Yay for Spring!

Well it’s officially Spring hooray! The last couple of days have been gorgeous weather. Warm enough to sit out and enjoy. I love this time of year, it’s so inspiring for me with all the colour, the blue skies and planting of new flowers.

This year we are planting fruit and veggies, I will take some pics to show you later on. We now have raspberries planted and will have runner beans and salad leaves going in next month along with wildflowers and sweet peas. Very exciting! Monday I sowed lot’s of marigold and cosmos seeds that I had collected from last years plants so I can’t wait to see them come up.

With all this in mind I just had to come up with a Spring inspired collection of bookplates. These are my fav! So colourful, you can find them in the shop now: http://www.etsy.com/listing/95622701/spring-art-bookplates-set-pack-of-12

And in other news I will be at St Johns Church Hall, Cauldwell Hall road, Ipswich (UK) tomorrow night 22nd March from 7-9pm for a Ladies Pamper and Craft evening. There will be various stalls along with mine and the opportunity for some pampering. The evening is being hosted to raise money for Samaritan’s Purse, admission is £4 inc. glass of wine and nibbles, tickets are available from Kathy Dines: 07980705309

I hope you’ll come and join us if you are in the area!

Blessings

xxx

New Friends!

As promised a whole new set of ‘friends’! I am so excited about these new animals, looking forward to seeing what antics they get up to next

All four available in my shop, only one of each!

xxx

Studio Make Over!

This is what my studio looked like before I decided I needed a change!

and now it looks like….

Not too pretty atm lol!

I’ve started de-cluttering although you totally cannot tell by these photos but believe me I have sorted and given away lot’s of craft supplies I just don’t use anymore which was good.

I’ve boxed up all my paintings and other bits n bobs I’m keeping. Now it’s phase two of de-clutter…

I need to find two smaller tables at the charity shop to make over and Hubby is making me a little drawer unit from an old teak sideboard.

I’ve been happily pinning away, finding ideas for what I like and you can follow me here.

Still struggling on the colour, I can see it in my mind but do you think I can match it to any Dulux or Crown paint hmm no! It wouldn’t be so hard if the colour charts were the actual colour of the paint but they aren’t and when you look online they aren’t the same either. How are you supposed to choose!!!

Anyway, this room doesn’t need much work thankfully as it was the first room we did when we moved in 4 years ago (of course ).

So this weekend we will be working on the ceiling and woodwork, then in a couple of weeks time I will be getting the paint for the walls. Hopefully by then I will have decided!

I’ll post update pics next week

In the meantime I have finished my first cardigan woohoo! So excited..

Still working on two others, it’s been so much fun I can’t wait to wear the other two when they are done.

I’m also still working on some new characters to show you soon, so watch this space.

xxx

Winter Fun

‘Winter Fun’

This is my favourite of my illustrations so far, I just love drawing snowmen and of course their animal friends

The buff colour of the paper makes the drawing really stand out and will look beautiful framed.

Now in my Etsy store.

Blessings

xxx

Ink Illustration Cards Vlog

xxx

Liberate Your Art Postcard Swap

I’ve been taking part in this year’s Liberate Your Art Postcard swap. It was great to get postcards in the mail spread out over several weeks.

Each were so different, as you can see from the pic above. Fun to go and visit each person’s blog and exciting to wonder where the postcards I sent ended up. If you got one of mine I’d love to know, leave me a comment!

Thanks Petra, Kat, Carolyn, Karen, Rinda and Wendy!

It was a fun swap, please check out the participants blogs:

xxx

Spring Time in the Meadow

'Spring Time in the Meadow'

5 x 5" on a vintage bingo card

£45.00

Congratulations to Belinda for picking the winning title for my latest painting. There were so many great names, thanks to all who entered.

xxx

Shopping Made Easy!

I’ve been tinkering away at my new website making it even better! One of the features I wanted to offer was that you could order online without having to email, because I know a lot of people would prefer that. We like quick right!?

So I’ve now got the whole site set up with Pay Pal payments so you can buy originals, prints etc all directly from the website yay, I am so pleased I got this figured out.

Another thing I wanted to do was show you some of the commissions I’ve done so I’ve added a slide show on the Commissions page for you to enjoy.

Come on over and check it out!

xxx

Spreading My Wings

I’ve been feeling really restless for a long time now, itching to spread my wings and work in other mediums but the thought of not doing my cute whimsical paintings, well it made me sad. How could I do both?

I’ve struggled with putting all the different mediums together in my Etsy shop and feeling like it just looked too confusing, and while some of you may say no, I felt it just wasn’t working.

The pull to create in other ways has been a recurring theme for me for years and I didn’t know what to do about it. Recent events have helped me to decide that I need to honour the different parts of what makes me ‘me’ and be creative in many ways.

I’m currently taking Paulette Insall’s Divine Romance class which is helping me to paint in a way that is less thinking more doing, connecting with God and allowing Him to flow through me. It’s exciting to see what will come out and I look forward to sharing more with you about this later on.

In the meantime, some of you may have seen my recent ‘Ellie’ sketch which has got me really excited! I totally loved the experience of creating in this way, again it was more doing rather than thinking and simple yet so striking. I decided that sketching is something I want to do a lot more of and am now offering custom pet sketches along with my photography and abstract paintings on my new website.

This seemed the perfect way to have the best of both worlds, I’ll be listing all my cute whimsical paintings and prints on my Etsy store and all other art and photography at Big Cartel. I’ve added new links on the menus here to help you find what you need.

Excited to be on this new journey,

xxx

Postcard Swap – Come Join us!

