Sunday Afternoon Tea

Sunday afternoon was a special time.

When I was a little girl my mum always made something special for afternoon tea on a Sunday.

What People did on Sunday

Sunday afternoon was the time when people went visiting. People worked hard and long hours during the week. Sunday morning they went to church and in the afternoon, while they were still in their good clothes, the went  visiting.

Sometimes relations came from the farm. They brought with them fresh butter they made themselves. Sometimes there were some freshly laid eggs.

The table was laid with a beautiful embroidered cloth that my mum had made when she was first married. The good china was brought from its safe place in the top shelves of the kitchen cupboard.

The kettle was put on to heat on the big wood stove in the kitchen. We were a bit modern as we also had a gas stove. Mum did not use it much though.

Soon there would be a knock at the door. We children were always excited to receive visitors. Although we had to sit quietly, we heard things we would never have heard otherwise.

 

Mum always had some thing lovely to eat for afternoon tea, along with a good hot cup of tea or two and plenty of milk and sugar. Mum’s specialty was a ginger fluff sponge filled with cream. Mmm, I can remember the delight  when a piece was put on my plate.

Here are 4 small paintings I have done of the lovely china of yesteryear. Enjoy

Free Photo Editor for your Photos

I have just been having fun with the wonderful photo editor PicMonkey - and its FREE. Thanks PicMonkey.

Using this editor you can make lovely collages of your favourite photos. Have a look at a couple I just made.



Duck and hens in my garden

 

 

This one is of my favourite hens and duck. It's nice to group them together. Similar things always look more impressive when they are grouped together. They become unified.

 



Black and white collage of birdbath

 

 

Here is another photo collage. I took the photo in colour of a birdbath which I had mosaicked. It looks very lovely in bright blues. I changed the colour in Photoshop Elements to black and white. This will make a nice print later on. Then I put it in PicMonkey, curved the corners and put a red frame around it.

 

What do you think?

How to Access all my Photos on my Phone

I can't access my photos

Sometimes I download new apps on my phone. They are often to do with photography. I like to see all the things these apps can add to a photo.

I took some lovely photos and put them together in a collage but then couldn't access them to send them to my loved ones.

Privacy Settings

I have discovered that there are privacy settings on the phone and here's how to enable your photos so they all go to your camera roll.

Go to Settings on your phone and tap. This will be on your front screen. Mine is an older iPhone.
Scroll down till you find Privacy. Tap
Tap on Photos
Turn to ON any photo apps you have to allow the photos to come into your camera roll.

And there you have it.

Return to your Photos > Camera roll. All your photos will turn up there from now on.

Happy snapping

Some snaps from my garden

Making a Sepia Photograph with Photoshop Elements

Original Photograph of a Beautiful Orchid

 

Changing your Photograph to Sepia using Photoshop Elements

Open Photoshop Elements

Open your saved photograph

Make a duplicate of it. File  > Duplicate

You are now working on the duplicate photo

 

On the right hand of the screen you will see Edit

 

 

Under this choose Guided

Choose Old Fashioned Photo

 

Follow the Guide

Choose Vivid Landscape

Click Adjust Tonality

Click Add Texture

 

Click Adjust Saturation - adjust the sliders

Click Done

 

Save your photograph

File > Save as

Choose the file you are going to save your photo in

Save your photo as a .jpg. This is often easier to use than a .psd

Click Save

 

Click Done

Click OK

 



 

 

To change your background to a clearer shade, after you make your duplicate photo,

Choose Water Paper on right hand side

Click Apply

Follow the rest of the directions from 'Guided' above

 

 

 

This gives a different, more delicate and more modern look. Enjoy.



Medieval Art

Medieval art always fascinates me. It has a simplicity about it. The colours used then were usually pretty sombre in comparison to modern times. The variety of colours were not available to the medieval artist.

My paintings, although in the older style, are painted in bright colours.



Count Conor

Bell Flowers, Campanulas

I am very attracted to flowers in the shape of a bell. When we bought our first home it had a lovely garden with lots of European flowers in it. My Mum had been a great gardener so I know a bit about gardening.

Canterbury Bells

Our new garden had plants that I had not seen before. One was the English Canterbury Bells.



Canterbury Bells

My favourite colour is mauve, purple or violet, whatever you want to call it. These lovely flowers came up in my front garden and I was very excited about them. They were shaped like a bell and were mauve as well.

However as I worked in my garden, I also found that I got a rash whenever I rubbed up against these plants. How could they be so lovely and give me a rash at the same time?

These lovely bell shaped flowers came to England from Spain in the 1500s.

The word Campanulate means the shape of a bell. Campanology is the art of ringing the church bells. The art of ringing church bells has come back into fashion of late after nearly dying out with the demise of attendances at the village church. It is good to keep alive old practices.



Campanula Punctata

I have had many different varieties of campanula over the years. My latest acquisition I received from a neighbour. They have lots of this lovely plant growing as an edging plant along the edge of their garden. It flowers for months.

They gave me a tray of cuttings they had grown for me. I placed them on the lawn in my back yard awaiting planting. Well my little bantams found them and devoured every last leaf on them. They were delighted and made a bee line for them each day when I let them out of their pen. I was devastated. However, the plants are slowly recovering with Spring on the way. 

Purple Duck

I had a lovely friend in my backyard. She was annoying, she was funny. She has a real personality. She could tell me what she wanted though she couldn't talk in my language.

