June Flower Class - Vintage Style

Susanna is back on Tuesday 15 June for Vintage Style Flowers.

Vintage style is very on trend at the moment, especially at Weddings, using beautiful pale and old fashioned flowers, styled in teacups and old china pieces.

The flowers Susanna is hoping to bring with her on the day include sweet peas, roses, including Secret Garden, Metalina, Old Dutch and Amnesia and hopefully some English roses too, astilbe, sweet William, astrantia and herbs.

The day will be useful if you are planning on a wedding, a summer party or you would just like to decorate your house. Perhaps you just want to spend the day surrounded by sweet smelling flowers!

Susanna demonstrates a variety of ideas, that always amaze, then everyone has the opportunity to create an arrangement to take home after the class. Everything is provided and included in the cost of the day, which is £75. A light lunch is also included.

The class runs from 9.45am - 2pm. For bookings please call me on 01635 44850.

A French Scene - Watercolour

We had a very intense day creating our French Market Scene on Friday, all artists had been on a Treetops Watercolour class before, so Claire seemed keen to stretch us that little bit further!

We spent quite a while sketching our scene, whether we wanted parasols, menu boards, plants, and discussed the characters sitting around the table, it really helped us to create a picture that had a possibility to be brought alive by paints later on.

I made lunch with a french influence, we had Chicken Chasseur and a delicious French Tart.

Recipe:

Roll out a rectangular piece of puff pastry, before placing it on a lined baking tray sprinkle some demerara sugar onto the lining. Lay out the pastry, sprinkle a little semolina over the pastry (this will help absorb excess juices) and position thinly sliced apples over the pastry (I used large coxes). Leave a 2-3cm border around the edge.

Sprinkle caster sugar or vanilla sugar over the top, if you don't have vanilla sugar you can sprinkle some drops of vanilla extract over the apples. Dot some small pieces of butter across the tart before you put it into a hot oven. It will take about 15-20 minutes. Serve with a dollop of creme fraiche or vanilla ice cream.

Below you can see the finished painting from the above sketch, amazing work in just a few hours!

There are a few places left on our Simply Venice class on Tuesday 16 March.

Banish The Winter Blues - Watercolour

Claire returned again today for our annual Banish the Winter Blues class. We haven't painted daffodils for a while now, so Claire thinking that they were bright and beautiful chose a great composition of the Lake District with some sunny daffodils in the foreground.

We spent a while drawing, trying to make the mountains look as though they were far away in the distance and then positioned our flowers, drawing them at various angles, so we could work on the various trumpet shapes that daffodils give us.

The day involved lots of new tips that really helped encourage our paintings along.

Claire will be back next Friday, for "A French Scene", there is one space left, please call if you would like to come 01635 44850.

Beginners Watercolour

Last year we had snow for Beginners Watercolour, and today it as back again! Fortunately everyone arrived safely and Claire cheered up the day with a Sunflowers in Provence painting. They looked great, from the background hills to the flowers in the foreground.

Banish the Winter Blues is next Friday, spaces are available, call me on 01635 44850 to book a place.

Welford Snowdrops

The Snowdrops at Welford will be open for visiting from 28 January until 28 February (closed on Mondays). If you haven't been before it is well worth a visit. Opening hours are from 11am-4pm and it costs £5 or £4 for concessions.

There is a website for more information www.welfordpark.co.uk.

I see from the website, that they are having Special Artist Days on Tuesday 9th and Tuesday 16th February, when you can take your paints, chairs and easels. There are some lovely spots to take it all in. What a great idea!

(The photographs above are from one of my previous visits - don't forget to take your camera).

Blue skies

It looks beautiful today with the bright blue skies. Schools are still off and Budgens is running out of milk, but the postie made it through and it looks like there may be an attempt to get back to normal tomorrow.

The snow arrived....

Woke up to a Winter Wonderland, about 5 inches. Very thick and crunchy. Ever so quiet out there too. Don't forget to leave out some food and water for the birds!