Stone Lettering

I've always loved this quote and spent a long time last year drawing the lettering for this piece.

It kind of marks a turning point for me because for 10 years I've been drawing formal roman alphabets and consequently have become a bit obsessed with 'getting them right'. By 'right' I mean that the proportions of every letter are perfect, the space within and surrounding each letter is balanced etc.

Whilst I understand that it is essential to have strong foundations when developing a skilled craft, and the key to breaking the rules in art and craft is to know those rules inside out, it has left me with a slight nervous twitch every time I do something which bends formality a bit...will it look rubbish? Will my peers snigger at its childishness? Am I producing something new and exciting or odd and confusing? I think that this is quite common insecurity for arty, crafty bods.

I started to find that the longer I spent 'perfecting' something, the worse it starting to look!

My friend Judith helped me. She wondered why I was trying to recreate a perfect letterform. Was it because I was trying to make the letters look like they hadn't been hand drawn? Fine... if I had intended that but what was my intention? For me it is to create a beautifully formed letter, beautifully DRAWN, not typed on a computer. I realised that to me, the visual beauty in a letter created by a human hand (rather than a machine) is in its imperfections which, in turn, make that letter pleasing to the human eye.

...And so eventually, with a lot of messing about,  this lovely quote by William Morris became some thing beautiful for my house! The lettering is my variation on a roman capital. It's a bit wonky on purpose as I adjusted the letters to fit and didn't drawn any lines to follow which I think is interesting.

Finally, Judith said that I must look at the work of David Jones ...
 

A lot of his work was purchased by the Tate in the seventies. It's a beautiful and free exploration of roman lettering created, I think, with pen strokes like the 'versal' lettering used in ancient bibles and religious texts. Its imperfections are beautiful and very inspiring.

Weekend Sunshine

The sun shone all weekend and gave me a little spring in my step...boing!

It seems, as I'm getting older, that the change in seasons affects me more intensely. I do love the change from autumn into winter, relishing a crackling fire and a dark evening, as much as when spring bursts forth. However lovely it is, though, warming my toes by the fire and all that, there is a low point at the end of February when I've really have had enough. I'm so fed up with wet, dark, grey weekends and a house full of children who don't want to go outside because it's too wet or cold or....dark!

My barren garden looks quite lovely in the winter as it's full of teasles and birds but it looks even more beautiful in the summer when it burst with flowers...and nettles, brambles, ground elder etc!

Two beautiful crisp days this weekend lifted everyone in our household and reminded us that the most wonderful thing about living in the countryside is being outside and the freedom of all the outside space we have by our house.

We have two huge gardens which wrap themselves around our home, doubley enclosed with a network of ancient yew trees...like a big hug. In the winter the garden seems to turn into a huge muddy moat, a defence between our house and the car park, calling small children to muddy their lovely clean school clothes. In the summer it is like entering a secret, magical place which calls kids to climb it's trees, make dens and have and adventure. It makes adults stop, smile, relax, wander and feel a whole lot better about their own gardens (because they have a lot less weeds!)

Wandering around our sunny, winter garden, stripped back to it's bare bones, made me realise what I love about living where I do and what I'll miss when we move away....

I love the bubbled stain glass of my front door against the rough oak pillars of the porch, the washed out distressed iron water butt against the cream cotswold stone walls and the woven willow....

I love all the textures, contrasts between rough and smooth, old and new, man made and natural.

Old enamel lettering, partly rusted looks lovely and provides an interesting contrast to the plants and trees.

I love the colour of rust...I bought this piece of iron from a car boot sale when I was very heavily pregnant and then dragged it back to my car!

Roll on spring!

Geocaching Adventure

Every Sunday Mr Wild Ink and I suggest to the children that we go on a lovely, long, rambling walk. It's a great thing to do as a family because we talk, giggle, jump in a few muddy puddles and get back home feeling like we truly deserve a hot chocolate/cup of tea/biccy/DVD etc. Recently our suggestion of a Sunday ramble has been met, not with enthusiasm, but a whole load of moans and groans. The whining continues throughout the WHOLE walk making it not a thing of pleasure but a miserable chore for everyone.

