Etsy Treasury East

If you're familiar with Etsy you will have come across the Treasury,an ever-changing member-curated shopping gallery. Here you get to choose your favourite items on Etsy and colour coordinate a page of these goodies for display - Etsy's front page is often chosen from these lists. For those of you who've tried making these fun galleries you'll also know the frustrations of nabbing a spot to publish your finds - they're hard to come by - I understand that some people even set their alarm clocks just to be sure of being there at the right time! Well, you can now get all the beauty sleep you need, as all that rising with the lark or burning the midnight oil to get a slot, should be a thing of the past with the new all improved Treasury EAST! I checked it out and made a page with a birdie theme featuring some of my favourite items. Click the screenshot (or here), to get a better look at the goodies and investigate the shops.

Illustration Friday - Ahead

Here's a little collage and watercolour postcard I prepared a few weeks ago for the Global Greetings group I joined. I thought it would fit this week's Illustration Friday theme of 'Ahead'! If you scroll down you will see that I have put together a presentation of all 10 cards I made for this project, plus a few others too. If you like, you can click on 'notes' (bottom right of the slide show)for a description of the card and/or click on 'link' to view a larger image. Hope you enjoy browsing!

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Last Travelling Book

It's been a while since I posted something for the ArtySoulSisters Travelling Book project. This is a page I've made for Laurel's book which I believe is the last to be wending its way around the world. Laurel's theme is Journies and I've taken the Robert Frost poem, 'The Road Not Taken' as my inspiration for this piece. The painting is watercolour on gessoed mountboard - my current favourite technique!

Positive /negative

'Keep your face to sun and you'll never see the shadows' - Helen Keller

Thankyou to everyone who has left me a comment on my previous 'Missing' post - I really appreciated hearing from you all and I'm well on the road to recovery now - must be all those positive healing thoughts beamed my way!


The painting above is a watercolour on gessoed board that I made a couple of weeks ago. I painted this building layers with negative painting. Negative painting is a process of finding shapes by painting the surrounding area. I like the quotation by Helen Keller - it helps me stay positive.



Beautiful Charlie - sadly still at large - that's negative. However, I like to think he's found himself some new family or perhaps a vast supply of juicy mice somewhere. I'm thinking positive !



Poor disgruntled Bob - definitely feeling negative! His eye hasn't completely healed after his operation. One more stitch left, so hopefully it won't be long now before he's back to normal. He's thoroughly fed up with his plastic plant pot on his head and driving us mad with his constant yowling. He needs to get outside - that'll be a positive improvement for everybody concerned!





Talking of outside - there was a terrific storm last Friday afternoon. These are a couple of photos I took from the sitting room looking out onto the garden. The heavens opened and in just a few quick minutes so much rain fell that the storm drains couldn't cope, the swimming pool almost overflowed and the water rose several inches, threatening to come into the house. Anxious moments!! Thankfully, the storm abated before the flood advanced further - we kept our feet dry but could have used an umbrella inside as the rain sneaked in after all via the roof - I wasn't best pleased to find the sofa receiving a dousing!

On the positive side we wouldn't have such a fabulous garden without the rain!