The Liberate Your Art postcard swap is here!  Join in to share your art, liberate it out in the world, where it can do its greatest good. Here's an overview of the swap:

WHO: Artists in any medium. Photography, painting, poetry, typography, jewelry, sculpture, knitting, cooking, illustration - you name it. If you can have an image of your art printed on a postcard, you are in! If you want to share a blog or website address, you can provide it for the participant list below. Then you all can find each other!

WHAT: You will send 5 printed postcards of your original art to me, along with your address and return postage. I will then swap them around and you'll receive 5 postcards from different artists mailed back to you over a period of a few weeks. (The email you receive once you sign up will have all of the details on what to do.)

WHERE: You don't have to go anywhere, and participants from all over the world are welcome! You will send your postcards to me in the US (I'll be moved back by then) and I'll mail them back out from there. Details for international participants will be included in the email.

WHEN: The postcards will need to arrive at my US address between July 5 and July 15.

WHY: To liberate your art into the world, where it can do the most good!

To sign up click the image above over at Kat’s blog.

xxx

The Journal Project–Come Join Us!

 

It’s here, it’s here!! I am so excited about this project, I do hope you’ll join me!

How to take part:

Take 1 sketchbook, 1 pencil and 1 eraser and draw for at least 5 mins per day, whilst waiting, watching tv, sitting outside, whenever you can find 5mins or more to sketch, doodle or write.

1 Rule:

It must be positive! Only draw things that are good, positive and loving, no dark art or adult content please. Drawing good things will make you feel fantastic even if you had been having a bad day till then. Conjure up good memories and draw from that place.

The aim:

To get people who have a passion for drawing back to it, in a simple way just taking a small amount of time daily, building up a sketchbook of happy doodles to make you smile.
For project ideas or just for yourself this project will help you to enrich your life, use the gift inside of you and feed that passion of wanting to draw.

Join us on Flickr where you can post your sketches: http://www.flickr.com/groups/journalproject

Have fun! Feel free to grab our button on the left and tell your friends about us.

xxx

Are you a fan on Facebook? Contest Time!

Thank you to all my wonderful supporters, I truly appreciate you.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a contest so I thought we would have some fun over at my Facebook fan page. To take part you must be a fan of my art and I’ll be announcing the contest later on today.

http://www.facebook.com/vintageartist?v=wall#!/vintageartist

Good Luck!

xxx

Pendants!

Wildflowers by vintageniki
Make your own custom pendant on Zazzle.

Love me always pendant by vintageniki
Browse other Love Necklaces

 

This year has started off really well creatively speaking! I have just uploaded some of your favourite prints as pendants over at Zazzle. These necklaces look great quality and are a fun way to wear my art. There are several designs available and I'll add more soon.

I'm also working on new paintings to add to my Big Cartel store, will let you know more next week :D

Have a great day!

xxx

New Creative Community

I am so excited! I have just opened my very own creative community for you to come and play in!

My first online class Mixed Media Basics was so much fun and I really loved the teaching, it really opened up so much for me creatively than I expected. I’ve tried creating my own communities in the past but it just wasn’t the right time for me but now I feel it’s right to go ahead and jump right in. :D

I taught the first MMB class on a private blog which turned out to be more limited than I had realised, so I decided to move to Ning and open up the options to teach more classes in one place as well as have the opportunity to offer free classes and add not just my art and videos but be able to enjoy communicating with you on a much larger scale.

This is going to be such fun and as the name suggests a big adventure!

I really hope you will come and join me at: Creative Adventures, I’ve opened up Mixed Media Basics for another round in the Autumn and Style & Inspiration will be opening soon also.

Lot’s of exciting stuff, and don’t worry if you can’t afford a class right now there is plenty of free videos to inspire and teach you and you can chat and share your art for free too.

Come and join us: http://creativeadventures.ning.com/

xxx

What is Your Heart Saying?

 

Learn more about this exciting new class here!

This class is going to be amazing, I can’t wait to share it with you.

xxx

Wonderful Weekend

First there was Art Club at ours on Saturday, we made ATC’s which was great fun and great therapy for me.

Then after a great service at Church on Sunday we enjoyed the gorgeous weather and planted these beauties…

 

I love these large bellis (I call them puffs lol) and my mini daffs and pink primroses.

Our front garden is starting to look lovely again at last!

While Hubby planted those beauties for me, I baked some more apple sauce muffins and Ellie happily chomped on her bone.

The weather was so gorgeous Sunday we enjoyed a lovely long walk by the river and then came home for dinner before rushing out to our Churches evening healing service.

Today it was back to work, which I am very happy about! I got right back into painting and created another cutie for you to enjoy which I’ll be listing on ebay tomorrow, so look out for a blog post on that.

This short break has really helped me to see life differently (even more than usual), I’m always pondering but I felt like God has been really teaching me that I can completely rest in Him, have peace and enjoy everything He has given us…I fully intend to!

Live life to the full guys…

Love

xxx

P.S Today I added a cool page of Q&A’s to help you with your paintings. I also updated my About Me page with some fun facts. xx

How has art changed your life?

Art has always been part of my life one way or another. I’ve always wondered what impact art has on people and have always wondered how I could make a difference in the world to help people.

Today my desire to help others is bigger and stronger than ever and I’m thinking about how I can do that.

What ways has art impacted your life either in creating it, learning about it or buying it (from anyone)?

What ways do you think art could be used in a more productive way to help others in need emotionally or physically?

If you have a story to tell about how art has saved you in anyway I would love to hear about it, either here in the comments or via email: niki@thevintageartist.com

I know we can all make a difference in this world, touching peoples lives is the most wonderful gift you can give.

Looking forward to hearing from you…

xxx