Jessie Lilac Blog

Take an old chest of drawers that is on its last legs, glue the parts together that have broken and give it a new lease of life with some old paint you find in the shed. Never mind that the lid is rusted on, you can pick the bits of rust out of the paint before you begin. No one will ever know, unless you tell them. :) Paint the drawer knobs with a jaunty sea-side design and there you have a nice new piece of furniture for no cost at all. :) :¦:-·-:¦:-·-:¦:-·-:¦:-·-:¦:-·-:¦:-·-:¦: Thankyou to those of you who entered my giveaway on Facebook. The winner is  Mandy Congratulations Mandy! Sorry to have missed out my bloggy friends on this occasion. Next time I do a giveaway I'll definitely have a blog one. You can be sure of that. :) Jess x x

I could not believe my eyes earlier today when I saw that my likes on Facebook had jumped up to 900! As a thankyou I'm having a giveaway of one of my A4 prints. All you need to do is to be a liker of my Facebook page and to share the post I have there about the giveaway on your own Timeline.You can choose any print from these above, so please leave me a comment underneath that post too so I know which one you'd like to win! To see the prints in more detail, please  click here . I'll announce the winner on Monday, both here and on Facebook. I've been working on a new painting for Spring.  You might remember this sketch (below) I did a couple of weeks ago? Well I kept finding myself turning the page of my sketchbook back to it because I love the colours. I just knew I had to do a painting based on it. So here it is! It's called 'The Song of Tulips' and is painted with acrylic on 7 x 10 canvas board. It's now available to buy...

Thankyou so much for your lovely messages for the arrival of my little grandson. It's lovely to share my excitement here with you. :)  Now talking of sharing and thankyous, I was very surprised and very happy to see that I now have 800 followers on my  Facebook page !  Wow!  I think a giveaway is in order don't you? (flowers drawn with gel pens) I'm going to pick 2 winners using a random generator who will each receive an original watercolour painting of mine, each one is painted on 300gsm watercolour paper.  Here they are: The Big Red Cat, 11 x 9 inches (29 x 22cm) Paisley Girl, 9 x 12 inches (23 x 30cm) All you need to do to take part is to leave me a message in the comments on this post telling me which of these paintings you'd like to win. If you'd like a second chance to be in the draw, you could go to this post on my Facebook page and (if you're on Facebook) share and like the post, then leave me a...

Here's my latest face that needs a name. She's a quiet person who holds things dear to her heart. ~~~~~~ Thankyou for your name suggestions for Olivia! I chose that name from one of the suggestions on Facebook. I'm so impressed with the different names you come up with and I'm enjoying finding a name that fits the person the best. Olivia is a lovely name and has been a favourite of mine for a while. Maybe it's her green dress and olive shaped head? Or maybe it reminds me of Olive Oil from Popeye?!  I don't know but she's very happy now she knows her name. :)

Here's my second face in this series. What do you think her name is? I love to read your suggestions, thanks so much for the lovely ideas!xx Please click here  to see Antonia! :)

I'm setting myself a little project to keep myself drawing regularly. I'd like you to join in if you'd like to :) Here's the deal: I draw a face on a regular basis, and post it here and you give the person a name.  You know how people suit their names? I know there might be the exception occasionally and let me tell you I used to hate my name when I was young. At that time no-one had heard of the name Jessica and I had to repeat it over and over again to people who would then give me a strange look and ask where it came from and was it made up. Well just for the record, my mum named me after a character in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice  so not that new! Today there are loads of Jessicas throughout the world so I don't feel such a freakshow any more! ;) The painting above is my first person in this series. What do you think her name is? The name that I think fits her the best will become the name of the painting and I'll keep an album...

First of all can I say a massive thankyou to all of you that have 'liked' my page on Facebook. This picture above was an illustration I did a while ago and it seemed so fitting to celebrate the occasion. (I added the text afterwards!) Thankyou to my bloggie friends too! I really enjoy your visits and your comments here. Do you remember the painting I was working on in  my previous post ? I've now finished it and given it a layer of varnish to protect the surface. It's now ready in waiting for its next adventure. I hope someone would like to buy it and give it a new home. :) (The copyright watermark won't appear on the actual painting.) I love to look at people's houses and imagine what it would be like to live there. I do admire pretty gardens too and wish the magic garden fairy would do all my gardening for me, well maybe not all of it because I like to do a little bit of planting when I'm on the mood but I could do with some help if ...

