"IT'S A NEW DAY, IT'S A NEW DAWN, IT'S A NEW YEAR..."

Starting afresh, I 've got some new picture ideas bubbling....which, I hate to say, I'm putting off like mad at the moment! Which tells me that I'm on to something (!) so I MUST LAUNCH OUT INTO THE ABYSS and have a go, if it fails then start again. It'll usually be better the second time around because you've learnt what does and doesn't work the first time.

On a completely different note, I am very proud to be a part of the Cygnet gallery in Shaftesbury, Dorset, so I thought I'd tell you a bit about them.

We are a society of artists who pay once a month to have a unit and sell/exhibit our arts and crafts. We volunteer to spend a morning or afternoon a week on duty with another Cygnet artist. This involves dealing with card and cash transactions, wrapping and answering questions. And we all have a jolly romp around at Christmas while we're at it (with lots of mulled wine!)

MERRY CHRISTMAS & A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Wishing You All A Wonderfully Peaceful Merry Christmas.....

BLACKPOOL!

Hello there, long time no see!

For those of you that don’t know, for a long time now (like January!) I’ve worked on my Blackpool picture. I emailed a design to the customer and they were very pleased – great – so I wet felted it...(hmm, it wasn't great...) then I

needle felted it....and needle felted it....and needle felted some more…but it didn’t have that sparkle. There was something that wasn’t quite right about it, and the more I needle felted, the thicker it became. Ok, it must surely be because I haven't machine stitched it yet, or so I thought. I stitched barely 2cm before my machine faced a thickness that was just un-breach-able! With a felt picture I certainly wasn’t happy with (a big no, no, I’ve discovered – you can’t work on a picture you’re unhappy with!), a felt as thick as a hamburger and no stitching, it was doomed to fail. So I went back to the drawing board, it was time to make some adjustments.

Now I’m a “large scale” artist and A4 size (which the customer had stipulated) is just way too small. There was too much going on as well, I’d literally chosen a scene everyone knew

off by heart and IT JUST WASN’T RIGHT. I texted her re making it bigger (in hope!) and was delighted when she said yes. I went for portrait rather than landscape this time, brought the tower down near the front and added a rollercoaster (why not?)...but she wasn’t so keen on that

(sigh!!!)

Third time lucky! I tried a slightly different approach – I used two perspectives (landscape and portrait) and stuck them together, moved the tower back where it was and brought the

background nearer (sounds haywire I know but believe me, it works!) Oh, and I made the whole thing much sunnier and brighter AND stuck some seagulls on top of the tram which I decorated with underwater octopuses (reliving the aquarium experience!!)) And she agreed – YEESS!

I went through the processes of wet and needle felting (pulling what didn’t need to be there and adding some fantastical imagery), machine and hand felting it....

....et voila – one felt pic of Blackpool.

Now it's that toe tapping period of waiting for a phone call and the words "YOUR PICTURE'S READY TO COLLECT!" Well, let’s hope she doesn’t read this page till after I’ve given it her! I hope she likes it – I do!