2 Pounds for Your Thoughts.

Someone asked me at a weekend craft fair ( I must have been staring into space ) : "A penny for your thoughts..." and then went on to ask me what it was like being creative. If you are...you are and it's hard to quantify, for someone else..

I have been a life long creator of things.
As far back as I can remember, I have made things.  I remember once when we had a fridge delivered and the huge box was sitting in the kitchen for a while, I dragged it out to the garden to make a house of it... cut windows, made 'curtains' and filled it with flowers from the garden using milk bottles for vases. I was probably about 5.

We had a huge garden in those days and being an only child, my amusements were often solitary and creative. Me and my little Dachshund, my best friend Remus.

Remus and me..making pies 1961

My Granny taught me to knit. My Mum carried on where she left off  ( Granny lived in the North of England and we, in the South). I had a sewing box for my birthday when I was eight. I made lots of little dresses for my tiny dolls ( most of my dolls were mini ones ) - I was into small things even then. I learned to draw..( my Grandfather was a superb pen and ink man ) and finally, I took up water colour painting.
I sold my first painting when I was 13 - well, alright, to my Father's friend - but I thought I had become a millionaire, when he paid me £12.00 for it....in old money! I earned £100 for my very first car when I was 20, by having an exhibition at the Bajazzo Gallery in Marlborough. And when I qualified in 1976, I had put myself through my finals with money earned from my artistic endeavours. I financed all my own education from then on, by working in paint.

I spent some time in Sweden as a young woman and slowly the arts of the Scandinavian area seeped into me. I took up embroidery, as it was big in Swedish culture. I learned cross stitch and tapestry, ribbon weaving and band weaving.

 Above.. A tapestry design created by taking a picture from a plastic bag!

When I returned I had the germ of an idea for a business and in 1982 launched a silk painting business ( it was relatively new then ) and I painted anything that wouldn't move! Including rocks and eggs.
I taught it at night school. I did trade and craft fairs.
Finally I began Rice Mice - probably the business which will go down in history as ME. ( Though, truly it was not Me at all ).

The stand of Rice Mice at THE HARROGATE GIFT FAIR  in 1985

 A page from the Christmas catalogue from General Trading London about 1989

I traded for 17 years, employed 12 workers and sent my goods all over the world, including the U.S. Japan, the Middle East and Australasia. I travelled to most major trade fairs and could count Royalty and 'celebrities' amongst my customers. I supplied Fortnum and Mason, Harrods, Liberty and many other large stores here and abroad and lots and lots of little ones. Then, I created little WHIMSICALS ( GO TO : http://pastmasterywhimsicals.wordpress.com - sorry for some reason it won't form a link to this blog ) and they too went winging around the world. All this alongside my real job.

I used to wake up on Christmas morning thinking..." there are hundreds of people all around the world waking up this morning, like me, who will open a present and find something I have made."
It's a lovely feeling to think you can make so many people happy.

I got married, moved away and started to paint dummy board figures in miniature - small things again :) PastMastery was born. ( Click the links above to know more.)

When I got ill and was no longer able to paint small things I founded BoxCleva- working with paper. I work when I can and with what I can...less and less as time goes on but I still have that urge to create. If ever I couldn't create something - I might as well not be here. Put me in a box and bury me. :(

Now, I have Gather Ye Rosebuds to show some of the things I do, or have done, which are not always paper and perhaps not painting. Strangely, I'm not a flower painter, yes, I have painted them but it's not my speciality.
I do like to make them in paper and I LOVE to embroider them.

Embroidered cushions - very Victorian I think I did these between  1989 and 1997

I can still manage free embroidery, where the action of sewing comes from the wrist. I can't manage tapestry any more where the pulling of the woolen thrums through the canvas has to be a shoulder action. I miss it - I do. There are so many lovely things I'd like to create in wool.

So I tried, a little while ago, wool on wool embroidery. That was whole lot of fun. Very slow to grow.... but wonderfully engaging.

A small lap rug wool on wool embroidery much of it three D. Took me from 1999 to 2004

I'd recommend it to anyone who liked to do canvas work but who no longer manages the holes.
Similar but different and so very rewarding.

I have little notion what will be my next idea....it might be my own entirely...it might be inspired by ( but not copied from ) someone else. We all owe a huge debt to all those crafters who have gone before us. However, more and more 'technology' can now be applied to craft. Sadly I think this somewhat devalues those items made entirely by the sweat and the furrowing of the brow, the fiddling of the fingers, the engaging of the left side of the brain.

My last idea was taken from the web.. silk flower making. Not my own idea but I think I've taken it a little further than some. I have the little tickling in my creative brain at the moment which tells me that there is another idea percolating. It still needs some thought. It needs refining... it has potential..more than that I will not say. I have made the first experiment on my Tussie Mussies. :)

I have no children, no nieces or nephews, no grandchildren to leave my hoard to. No one. Every time I make something new ( which I am not trying to sell, of course ), I think " What for? Where will it end up?"
I think that is why I like to give things away. ( See my latest Facebook Giveaway ).
But I can say that I will have left behind me, not children of my body, but children of my creative brain, my fingers, my eyes and my heart. And I hope I have given people pleasure..and still do.

Lots of people create.
Few are truly original. No one however, creates in isolation. As John of Salisbury a long time ago,     ( and Newton after him in 1676 ) said,
"We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours." ( Metalogicon 1159 )

We are standing on the shoulders of giants. It's written on the edge of a £2 coin..did you know that?


I think thoughts are probably worth much more than a penny now...with inflation!

Thank you http://blog.imb.biz/2007/09/07/shoulders-of-giants/  for the photo