do what you love Page 59 of 61

At home: Welcome to my studio!

Posted on 2010-08-23 at 9:22 am.

“Pick one room and make it yours.

Go slowly through the house.

Be polite, introduce yourself,

so it can introduce itself to you.”

(borrowing the words quoted by the lovely Louise Gale as a comment in response to this blog post)

So that’s what I am going to do. Introduce myself, then introduce you, room by room, bit by bit. As we start to make friends with our new home.

Here is a peek of the first one – my studio. Won’t you come in?

At one end it has this sweet fireplace, which will be great when winter sets in. I have just put up this picture for now while I work out what to do with the space above the mantelpiece. Any ideas?

Here’s my painting/making stuff table. There is an easel in the corner but I like making a horizontal mess! The glass table is actually more practical than it looks – it provides a brilliantly smooth surface for painting and is easy to cover, but also makes the most of the space in the room when it is uncovered.

The wooden floorboards were reclaimed from an old school gymnasium. They are full of marks and stories – you can almost see generations of children jumping over benches and off climbing bars (and maybe even sneaking a first kiss behind the pommel horse).

There are three big windows like this so they let in lots of light

Handy storage for my art supplies, and just enough space to squeeze blank canvasses underneath

No such thing as too many art books…

These old picnic hampers make great storage for my sewing stuff – fabric, ribbons, thread for the things I am slowly learning to make!

And above them is the lovely painting from Judit at Pilgrim of the Moon (I talked about it in this post)

One of my inspiration boards. This one includes prints by Juliette Crane and DJ Pettitt, and my Soul Collage cards that I made in California back in February.

I think the paper obsession, stationery obsession and book obsession may be linked…

Finally I have somewhere to put all my bits and bobs – paper ribbon, buttons, lovely shiny things

My little bonsai friend (in need of a haircut)

My reading corner, and all important stereo – a girl’s gotta have tunes to paint to!

So there it is, my new studio.

Would love to have you all come over to create and make mess. What’s your creative space like? What’s on your inspiration board?

Overwhelmed by kindness

Posted on 2010-08-19 at 5:38 pm.

Written by Beth Kempton

Housewarming gifts and cards have been pouring in before we have even had the chance to send out our new address to most of our friends. We have been overwhelmed by the kindness.

Here are a few of the things which have made my heart leap in the past couple of weeks, and which are indeed warming our new place:

A bay tree by the back door (I have dreamed of this ever since doing postgraduate study in the beautiful Roman city of Bath several years ago, where all the houses are honey coloured stone and many have bay trees outside).

A gorgeous original painting all the way from Spain, created especially for my new studio by the lovely Judit of Pilgrim of the Moon – so kind! Thank you Judit – how did you know the colours would be perfect?

Flowers, flowers, flowers – these are now all over our house!

A hand-stitched picture of the Chinese character for love

We were also showered with welcomes (and vital rubbish-disposal information!) from our new neighbours, a new bird feeder for the garden and cards and messages galore… I feel full of love for the world today!

Thank you everyone!

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Photos of the house to follow shortly I promise…

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Shoes and memories

Posted on 2010-08-06 at 11:39 am.

Written by Beth Kempton

One of the best bits about unpacking and sorting boxes of stuff is rediscovering all the stuff you already have. It’s like a shopping bonanza without spending any money. However, it also slows down the task somewhat, as you think a little about each thing you pull out of the cardboard boxes.

As you can see, I quite like shoes and am trying to find a place to put them in the new house…

However many times I have a clearout I can never bring myself to throw shoes away, so I end up keeping them for years. For me shoes – especially the really impractical but gorgeous ones – spark memories.

…The day I wore those sparkly flipflops on the beach in Brazil when I first tried surfing
…The night I wore the really high silver heels with a long tangerine dress and danced until dawn with my man
…Even the slippers I wore to climb the Great Wall of China back when I was 19, having rushed out of our Beijing hostel in a sleepy daze to catch the 5am bus, forgetting to actually put on a pair of proper shoes

You can see why it takes me a long time to unpack!

What do your favourite shoes remind you of?

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This month I am joining in Susannah Conway’s August Break, sharing daily photos of my life this August. Why not check out who else is joining in, or have a go yourself?

Pottering about

Posted on 2010-08-03 at 11:14 am.

Written by Beth Kempton

Thinking about our new garden today, and realising how little I know about how to care for it. My gardening history to date has revolved around pots of basil and the odd tomato plant on many an apartment windowsill. Our house was empty for a few months before we moved in as the previous owners had emigrated to Australia. As a result the garden has gone a bit wild. It has lots of tropical plants in it and I kind of like it that way, all a bit crazy, but it seems a shame not to be able to even see the sunken table, never mind eat dinner at it! Time to get green fingers…

Photo from recent island travels in Greece – photos of our new garden coming soon!

Joining in some creative summer fun!

Posted on 2010-07-21 at 8:57 pm.

Written by Beth Kempton

Just wanted to share a couple of cool things I am joining in with this summer, in case you fancy having a go yourself.

The lovely Louise over at Dream, Inspire, Create has launched a ‘Creative Color Challenge’. It’s a great idea, and gives you a bit of a steer for creating but also gives you a lot of freedom to play with juicy colours. I will be sharing what I make over the next month right here.

