I have moved to a new studio! Same building on the First floor and its bigger too. Room for a large table which is ideal for hosting workshops! Coming soon, children’s art classes, doll making workshops and comic drawing workshops.
I am taking part in my first event since having a child. I will be selling works old and new at six streets art trail in derby.
Old work will be sold at a huge mark down in price. I have had boxes full of prints ranging from etchings, collography and monoprints.
These Original pieces of art have been gathering dust for too long and I would like them to go to good homes.
New work will be from my brand petite house of dolls and will consist of art dolls, badges, stickers, greeting cards, broaches and hair slides.
I have been working on a new brand idea, petite house of dolls, for a while now. The portfolio of work for it is still in production but I have enough now to share.
How it started – My work has always had a storytelling element to it and I have always been very fond of stories growing up about toys or dolls. The mennyms are a particular favourite series or tales about small creatures like brambly hedge. After working on a ragdoll project as a community artist this fired my interest in creating dolls.
One of the first dolls I created was a ‘mini me’ doll which is what I call her. She is even wearing fabrics from an old favourite dress of mine.
Why the name petite house of dolls? – My work is and has always been small and delicate weather its been illustration or embroidery so its only natural my dolls are turning out the same. Petite is in the name because I am a little bit French. The image of a doll house isn’t actually in the name but it is in the logo and is an ongoing project which will expand the brand.
I have now developed 3 different styles of art dolls made from cloth, clay and wool and wire.
The cloth dolls are painted and embroidered and defiantly take the longest to make. I have created two for commissions also. Although crafted from cloth this style is intended to be a piece of art and not a toy due to small parts.
The two dressed in spotted outfits are now for sale.
Another style of doll is made from wire and wool. The first I have created are flower fairies. These reflect my interest in small creatures, are inspired by the flower fairy stories by Cicely Mary Barker and my love for bright colours.
I also have for sale two one off soft cat sculptures inspired by a collograph print I illustrated a few years ago. My stories are often influenced by traditional weird and wonderful fairy tales.
The story behind these cats is as follows;
My Tail – This is a tale about a witch who is obsessed with cats, in particular their tails. Stray hungry cats who wonder into her garden often fall victim to the treats left outside her door as a way to lure them inside. She uses her golden magic to remove their tails and keep them stored in a wardrobe as if they were just another fashion accessory. The cats leave unharmed but in place of their tails are long beautiful golden trails. These cats often end up staying close by. Locals often wonder if its either because they are under the spell of the witch. Or if they just want to remain near to their long lost tails.
Another doll style is a created from clay and wooden peg tops. My first creations is a wedding cake topper. This will be something I will advertise for commissions soon, I loved creating this. I have drawn an illustration of the final piece which I will develop into cards too.
My etsy shop can be found if you follow this link;
https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/Petitehouseofdolls
Empowered women of women’s work exhibition is the first exhibit I organised and helped curate.
This exhibition collated a beautiful selection of my students work displaying their skills in textile art and painting.
The second exhibition of students work is still currently displayed at the community café in Derby city’s Arboretum until the end of April.
This exhibition is an interactive presentation of individual students collaged art pieces. These are shaped into simple paper dresses of my design.
Held up by hangers the dresses can be taken down so the reverse can be seen.
Blow you can see close up images of my example paper dress.
Pictured is my reason for the lack of blog posts, I had a real life one of these!
I have been very busy being a mum and building my art practice which now includes doll making and puppetry!
More blog posts on this to follow but for now I will just show you a few pictures of me in my new studio at banks mill derby.
A small studio but it is the ideal space for me to develop my ideas and run one to one art tuition classes.
I may be loved up and happy but not with February, I am looking forward to racing through the next month towards spring.
The first few months of the year are never my favourite mostly due to the colder weather and short days. Although the days are slowly getting longer and there are signs of spring with colourful flowers popping up to say hello, No doubt a cold snap will try it’s best to kill them off though.
I have been keeping busy with the more craft related projects recently. I desperately want to continue drawing and churning out imagery for my story but have developed quite the literal neck ache. Giving the studio a spring clean and setting up a proper area with an easel of sorts will help and support a more effective posture ready for completion of the rag doll fairytale story.
