Time to wish all my friends and readers a very Happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year. This is called Co-ordinating Leaf Bird for obvious reasons. This is a picture I painted in watercolour when I first started my blog but I have since altered it and changed it to digital colour and I think it has improved it a lot. This piece is called Contemplating A Sunflower. A simple, sweet little white cat among flowers. One of the Victorian monumental angels I enjoy photographing with a tiny touch of Photoshop The following Christmas decorations (except for the ceramic ladies) are all ones that I made about 20 years ago. I used to have time to make things in those days. I cannot take credit for these cuties. I found them in a shop a few years ago. They were surprisingly inexpensive. I love the little partridge and the goose. The ladies even have long, gold metallic hair. These three pictures are of ordinary metal bangles which I have wrapped around with wool (hidden) then very thick, glittery tape and finally various coloured ribbons. The ribbons are wrapped so that the glittery tape is visible in some cases. I then sewed on co-ordinating tiny glass beads and star sequins. They also need a piece of ribbon to hang them up with. The best bangles are the childrens sized ones as they look very dinky. They look lovely suspended from the Christmas tree. The middle picture is of two tiny bangles intersected. You have to hold them in position as you wrap them. These decorations are simply walnuts which have been opened up and the nuts eaten (very important). The outside is sprayed with gold paint and various items are laid inside one shell. In this case I have used gold beads threaded on wire, strung glass beads, pine cones, ribbons and everlasting flowers, but there are many other things you could use. The trick is to neatly arrange the items whilst at the same time glueing the edges of the walnuts together. The amazing thing is that the dried everlasting flowers have lasted so many years being handled without falling apart. Don't forget to add a little piece of gold thread to hang them from the tree. These are felt stars filled with fibre and stitched around with very wide, glittery thread and sequins applied with transparent thread. I had great fun making these in different colours. The following images are the artwork of Welsh artist Dai (David) Harding and his extensive website can be found here. Time for the last blog post of the year as I won't have time to blog till after the New Year. Christmas is busy enough as it is without extras added. I think I have finally managed to get all my Christmas letters and cards posted and the presents wrapped. What a rush it has been. But it doesn't have to be if only I could arrange my time better. I promise myself every year that this time I will start the preparations earlier and get everything completed before the last week before Christmas, but everytime I am foiled...by time, or rather, lack of it. Anyway, enough of that. I thought I would post a few pictures of my "crafty werks" this time. I used to make lots of things once upon a time and I really enjoyed the creative process. These are mostly Christmas decorations which I made for a hospital bazaar many moons ago. If fact they are over 20 years old but they only make a brief appearance at Christmas so that is probably why they are still in good nick. My artist this week is Dai (or David) Harding. He is a Welsh artist with an amazing talent for different styles of art. You can visit his website here. I don't think I have ever seen a website with so many images on it. A lot of his work is semi-abstract or contemporary. His figurative work has a primal, mythic quality. I particularly like his colourful landscapes. Definitely landscapes of the imagination. I also enjoy the pieces of text he combines with the artwork. He has a collection of very diverse commercial styles as well. A very talented and adaptable artist.