She was curious, always looking in the glass door or window of any room I was in. She never really got a name though she was well loved. She was usually just called Duckie.

My Friend, Duckie

Duckie had a good life. She had the company of a few bantam hens.

When we arrived at our present house eighteen years ago, the land had been farmland just two years earlier. The ground was covered in snails at night. Anything we planted in our bare backyard would be eaten by snails. Once Duckie came to live with us she got started on the garden with me. Together we rid the backyard of snails.

Actually all the snail hunting in the back yard was done by Duckie. I tried to clear the front yard. Each night I would go out with a lidded bucket or empty ice cream tub. I collected snails and transported them to the spare block across the way. Dear one used to say that he saw them slippery sliding back across the road each morning. Sometimes I deposited them down at the beach among the grass. I am not into killing them.

Well Duckie did a better job than I did. I kept track of the number of snails I assigned to transportation - 2000 all up - until I stopped counting. I gave up but Duckie was still at it. She kept working every day until those dratted snails just took off when they saw her coming.

Isn't she cute?

Aloe vera, the Healing Plant

Aloe vera is a great healing plant. I has essential glyconutrients in it which we need.
Aloe vera is wonderful for burns, sunburn and other skin rashes.

If you have a plant in your garden, you can slice off part of a leaf. Run your knife along the edges to cut off the sharp spines. Next, slide your knife inside the leaf, cutting the leaf in half, cutting through the fleshy, juice filled flesh. You will notice a gel oozing from the cut flesh. If you scrape the inner flesh more gel will exude from the leaf.

How to use Aloe vera plant

Rub this gel onto your rash or burn and let it dry there. You only need a small amount of leaf as a little goes a long way. If you find you have cut off more than you need, just wrap the rest of the leaf in some plastic wrap or aluminium foil and keep it in the fridge until you need it the next day. The leaf will last a few days.

The plant will heal itself where it has been cut.



Aloe vera flower

Aloe vera plant

How to paint a Folk Art flower

In my Folk Art books I teach you how to paint flowers. The books centre generally around Bavarian type painting. Bavaria is in the southern part of Germany in the beautiful mountains and valleys. This type of painting was done by the peasants of the area.  

A few hundred years ago artists would go from village to village painting the cottagers houses and furniture. People were very poor in those days and welcomed any form of beautification they could afford.

Their artwork was very simple, colourful and symbolic. Flowers were not painted in the way we would paint flowers today. They were rather a symbol of the flower. 





Getting started in Bavarian Folk Art by Therese Vahland


 

Here is a page from this book showing the steps of painting one of these pretty flowers.

 

 

 

 

This book is available @ http://www.allergiesandcfs.com/folk-art-books.html 

 

 

Enjoy.

Jonquil Perfume

In our household, there are those that love and those that hate - JONQUILS.

I just love the perfume of these pretty little flowers. We have lots of different cream jonquils, single ones that look like stars to double ones, ones that have lots of petals.

My favourite jonquils are the bright, intense yellow flowers. They usually have a few flowers per stalk.

We are lucky enough to live near flower farms and every year in August and September, perfume pervades the air for a kilometre or two.

Step outside at night and the perfume is strongest. Some years we could also hear the bleat of baby lambs as they wandered the next paddock also.

Yellow Jonquils nodding in the breeze

Those that hate the perfume of these pretty flowers - there are three of my children - really detest the smell. It makes them feel ill. I can understand that many people are intolerant to many things. One of their intolerances just happens to be jonquils.

Some people get bad hay fever from the strong perfume of many plants in Spring time.

Do you like the scent of jonquils?

Perfumed Flowers

There are some lovely flowers that also have an exquisite perfume. Remember that, just like perfume in a bottle doesn't suit all people, some people don't like the perfume of some flowers whilst others adore it.

One of my favourite plants with lovely flowers and lovely perfume is the Snail creeper.

There is some controversy about its true Latin name. It is either Phaseolus caracalla or Vigna caracalla. According to Wikipedia the latter is the correct one.

Why is it called the snail creeper? Well it doesn't attract snails but it is all curly in a ball and about the same size as a snail. Caracalla is from the Portuguese word caracol meaning snail. It is also called the Corkscrew vine. 

It actually needs ants to fertilize it, so if you see a lot of ants travelling its vines, don't try to get rid of them, leave them to do their job.

Snail Creeper Vine

This plant is rare. Many people cannot get it to go to seed. This beautiful plant and I have had a good rapport and it has provided me with many seeds, though this year there were few of them.

If you are after some seeds, I have only a few left. Try here for more info about the flower and for some seeds.

Free Wallpaper for your Laptop

Recently I made some wallpaper for my laptop, you know, the pretty pictures you see when you turn on your screen. I thought someone might like to share it too.

Its a photo of the beautiful beach at Airey's Inlet a small community along the Great Ocean Road along the southern Victorian coast. We are talking Australia here.

The size is 1920 x 1080, 884Kb, just right for a laptop.

Here's the link in Flickr. Hope you like it.

While you are there you might check out some of my other photos.

Cheers

Printmaking and the Human Form

Art is very important in my life. I have enjoyed many forms of it. Sometimes the different forms of art interact. Here I have used Life drawing and linocut printmaking together.

 

The female form is complemented by a partner. Where one is rounded, the other is angular. Where one is nurturing, the other is protecting. Humans have needed both qualities to protect and develop the human race. One attracts the other for the innate qualities each has.

 

 

All artwork is for sale.