Blooming Spring in my card design!

It has been hard to turn away from making more card designs lately since there is little else going on! But Spring is always a Season that renews my spirit – I want to create – to bring something into the world that helps raise the spirits. I love to browse through historical artworks – it is where I find my inspiration – it came to my attention that I have some weird brain wiring that is called Aphantasia. It is an inability to conjure images – so I don’t see pictures in my head, not even of my loved ones. I think it is the drive behind me wanting to create pictures myself – and I rely on nature, and the images that have been created by others to create something new of my own. It also means I have a terrible recall so if I don’t recognise you on meeting again, please don’t be offended! My husband had to get used to the irritating fact that I find it difficult to recall those special shared moments – but he knows me well enough to know its not because the moment is not important! I live in the present – it is one of the advantages I think!

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/941706983

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/969487966/floral-greetings-card-with-personalised

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/977839770

.and to mix it up I have been commissioned with some lovely work to illustrate customer’s own poetry, so that has been a delight too. A challenge too – I have to dig deep to interpret the work visually – but so far my customers have been delighted so that has been a great joy!

I hope you too are looking forward to a new season of renewed hope for the future. Let’s Spring forward together !

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Making it matter

Making it matter – it’s always the little things isn’t it? and acorns encapsulate that idea with perfect clarity – because I love spending time amongst the trees. I have a majestic oak just beyond our window – and it is the same tree that my eldest son would sight from his bedroom when he lived here, and he loved that view. Somehow a tree manages to connect me with something I can’t quite name, but it is a feeling I treasure, and I think I share that with him. Autumn is so glorious and a treat I look forward to every year and I am preparing for a trip to discover the grandeur that Scotland offers at this time of year. It never fails to take the breath away. So I am going into the archives to find some of the Autumn pictures my husband has shot over the years. I really shouldn’t keep them all to myself!

Ben Nevis Road

End of Loch Leven

Faerie Pools, Glen Brittle, Isle of Skye

Buachaille Etive Moor

Please do not use the photographs without permission. Any interest in the photographs please DM me.

And before I sign off a very big thank you to Annie Mason for spending time getting to know me in a virtual interview – we live at opposite ends of the globe but share a common sensibility for plants, painting and all things lovely. If you are interested please investigate the blog

.https://www.anniespalette.com/post/meet-the-artist-anne-corr?fbclid=IwAR25ty8B31fQ93ArxuV8B_kgICSsb90KC8xAu5cotoWfJUIztVMhmVrBC8g

New Year, New range!

I have been in contemplation regarding my Etsy shop – it is getting much harder to get visibility on there right now and I continually ask myself whether the platform is still where I need to pursue my creativity. For now I have decided to give it another go and to help it out I have dreamed up a new product range to spike interest!  My card designs have been popular, so I have chosen some to translate into mounted mini art prints which can be complemented with a personalised greetings card, so you can make someone feel extra special ! Brilliant or what!!!! There are two formats available – some designs work better 5 ” x 7 ” and some better at 4″ x 6 ” – and then I have pooled a collection of botanicals to make a set of 3 available.

You can find the listings in my shop at Etsy here, Mounted prints at Etsy  isn’t technology wonderful!

So now I just want to go viral and find myself overloaded with orders! That would be good. It just might drive people to see my other work there too of handmade books.

Here are a few more pics of some of the designs I chose to sell as mounted prints. If there are any you would like me to put up as mounted prints, please let me know!

I hope your New Year, and New decade bring peace and creative endeavour. Making things is how I manage my stress dealing with the perplexities of being human in a discombobulating world. My peace in under attack at the moment , so I need that creative side to dive into.

Keeping busy

It’s been mad hot here – and I mean mad – I don’t ‘do’heat – I am a coolio character who is sent into a tailspin when knocked off a very narrow spectrum of temperature tolerance.  I have a sneaky irritating condition which is exacerbated by fluctuations in weather, so I am trying desperately to stay cool.  My newest companion is a nine year old rescue dog – Reggie, who is frustrated too by the rising temperatures because it interferes with his walking schedule. Getting Reggie is the best thing I have achieved in a long time – less a rescue by us than a rescue of me by him.  I missed walking a dog since having lost Digger, missed the casual engagement with the local dog walkers, the daily interaction that brought the outside in. But we are back – and Reggie is settling in grand, a little heartbeat at my feet.

 

My other achievements in the past few months have been to include three new product ranges into my Etsy shop – to keep up interest!  I was considering how to use my card illustration to create another income stream, and have designed three different sized notebooks which incorporate my card design and inspiring quotation. I have taken life lessons from writers, musicians and philosophers for decades, and so share some of my favourites.  A further project is now available on Amazon too – a heftier volume featuring a selection of my card designs as a book to share on the coffee table – no note pages in this one! All the books are also available via the site at Blurb, but I have a few copies at Etsy which I can send out signed.  A further project in the pipeline should be with me soon –  a smaller production featuring design and quotation- more to follow!

Fully illustrated notebook Modestly bites

Link to purchase ‘Modestly bites’ on Etsy    etsy.me/2NeDTnb

Fully illustrated notebooks with full page illustration inside

…Oh and before I forget I was delighted that one my designs is now up and running at the Urban Outfitters splendid site—-sweet!

Circle of Life by anipani

 

Link to Urban page   bit.ly/2NbhKpU

Reggie

The Handmade Maiden

Just a quick post to remind my readers (!) that creative endeavour can be life enhancing – a dancing in the dark sort of preoccupation, the moments that transcend time.  Lost in flow, all appears in balance – the world is a more comprehensible place to inhabit. In focusing on the small things, the big things seem to appear in greater perspective.  I like losing myself in my handmade projects which I sell on Etsy. Each handmade book is designed and made by me – every one is unique as I like to make something different each time , so the covers you see on the photos may differ from the book you receive. But don’t worry – I pour oodles of care into each one – and I haven’t disappointed yet! All my reviews from sales are viewable on the Etsy site and I am extremely grateful to my customers for their generosity in sending me them. It is always moving getting feedback that tells you of delight and astonishment!

Some of the designs you will find on the Etsy site are books I have wanted to research and produce myself – many of them arise from lifelong interests in nature and in poetry. Others are created in collaboration with customers who ask me to research a them and produce a book around it. The book celebrating Moths was created on behalf of a customer wanting to surprise a lepidopterist family member! I have created books that illustrated a wedding proposal – a young man had written a poem to his fiance which he asked me to create a book around. She said yes! He even sent me photos of the ring he commissioned!

I think handmade creates connection – between the commissioner, the maker and the recipient. It is as though it has imbibed love – much like houses do, we have all felt the difference between houses that have been filled with love, and those that are just places to function in. It may be strange, and somehow difficult to quantify, but it is real.

I have lots of pictures on the site at Etsy, Storefront  

There are cards that I design too, and that I can personalise if required. They are printed on a wonderful textured watercolour paper, and look great mounted and framed too.

Etsy link etsy.me/2sRAG1s

Link etsy.me/2sR7

http://etsy.me/2tlR6CK

Reminder No.2 (Series One)

Ray Bradbury about the emotional mind v the intellect.