Image: from Louise Gale

And Susannah Conway has just launched the ‘August Break’, a photo blogging challenge for the summer – so I will try to share a photo (nearly) every day in August.

Joining in some creative summer fun! august+break

Image: from Susannah Conway

And I am also trying to keep up with learning some new techniques from the very talented Claudine Hellmuth. Her class ‘@ Home with Claudine Hellmuth’ is very cool. I will share some of the things I make over there in the coming weeks too.

Joining in some creative summer fun! %40home

Image: from Claudine Hellmuth

What creative challenge are you setting yourself this summer?

The power of photography

Posted on 2010-07-13 at 7:02 am.

Written by Beth Kempton

“When we look with our eyes, from our hearts, through the lens, it’s a completely different photo and something really powerful can happen” Jen Lemen

Check out this awesome video of Jen’s story on her journey from happy snapper to $50,000 world photography prize winner…

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And if you are in the mood for wishing, please help me make a dream come true here!

A dream about to come true?

Posted on 2010-07-12 at 1:18 pm.

Written by Beth Kempton

I do believe in the power of wishing, and of visualisation, to help make things really happen (like it did here a few months ago). But sometimes some things just seem that little bit too big and too important to say out loud. I always have a niggling fear that speaking about the dreams you really really want to come true will somehow jinx them, and make them not come true after all.

That is why I haven’t mentioned anything about our dream house until now.

(cute stitched keyring from the lovely Dear Emma)

My man and I have been living together for some time, but in his place, not in our place. To his eternal credit, when I moved in he let me change a few things around (read ‘new wooden flooring, new doors, new paint on every wall, new furniture…’) and we have been happy here. But for a long time we have wanted a home of our own, that we chose together, with a little garden, space to spread out, and maybe even a nice big studio for me(!).

And then, all of a sudden, a couple of months ago, we found it. The perfect house for us, right now.

And then one serendipitous thing after another happened, which brought us closer to actually buying the house. And guess what? If all goes to plan, it will be ours next Thursday!

I cannot tell you how excited I am about this!

There is something very comforting about a house, with actual staircases. Having lived in a flat for so long, I cannot wait to go upstairs to bed! And downstairs in the morning, to make a brew and then sit in the garden having breakfast and chatting to the birds.

So please, wish hard for us that everything goes right and we get the keys next week, as is supposed to happen according to our dream. And then I can invite you round for tea!

Adventure is good for the soul

Posted on 2010-07-09 at 5:03 pm.

Written by Beth Kempton

I’m back from my little African adventure.

Energised.

Refreshed.

Inspired.

I went alone but travelled in good company

with people I found along the way.

I visited a prison,

played with a lion,

hung out with new friends and old.

And I soaked up the energy of the world’s football fans

dancing on African soil.

New places, new faces.

New perspectives.

New memories.

Nothing like a little travel to shake it all up.

What little adventures have you lived recently?

Back to basics

Posted on 2010-06-27 at 10:02 pm.

Written by Beth Kempton

Imagine the scene. Ten people sketching furiously to a strict time limit of ten seconds, one life model pose after another, papers flying everywhere, tossed to the floor on each ring of the bell for a new pose, new piece of paper, new sketch. A veritable storm of drawing paper and charcoal dust…

10 second sketch (10 seconds is seriously quick! I’m not sure I even looked at the paper in that time!)

I spent most of Saturday at the Northern Film School taking a fascinating workshop on Drawing Figures for Animation. Five solid hours of live drawing, with the longest sitting at 20 minutes – exhausting but exhilarating. And seriously good practice. We did a mixture of contour drawings, gesture drawings and charicatures with charcoal, pencil and marker pens. I came away with about eighty sketches, and a whole lot more confidence in figure drawing.

30 second sketch

Sometimes it is worth putting a time limit on your work to focus your attention and really make you look. Then it’s up to you whether you stick to the rules, break the rules or abandon the rules altogether!

2-minute sketch

When was the last time you played around in your sketchbook?

Doing nothing

Posted on 2010-06-22 at 8:31 am.

Written by Beth Kempton

Doing nothing does not come easily to me, but island hopping in Greece was the perfect opportunity to take a step back, get some much needed rest, soak up the sun and have no schedule for over two weeks (except ‘swim time’, ‘ice cream time’, ‘dinner time’ etc – you get the picture). It has been time for:

… ice cold watermelon

… cool swims in sparkling seas

… dancing in the sand

… long chats over dinner as the sun set

… and a time to wander and explore tradition and modernity

It has also been a time for clearing out my head, which arrived in the baking heat of Athens jumbled and full, noisy and impatient.

The gentle breeze, clear skies and luxurious sun have calmed it, and made space for new ideas, plans and adventures. I have made real progress on two exciting projects I am working on (more on this soon) – baby steps towards a big dream.

I feel healthier, energised and ready to play.

It’s funny how quite a few of us have been talking about rest recently, as Louise pointed out.

It’s half way through a big year, spring is turning into summer, and we all need to take time to replenish our energy reserves every now and then.

Are you taking care of yourself?