Paying it forward with a giveaway

 A few posts ago I wrote about the trials and tribulations of my offering for this year's Bookmarks Project organised by Sarah Bodman at the Centre for Fine Print Research. After trying out some cyanotypes and some embossed lettering ideas which I felt had not hit the mark I opted for a crop from a conte drawing of mine and printed my 100 bookmarks digitally.

Well this week I received my full edition of everyone's bookmarks in the project, including one of my own of course to make up the set. It was just like Christmas when I opened the package and I have spent ages looking through them and following up the artists who've signed with an e mail or website address. They are a rich set of original prints, drawings, re-purposed book pages and clever digital work. I am a lucky girl and hope I can join in again next year too.

 Of course, now I have the luxury of hindsight and seeing other people's take on the brief, I realise I was reading it too literally. I could have easily continued with the embossed bookmarks and offered them up so next time I shall yield to my instincts and go for it. No idea is wasted though is it? At the time of the bookmark printing I used the cardboard letters to emboss a few pages of Khadi paper and I subsequently used them as end pages and internal pages within a book I made as a sample for a workshop. I now come to the bit about paying it forward as it is time I did my giveaway for reaching 500 posts since 2009. Well, in truth, I'm a few over but let's not split hairs.......

The book is A6 in size and made up of handmade Khadi cotton rag paper. The surface is slightly rough and it will take water based media to use as a small sketchbook or notebook. It is sewn over tapes and is a bit floppy as so many people have handled it but it holds chunky in the hand and would look great filled to the brim with someone's creativity. The cover is a wallpaper sample of tiles from Deborah Bowness and if you'd like to have it just leave a comment below and say so. I will leave the post up for a week to 10 days and then ask my lovely assistant to pull a name out of the proverbial hat. Once done, I'll post the winner here and they can get in touch via e mail with an address. Hope that sounds a good idea and I hope someone puts their hand up for it!

In the pink

 I have mentioned that we might be moving before now.... but, after a foray into other parts of the country to  look at properties etc we realised what a special place we live in already. Interest in our house, and our garden in particular, served to remind me how much work has gone into it. I don't want to let others reap the reward of our hard work so we're staying put for a few years yet. Besides, there's more to be done here and we still have plans for change which include a wildlife pond or a bog garden.

As if to say thank you, the garden has gone into overdrive. It looks stunning at the moment, full of colour and texture. These opium poppies were sown over a year ago and I thought they had disappeared altogether but all of a sudden they are flourishing. The gorgeous blood red one above came from seeds sent to me by the lovely Jill of Third Age Musings. It is so rich but it has to compete with a mass of this Lauren's Grape poppy that are growing up and through the cotinus bush. It looks like shot silk. Just beautiful. I shall be collecting seed and suspect I'll have a ton of it so I'll be passing some on to friends. Some  might be combined with my 500th post giveaway. Somehow I seem to be on post number 502 so have overshot the target a bit but will be posting a give away next time!