Merry Christmas!

Today is Boxing Day, and it's been raining and now becoming stormy.  Such a day isn't for a walk but good for writing my blog.  :)

After the hectic days, we have spent relaxed Christmas days.  Making Adventskränze (Christmas wreaths in the German traditional way) became a tradition for us among German-speaking friends.  We bring leaves, branches with berries from each one's garden and decorations.  It's always nice to share the materials among us, and to catch up with a or more cup of coffee and/or tea, of course.

Since my husband is German, we follow the German way more or less.  Putting and decorating a Christmas tree, and unpacking the Christmas present take place in the Christmas Eve.

This time, I chose a necklace for myself as a Christmas present.  I saw it on a stall next to me on a craft fair.  Yuki, whom I got to know at the last Christmas fair, creates beautiful fine jewellery with the name of 'locca'.  She uses a distinctive technique of Japanese Shippou-enamelling, and is inspired often by plants and animals.  The necklace I bought is not used the shippou-enamelling technique, but I fell in love with the delicate form and texture.  It looks like a petal of, say, rose.  But she told me that the necklace was inspired by a scale of a cone of a kind of spruce or larch.
(Yuki has her own blog: locca.exblog.jp)

Christmas Day was chilly but sunny with the crisp air and the blue sky.  My eldest son, who is usually not keen on walking in the woodland, suggested a family walk in the woodland.  As we knew the ground was quite muddy, we all put on wellies or sturdy water-proof walking shoes.

The stream was quiet and clear despite the recent bad weather.  But the ground was muddy as expected.  A flock of sheep was browsing on the green field.  At the fringe of the woodland, the fern leaves were now died down.  But I find a batch of the grey beige leaves was beautiful.

As we entered the birch woodland, we were surrounded by the quiet atmosphere.  It was Christmas Day at noon.  Most of people were gathered at home and busied with preparing Christmas dinner.  Quiet; even birds might have been resting in the rare sunny day.  

A tall old birch was fell down onto a foot path.  Was it not able to hold its long trunk?  

Birch trees grows mainly in the woodland, but some other trees also cohabit.  Larch trees fell their leaves but left some cones on their branches.  I found it on the ground and imagined Yuki might have saw one like that and made the beautiful necklace.

PADLT Craft Fair was held today

The weather was nice, warm and dry today.  A lot of people came in to the Baptist Church Hall to browse the PADLT craft fair although there were some other craft fair near by today.

I prepared much more greeting cards than ever as I noticed at the previous fairs in the summer that more and more cards were sold.  As expected a lot of greeting cards were sold.

Also calendars for 2015 were sold well.  Some people returned to buy the next year's calendars.  This encourages me to carry on creating calendars.

Quite a few people were interested in the original paper cut pieces, which I framed and displayed but not for sale.  It was a shame I didn't want to sell them since they were very precious.  However, I wanted to show how the original pieces looked like.  (As an example, see the pictures of the diary on 23. November 2014)

I would like to thank you all so much for having come to the fair,  and also thank the PADLT for having invited me as a stall holder again!

The PADLT showed the visitors the documentary video of their youth group's visit to Lesotho in the summer 2014 during the fair.  I hope they raised a lot of money for children in Lesotho through today's craft fair.  I am very pleased that I could contribute (only a little bit but )to the fund raising.

I will have a stall on another craft fair, nus nus Winter Fair, next Saturday 6th December in Cardiff.  Please come along if you missed today's fair!

In the morning at 10 am, the fair has just started.  

Christmas Fairs are coming soon!; Greeting Cards: Christmas + 4 Seasons + 4 Trees

I've been busy with preparing for the upcoming craft fairs.  I'll bring my art work pieces including the next years calendars and greeting cards.  Either of the fairs are free admission.  Please come along!


Upcoming CHRISTMAS FAIRS 

PADLT Christmas Crafts and Creations

Saturday 29th November

10am - 1pm

Stanwell Road Baptist Church Hall (next to the Paget Rooms)

Free Admission

nus nus Winter Fair

Saturday 6th December

10am - 5pm

St.Catherine's Church Hall

Pontcanna, CF11 9DE

Free Admission

New greeting cards (A6, 105x148mm) are now ready for the craft fairs.   

CHRISTMAS CARDS

There are two versions of two different images from paper cutting.  1st version is in the black background, and 2nd version is in the green background (each green is different).

Squirrel and Holly (left)

We have a big holly shrub in the garden, but the berries almost disappear by the beginning of winter every year.  I presume birds eat the most of the berries, and yet our neighbouring squirrels might contribute to consuming the red berries, though I have never witnessed it.  By the way, the holly berries are toxic to human.  So you never eat them!

Robin and Rose Hips with Holly Leaves (right)

Robin, of course, is a typical symbol for the winter here.  When I walk outside in the meadows near by our house in the late autumn and in the winter, I can find half-pecked ripe rose hips.  Sometimes, if I'm lucky, I can see the feast.

