Jessie Lilac Blog

summer autumn winter Right outside my back door grows a virginia creeper. I watch it change dramatically through the year and constantly marvel at how it can grow back so beautifully from how it looks today in the winter. It seems almost impossible. I've had a difficult couple of months with health problems and a busy time with family things and my exhibition so my art making has taken a back seat. I'm still knitting and crocheting though and I've almost finished the jumper I'm making for Middle Daughter. For fellow knitters, you can see the details here  if you like. As I've got no new artwork to show you, I'd like instead to show you a lovely little film about the artist Del Kathryn Barton. I came across this a while ago and kept it in my favourites folder so that I could watch it again. When I'm missing my painting I like to look at other artists' lives and work. I hope you enjoy watching it too. xx

Hello Spring! It's finally here and what an entrance! A glorious warm sunny day today following the excitement from yesterday of the solar eclipse. It must mean that new starts and changes are afoot don't you think? My paintings seem to have changed with the lovely sunshine. What do you know? I've found myself painting flowers again. (close-up crop) (side view showing the deep sided canvas) Here's my new painting hanging on the wall. I love my purple walls. :) It's called 'Morning Revelation' and measures 12 x 6inches, which is 30 x 15cm. It's painted on box canvas (I think some people would call this gallery wrapped canvas?) and the sides are 1½ inches, or 4cm deep. As you can see above, it's ready to hang on the wall, no need of a frame. Please click here to see all the details. :) You might have noticed my blog banner is now sporting this new cheery painting. I thought it would be perfect to welcome in the Spring...

 The three ships are alight on Brixham Harbour,  it's Christmas time! (In case you needed telling.) ;)  We've had some lovely moments of afternoon winter sun over the past few days.   But what does it mean when the cows are sitting down?  Rain!  It looks cosy inside this house doesn't it with the lights on through the windows?  The gamekeeper's cottage at Cockington hasn't been lived in for 100 years. Hopefully one day it'll be loved back to life. It's still beautiful to me.  So now it's time to go back home to dry off and get things ready for the busy days to come. Wishing you all a very merry Christmas  and a peaceful new year. xx

Thankyou SO MUCH for your very helpful suggestions in my last post. You are all so amazing and very much appreciated! I'll have a renewed energy with my next painting. :) I hope you've had a lovely weekend. I've had a busy time, what with trying to clear the bottom of our garden which has turned into a mini woodland. This sounds nice doesn't it? but with young trees underneath the weight of a soggy heavy fence, growing sideways across the ground in a desperate attempt to survive, there is a lot more work to be done! Messy isn't it?! I've also been busy adding new items to my Society6 shop . Would you like to see a few of them?  I have lots of mug designs, please click here to see more :) and tote bags, please click here to see them :)     There are lots of different phone skins and case designs. and wall-clocks, please click here  to see :) My designs can also be bought as greetings cards or prints , ...

On a walk down a country lane, Something purple caught my eye. You might already know that my favourite colour is purple,  it really was quite beautiful.  I'd love to be one of those people who know all the names of everything I see in the wild, every flower, every bird, every tree. I'd like an App to be invented that could do this, wouldn't you? Not the Google Image Search with its outrageous suggestions that are almost never like the picture I put in the search box! So until that App gets invented, does anyone know what the wild flower in my photo is called? :) **UPDATE** It's periwinkle! Thankyou kind people! :) ♡ ✶ ♡ ✶ ♡ ✶  ♡ ✶ ♡ ✶ ♡ ✶ I've been addicted to making colourful crocheted blankets over the past few months. I upload them to Ravelry so that I have some kind of record of what I've made. I've just popped over there to have a look to see how many and it's six (so far!) Here's one I made a f...

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

Thankyou for your kind comments about my new paintings. :) I had quite a busy week last week so any new ideas for paintings that I had since then, were put on hold but hopefully this week, I should have more time. Meanwhile, let me show you my latest crochet project. Now if you have visited here before and are aware of my craze for bright colour, take a look in my bag of wool in the picture above. Do you see anything odd? No? Well it might not seem unusual for you but I bought some grey wool. Grey! I think I must be influenced for the apparent fashion for grey everywhere at the moment, in paint, wallpaper, fabrics, carpets but my thinking is that it would set the other colours off nicely and make them seem even more bright! You can see I haven't altered the photo because the grey looks like grey and the yellow ZINGS out of the picture. I find crocheting in the evenings very relaxing and as you may already know, I've made quite a few of these colourful blank...

Monday morning, I hope you had a lovely weekend! Mine was filled with family visiting but now the house is once again quiet, it's time to show you what I was working on just before the weekend. Thankyou so much for your lovely comments about my beach baby painting! As I had some time left at the end of the day that I finished it, I decided to work some more on a painting that you might remember from last year? Do you remember this one? I've had it hanging up on the wall at home and so each day it would catch my eye and after time, I knew I wasn't happy with the face on the yellow vase. I felt it looked unfinished and at first I was going to put more shading in it to give it depth. Something else happened once I had my paints out! Not only did I change the face, I painted over it completely and added some birds and some more spots. (If you look closely you can see the masking fluid I put on around the edges of the vase so that I wouldn't ruin the bac...

I like making crocheted blankets and have a couple ( ok, I have about 4 if you're counting ) of my own. When I discovered Middle Daughter would like one I couldn't wait to get started on another. :) I wouldn't have minded keeping it for myself. It does match the duvet cover quite well doesn't it? The fringing is the part I least enjoy, it's very fiddly trying to get all the strands the same size.  So I gave it a haircut! Now that my stock of colourful yarn is very much depleted I need to go out and buy some more for my next project. YaY!