Let your spirit dance...

Let your spirit dance

Allow your soul to sing

B E L I E V E

in the power within

{ 10 x 14 inch canvas / 25 x 35 cm }

available here

Favourite Baby Quotes

Personalised gifts for when a baby is born form a large part of my work… and Christenings too. Over the years I've built up a fair collection of quotations, but the same few tend to get used again & again.
At some point I transferred all my handwritten quotes onto computer. Well, not all, but the ones that fitted themes I write out frequently for people…. It's far easier to give people a list of themed quotations to choose from when they don't know what to say.

Then suddenly my "baby" list vanished! Into thin air. No amount of searching or turning of stones made any difference, the baby quotes have gone. And then I remembered doing a bit of 'sorting out', *sigh*… they were supposed to be with "children"… except they're not….*another sigh*

I don't photograph every single bit of work, especially when the style & layout is similar in many cases.
It's a good job too…. i've just looked & I have 4,842 pictures in my calligraphy file! Admittedly there's more than a few that could be deleted, but there's so much I don't have records of either.

~Babies are angels whose wings get shorter as their legs get longer~

I needed to make some suggestions for a recent customer, so started to trawl the internet & compile another list. I found some that were in my original collection;

~Babies are special people just waiting to grow

~A parent holds their child’s hand for a while, and their heart forever

~A baby fills a place in your heart that you never knew was empty.

~Babies fill the world with love

And a few more that I might use;

~A baby makes love stronger, the days shorter, the nights longer, savings smaller, home happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten and a future worth living for

~A new baby is like the beginning of all things, hope, a dream of possibilities - Anonymous

~To be in your child's memories tomorrow, be in his life today - Anonymous

~A child has a special way of adding joy to every day.

~A baby is born with a need to be loved and never grows out of it~

This one is, without a doubt, the most frequently chosen baby quote!

A couple more favourites I tracked down:

WHERE did you come from, baby dear ?


Out of the everywhere into here.



Where did you get those eyes so blue ?


Out of the sky as I came through.



What makes the light in them sparkle and spin ?


Some of the starry twinkles left in.



~ George MacDonald

When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. And now when every new baby is born its first laugh becomes a fairy. So there ought to be one fairy for every boy or girl. ~James Matthew Barrie, Peter Pan

The first sentence of the last one by JM Barrie, was in the very first concertina book that I ever sold!

~Babies are little bits of stardust sprinkled from heaven~

This, and variations such as, 'Babies are little bits of stardust scattered from the hand of God', are popular for Christenings. Whilst looking for more quotes I came across 
'Babies are bits of stardust blown from the hand of God', attributed to Baretto

I loved this bit of lore that I found;

The old Irish, when immersing a babe at baptism, left out the right arm so that it would remain pagan for good fighting.

Nothing like hedging your bets eh?!

If anyone has anymore baby or child quotations, I'd love to hear them if you'd like to leave a comment!

A mega accordion book- 5 feet long!

What a love story this turned out to be! A lovely lady called Lisa asked about an extra special love letter to include a marriage proposal. We decided on a concertina book with a couple of envelopes for keepsakes such as a show ticket & a pressed flower from milestone dates. Well…. the idea sort of grew… and grew.

We decided on colours early on; natural tones, charcoal & sand… layers of watercolour… more water… more colour… some acrylic...

I asked her to think about special events along the way… 

dates, places, songs etc… little things that tell their story...

She told me their tale of synchronicity & bliss, of cold feet & separation; yet always on each others mind…. until they finally re-united...

Just as their story has many strands, I wove snippets of songs alongside tender memories...

 layering their tale in a book of love… 

Extra pages stitched in, for her to write a personal letter in her own hand...

A proposal hidden at the very end...

books within books, pages to unfold...

quotes about love & words they have spoken…

 space for a ring to hide?

Art Quote & a Garden Posy

'What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.'

~John Updike

my latest posy from the garden;
lavender with cow parsley leaves

Art- Einstein Quote

"True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist." -

Albert Einstein

Art- 2 Picasso quotes

Art is the lie that helps us to see the truth

Picasso

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

Pablo Picasso

Falling Stars...

Way back last August (crikey, 2013 seems so far away now), I had a Groom that was planning well ahead for a gift for his Bride on their wedding day.  He came with a romantic tale too...

Very early in my fiancee's and my relationship, we went stargazing at the top of the tallest hill where we live, which was really the night that we realised there was something special going on. She saw a falling star for the first time in her life, and it's one of our favourite memories. Subsequently while browsing a poetry website, I was floored to come across this poem, which seemed to sum up the feeling of that night.

Do you remember still the falling stars

that like swift horses through the heavens raced
and suddenly leaped across the hurdles
of our wishes--do you recall? And we
did make so many! For there were countless numbers
of stars: each time we looked above we were
astounded by the swiftness of their daring play,
while in our hearts we felt safe and secure
watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate,
knowing somehow we had survived their fall.

~Ranier Maria Rilke

He liked the style of the Yeats, Cloths of Heaven canvas and had the idea of hills in the foreground.... of course I was happy oblige! 

