Blossom at Rowallane

On a sunny Tuesday, after a trip to the dentist, me and George along with my mum and her friend Lorna headed to Rowallane to have a walk round.  Mum, George and I had been there back in March to look around the Spring Ground there but when we were there then spring hadn't really sprung and there wasn't much out in bloom.  A month definitely makes a big difference!  The place was full of blossom this time!

Gorgeous apple trees.

I thought this was some sort of big snowdrop but it's actually called summer snowflake.

After watching Gardener's world feature on magnolias the other week I really fancy getting one for our garden, although I'd say it's take a good few years before it was this big!

The branches and blooms made a lovely pattern against the blue skies.

Masses of forget me nots.

Rowallane is well known for its masses of Rhododendrons.  I particularly liked this one, it looks quite like the one in our garden, although our one is no where near blooming yet. 

I think these are woodland anemones.

The courtyard was looking very nice in the sunshine...

So one of us stopped to have a bit of a picnic!

It was a lovely day out although be warned, at this time of the year the cafe isn't open on a Tuesday and for some reason they have closed the shop :-(

recent silence and let's colour project

Hello, sorry for the lack of posting recently, been busy screenprinting away and have been a bit neglectful of the blog.

I am coming to the end of printing my first series of mixtape screen prints and have found myself struggling with what colours to pick.  I have 12 illustrations in the series and have chosen a different colour for each image.  This week I have been picking the last four colours for the last four prints and I must have stood staring at the tubes of paint for ages trying to decide what colour to go for!  As a default I nearly always go for blues and greens - something which I hadn’t really noticed until I put together a portfolio and realised that all the background colours were rather similar!

For colour inspiration I decided I would have a bit of a google to see if I could sway myself away from the blues and greens and I came across the Let’s Colour Project, it’s a project organised by Dulux and a few other paint companies thats aim is to banish some of the grey concrete in this world and replace it with a plethora of colour.  I’ve always been a great fan of exterior colour - I just recently repainted our PVC windows and door for the second time - they were green and are now blue and cream - despite the fact that most people pointed out to me that the idea of them being PVC is that you don’t have to paint them, they look much better now than the original dark brown they were before.  This project is incredibly inspiring - so often you see really neglected or boring grey buildings that could do with a brightening up.

These two images are from the project in Istanbul in Turkey, I particularly like that in the second image they have planted flowers in the empty paint containers!