Typecast

Recently I've been moving all the pictures around in my house.  I now have a "family gallery" in the hallway which is like a living history display of our family and how it's expanded over the year. There's no rhyme or reason to it but it's a huge talking point. But because I'd moved all the family photos from other places in the house the rest of the walls were looking a bit bare.  Wall art is such an affordable way to brighten up a space in your home so I was really excited to work with Posterlounge - an online art publishing house based in Leipzig, Germany - to fill up those blank walls. For this review, I selected three different styles of wall art. First was a motivational poster (unframed) which I have gifted to my daughter.  The theme is ' carpe diem ' and fits it perfectly with her bedroom decor as it was a black and white print (80cm x 70cm).  Next I selected a Tina Melz print on acrylic glass (80cm x 30cm). The title of this pr...

You know me and notebooks... it's a total love affair. But I'm always on the lookout for something new and different and that's exactly what these Dreamday Journals are. Adopting the trend of stress-busting 'adult colouring', Laurence King Publishers have created six luxe notebooks which are unique in their layout and I was lucky enough to review two of them.  Each notebook has 100 pages (uncoated ivory paper) and you get a mixture of blank and patterned pages. The two notebooks I took a look at were the Japanese themed journal with its cherry blossom pink cover and leaf-and-wave designs and the Marrakech themed journal with the blue cover and Moroccan mosaic inspired patterns. In fact, you can have a proper sneak peek inside the journals by watching my video . These  Dreamday Journals  have quickly become my desktop jot pad because I have blank paper to hand to scribble notes on but then I can while away a few minutes when on the phone or jus...

I have a theory about drawing and art. When we are children we just pick up a pencil or crayon and draw. We can, when prompted, explain our picture in full, glorious detail. Then there comes a point in life where we become critical of our own work - whether that be through self-analysis, comparison or negative feedback - and some of us just stop drawing because we believe we aren't as good as our peers. I am one of those people. I have friends who arty types and their talent never ceases to amaze me. They use different mediums and have totally different styles however the finished article is always stunning. Recently, through work ( I am loving my new line of work! ), I was invited to attend a life-drawing class. I was going to sit at the back and observe but I had a spare blank notebook and HB pencil at home so shoved them in my bag just in case.  The class was advertised as an alternative life-drawing class with entertainment, competitions and 'quick dra...

Our house is a little bit quirky in the fact that it's like the TARDIS.   From the outside it looks like a northern mill town two-up-two-down but it's wider than it looks and stretches back quite a fair way.  It is a corner terrace with no gardens and was built somewhere around the turn of the century; we believe 1899.  The house hadn't been updated in about fifteen years when we bought it but it was one of those houses that we knew we wanted as we walked into the hallway. The inside isn't anything special (apart from the fact that it has five bedrooms) however this original cornice is in the hallway.  We have only cleaned it up and painted it and found nothing else as interesting in the house when stripping back and modernising.  My wall hangings have matured with me over the years.  I was never one for keeping anything that the children created (you can read about that on The High Tea Cast ) but I do have loads of photographs in those multi-a...

It's time for another article over at  The High Tea Cast .  Today I'm talking about those 'precious' pieces of art that your children bring home from school in ' All That Glitters Is Not Gold '.  I hope you enjoy it.  Find all my articles on The High Tea Cast here 

At work, where I never really mention what I do because I try to keep it separate from blogging stuff, we have an activity which centres around creating vision boards.  It took ages for me to buy into this, mainly because the only clear examples we can find on YouTube to demonstrate the ethos behind it are from mad Americans who probably should be on infomercials selling milk carton openers or juicers. If you've never come across vision boards before let me try and explain without looking like a mad American who should be on infomercials...  You create a collage by cutting out pictures and words from magazines, newspapers, downloading/printing images from the internet, real photographs... anything which represents your thoughts or the theme behind your vision board.  We strip this back and use the vision boards as part of our discussion work.  During our first session the students are given free rein.  Everyone - and I mean everyone - turns their nose...

I hear that the " How My Child Sees Me " meme has started again although I'm not sure we have recovered from the last time I asked one of my offspring to draw a picture of me.  It was SO bad last time that I have deleted it from my Picasa albums and I very rarely do that.  I was drawn with a black triangular nose and had a laptop in view instead of a body.  They're a canny lot, these children of ours. But I wasn't going to be fooled this time.   I have more little people at my disposal now. Small people who can easily be bribed. So... after the promise of a lolly and some stickers... in all its glory, here is how my 3 year old granddaughter sees me: No, I do not have a cock for a nose. She got bored halfway through drawing me and found something better to do. Then demanded her lolly and her stickers. So there you have it. Can your child do better?   Get them to humiliate you and link up over at Tara's place . ...

I spotted a tweet yesterday from @WalkTheLinesLDN  which linked to this picture (Mark's book looks amazing, by the way - a walk along the London Underground - overground - passing each station on the way - Amazon link if you're buying me a present here -  Walk The Lines ) . You can find a large version of the picture here  http://i.imgur.com/MQ4Or.jpg and a bit of googling sent me to the original blog post on Look For Longer . There are apparently more than 70 London Underground stations on this picture.  I got about ten at first glance.  They are very cleverly incorporated into the drawing and some are more obvious than others.  When you find them, stick them in the comments and let me know what part of the picture you saw them in. My first spots were: Barbican (Barbie & Ken) Lambeth (the lamb in a bath) Elephant and Castle (sign on the pub) Knightsbridge (knight and horse crossing the bridge) Shepherds Bush (shepherd stood next...

Everyone is always looking for something a little different to raise awareness and donations for charity and let's face it - sitting in a bath of cold baked beans is so 'last year'.  So when I found out that my fellow #FridayTwiz -er, the lovely Jane Fox of   Fired4U , had organised an evening of ' Painting By Nipples ' I was intrigued.  She tells me that is going to be very much like children's hand and foot printing but using * ahem * alternative body parts...

Please share this blog post within your network using the TweetMeme button to the right of this page or the 'share' facility at the bottom of the post.  I am desperate to find out more about two pictures I have that I am willing to sell.  I have Googled as far as I can and my knowledge and experience ends here.  If you have any information whatsoever please feel free to comment at the end of this post or email me