Crafting A Patterned Home - Book by Kristin Nicholas

I have been following Kristin Nicholas on her blog Getting Stitched on The Farm for a while now, and what I love about her is that she seems genuinely motivated out of the pure love of creating, to decorate her home and make things. She doesn't follow trends, she just has a love for pattern and colour that transcends the latest fashions. It's a true love affair, not just a fling!

photo by Rikki Snyder

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So when I found out she had a new book out, Crafting A Patterned Home, published by Roost Books, I didn't hesitate, I didn't even read about it, I just jumped online and bought it!

I am, like Kristin, intoxicated by pattern and colour and love home decorating. Sometimes I walk into a minimalist space and find some peace and a breath of fresh air, but after a while, I grow bored. Pattern and colour excite me. So clearly I feel like I have lots in common with Kristin.

She has covered the walls in her home with hand-painted patterns, and objects such as lampshades and furniture are not safe... there's even a bath! In this book, she shares how she has done it.

Kristin talks about her previous book Crafting A Colorful Home in this video below, but you can get a sneak peek into her colourful life.

So even though I can appreciate a nice calm neutral home, when I saw Kristin's via this Houzz video I sat there absolutely enthralled. I just would love to sit in her loungeroom with a cuppa and cake and absorb all that pattern into my soul.

Kristin also includes some words of encouragement for the novice or the unsure (scared?) on how to get started.

She gives in-depth advice on how she creates her rooms. One of my favourite snippets of advice she gives is don't make your rooms too "matchy-matchy". I've always agreed with that line of thought; less matchy-matchy makes for a more personalised, interesting home. If all of your furniture is the same design, your rooms might end up looking too much like a furniture display store.

There's a lot of advice on colour, how to think about and design a room, and techniques and tools. There are projects for each space of the house, kitchen & dining, living room & library, bathroom and bedroom, and then outdoor spaces: pottery studio and garden shed, and in the orchard and under the pergola. And of course, if you don't have a pottery studio or pergola, you could make projects for your potting shed or outdoor deck for example.

Such as the one in the image below. I really want to do this with the chook pen window!

The book is bursting with colour, and as a creative person myself, I find it very motivating and I'm eager to try some of the projects in the book.

Thank you Kristin for a lovely book! It's going to slide out of my bookshelf and appear on my coffee table frequently!

Kristin's new book can be found here: Crafting A Patterned Home

Jules :)



*Affiliate Information: Affiliate links help me earn small commissions on products (at no extra cost to you), which helps support my love of blogging and sharing creative things. I only ever recommend or link to products that I'm genuinely into or would use.

Art Book Review & Road Test: The Painting Workbook by Alena Hennessy.

Art book review time! Today I'm reviewing The Painting Workbook by Alena Hennessy.

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First of all, I can't believe I'd never heard of this artist before. I thought I was fully immersed and up to date with all this arty stuff online. But when I saw some images of a fellow artist friend's work on her instagram that she had completed whilst taking one of Alena Hennessy's online art courses, I immediately googled Alena and I was so happy with what I discovered. (Surely I have seen her work around, and just not known who she was? Surely!)

When I first got my hands on this book I couldn't stop to read any of the information as the pictures were so beautiful it teased me to just look through the whole book first! The first thing that jumps out at me is her colours. They are bright and bold, which is what I like to use too.

Once you've got that out of your system, you can focus on the information and 52 prompts given in the book. I love that they are prompts so that you can take some inspiration or guidance from them but create your own individual & original artwork. 

Some of Alena's breathtaking art...

Just so amazing and beautiful.

As the title suggests this book is about creating art/ paintings. It goes through materials and tools and the uses and applications of different paints, mediums, surfaces and extra things you might like to use whilst creating art. Then, some basic techniques, colour theory and other thoughts regarding creating art are discussed before moving onto the prompts. Some of the prompts are followed by mini workshops, where she goes through a certain technique in more detail. 

This is not a how-to-draw book, but a book full of prompts that Alena has outlined with an explanation for each on how you might get started. You can use the prompts to push your own boundaries, try something you've never tried before (like paint a picture with a minimal colour palette for example) or use it to help get out of a creative slump. Or just for plain fun!

I think regardless of if you were wanting to get some prompts to start painting, the simple act of just flicking through this book is inspiring enough for me and just makes me want to paint anyway!

I decided to try a bit of 'finger painting' and 'paint with prints'. You know, I never finger paint. Maybe I have with my kids but not on my own personal artwork. 

So I took out a half finished painting, one that has been sitting around in my studio for a while and I added some components from some of my old unusable prints.

 ...And then dipped my finger in some paint.

Very fun and liberating! I added some splodgy marks here and there.

Other prompts I focussed on during this painting from Alena's book were 'repetition' (which I added in the form of repeating patterns), 'add some script', 'layering' (always!), 'draw on top', and 'found objects'. I used some bits and pieces from my mosaic stash :). 

