Cherry Rose Cottage Crafts: July 2016

So how long has it been right!!! You were probably wondering where I have been, and while thoughts of being smooshed under the giant collapsed piles of washing as they avalanche in my house come to mind, really I have been distracted by life, my chronic illness, and my family, and getting my beautiful boy settled into more suitable schooling and all sorts of other things. But do not be saddened... I have managed to craft during that time... In fact I have been working on something special!!

Since (re)learning to colour and discovering pencils and copics and distressed inks I have had a desire to stretch my skills away from stamping and to challenge myself by creating pieces of my own artwork. I guess I was always second guessing my own confidence though in my ability to do so and so I didn't even try and just kept on plodding along. Then I was hospitalized last year in October and that month long stint gave me plenty of boring time to work on a piece of graphite artwork I called "Lady With Blue Hair" that when finished I ended up being really proud of! You can take a look at that blog post HERE if your interested. This piece started me realizing that "Hey!!, I might be able to do this!!!" So after another month of squirming I took the plunge and set out to do my very first Coloured Pencil artwork.

Of course I choose a really hard multi hued Rose as my first piece because "Go Hard or Go Home!!" right!!! BooYah!! :/ and off I went to my camping trip with all of my art gear, and my easel, and I spent nearly every day of that two week trip colouring away, being spurred on by the daily bystanders I had that would come by to check on my progress... It would have been perfect if not for the fact that my nasty illness flared up again and started me fainting and collapsing for no reason we could see and a week after coming home from camping with daily collapses and me not even able to walk to the toilet without falling I was hospitalized once again for another week putting my artwork on hold until I got better.

I wasn't able to pick it up again for quite a few months. I was just too unwell, and didn't have the motivation too. But once I got back to it, no one was stopping me. I was determined to finish it.

I'm proud to say That I completed my artwork naming it "A Rose For Nan" in memory of my Nan, an avid Rose Gardener who has passed 2 years ago now. I'm sure she would love it. I couldn't keep a weed alive, but at least this will not fade, nor die, and my memory of her will live on always in it.

So here it is completed!!!

For all of those interested, I took MANY photos during the process of making this piece, and I've collated them into a short YouTube video.

That was so many hours of work.... and it's such a small piece really, smaller than an A5 but anyhooo.

Since completing this piece it has featured on the Anne Kullberg's Magazine for Coloured Pencil Artists Facebook Page as a June 2016 Featured Artist! which was such a pleasure.

I've also joined with "Fine Art America" and "Pixels" started selling prints and other items of my artwork. It's all so cool and exciting to see your own artwork printed and/or framed, as pillows and PHONECASES!!.