❊ Blogging, I love you but I'm not in love with you ❊

Hello all.

Something something, long time, busy, boring something something.

I spurned Instagram for a long time.
Really, I was not interested at all.
All I ever saw were dodgy looking digital polaroids with stock special effects that made everything look exactly the same.
My phone was the last place I wanted to take an image as I love(d) my camera.
Downloading images and then uploading them again is a pain when you've got thousands of snaps.
So Instagram and I never really hit it off. We weren't clicking. (forgive me)

I had embraced Twitter from the very start and it's still my go to place for news, political comment and the deepest LOLs I've probably ever had. I loved it because I felt anonymous and I didn't have to say much and I didn't have to say anything to join in. And I could peek at it whenever I felt like it, a non committal stream of consciousness.

Facebook? Meh. I haven't quite got to the smugness of deleting it as I love the community groups I belong to at my various world wide adopted homes. But it's pretty bad, all that Fakebooking. Telling people how much you love them in an online status gives me the creeps. WE ALL LOVE OUR CHILDREN. lol. And I rarely share my creative or travelling life on there. Not for me, the same post on Twitter, FB and Instagram. I am 3 different web personas, I don't even know who I am generally.

Meanwhile Blogging, hanging around, collating images, uploading them, being clever and interesting and relevant? I lost the art of it. I was/am spending all day on a screen for work (creating online content, visual and educational) the last thing I ever felt like doing to unwind was writing a blog entry, on a screen and evaluating my images as though they were important.

Then I got a new phone. With a brilliantly scary clever camera. Suddenly I was up and running on Instagram like millions and millions of others.
Now I love it. No politics, no misconstrued 'likes' or 'shares' or weird comments, no one I really know in real life. I'm so Instagram these days, it's up there with my top 3 most visited internet lands for inspiration and mind candy.

Twitter
Instagram
Pinterest

I'm posting too, some of the little things I create. A glimpse at my non work life which consists of all the places I am lucky enough to live in and some of the work I make in my sketch books along the way. The Indian cows you see up there are my new obsession. Painting them in the evenings, I detest TV so I draw and paint. And now I am posting the results.

It's so much easier to post. Click and post.
The world is galloping along at 10,00000000 knots a minute and we are too.
Eventually our brains will turn to mush but until then....

lou.lou.loves.this

That's me....on Instagram

I still follow your blogs, I read them on the bus or train or plane.
They still make me feel warm and friendly and happy and inspired.
So if any of you have Instagram accounts please let me know your user names in the comments or by following me?
Then I can visit you too. And 💜 💙 all the way to brain mush.

⚛ The Greatest Show on Earth ⚛

I am running in circles and squealing at my decision to take a sign painting course....
A fairground art sign writing extravaganza.

HOW DELICIOUS AND

I've been drawing and doodling lots of letter forms lately and whilst living in London I see some very splendid signs and handwritten notices. I have always been drawn towards 3D and shadow work in letterforms and when I was a teenager 3,000 years ago it was all I did when I had a piece of paper and a pen. I didn't know about typography or fonts then. Only album covers. 

As part of my commitment to learn something new every year (last year was doing my maths GCSE which I passed ..YAY but it wasn't very exciting, it was very useful when I had to work out how many materials to buy for my new workshop-more on that soon) this year, I have chosen to go on this sign writing course. Quite simply, I want to paint signs. I want to know what kinds of paints to use and how to use one of those sticks with a ball on the end for support. There must be a lifetime of learning to absorb. I am sure I will be full of terminology and lung damage from inhaling paint fumes after my week of study. Of course, I am not going to be an expert after a week but I have got some of the skillz needed surely? The course is taught by a very skilled traditional fairground painter and that is the style we will learn. In a working fairground yard with real life examples all around us. Can you imagine? What a thrill.

Here is a circus inspired picture  I made last year. I only had a box of cheap child's paints but I really got into using them, the pastels seduced me and I ended up raiding the local toy shop for a lifetime's supply.

The colours inspire me, I might see if I can make a pastel coloured circus style sign...lead myself away from the traditional style. I guess it will depend on the materials available.

I've been pinning HERE onto a circus/fairground board for inspiration...feel free to send me any via pinterest. 

I'm already worried about Ms and Os and Ss. I've stopped obsessing about building materials and I'm back on track thinking about Words. 

Delicious words, letters and swirls.

I can't wait. It's not until November so I have ages to decide which word I should paint first? 

Any ideas? 

What word or short phrase would you paint?

▣ August 17th ▣ {not quite quiet enough}

This is my lounge as of today. The fireplace has always been a bit higgledy piggledy raggle taggle gypsy O and I was using a chimenera from the garden as a stove which is dangerous and inefficient. I wouldn't advise it unless you fancy half the fire brigade stomping through your lounge. 

(hmmm, second thoughts anyone?) 

I longed for a new stove and had my nose pressed up against the stove shop window for most of the last four winters. And then I spun off into an extravaganza whirl and bought this little beauty. It was fitted yesterday and the guys showed me how to fine tune the air flow to make the stove heat the bones of my house. One burnt log later and I was stripping off clothes and fanning my hot flush face. (the fitters had actually gone by this time btw) 

Blimey. It works. Really really well.

So now the gypsy in me is happy and even more so that there is enough space to pop my little orange kettle to heat on the top. Darlings, I am NEVER going to leave the house except to gather kindling and waft past the fire station giving them the thumbs up. 

Can I confess though? I hastily painted the inside of the fireplace pink as it was so pale pale green and was not doing anything any justice, not even my complexion. But now as usual I am having a mini 'what have I done' crisis and thinking a riot of colour may not be the best way to express myself? 

Or do you think it will grow on me and it's just a bit 'fresh'?

And as you can see I need a 'g' to complete my 'lounge' statement, sometimes I need help as to which room I am residing in. But I do have a small 'g' that is on the desk for refurbishment but if you have any other spare letters it would be good to have a few options. A new fireplace game called Frabble. (which is alarmingly like Fireball) 

Postal address supplied on request.

As my friends would say... eff off, you're getting on our nerves now.

+Loving Lime+

After the soggy week last week, rain and drizzle and fine mist (we Brits must have as many words for rain as the Eskimos do for snow) we are now basking in sunshine. The washing that was on my line has finally dried, the builders have packed up and gone and left me to do the painting, sanding and filling. The gas board have stopped traipsing through my house and have set up camp in the road to replace 30 year old gas pipes. And suddenly it is calm, I can once again concentrate on the tasks in hand (about 36 at the last count). 

I hung this Turkish lantern in the garden because it's too big for indoors and now I want to paint everything lime green. Starting with the garden furniture I got for £12 in a garage sale. It's going to be tres chic. I'm imagining garden lunches that look like Sunday supplements but I know that the soundtrack will be the neighbour's new chain saw and the gas board's pneumatic drills.