Welcome to February

February is the month for Valentines Day and all things rosy and red.

We would like to offer you £5 off our online Autumn Berries Watercolour Workshop so that you can enjoy working with a lovely red paint.

If you haven't tried Claire's watercolour paints yet, we will post you a FREE Poppy Red tube, with every pair of paints bought from her range.  (value £8.40)

Mixed with a little transparent yellow you can highlight on top of the berries for glorious orangey tones, or mix it with a little blue for the underside of berries.

Claire chose to have this gorgeous rich colour made as she was finding other reds were producing a colour that was too dull for her taste, and needed a number of applications to give sufficient coverage.  Poppy Red has become one of the most popular colours in her watercolour range.

All of Claire's paints contains honey, an ingredient which has been used over the years by colour chemists to produce extra translucent and vibrant colours.

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In Yoga red represents the Root Chakra

The chakras are the points in our body where our energy flows.  The Root Chakra is located at the base of your spine and creates the foundation for all the chakras that lie above it.  It helps you to feel grounded and able to withstand challenges.

Rachel, our Yoga tutor, has created a lovely playlist on Spotify and the first four songs are specific to the Root Chakra, it is lovely to listen to whilst relaxing, meditating and during a gentle yoga flow.

We would like to offer you Rachel's online Woodland Yoga Workshop for just £12.50 this month, take some time for yourself and discover how relaxing and gentle Yoga can be.  Once you have bought the workshop you can watch it again and again.

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In season this month, red and pink vegetables & fruit are beetroot, rhubarb, apples, red cabbage and purple sprouting broccoli.  But I thought, seeing as it's Valentines Day, and it's been a VERY long January I would share my Red Velvet Cupcakes recipe with you!  (Some of you may remember I used to run Colourful Cupcakes a few years ago, running classes and creating cupcakes for weddings and parties).

For the Cakes:

140g self raising flour

2 tablespoons Green & Blacks Cocoa

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

110ml buttermilk

1 teaspoon white vinegar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Christmas Red Colour Paste (needs to be paste not liquid colouring)

60g butter

170g caster sugar

1 large free range egg

Preheat your oven to 170c/325f/Gas3

Mix the flour, cocoa, bicarbonate of soda and a pinch of salt.

In another bowl mix the buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla and red paste, mix well so the paste is blended well.

Beat the butter and sugar together until fluffy and pale.  Beat in the egg bit by bit.  Mix in a small amount of the flour mixture half of the liquid mixture and repeat.

Beat well.

This will fill 12 cupcake cases in a muffin tin. 

 Bake for 20 minutes.

  Leave them to cool slightly and then remove the cupcakes onto a wire baking rack.

For the Icing:

200g cold full fat Philadelphia cream cheese

75g unsalted butter at room temperature

450g icing sugar

1 tablespoon warm water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat the sugar, butter and water together.  Add the philadelphia, beat until the mix is smooth and shiny.  Add the vanilla.  Use a palette knife to decorate the cakes.  You can add red sprinkles or crumbled red velvet cake to decorate.

Have a great February!

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So exciting, our new Website is LIVE!

 

 You can now buy Claire's Workshops to do ONLINE!

In the comfort of your own home, pause when you want, rewind, rewatch ...

The films have been professionally made and are fantastic.

We have launched with 7 Workshops:

Autumn Berries Watercolour

Rhododendrons Watercolour

Porthmeor Beach, St Ives Watercolour

Reflections in Croatia Watercolour

A Cottage Door in the Cotswolds Watercolour

Cyril the Squirrel Pen and Wash

Beginners Watercolour

They are all priced at £40, you can keep them forever.

You will receive a materials needed list, a paint chart, some top tips from Claire and images of the stages to help you paint along.

The videos vary in length from an hour to one hour 45 minutes, they are broken down into Claire's step by step style of teaching, so if you've been to Treetops classes before you will recognise the style.

We have also decided now was a good time to launch our Online Shop

You can buy a Materials Box of all the basic equipment you need to get started, this costs £75 and is 20% off the RRP, it would make a great gift for someone.

We have packs of Saunders Waterford Paper, our high quality Mounts, Claire's own range of watercolour paints, her sketchbook (this has the thickest paper on the market, ideal for paint washes) and Gift Vouchers, just in time for Christmas!

We really hope you find a Workshop to suit you, let us know how you get on, we'd love to see photos of your artwork!

Autumn Berries Watercolour

We last did Autumn Berries in 2014 and the paintings were great, so we always meant to do it again, I can't believe it's taken 2 years though!

My lovely neighbour had made a great arrangement of autumn colours and berries and Claire had lots of great photographs for us to use.

We started by pencilling our chosen image and then masked the outline of the berries and filled in the smaller berries.

We had a few new people today, so Claire spent some talking about the papers we use here for watercolour classes, Saunders Waterford, in various weights 140lb, 200lb and 300lb.  Paper is so important, these papers are lovely and thick and hold alot of water, so when we create our wet in wet paintings, it holds and absorbs the water and colour brilliantly.

Best of all it's made in Britain, at St Cuthbert's Mill in the Cathedral City of Wells in Somserset.

After the masking was absolutely dry (we use hairdryers to help this process along!) Claire put in the colours for her first wash, creating some loose berry shapes behind the main berries.

Here is her almost finished painting, after she had started to fill in the berries. 

Here are brilliant paintings from the day, I loved the addition of the conkers too! 

They were really lovely to look at and enjoy at the end.  They should all be framed and on the wall for this autumn.  

As a PS, I had a lovely autumn walk yesterday around Kintbury, the colours were stunning

If you're local, look at the link, you can park near the Dundas Arms, which is lovely for lunch either before or after!

Kintbury Canal and Meadow Walk - 5 Miles