now, and in spite of having had one whole month’s lead time following the prompts release I still ended up doing last minute Folktale illos this week, because I made my Christmas and birthday cards at the beginning of November instead of what my organised self told me to do in October. So, no blog this week, but I’ll be writing about my Folktales here soon, and it’s back to work on them now.
We have so many friends whose birthdays fall between November and January that it has become an annual ritual to make birthday cards as soon as the Christmas cards are done, and it is free licence to mess about with every craft material in the studio (hem, spare room) plus anything I can purloin from B's shed. This year the hot glue gun came in extremely useful.
Looking at these birthday cards laid out together drying, I thought this would make a lovely pattern. It's been a while since I did some pattern-making, so that's something to look forward to for the new year, if not sooner. Thanks for visiting, see you next week! At the weekend I started the seasonal task of making this year’s Christmas cards. I got all the cutting, trimming and white painting done on Friday and Saturday, then on Sunday it was the more enjoyable job of adding faces to the snowmen and gluing on silver snowflakes and a fluffy scarf blowing out in the wind. The process was considerably faster this year, thanks to B lending me his hot glue gun which made a huge difference. I usually dry the cards on all the upstairs radiators, and this year I found the fastest way to add details like the red noses was to arrange the cards on the radiators first, then apply the details in situ. It was good fun! I have rubber stamps on order for the greetings to go inside which should arrive tomorrow or Thursday. The idea is to finish making the cards, and then focus on work for Folktale Week. Thanks for visiting, see you next week!
Enough said! The prompts were released and I had such a load of fun making Staffordshire china cats announce them! I am very excited to start work on them, but of course they will not be shared until Folktale week begins on the 23rd of this month.
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! |
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Welcome to my illustration and patterns blog.
I illustrate under the pen-name of Binky McKee, McKee being my mother's maiden name. Binky was the name of every single cat my great-grandmother kept - allegedly about 40 of them during her 94 years of life. I changed the website address a few months ago, so some older links on previous posts are broken. If you click one of those and it takes you to a strange page, simply replace the .co.uk after the binkymckee. with weebly.com and it will work again. I hope you enjoy your visit! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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I keep lots of scrapbooks and sketchbooks where I develop ideas and design little creatures. Here's a peek inside one ...
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As you may know, I am also known as Heather Eliza Walker.
Click the image if you would like to find out more and visit my other website. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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April 2024
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This time, take a peek into my ceramic design sketchbook. I actually made some of the mugs, but I kind of prefer the drawings! The plate designs are painted on paper plates, a most liberating process.
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These watercolours are from my pattern sketchbook. I used coloured wax crayons to resist the washes of watercolour, also home-made rubber stamps dipped in bleach then printed on crêpe paper - the bleach takes out the paper dyes.
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A sketchbook I used for mark-making with unusual objects - corks, seed-heads, feathers, home-made rubber stamps, my fingers and lots of flicky things ...
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