If you are wondering what Urban Jungle Bloggers is all about then let me give you an idea here. Set up by two lovely souls, Igor and Judith, they have brought an online community together of people who love house plants. At first I thought it was for people living in the city but now I've met Igor and Judith I realise its for everyone who likes plants in their home and who like to style with them.
As I've mentioned before, I attended a blogging conference a few weeks ago, primarily to meet in person the people behind some of the most inspiring things on the internet. Bloggers are people who often are working in complete isolation and this can become far too inward looking if you're not careful. So when you meet the creators of a cool online community and they are really nice with a great philosophy and attitude, its a bonus for sure.
Having travelled extensively when I was in the music business, to over 42 countries around the globe, you find that some nations have very cool attitudes to life and I think that this is exuded by Igor and Judith in bucket loads. Their 'no rules' approach and philosophy is so rare these days, the idea to facilitate the meeting (virtually) of like minded people for no financial reason is a Karma which will return to them Im sure. This is also something I would love to emulate in my #paintpassion community.
Setting a theme monthly to their house plant stylings Im delighted to say that in my first month they have chosen my area - colour - to be the topic, giving it the hashtag #plantcolorpop (and don't forget its the American spelling of color not the English spelling - Colour.
Since working with Annie Sloan's Chalk Paint(tm)for Painters In Residence, Ive continued to explore this paints properties and abilities. Becoming more and more free with my approach I've been developing a technique of working with a wet brush and just dipping the same brush into different colours, then working it with water and so on, to blend and wash. Ive chosen to do this on some back boards as a way to practice but Im intending to expand onto canvases too.
The backboards give me the possibilities to try out colour combinations and see how they work with different objects on and around them. So to my third element here, the woven wall hanging.
I studied textile and embroidery for A level in the late 1970's, so the revival of the this type of wall hanging has amused me enormously. Its been a right trip (in the hippy sense of the word) to pick it up again and be able to play around with it for interior styling.
Last weekend I went to Yarnspiration2015, a day of workshops and socialising for people who love their yarns, like alcoholics anonymous for wool hoarders - where do you keep your hidden stash?, did you secretly spend the housekeeping on cashmere and silk yarn, oh the confessions. Hello my name is Janice and Im a yarnoholic.
It's Fibre East at the end of July, a big yarn related show which I shall be popping along to and reporting back on. Its my nearest big wool show, in Ampthill.
Anyway, back to the wall hangings, Ive tried two on the small basic hand loom and one utilising a tapestry frame. I don't want to give a tutorial here yet until I feel Ive tried out a few things and can tell you the do's and don't from first hand experience. Like anything, practice makes perfect so I shall practice a bit more and let you know.
You can find Urban Jungle Bloggers here and I'd put money on it that after looking you will be rushing off to the garden centre.
Im back off to do some more weaving and paint sploshing now, please tag me and #paintpassion so I can see what you have been up to.
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