I felt that our local walks needed an injection of something new and exciting and I'd read about 'geocaching' in a newspaper article a few years ago. It's basically an international treasure hunt with a huge following. All round the world 'caches' have been hidden ready and waiting to be found.

After logging on to the site and registering for free we were delighted to find that loads of caches were hidden along the footpaths near where we live. We downloaded the app on my phone and followed the GPS reading which helped to navigate us to the caches.

After a longish walk, our GPS told us that we had indeed hit the spot so the children began searching high and low. We looked under big stones, piles of sticks and then the big boy spotted this in a rotten old gate post.....

It was a 'nano' cache!!!! The children were so excited (as were the adults!!). 

We unscrewed the lid and wrote our details on the log ......then replaced it where we found it ready for the next geocacher to discover.

We marked it on the app as having found it then searched online for the next nearest cache which we found in no time. This proved to be even more exciting as it have little things to swap in it (the website has suggested you bring with you a few nic-nacs). The kids chose a badge, we left some marbles for the next intrepid explorer, logged it as found then searched for the next one...

...and found it! This was an even bigger cache and the children were quite beside themselves with excitment. The brilliant thing is that all these exciting boxes are all over the place but unless you're 'in the know' you would never be able to find them. We felt like we were part of a secret and elite club!

Loads of interesting things in this one!

We logged it and left feeling very excited and quite addicted!!

Fortified by some chewy sweets found in my ancient raincoat (no GPS required), we set off home feeling like we'd had a proper adventure and had, without a doubt, earned our hot chocolates! x

Baby, It's Cold Outside!

My car battery is getting on and, consequently, if the temperature drops below 5c my car will not start.

This is very frustrating because I need to get everyone out the house and in the car by 8.15 and when Mr Wild Ink leaves for work at 6am and there are no residents at home in our village I cannot jump start my car. Every moment of my day is accounted for so this week there is no time to get a battery until the weekend.

Also my washing machine in the shed keeps freezing up so I can't wash clothes for a week AND we've run out of logs.

Normally these things wouldn't faze me but with all we need to do with our house renovation, it's just more things to sort out...

When I sat down (at 11.30pm!!!) last night my heart was warmed by this lovely photo taken by Charlotte. I had a read through her lovely, lovely blog and felt all the stresses of my day unravel.

I then had a little nose at Jane Brocket's fantastic blog which, like all her books, is such a pleasure to read. It's what I love about blogging... reading a snippet of someone else's life. A guilty pleasure for me, like eating chocolate...but low in fat!

Decorated Dispatch

It is quite quiet on the Wild Ink webshop which I don't really mind at the mo. Things are so busy with our house renovation that I don't think I'd cope if things went manic on notonthehighstreet too. I am doing 'steady' business, though, and still get so excited that people want to buy the things I make!

I've always loved receiving something exciting through the post and believe that an envelope should always look enticing so consequently put loads of effort into the package I send off to my lovely customers.

I went to an exhibition years ago which was all decorated envelopes. They had been illustrated by an artist and sent to her daughter whilst she was studying at university and each one really was a work of art and a joy to behold. How exciting to receive something so beautiful! I can't dedicate that much time to each of my envelopes but I hope that they make the recipient smile and hint towards the delightfully handmade contents!

Crayola Pen Lettering

Life's been super busy over the last few months and it's all coming to a head with our house renovation so we feel like we're overwhelmed with 'THINGS TO DO'. There is little time to put aside for creative projects so small moments of inspiration seem all the more exciting.

The little girl LOVES colouring and will spend hours carefully staying in the lines but only ever colours with one colour. A fairy, for instance, will be have a purple dress, face, wings, hair, shoes etc. Consequently the pens run out really quickly and are no use to anyone right? Wrong!! I was messing around with the rejects before they went in the bin and created some really exciting lettering. It looks a bit like brush lettering but was much easier to produce as the pen tip is much firmer than a brush.

The brilliant thing about these Crayola pens is than if you turn them on their side you get a really thick mark but holding them upright gives you a thin line. When they run out a bit they give a fantastically distressed look. To create this lettering you need to use the pen on its side (with pressure) for the thick 'down' stroke and on it's upright point for the 'up' stroke.