I hadn't come across Rilke before, but having looked him up, it seems I've been living in a cave! His quotes have been used in tv, films & self-help books.... In the US he is one of the best selling poets along with Kahlil Gibrahn & Rumi... not sure about in the UK tho'.

The Poetry Foundation begins a quite extensive biography with these words, 

Widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets, Rainer Maria Rilke was unique in his efforts to expand the realm of poetry through new uses of syntax and imagery and in the philosophy that his poems explored. With regard to the former, W. H. Audendeclared in New Republic,"Rilke's most immediate and obvious influence has been upon diction and imagery." Rilke expressed ideas with "physical rather than intellectual symbols. While Shakespeare, for example, thought of the non-human world in terms of the human, Rilke thinks of the human in terms of the non-human, of what he calls Things (Dinge)." Besides this technique, the other important aspect of Rilke's writings was the evolution of his philosophy, which reached a climax in Duineser Elegien ( Duino Elegies ) and Die Sonette an Orpheus (Sonnets to Orpheus). Rejecting the Catholic beliefs of his parents as well as Christianity in general, the poet strove throughout his life to reconcile beauty and suffering, life and death, into one philosophy. As C. M. Bowra observed in Rainer Maria Rilke: Aspects of His Mind and Poetry, "Where others have found a unifying principle for themselves in religion or morality or the search for truth, Rilke found his in the search for impressions and the hope these could be turned into poetry...For him Art was what mattered most in life." 

 Rainier Maria Rilke 1875-1926

Some Rainier Maria Rilke quotes:

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” ―  Letters to a Young Poet 


“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” 

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.” 
―Letters to a Young Poet


“Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you.
Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you.
And without feet I can make my way to you,
without a mouth I can swear your name.

Break off my arms, I'll take hold of you
with my heart as with a hand.
Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.
And if you consume my brain with fire,
I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.” 


“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. 

This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose...

 Many more quotes here

Apologies for the stripey backgrounds to some of the text. For some reason everything I copy & paste includes the background colour & I can't get an exact match to the background of my blog no matter how much I fiddle around!

Thoreau quote

We are all sculptors or painters, 

and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones…

Thoreau

Scheduled Surprise Quote!

God has no body now on earth but yours,

No hands but yours,

No feet but yours,

Yours are the eyes through which She is to look out

God’s compassion to the world;

Yours are the feet with which He is to go about

Doing good;

Yours are the hands with which She is to bless men now.

~ Teresa of Ávila

The Lamplighter ~ Old Book Pages

There's something about old books... 

I know I've said it before, but I really can't resist them.

I've never handled a book with pages so deeply browned with age as these. Perhaps it is something to do with the type of paper used, which feels really soft. It's a book called 'The Lamplighter", written by  Miss Maria S Cummins & the publishing date was somewhere between 1880 & 1910. I suspect this edition was one of the earlier editions but there is no date printed inside.... it just feels old.

I read it... a gentle tale of love & loss, hurt & forgiveness... an overall lesson in good old-fashioned christian charity, love, forgiveness & benevolence. Of course, in three instances where the story held a bit of excitement, were where pages were missing. I never did find out how a dastardly deed was done or how the misunderstandings between prospective lovers were resolved.... *sigh* never mind...

pages from 'The Lamplighter' 

are available here

 One thing I've noticed since starting to pick up these old books, is how language has changed over the last 100 years or so. Maybe not drastically, but I find myself reading more slowly due to more complex sentence construction & slightly archaic phrasing. I have been known to mutter about 'text speak' creeping into everyday usage, but really it's no greater change than the way we use language has relaxed over the years anyway.

 Believe in the power of your dreams

These scans show the true page colour better than the photographs... 

isn't it yummy?

 Everything happens for a reason

(this is actually one of the most popular quotations 

I am asked to write on canvas!)

I played around with printing over them, & thought the chocolate browns of these canvasses worked pretty well. For me, it's more about the textures than the legibility, though the smaller text on the prints is legible if you enlarge the photographs.

 Friends are the family we choose for ourselves

I really like the idea of modern, loose artwork, in combination with old, structured pages of text. Quite a contrast in style, but harmonised by the colour.

Lovers do not finally meet,

they knew each other all along

Which reminds me of being taught about using contrasts in calligraphy: that they could be striking with a bold visual impact, or subtle & harmonious. But either way they should look as if you meant it... the viewer shouldn't be left asking the question, 'Did she mean to do that or is it a mistake?'

Just thought I'd share that while I thought about it!

to love and be loved is the greatest happiness

To begin with, I had thought about adding more layers, but the more I looked at these the more I liked them as they are. It's funny, I love the layered collages that other people create, & really admire them, but I struggle to make myself add more!

I have listed them in suziscribbles shop, here

... need to sort out the wonky heart on the last one tho'!!

The reality of your being is within you.

You just need a silent mind...
it will be reflected....
you will know who you are.
~Osho

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe,
deserve your love and affection
~Buddha

A couple more I sneaked in on a random date, to give me (& you of course) a surprise & some inspiration!