These are the original paper cut pieces; 11x11cm.

FOUR SEASONS
These four cards are extracts from the 'British Countryside Series'.  The size of the original paper cut is A3, and the images are trimmed for the A6 cards.

 TREE SERIES
These 4 pieces of relief prints are from 'Tree Series'.  They are 'Sycamore and Ash', 'Silver Birch', 'London Plane' and 'Bustard Service' .(clockwise from upper right)

TREE SERIES
These 4 pieces of illustrations are 'Tree Portrait Series'.  Clockwise from far right: 'London Plane', 'Silver Birch', 'Turkey Oak' and 'Horse Chestnut'.

At last! Calendar 2015

Now it's in the middle of November.  I should have planned better to organise calendar making.  It was running late.  However, the leaves calendar 2015 is at last ready!

I have made three types of calendar for the next year.  The moon phases and seasons (equinoxes and solstices) are put but no particular national holiday on the calendar.

Wall Monthly Calendar I: (larger one, right)

Calendar Original Relief Prints with individual signs and serial number (limited edition of 20)

12 pictures (one picture for each month, 10 x 15 cm)

Paper Size: 14.9 x 42 cm, Weight: 150 g/m²

Acid free cartridge paper from responsible sources

A tweed thread (wool 60% and cotton 40%) for hanging

Wall Monthly Calendar II: (smaller one, left)

Printed with inkjet printer

12 pictures (one picture for each month, 5 x 10 cm)

Paper Size: 10.5 x 29.7 cm, Weight: 150 g/m²

Acid free cartridge paper from responsible sources

A tweed thread (wool 60% and cotton 40%) for hanging

Calendar in acrylic case stand: (bottom)

Printed with inkjet printer

12 pictures (one picture for each month, 5 x 10 cm)

Paper Size: 10.7 x 18.4 cm, Weight: 148 g/m²

External Size of the case: 0.8 x 11 x 19 cm

Original relief prints of 12 different plants for 12 months

Serial numbers and signs for original relief prints

Calendar stand

If you are interested in the calendar, please leave a message (below).

Apology for Calendar 2014: October 20th was missing!

I have to apology for my mistake in the 2014 Calendar.  Just before I have received an email from one of my friends about missing the 20th October.

Having checked in my file of 2014 Calendar, indeed, the 20th was missing; the 21st came straight after 19th.  Although I had checked through the calendar when writing the numbers, I couldn't find the mistake before finishing the work.  It mustn't have happened, and mustn't be repeated!

I will endeavour to avoid any mistake.  (There is no missing number in my 2015 calendar.  I am relieved.)

Calendar 2015 in Progress; Upcoming Winter Craft Fairs in November and December 2014

I have been working on the next year's calendar of relief printing.

Choosing 12 plants for all year round is always hard.  I would like to find the most beautiful one for each month.  For the summer months there are so many options, then the spring, the autumn and I have to look around intensively for the winter months.

This time I'm making a little bit bigger relief prints, which means I can give each image with more expression.  Hopefully I will have finished the Calendar 2015 by November.

There are some exciting winter Christmas craft fairs  in November and December.  I will have a stall there.

PADLT Christmas Craft Sale

Saturday 29th November 2014

10am - 12pm

Stanwell Baptist Church Hall, Penarth

(on the left side, next to the Paget Rooms)

PADLT (Penarth and District Lesotho Trust) is a fundraising organisation for children in Lesotho) 

nus nus Winter Fairs Part 1
Sunday 30th November 2014
10am - 5pm
Cardiff Made (on Face Book, or visit Cardiff Made Web)
41 Lochaber Street, Roath, Cardiff CF24 3LS

nus nus Winter Fairs Part 2
Saturday 6th December 2014
St.Catherine's Church Hall
Kings Road, Pontcanna, Cardiff CF11 9DE

nus nus is an artisan market for beautiful craft art.
Cardiff Made provides a platform to showcase the work of Cardiff based artist and craft makers.  They run a cafe too.

Making Berry sirup, or Jelly?!

We were too late.

Birds enjoyed most of the juicy elder berries, while we were doing other than picking the berries up.  But we could still collect a handful berries for the sirup.

Our children love cordials.  My youngest son made aromatic elderflower sirup this early summer.  I made brilliant red strawberry sirup from the excessive not very nice looking strawberries from our garden.  These sirups are nice on warm days in the summer.

Elderberry sirup is nice on cold days in the winter with hot water (though my children drink cold.)

The berries were carefully removed from stems.  This picture below is the berries cooked with water, sugar and citric acid in a deep pan.  Then the berries were strained through a sieve.  The juice was put back into the pan, added more water and sugar, and cooked thoroughly.

This time we produced only a few jars of elderberries......

