Category — Uncategorized

Well, the season is here and I hope you are feeling joyful! As a special treat for this holiday season I will be taking part in Red Friday on 4th December!

This is a heads up to all my dear friends that I will be offering FREE SHIPPING on ALL my paintings, prints, cards and photography prints on Friday 4th December for that one day only!

Happy Shopping and love to you all.

xxx

Do you ever look up at the sky and just feel so amazed at what you see?

Hubby and I have found ourselves doing this more and more lately either while we are on our walks or watering the garden in the evenings. Every time there is something new to see and it fills us with such joy and a sense of life.

These two beauties will be up in the shop next week along with some more new photo’s.

Have a wonderful weekend.

xxx

I’m sure Autumn is coming, I can feel it in the air, can you? The last week has been a little nippy in the air. We are still having some warm days but the temp drops really quickly in the early evening and first thing it’s quite nippy too!

Still, our tomatoes are going strong. We’ve had lot’s from these plants and still more coming which is great. Today I bought AM magazine (Amateur Gardener) it’s got a packet of free seeds with in it… sweet peas!

I loved growing the ones this year so am definitely going to go for it again.

Our garden is coming along nicely…

Over the Bank Holiday weekend we had a skip and spent ages (well Hubby did most of it, but I did help lol) shovelling sub soil and now the garden is much clearer, ready for more prep.

This is what the patio looks like, it’s now got a layer of sand on top, so we are gradually getting towards laying the slabs.

I can’t wait till the prep is finished and we can actually lay grass and start putting in flowers. I am planning to grow a lot of plants myself but will be buying some lovely trees and shrubs as well.

So, that is what we have been up to over the Bank Holiday weekend, it’s gone so quick!

I have more paintings in the works, so watch this space for those, in the meantime check out the lovely Sharon’s blog who kindly featured me for her Ipswich Artists series.

Thank you Sharon!

xxx

Tonight we took a lovely walk in the country with Ellie, breathing in the fresh air and taking in the scenery. I’ve wanted to share with you where the bunnies play, that feature in my paintings…

As you walk along the track there is a bridge and when you look over the top look what you can see:

Very hard to see them, you can just make them out in this photo, they are so cute and always up to something new.

On closer look, there they are! Aren’t they adorable, I always look forward to seeing their antics lol.

As we continue on the walk we get to the mile marker and turn right into this…

Isn’t is beautiful!

Off we go down the dirt track and all the way home.

I hope you enjoyed our little walk, I’ll be back on Monday with a new painting. Have a lovely weekend.

xxx

Just before the weekend you may have seen me mention feeling like dancing on twitter. I’d already woken up in a good mood but when I sat down to go through emails etc I just had this sudden urge to dance, it was quite funny really. Not really like me to be dancing first thing in the morning lol. So Ellie and I had a little fun dancing around the room, feeling very silly and then it came to me. This idea of painting ‘Millie’ (my latest character) dancing with a floaty white dress on, simply celebrating being alive and being happy.

I couldn’t wait to sketch her out and get painting, so I started right away and here she is!

I am so pleased with how she turned out and can’t wait to do more.

Original is available here.

xxx

As you all know Hubby and I are Christians and love to help where we can. I’ve always enjoyed giving from bake sales to 24hour famines to raise money for various charities.

Well it came to my attention from the lovely Caitlin’s blog that we could sponsor a child and help to make a difference in their life.

It couldn’t have come at a better time since Hubby often talks of going out to the poorer countries to help build schools and he recently went to France to help build a wood store for the Chateau our church helps to maintain.

I wondered how I could help since hands on isn’t really my gifting and here is my chance.

Through Caitlin’s blog I found out about Children International and we are now sponsoring a little girl called Francis, who is 3 years old. Her family lives on only $40 per month. When I think what we have, it breaks my heart.

I also found a great UK based charity called Compassion who are a Christian based charity helping bring God into the lives of the children who need sponsorship. We have sponsored a little girl called Maria who is 8 years old.

These and many others are doing such a great job to try and help these poor families, if you would like to help too please visit their websites to find out more.

Children International http://www2.children.org

Compassion http://www.compassionuk.org/

I’ll be back tomorrow with another new painting.

xxx

I am so excited to bring you the first in my new range of printables!

Now you can make list writing way more fun with these cute little ‘To Do’ lists that you can print off whenever you want.

Simply print out, cut and you are ready to go!

I hope you will enjoy these and look out for more printables coming very soon.

Have a wonderful weekend!

         xxx

This painting started off as a response to how I have been feeling lately ~ stressed! I’ve been putting a lot of pressure on myself to push myself more in all areas of my life and I knew what I really needed was to relax.

It’s funny how paintings come to me, I’m not much of a sketcher, although I’d like to be. No my paintings usually come to me as a vision in my mind, I see what I want to paint, how I want it to look and then I go straight to my canvas and draw it out, then paint it.

Well this painting was no different, I knew I wanted to create a totally relaxed scene, a place of calm. I think I captured it with my latest character ‘Millie’ relaxing after a long day in her favourite place. I’m really enjoying seeing this character evolve and am sure there will be more of her in the future.

Originally I was going to call this painting ‘relax’ since that was my message, however today I’ve realised that it is so much more than that. It’s about how blessed we all are with what we already have. It is so easy to strive for more thinking we need this or that but if we stop and breathe we realise we have everything we need right now. Reminding myself of this I now feel so at peace, so relaxed and actually so very happy.

So remember this today ‘You Have All You Need’

Thank you to everyone who entered my contest, your ideas are amazing and I will be considering all of them. I picked a number at random from number generator..

And the winner is….

Karla!  Congratulations you win a print of your choice from my Etsy store.

Have a blessed day!

{Buy Original Painting Here}

Niki

xxx

Well the time has come for a Spring clean of my Etsy store!

I am offering 50% off all my original paintings, prints and ACEO’s today to make way for new exciting art to come.

I will be discontinuing many items so if there is something you love, now is the time to get it.

Check out the great offers http://www.vintageniki.etsy.com

Enjoy and thank you for your support of my dream!

Niki & Ellie xxx