Today I had a free day and decided since I have been relatively busy with jewellery making for the last couple of weeks to have a day off........I thought I'd tidy out some cupboards and have an early spring clean....I started out with very good intentions.

But as often happens when I decide to clear out a cupboard, I stumbled upon lots of things I'd forgotten about ! Today it was all my art materials that I'd bought when I was at college studying jewellery design.

I love being creative and making things. Long before I made jewellery I dabbled with all manner of crafts to varying degrees of success. Some things were frankly shocking and as I'm quite impatient they fell by the way side quickly. Its one of my failings but if I struggle to do something right the first time I often wont persevere.

So when I began college and realised that I had art lessons every week, horrified wasn't the word.

Drawing has never been a strength and I had dismissed it as something I just couldn't do.

When I was about 13 or so I remember being in an art class at school and having to draw a potted plant. My geography teacher popped into pass a message to the art teacher about something and on her way by glanced my 'work in progress' and said "I was never very good at drawing either".

At 13 I just wanted to melt into the floor tiles. I knew my drawing wasn't great but such a public humiliation was all I needed to pronounce myself rubbish at drawing forever !

So hearing that I had drawing classes every week made me fearful to the core.....Ok maybe not, but I was apprehensive.

The advice I was given was to try, and to practice regularly and my skills would improve. So with no other option I decided to embrace the challenge and try my best. Gradually my drawing did get a little better. I'm never going to be fantastic at it but I began to see some progress so that gave me heart to carry on. Eventually I actually started to enjoy it, yep truly I did enjoy drawing.

I sketch designs and things now for my jewellery and when I'm thinking of ideas I might sketch various ideas but I don't worry about how good or bad they are because they generally are just for me. Anyway today I found all my pencils, pastels, watercolours and papers and decided to give sketching and painting ago.

So I'm sharing the results with you....I have never painted before so this is my first attempt. I did struggle with it and its far from good but do you know what, I had FUN !!

And really when you think about it that's all that matters isn't it.

Influences and Inspirations

Over the Christmas break I started to think about creating a new collection of jewellery. So as always I spent days cutting out images from magazines not just of jewellery but all kinds of things that I felt drawn to......the images and styles were broad and varied from nature to architecture, patterns textiles and fashion, yet my mind kept leading me back to the same place.

Each night when I'd go to bed I'd close my eyes and see the same things and no matter what I sketched I found nothing was quite right. So I decided to concentrate on my feelings and started to write a list of the words that popped into my head. They were random and at times amusing. It didn't take long though before I realised with some surprise that my thoughts were leading me to my Mum.

Thinking back and picturing Mum during my early years I realised she had always worn the same pieces of silver jewellery. They weren't expensive or elaborate but I'm guessing they were much loved as she wore them daily.

I have memories of sitting together at the dining table with Mum helping me paint a plaster cast craft kit of paddington bear and her long silver pendant knocking against the edge of the table each time she leaned forward to reload her brush with paint. Or her dozen thin silver bangles chiming together when she was waving Goodbye or washing up. Or the ring she wore on her little finger and removed each time she made pastry.

Sadly Mum passed away in 1985 when I was twelve. Until now I hadn't realised that her tastes had left such a lasting impression on me. Its funny really because I have a new found respect for her style. Looking back I can see she made more than the odd fashion faux pas. The huge beehive up do in her wedding pics was awful but none the less with her bell bottomed jeans, cheese cloth tops & gorgeous silver jewellery she was pretty cool to me...............