An idea came in my mind.  Brambles!  It shouldn't be too late.  I took my youngest son to the place where we usually collect the black berries.  There we found plenty of them.  The shiny fat black berries were still waiting for us to be harvested.

My bowl was soon full.

We had around 2 kg berries all together.  Didn't have a recipe for bramble berry sirup, I simply followed the elderberry sirup.  I though it worked quite the same.

Here!  I made 4 bottles and 3 jars of bramble berry cordial!  Hurray!  So did I think, so far in the evening....

Next morning I saw the liquid in the bottles and jars, which should remain liquid, turned into jelly!  I tried to think why the cordial transformed to jelly.  Maybe because I cooked the liquid too long.  I didn't know that bramble berries contained much more pectin than elderberries.  Shocked but we didn't waste the effort and the sirup.  Children scooped the first clod.  Then my eldest son shook the bottle many times.  Eventually the jelly turned back to thick liquid.  I poured a little bit of sirup in a glass and filled with sparkling water, tasted the bramble berry cordial.  Umm,  it was not so bad!

My Online Shop is now open!

At last!

I have opened the online shop at Etsy, which is one of the most popular worldwide art and craft online marketplaces.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TreeLeaFlower

As a start, I put 2 listings of my latest screen prints, My Summer Garden and Summer Meadow (pictured below).

I still need to improve the visibility of my listings and maintain my shop step by step.  Anyway Please have a look!

Summer Greeting and Agenda, and Hazel Nuts

I've been too lazy for writing on my blog, but have enjoyed this hot dry summer.  What I was really pleased was that I was able to wear short sleeves almost every day.  We have had a wet winter, so we deserve this fine summer.

I feel I need declare my agenda for this summer (by the end of August) so that I complete my tasks.

I've been working out to open an online shop at one of the most popular art and craft selling sites but very soon, hopefully finish setting up this weekend.  Alongside I'd like to finish the next paper cut art for the Autumn, and also finish the next year's calendar of the plants in the UK.

Anyway, the autumn is approaching now.  While raspberry bush in our garden has been producing still red sweet aromatic berries, though, strawberry runners are growing endlessly and the hazel nuts are fattening day by day.  Why not the squirrel's family in the neighbour's bushy garden find the fresh nuts for their dinner!  

I got two young hazel about 7, 8 years ago, and planted in our back garden.  They had only 2 nuts last year for the ever first time.  This year, at last, they got plenty of nuts.  But the naughty squirrels have eaten the most of them lavishly.  I decided to crop some nuts for us before all the nuts were gone.  We haven't tried green nuts.  But cob nuts ( a sort of hazel nuts) are now in vegetable shops and some supermarkets.  

My children helped to crack the shells.  The nuts are moist and a bit soft.  I could slice them easily.

The sliced nuts were eaten with salad leaves, sprincled balsamic vinegar and virgin olive oil.  They tasted nutty but very subtle and green?,  how I can describe, green crispy vegetable rather than nuts.  I prefer, to be honest, ripe nutty fatty ones.  Yet they were not so bad anyway.

Illustration: Bento

This was the second time to display cabinets in the Cardiff Central Library (See on Facebook, Photos; Cardiff is the capital city of Wales, UK) for the Japan Day to raise awareness of Japanese Culture.  This years Japan Day took place on Saturday 31st May.

I used to display cabinets in department stores and individual shops when I worked for a confectionary and cake company in Japan years ago.  It was a sort of work, but 10 display cabinets at once!  But my friends came to help me to do a lot on the day of display.

Many other friends supported for the display not only on the day of display, by such as creating Japanese calligraphy (amazing!), making origami art (amazing!) and lending invaluable personal belongings.

By the way, this time I drew some illustrations to decorate a couple of empty lunch boxes.

(Please see in Portfolio: Illustration)

Bento, lunch box in Japanese, is a kind of food art, or a treasure box, filled with colourful foods.  I cut the illustrations into the right sizes, fits to each lunch box.

Nowadays in the UK, you can get a lot of Japanese ingredients in supermarkets, but I still miss the traditional lunch box which my mum used to make for her children every morning!

Elderflower Cordial Season

It was a few week ago now.  I took my youngest son as a company for elderflower hunting one warm dry evening after very wet week.  He is a great fun of elderflower cordial.  So was he very delighted to come along with me.

Here and there were the bushes with full of creamy white elderflower.  We cut them just as much as we needed, leave the rest for the bees and the others who might want to make cordials or wine (or champagne).  As the berries ripen in the Autumn, we need leave the flowers for birds and for us making berry cordial.

I like the sweet smell.  We cut the flower from the stems, ready for making cordial.

The flowers are put in a large bowl, together with lemon and orange peels, which add a zesty touch, and left overnight to infuse.

Next day the liquid is carefully strain with a muslin bag.  Sugar, lemon juice citric acid are pour into the liquid and boiled.

Bottled cordial is ready for this summer!