Articles from July 2009

How very remiss of me not to give you information about Blackburn Art Market before now.

Blackburn Art Market takes place tomorrow (Wednesday 23rd July) as well as Friday (25th July) and Saturday (26th July).  If you’re in or near Blackburn, it may well be worth a visit.  Art markets and craft fairs are great places to buy unusual gifts and high-quality hand-made items at reasonable prices.  It’s the first time they’ve tried something like this in Blackburn, and if it’s successful, it is likely to become a regular event.

The Art market is being held actually inside Blackburn Market.  Here’s a link for you:

http://www.visitblackburn.co.uk/site/whats-on/blackburn-market-art-market-p548760 

Oh, and I suppose it goes without saying that I’ll be there on all three days. 

I’ll also be exhibiting at Samlesbury Hall in Blackburn on Sunday the 26th July at the Farmers’ Market/Craft Fair. And the link:  http://www.samlesburyhall.co.uk

It seems to be that Blackburn is suddenly the place to be.

I know I’m a bit of a virtual peeping Tom when it comes to looking at other people’s workspaces, and I know from what other people tell me that I’m not the only one.  You can see my workspace if you click here: http://www.1stuniquegifts.co.uk/blog/creating-the-garden-studio/ (or click on the Creating the Garden Studio link on the right hand side).

Here’s a link to another workspace – that of Lizzy from Lavender and Lime: http://thelavenderandlimecompany.blogspot.com/

I would’ve loved to have seen it before the three hours of tidying up!  Mr 1st Unique bravely ventured into my studio over the weekend – I use the word bravely as he is such a tidy soul, and I am not.  My workspace gets gradually worse and worse until a craft fair or event, and I (usually) tidy it up afterwards.  So I don’t really recognise Lizzy’s “calm before the storm” – for me, the calm is after the storm! 

But I love her baskets, all laid out in readiness for a fair.  Just gorgeous.  Here they are looking very tempting:

Don’t you just love this?  It made me laugh – hope it brings a smile to your face too.

I have forgotten where I found this picture, so many apologies if it originally belonged to you.  Let me know and I’ll post a link to it in its original virtual home.

I have been working on a lot of these names on individual chunky canvases this week:

bright alphabet letters on small individual canvases for children

I paint these freehand on 15cm (6″) square chunky canvases.  There have been a lot of different colour choices, and I’ve done lime green, jade green, mint green, red, pale pink, bright pink, bright blue and pale blue backgrounds – er, that’s just this week!!  Phew!  Want a colour I’ve not done yet?  I’d be happy to do it (if you can think of one)!!

individual alphabet letters on canvas with balloons for children

And one with gorgeous girlie bright pink letters for little girls:

individual alphabet letter canvases with balloons for little girls

I love painting these, they’re easy to handle, fun to work on and really effective when they’re done.  The ones with blue backgrounds (above) are painted so that each letter is actually a letter-shaped balloon floating in the sky.  The top one (James) has little hills at the bottom with a scattering of sheep grazing. 

Customers are now requesting these balloon letters with other backgrounds – they don’t have to be floating against a pale blue sky.  Mint green or bright pink?  Not a problem!!  Because I hand-paint them all, I’m able to change the colours to match your decor or even your child’s favourite colour.

I know they work out more expensive the longer your child’s name is, but the longer names do look quite stunning along a wall (or even standing up like little letter blocks on a shelf).  However, to make it a bit cheaper, I can paint any name on a 45cm x 15cm (18″ x 6″) canvas, in similar styles.  I’ve not yet got these on the website, so I’ll try to do that in the next few days.

If you are interested in ordering a set of canvases with your child’s name on, please go to:

http://www.1stuniquegifts.co.uk/childrens%20wall%20art.0.html  – the postage is free for orders made in the months of July and August 2009, so be sure to take advantage!  Please allow about three weeks for delivery (it it’s urgent – for a birthday or Christening – email me on this contact form first http://www.1stuniquegifts.co.uk/contact.html and I’ll see if I can rush it through).

Right, there are more of these to paint and post out to customers, so I’ll be getting back into the studio.

My middle daughter went back to London yesterday.  She’s a high-achieving law student, who’s aiming to be a barrister.  So you’d expect her to be intelligent, right?  Hmmm….

Yesterday, I drove her to the train station, and dropped her off while I went to park.  I went up to Platform 2, where the trains for London leave from.  As I was looking for her, my phone rang.  Yes, it was Ditzy, waving across the railway track to me, telling me she was on Platform 3.  If I hadn’t gone into the station, I’m sure she’d've got the next train from Platform 3 – and she would be in Glasgow by now, wondering why so many people had Scottish accents and all the signs reading London Euston had suddenly become Glasgow Central. 