My finished "prompted" artwork 

I really love this book and was so happy to discover the gold that is Alena Hennessy's work and teachings. It's the kind of book that will happily live on my coffee table just for the pleasure of reading through it to kickstart some inspiration, or just as valuable accompanying me in the studio.

I do think this book could be used as a fantastic tool for kicking some creative block. Just start with a prompt and hopefully the flow will return. And with 52 prompts there is one that's sure to spark some inspiration.

If you'd like to know more check out Alena's The Painting Workbook here or visit her website here.

Jules :)

*Affiliate Information: Affliliate links help me earn small commissions on products (at no extra cost to you), which helps support my love of blogging and sharing creative things. I only ever recommend or link to products that I'm genuinely into.

Art Book Review & Road Test: Daring Adventures in Paint by Mati Rose McDonough

Today I'm chatting about the art book Daring Adventures in Paint by Mati Rose McDonough.

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Daring Adventures in Paint

I have admired Mati Rose McDonough's artwork for a while now. She has this amazing ability to create modern artworks that look like they are directly from the inner child. Like gallery-quality-kids-paintings! And it may look like an easy thing to do, until you try to do it. It is in fact, so hard to do. Personally I think she has perfected it.

Some of Mati Rose's work. Those elephants are just so wonderful.

In Daring Adventures in Paint Mati includes ideas and prompts for creating art, and shares some techniques that she uses.

She talks about ideas for getting inspired, plus where she personally pulls inspiration from. I always love to hear where other artists get their inspiration from.

There's an honest story in there about her own beginnings and feelings as an artist (and I can totally relate). 

She talks about habits and rituals and finding your own style/ voice. All important stuff. Being an artist and creating is not all about the physical act of painting or making, it's a whole jumble of feelings, life experiences and your perspective that make up the unique-you, which all comes together to make the artist that creates. She talks about finding your own unique voice: "Your voice is a mixture of all the sparkliness and grit that tells your story." I love that. 

I also love the bright colour and the beautiful photography in the book.

I think you would gain something from this book if you like the style of Mati's work, and are interested in learning about some of her techniques and how she creates her paintings.

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So, here's the road test! The book goes through creating a piece of artwork, and you see how she completes each stage until the painting is finished at the end of the book. There are also other paintings in there with different techniques explained.

I chose to create my background with a few techniques Mati describes, including covering the background with some paint applications with a couple of Mati's techniques, and I also chose to do some collage with decorative paper. 

Paint, collage, then more paint

I then chose to invite collaboration (another prompt in the book). Luckily I have two little artists living in my house! "Miss 6!... I need you to draw a tiger!" We both have a thing for tigers lately.

In she came and sat down and boldly drew a tiger. I've said it before and I'll say it again; we need to learn from kids' fearlessness when it comes to creating art. She had no issues about taking the pencil and just drawing top & centre over my art!

I then continued with some collage and added a few more elements here and there. In the book it describes placing other elements over the top of your prepared background so I used some of the ideas in the book plus a little artistic license.

I like the previous collage element and how you can still see a glimpse of the patterned paper above the tigers head.

And then the finished painting. 

Close up detail of Miss 6's tiger

I had fun with Daring Adventures in Paint and I'm sure this book will be out on my coffee table often for random perusing.

I hope you enjoyed this review & road test. Do you own or would love to own Mati's book? Or love her artwork as I do?

Jules :)

*Affiliate Information: Affliliate links help me earn small commissions on products (at no extra cost to you), which helps support my love of blogging and sharing creative things. I only ever recommend or link to products that I'm genuinely into.

Book Review: Art Lab For Kids

Art Lab For Kids (affiliate link)

Today I'm reviewing Art Lab For Kids by Susan Schwake. And we took one of the projects for a road test!

Art Lab For Kids is a practical art book with projects grouped by medium. The sections are painting, printmaking, paper, and mixed media.

I liked the important notes at the beginning, such as how to ask a question about a child's piece of artwork. Using thoughtful language such as "tell me about your painting", rather than asking "what is that?" is more respectful. And suggesting promoting fearlessness when it comes to creating art; something I'm still working on! But kids are better at this concept.

I like that the book includes gelatine plate printing, which is a really effective and fun project for kids. (I will have to do it here on the blog one day.)

Art Lab For Kids promotes play and exploring, and shows artists' examples along the way.

As an artist myself, I found myself wanting to explore the fun and interesting methods alongside my kids. The materials used throughout are easily accessible and if you're already a bit arty you will probably have most things at home already.

We chose one of the projects in the book to do, which was watercolour shapes. Here are our results:

Other projects that look interesting within the book that I'd like to try out is plastic printing (where you use plastic on top of painting to gain effects), charcoal drawing combined with acrylic paints, and vellum drawing, which is creating an artwork incorporating some semi- transparent paper.

Then again, art projects are what I could do all day :)

Jules :)

Disclaimer: Affliliate links help me earn small commissions on products (at no extra cost to you), which helps support my love of blogging and sharing creative things. I only ever recommend or link to products that I'm genuinely into.