Hello, I'm here today to tell you about my giveaway! I reached 100 likes on my Facebook page a few days ago,  142 today!  ♥ THANKYOU! ♥  There will be two prizes, one will be my original watercolour painting, painted on thick watercolour paper, with lovely soft hues of pink and mauve called 'Peace' :) I'm also offering you a print on lovely Bristol paper from my mixed media painting 'Open Up To The Best'. Here they are.. Peace,   watercolour painting, 8 x 11 inches Open Up To The Best , art print 8 x 10 inches. (The copyright watermark will not appear on your print.) To Enter: Go to my Facebook page where the link for my giveaway is and 'share' and 'like' the link.  There! That's all you need to do. :) If you're not a Facebook person , that's still ok, just copy and paste one of these pictures above to your blog with a link to this post but don't forget to come back here to tell me that you've...

Thanks for all your lovely comments and for the new likees on Facebook! I update my Facebook page on an almost daily basis as it's so easy to upload (lets hope that's not tempting fate!) If you haven't already, come over and say hello, I'd love to see you! :) I like to do a blogpost every few days too, bringing all the things I've been doing up together. Here's an art journal page I made... I used a texture medium and stamped into it with plastic stamp shapes, adding layers of paint. I love how the relief catches the colour leaving the background showing through. I must do more of it on my next painting because I do enjoy doing it. I've always done this technique on paper but I'm sure it would work on canvas too, even with the springiness, don't you think? I've finished this one and loved using the bright cheerful colours. When I took it to the kitchen to take a photo, I realised it has the same colours are one of my favourite cup...

Thankyou so much for my new likes on my Facebook page, you're all so lovely! I'm still learning how it works, it's slightly different to the one I had before but I think it's going to be easier because I use the same email address as my personal one, so it's just a click away for me. I'm so happy to have 37 likes already - yay! Having recently spending many hours decorating the bathroom I still have houses on my mind hence the house in this new painting! It measures 25 x 25cm (that's 10 x 10ins) and is painted on a box style canvas, ready to hang on your wall. It's now available to buy in my Etsy shop . (a close up of the finished painting) You might remember this sketch I made a couple of weeks ago. I'm going to make a new painting based on it. Experimenting with colours, I like the orange and pink so they'll stay, not sure about the jug staying purple though and those fried egg flowers?  They've got to go! I...

'Love Cat' ACEO painting, currently for sale in my Etsy shop. Thankyou to my  lovely new followers and a happy hello to old ones. :) To celebrate, I'm having a half price sale on all of my ACEO paintings. They were $10 and will now be just $5 (£3.37) each! Please click here  to see them all. :)  My Facebook News I'm so happy to have so many new likees on my Facebook page. Thankyou for your support! I'm going to open a new Facebook page and I shall tell you my reason. My old one doesn't have a newsfeed and it doesn't allow me to 'like' anything on your pages which is disappointing for me, especially when I see something I love (which is often, there's so much amazing talent out there!) This could be because it's a business page so I've now made a new one that's linked to my personal one so I can access it easily from there. It's quite a brave step to take because it's going to be brand new. Because I'm starti...

It's only been 3 days of my A-Drawing-a-Day challenge and already I'm getting back into the flow of creating again.  I'm making backgrounds in my art journal and sticking the images I've created on top, to create something new, adding a little more paint here and there once the glue's dry. It might not qualify as a finished painting as such but just the doing  really unlocks the part of the mind that finds visual solutions through play. Try it if you're stuck at all, it's really working for me! To see the drawings as they were originally, please click here. :) While we're talking about Facebook, can I ask a question of those of you who have a Facebook Page for your work?  I don't seem to get a newsfeed like I do on my normal personal Facebook acccount. Is this normal? How do you see what other people are doing unless you individually click on them on your 'like' list? Also, quite often I find I can't 'like' other people...

Me standing with my painting at the 'Into The Light' exhibition at the Hotbath Gallery in Bath a few years ago! With this new term starting I've been in an organising mood. I've been having a sort out of photos I've taken in the past, of my exhibitions. I don't have pictures of all the places unfortunately but there are still a few that I've managed to find. I hope you're all having a lovely weekend, it's very warm and sunny here, long September shadows, my favourite.♥

Thank you for your kind good wishes on my last post. I'm gradually getting better and I had a lovely weekend. A sunny Sunday was spent in Windsor catching up with my eldest and her family. Here we are with my youngest and baby Maisy and that's the castle peeping through the trees in the distance. We didn't visit the castle but had a nice lunch in a pub catching up on all the news. painting by Jane Ray from my Pinterest  Board,  'Art I like' . Last week was spent mostly at home, skipping through the amazing site called Pinterest. I'd heard of it many times through people's blogs but I couldn't see the attraction until that is, I gave it a go myself! I am now hopelessly hooked. For instance, I can collect all my favourite artists in one place. ( CLICK HERE  if you'd like to see my boards) Another new venture for me is my new Facebook Fan page. I wanted to do one for ages but wasn't sure how and kept putting it off. With t...