inspirational gift

People are so generous aren't they? Knowing that Six and Friends are working towards an exhibition with an Oriental theme, a former student of our online courses sent us a gift a few days ago. It's a beautifully presented book about very old, dark red, Chinese teapots. Here's one of the pages showing an example against a gold background.

Throughout the book there are envelopes and postcards with actual postage stamps which were designed to celebrate this particular style of pottery.

The text on this envelope is glorious in gold.

And the seal on this page is my favourite deep red.

I shall study the book over the next few days and see what creative ideas might spring to mind! I'm sure this is a collector's item so I have no intention of using the book itself but I might be tempted to copy some of the shapes and colours!

In the meantime I've been making samples for Laura's new range of printed fabrics. She's developing a range called, 'We Print, You Paint' for her new Fingerprint digital printing service. The designs are all based on her original drawings - this one features monoprinted fancy teatime  treats.

As you can see from the image above, you buy the print as a single colour outline on a white ground and then you can have great fun painting the shapes any way you want. I've chosen 'cake-like' colours for the cakes and a deep blue background with metallic gold highlights to match my best china teacups! I intend to make a tray cloth from the painted print so summertime cups of tea in the garden will become instantly more civilised!

Painting the fabric is as simple as crayoning in a children's colouring book so we hope the idea will appeal to all ages. My Mom and my sister are coming over tomorrow to have a go - I'll let you see what they get up to if anyone remembers to take pictures!

Laura's new website is almost ready to go live. I'll let you know when you can check out the rest of the fabric designs!

Hope your new week is off to a creative start!
Thanks for visiting - Linda