For now though I have gone off on quite a tangent with an idea I have had in my head since the start of my rag doll project. I have painstakingly painted, designed, hand and machine sewn a ‘real life’ version of one of the characters from the story. I describe it in this way because I did not realise how much work the outfit would take to create. Sewing tiny clothes is far harder than I thought!
I am pleased with the outcome though and think I did a good job of sourcing bits of fabric scraps from my storage to remain complimentary to the original illustration.
Wings can be made at a later date along with more characters and creatures in this style. I will need to draw more of the story before this idea can be explored further.
My sister’s birthday has been, celebrated and gone but I brought this book from a charity shop before Christmas with the intention of making it into a clutch.
I don’t usually enjoy doing crafts on my own, I think I will but it may be because a lot of the exemplars I need to create are craft related so I prefer to draw in any spare time I get. I find ‘Crafting’ is usually always more interesting when done with someone else or in a workshop setting.
I discovered many online tutorials on how to make one so I took inspiration from a few and developed my own, somewhat messy, version.
A few paper cuts later I had paper mached and super glued my way to something I was thankful to have finished. I hope my sister will like it even though there is pretty much only room for a lipstick and phone, but what else do you actually need in your bag!? #firstworldproblems
My partner in creative ‘crime’ has been colouring my art nouveau updated images beautifully, I am so excited to see them all completed and perhaps will draw more.
We are thinking of created enough to exhibit. When, will be decided once we discover the right location to host the exhibition.
March is just around the corner which means lots of exciting projects happening. I am really looking forward to Derby’s international women’s day festival which I am always happy to be involved in, so watch this space.
I won the bronze award for my entry into eco creates exhibition Time and tide waits for no man with my entry ‘tide and tide waits for no one’, this kicked off a great start to what has already been a busy creative year for me.
‘This is a metaphorical Illustrative textile piece. I chose to use a mix of embroidery, machine sewing and appliqué to ‘colour in’ with a small amount of fabric painting added for good measure. Pictured is a female dressed in her wellies, rain coat and mittens, she represents human kind, and struggles to hold onto a clock ‘umbrella’ with ocean waves crashing down upon the top. The umbrella is decorated to look like a clock which depicts time and that it is running out. A gold, slightly wonky, umbrella handle that she is clinging to signifies those of us who are trying to prevent the inevitable. Admittedly a future that won’t necessarily happen for hundreds of years yet. After all though shouldn’t we begin to realise that eventually mother nature (the tide) will do as she wishes. As the theme of the exhibition suggests ‘Time and tide’, really wont, wait for no man or indeed woman’.
My aim for this year is to have a clear out of unsold art work I have stored for years now cluttering the corner of my studio. I can’t keep hoarding them any more so I am having a 60% reduction off the original price which will run until the end of February, I am hoping at least this way, my work can go to new home where they will be out on display and seen.
Follow this link https://en-gb.facebook.com/ElizabethBladesArtist/ to my facebook page to grab a bargain and own some hand printed art that is worth so much more than what you will be paying for it.
This January saw the start of my new venture, life drawing evening classes. The classes are in such a beautiful space, with chic and inspiring surroundings at the Smallprint Co http://www.smallprintcompany.co.uk/
I am keen to see if this will grow in terms of attendance numbers but for now at least I will wait and see what happens.
I found time over the festive period to work on my art nouveau collaboration project, here is a sneak peak at some of the drawings awaiting colour.
My ragdoll panel imagery is slow in progress but still coming along nicely. I will have to stop myself from posting too many of these so I don’t give the whole story away. It is still early days yet but I am rediscovering my love for just drawing in pencil, atmosphere and tone is so fun to create and perfect for setting the mood.
I have begun to experiment with a new medium for an exciting job opportunity I gained just before the end of last year. Mosaic will be a technique I am determined to master.
I will be running a series of mosaic workshops in schools throughout the first few months of the year so I have created this exemplar because I teach better when I have visual aids. The mosaic’s the children will produce will be large mural size intended to adorn the school walls.
I have many more exciting projects planned over the coming months and I am looking forward to documenting it here in my blog.
