Things are looking up a little

I've been a bit busy this last couple of weeks, working on an oil painting commission for a friend. Hand on heart I can't say I really enjoyed doing it, because he wanted one the same as a painting I'd already done ...so that made it a bit boring. But when I took it round for him on Saturday he was really pleased with it, so that's the main thing, but I forgot to take a photo of it dohhhh. I've also been working on the first of a few paintings I want to do for myself. The walls of my little bungalow are sadly a bit bare looking, so I thought I'd give the glass things a miss for a bit and do some paintings. The first painting is almost finished, just a couple of touch ups here and there and it'll be ready to show you. Note to self ... do not keep fiddling with the painting too much lol !!!

A couple of other friends popped round unexpectedly yesterday afternoon, and I ended up with another commission !! This will be just a small oil painting as it's for in his camper van, he wants a sunset seascape. I always find seascapes quite difficult because of the reflections in the water, but hey ho I'll give it a go :o)

I seem to be getting a little bit domesticated and have baked two cakes this last week, don't fall off your chairs in shock lol. The first was a carrot cake, which we love, and the 2nd was a new recipe for me a lemon yogurt cake. On hindsight I should have doubled the quantities because before the icing even got time to set, 3/4's of it had disappeared down the throats of my son and daughter lol. I got the recipe from a very good blog I've recently started following called the English Kitchen, well worth a look at if you enjoy cooking, or even if you don't as in my case lol.

We recently acquired two additions to our garden, one was good the other not so good. The not so good, was a non working motorbike which my son was originally intending to do up for himself. He's now changed his mind and decided to strip it down and sell the parts on Ebay, so I currently have half a flipping motorbike in my garden. The other addition was much more welcome, a 3 seater garden swing. A neighbour of mine was moving out and she didn't want it any longer, so now it has a new home with us. We plan to respray it and give it a bit of colour, which probably won't surprise many of you knowing our love of colour in this house.

This is the link to the English Kitchen blog if any of you would like to go over and have a look at it. The English Kitchen

Chuffed to bits

I was chuffed to bits yesterday to see that an interview I did for Deviant Art (a huge art and crafts website) was published. Out of the hundreds of mosaic artist myself and 4 others were the chosen ones lol !! I've had some lovely comments about my mosaics and also someone made a wallpaper out of some of mosaics too. Sometimes it's just nice to see that other people like the work you're doing and that alone makes it all worthwhile ... well it does to me. This is the interview and I'm manicmosaics Deviant Art Interview This is the link to the wallpaper someone did of my mosaics too, Mosaic Wallpaper

Where does time go

Where does time go, yet another 13 days has gone by without me updating my blog.

My time off here hasn't been wasted though, I finally finished off a panel I was doing and have done an oil painting that a friend asked me to do for him.

Also on a whim a week ago last Friday, we went to take our dog for a walk and ended up in Blackpool lol. Quite a long way to go for a walk I admit, but the dog enjoyed the change of scenery. It's donkeys years since I last went to Blackpool, and to be honest it doesn't seem to have changed that much lol. But we really enjoyed ourselves and I love nothing more than to do things on the spur of the moment.

For the last couple of days my daughter has been taking our jungle of a garden in hand. The strimmer came out and no plant, weed or piece of grass was safe !! It does look much better now, and I've decided that next year I'll just have the odd bush round the edge of the garden and have more sculptural things around, to decorate it and add interest. It'll be a lot more low maintenance this way and maybe thats for the best. Trying to keep on top of watering pots of plants, has been difficult in a lot of ways, and even with the best will in the world the veggies I grew have been a flop really. The spring onions seemed to just dwindle away, the courgettes that started off so well, got attacked by some kind of mildew looking stuff on the leaves, the runner beans got savaged by slugs, the carrots are the only things that seem to be still going !!

The gallery that I exhibit my glass things in, is finally going the way of a lot of small businesses. High rents and rates and people hanging on to their money has taken it's toll and the gallery will be closing in Sept. I'm really sad about this but not all that surpised to be honest.

Blah blah blah

I seem to be finding it increasingly difficult to think of titles for my posts lately, hence the blah blah blah one this time lol.

After a few days where my hands have been so painful I've barely been able to type or turn the cooker knob, the arthritis seems to be easing off a bit again, thank goodness. So I've started to do a painting for a friend of mine, while the goings good so to speak. I've just done the basic background layer so far, and as soon as that's dry I'll start with the more detailed work. It's a shame my friend wanted a replica of a painting I've already done, a new challenge would have been good, but the choice is his. I've also been spray painting the board for my latest glass panel. I tried painting it by hand as I had some paint the right colour, but the finish wasn't smooth enough for my liking. This isn't a mosaic this time, hard to explain what it is really lol. But eventually a photo will be taken I expect and shown to you all as usual.

Along with the arthritis, the extra beats in my heart I've written about before, seem to have returned this past week or so. The last couple of days they've been particularly bad, and although it's not something that's painful, it can feel pretty unpleasant and makes me feel like I might have a heart attack (although the doc has said that won't happen). So one way or another I haven't felt 100% ...but life goes on and I'll carry on plodding on as I always do. I'm sure a bit of sunshine would make me feel tons better !!! But it seems like there's a rain cloud permanently over Anglesey at the moment. The other day the rain was torrential all day and I even contemplated starting to build an ark, but the arthtirtis in my hand put pay to that idea lol.