How on earth does she manage to live independently in a place like London, hold down what is almost a full-time job, and get excellent results in her law degree? 

Oh, and yes, she’s blonde…

I have a program on this blog which picks up spam comments and deletes them automatically.  Apparently the legitimate (non-spam) comments are called ham.  I didn’t know this until today.

This is what it says on the spam-collector stats page, which I’ve never looked at before:

What the heck is ham doing on my blog? I’m a vegetarian.

Spam most people know as the unwanted commercial comments on their blog, its counterpart we call ham to indicate legitimate comments. On the Akismet mistakes side, missed spam is pretty self-explanatory, but a false positive is what it’s called when we incorrectly identify a legitimate comment as spam. (Which hopefully happens exceedingly rarely.) Also, we’re sorry about the vegetarian thing.

***

It made me laugh because I am vegetarian – and ham is a bit of an in-joke with our mainly veggie family.  My mum, a dyed-in-the-wool meat-eater, offered my vegan daughter a ham sandwich.  “No thanks, Grandma, I don’t eat meat,” she replied.  To which my mother responded: “But it’s wafer-thin ham…”

Oh, so that makes it ok then!??

It was bound to happen.  I signed up to post on my blog every day for the month of July – and I missed TWO days on the trot.  Do you think they’ll hunt me down? 

On the first day, the excitement of having my daughter at home for the first time in months, along with her Slovakian boyfriend, meant things just got left.  They’d come back from (literally) a flying visit to Slovakia, where she’d been introduced to his parents and the extended family, eaten her fill of traditional food, and been kissed far too much for a British type.  Stiff upper lip and all that.

Anyway, he’s a lovely guy, but I’m not sure my hospitality is as extending as his family’s was, and he certainly didn’t get as many kisses as my daughter did in Slovakia.  Hopefully he wasn’t expecting them!

The second day I missed blogging, I was desperately trying to catch up on orders I was behind with, having taken the Sunday to paint a last-minute order stork canvas for a Christening, and spend time with said daughter and her boyfriend.

I delivered the stork canvas myself, as the customer lives just five minutes away from me.  It was lovely to be able to do so, just to see the look on the customer’s face.  It’s one of the great things about dealing directly with people.  I only hope the recipient likes it just as much.

What started out as a very quiet day with rainclouds looming ominously overhead actually turned out to be a great day.  It was a busy afternoon, still cloudy but warm and rain-free.  My daughter who’s up from London came along and made herself very useful as an assistant.  She also kept me company and it was nice to chat as I do miss her.

For a customer I met today, I have a rush order to get ready for tomorrow lunchtime – a personalised stork canvas for a christening gift which needs to be done for lunchtime.  Fortunately the customer lives a five-minute drive away from me, which is an obvious advantage for rush orders!!

This is a pic of the canvas on my website – see www.1stuniquegifts.co.uk for more info and to order your own!

I’d best go and get started!!

If you’re waiting for an order, I’m hoping to get them all sent out soon!  I am working on them as hard and as fast as I can.   If you ordered at the Cheshire Show, I’ll be posting your order out on Monday or Tuesday the 13th or 14th.  If you ordered at Capesthorne Hall Hot Air Balloon Show, I’ll be posting your order out on Thursday or Friday the 16th or 17th.

orders waiting

Your order will be sitting amongst this little lot, but I have made a start on all of them, believe it or not.  It can be a time-consuming business because everything I paint needs at least a few layers of paint and maybe varnish.  I tend to work in batches, doing all backgrounds, or all detail, at one time.

I may see you at the Stockton Heath Festival tomorrow (11th July 2009) – it should prove to be an excellent event.  Let’s hope for sunny weather!

I know people visit this blog when they are looking online for unique gifts.  The unique, hand-painted personalised gifts I create on clocks, canvases, door hangers, etc. can be found here: www.1stuniquegifts.co.uk as always. 

People always say my gifts are “something different”, and here’s something else which I think fits the “something different” tag too:

I’d like to share with you some unique gifts made by Rachel from the Wirral.  These cufflinks (above) are made from fingerprints that a customer sent to her.  Aren’t they just gorgeous?

And look at this too:

I’m sure these will be very popular.  You can find more info here: http://glamglassgifts.blogspot.com/

If you’re looking for a unique gift for someone special, I’m sure you won’t have too far to look!