Invitation to snip lickety split!

"I wish I could cut paper like you do!" people tell me and sigh.

Well, now you can, but you can do it much, much faster than my hands do.

Thanks to a new partnership with Ellison Sizzix, you can reproduce the same results I get but it's almost instant, and the quality is shockingly fantastic.

Slated to roll out in just about two weeks is a new line of images for the Sizzix e-Clips.

You can buy designs online, similar in cost and delivery method to iTunes. 

And in just minutes you can reproduce what it takes me hours to do!

When I was at company headquarters last week I met with the technicians who took my scanned originals and turned them into more than 100 patterns for the initial roll-out.

If you simply click on the Sizzix eClips tab here after November 1, you'll find a big list of some of my best designs and be able to cut them out on your own Sizzix machine.

Coming soon will be the ability to print my painted work and follow it up with the cutting, so you end up with a watercolored paper-cut, just like I do in my studio. And the quality of the reproduction is amazing.

I'm working with their creative team on more exciting products which we'll talk about later, but for today, wheee.... 

another new partnership!

There's a lot to love about the Sizzix product line and their philosophy...

Walnut ink... a happy little tutorial

True confession:

I'm an inkaholic.

My stash is almost embarrassingly huge.

But only ALMOST.

An artist can never have enough ink. 

That's why every autumn I get an itch to make a batch of homemade walnut ink.

It's free and lovely and you can boil yourself a batch of loveliness if you want...

It's so easy!

Here's how:

Click here to watch a quick YouTube video. It will explain everything you need to know.

The only thing better than ink from your own kitchen is ink from a friend.

If you would like a bottle of mine, just post me an email here, or comment on Facebook or here.

I'll randomly choose one entry on October 10th and post a little bottle of goodness to the winner.

Tres chic, dear friends!

Far away and back again

It's lovely to see the great, wide world

and extra delicious to come home again.

Home to leaves beginning to turn

to the last of the sweet corn and the beginning of apple season.

Home to mushrooms appearing in the field

behind our house

 

 

...and a little glass of wine sipped by the fire on a rainy evening when a deadline finds me painting late into the night.

So grateful for the joy of going away, and even more blessed by the gifts of ordinary life and home.

Cycling in Flanders

Biking the polders last week in Flanders was like visual poetry.

 Rain trickling down my neck kept me from taking the photos I really wanted...

and meant I couldn't sketch as planned

but oh what fun anyway!

Old cathedrals...

windmills, canals and dikes...

Sheep grazing along the churchyard

and beef cattle along the canals...

All of it was so splendid.

If I live to a hundred, the stain of beauty I saw that day will remain.

Someone said that the world is like an enormous and ever-rich book

and those who do not travel read only a single chapter.

I am already dreaming of more travel.

Any advice?

Where have you been? What have you seen?

A Royal Day in London Town...

Fair warning: The pictures and story below are a frankly cheesy account of my shamelessly cliche final day in London...

Want to join me? Come on, here we go!

If you're going to play tourist, might as well go all the way.

So we start at Trafalgar Square, where the bells in St. Martin-in-the-Fields mingle with street carneys and gaggles of tourists crushed together gazing at the stature of Admiral Nelson and trying to decipher their maps...

Then through the Admiralty Arch... 

along Green Park, the Jubilee Walkway.

And then we entered the Royal Gardens and heard a child's voice, an excited stream of British English... 

"Mummy! I want to see the Queen!! Will we, Mummy? Will we see the Queen? Will she walk out the front door?"

There we were... Buckingham Palace.

Quintessentially British. Royalty in spades.

Gilt and splendor everywhere.

If architecture can be glitter and glam, this is the perfect example.

And then (you knew this was going to happen, didn't you???)

we saw the Changing of the Guard!

It was not publicly announced so the press of tourists wasn't what you'd expect... we had a front row view. We were livin' the stereotype... London tourists all the way.

And I didn't even mention the National Gallery, did I?

Or the pigeon man?

Or the taxis, the shop windows or the souvenir underpants emblazoned with the Union Jack, which blessedly did not come home with us.

Since we were embracing the cliches, we decided to drop into a pub for steak and ale pies for dinner and then sit on our suitcases to press them shut in preparation for the flight out in the morning.

Home and studio await.
Sigh.

The End.

Norway again... naturally

Norway inspired me so much that today, on my first morning home, I find myself sitting in the studio thinking about what I saw there.

The reflections in still water.

Raindrops.

Women hunting for mushrooms along a forest path.

And the fjords. Always the fjords.

The Norwegians take the simplest materials, leaving them so natural and make them stunningly gorgeous. The countryside is sprinkled with buildings that seem almost to have sprung straight from the earth.

I wish I could cover the studio roof with birchbark like this and plant it with wildflowers and mushrooms... They say that turf is wonderful insulation; all I know is it looks amazing.

The use of stone is another natural touch the Scandinavians use so well.

Seldom have I found a place so inspiring to new art. 

The sketchbook is crammed to overflowing. 

Naturally!

Hiking to the goat pastures

We woke up to drumming rain.

"Who cares?" we laughed. 

It was our chance to hike to the high pastures and we weren't going to miss it.

First you suit up, then climb in a rib boat and cruise through the fjords.

The clouds hung low over the water and our tiny boat sped past seals, porpoises, and sea birds.

Near the tiny village of Undredal, we climbed out at Skjerdal's farm dock and hiked through the apple orchard.

We'd left the wet suits behind and rain was already dripping down our necks.

"Who cares?" was the refrain of the day.

With so much to look at, it really didn't matter.

Up through the forested hillside...

Along goat paths where the rivulets ran over our hiking boots.

Thank goodness for sturdy boots!

I looked over the shoulder of a damp goat and there, far below was one of the farms we had passed. 

There is a little guest house on this farm where one can rent a dreamy hideaway in summer. 

Oh, to visit here for longer!

These are the goats whose milk has made the cheese that brings home the gold and silver medals.

And if you had been sitting in the goat shed with us, munching cheese and sandwiches and even goat sausage (poor billy goats... they don't give milk so instead they turn into delicious sausage!)

Soaked to the skin but what sights!

Even the humblest of sheds is heaven when you are munching gourmet cheeses after a long hike.

 Don't I look glamorous in my $1 thrift store poncho?

I was glad to have it, and the only ones to see me were the goats and the three other soggy hikers!

I hope you will get the chance to visit Norway and hike the fjords, too.

Even in the rain there is endless inspiration.