Breath

I found this while flicking through quotes, so have scheduled it ahead to surprise myself later!

from a Japanese master, 

- Everything in heaven and earth breathes. Breath is the thread that ties creation together. When the myriad variations in the universal breath can be sensed, the individual techniques of the Art of Peace are born. Consider the ebb and flow of the tide. When waves come to strike the shore, they crest and fall, creating a sound. your breath should follow the same pattern, absorbing the entire universe in your belly with each inhalation.

~ Morihei Ueshiba.

Red & Black Canvasses... & photography dramas

It started out with a request to add a few words to a print... here. The words "If love is a labor, I'll slave 'til the end" are from a song called 'Swing Life Away' by Rise Against

I suggested a small canvas instead, that could be done in colours to suit the song & the couple. Where price is an issue, any extra cost is offset by having no need to purchase a frame. N very helpfully told me some details about the young couple soon to wed.... including that they both have a lot of body art in black & red plus their wedding list expressed a penchant for reds. She agreed that a canvas would more likely suit a young, modern couple. When she received the canvas, N couldn't wait for the wedding & sent it off straight away!

I did a few others in the same colours while I was working, but wasn't at all happy with any of the photographs... i tried inside, outside, natural light... they either appeared washed out or too orange-y & didn't show the dark, old-school tattoo style red to good effect at all.

vive l'amor

9.5" x 7" / 24 x 18 cm

I just had another go at photographing them. I know that digital cameras tend to 'average-out' the colours that they see, but adjusting the white balance didn't help. Neither did adjusting the colour sliders when editing (I only have quite basic photo processing tools & skills!)

long live love

8" x 8" / 20 x 20 cm

Thinking about colour 'averaging'... a light background was much better, then I thought about colour theory & went for the opposite colour on the colour wheel to red.... green, the complimentary colour... 

red & black heart

11.5" x 11.5" / 29 x 29 cm

Much better! Also, adjusting the proportions of white, black & grey in the setting made a big difference

Although I love outdoor photography, I've never particularly enjoyed photographing my work. Once I started thinking about mixing colours in the viewfinder, much like on a paint palette, I started having more fun & more success. Having temporary access to a big wall with plenty of light from both sides certainly helps too... I'm going to dig out some more canvasses to re-photograph now!

Some Quotes from Einstein...

I was just flicking through some quotations & came across these from Albert Einstein. They've just gone on my "to do" list!

'Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world. 

All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it'.

‘To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull facilities can comprehend only in the most primitive forms, this knowledge, this ‘Feeling’, is at the centre of true religiousness in this sense and in this sense only I belong to the ranks of the devoutly religious men’ 

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift 

and the rational mind is a faithful servant. 

We have created a society that honors the servant 

and has forgotten the gift." 

~Albert Einstein~

Minor Miracles can happen!

 DB had a plan to have his wedding vows written out for his 1st wedding anniversary gift to his wife... but with one thing and another.... you can guess the story.... I got an email on a thursday afternoon wondering whether I could get something to him by Saturday!

He'd already realised that he was probably asking too much, but whilst looking through my shop he had fallen in love with this piece and wondered whether I could arrange framing for 'as soon as possible'.

Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.

~Robert Browning~

Well, at the moment I don't have anyone I use as a regular framer, so rashly promised I'd see what I could buy 'off the shelf' locally, if he was prepared for me to change the design to suit. In the end, I pulled off a "minor miracle" as he called it, by getting this done & posted on Friday... then Royal Mail responded to our fervent positive thinking requests for it to arrive on the Saturday!

I can't always complete work at such short notice, but if I can, I will. A good sob story & lovely attitude helps too!

Be Still and Know....

A request for these words...

So, an option that can be printed & colour added later...

...a well known quotation, but with the words repeated & contracted 

down to the essence of the phrase...

Be Still. Be.

I love the pencil with watercolour splashes. 

They have an ethereal quality... floating...

Ocean colours... Water.... Calming, cleansing...

But then, the painted letters are perhaps more balanced? Certainly more visible.
Subtly changing tones of translucent colour.... blues, greens, aqua...

This image brings to mind the Rumi quote, 

"Only let the moving waters calm down, 

and the sun and moon will be reflected on the surface of your being."

Perhaps the pencil version is more suggestive of an invitation to 'be still.... to know... to be'

whilst the stronger painted letters seem more of an instruction... what do you think?

Simplicity...

again, the watercolours merge into each other within the letters...

Although I like the look of this, for me the emphasis on the whole phrase 

turns the additional wording into more of a back-up statement.

Nothing wrong with that, of course!

I have an ongoing fascination with how a seemingly minor change can totally change the meaning or impact of the same few words. Even after all these years. It's more than 20 years since I first played with this quotation... using just the words, no decoration, changing the emphasis from one word to another, learning about contrasts, and in doing so changing the whole meaning of the phrase.

Prints will be available soon 

(but with a whiter background than these photographs show!).

Which version would you choose?