Adieu April showers, bring on the May flowers!

Hi everyone,This was going to be a hello from Sunday night post, but then I didn't think I had much to say (past the car boot sale on Sunday) and then I thought that maybe I wanted Monday to finish up some art to show you and that turned to Tuesday...and there you are!Typical me.Do you remember last post when I was at the Burford garden center?I fell in love with a few books, but they cost about $60 Canadian dollars each, so I looked for them on the UK Amazon where they were only about $15 each and I ordered two of them.They are the most gorgeous books. Complete house porn!I could live in each and every farmhouse in the Farmhouse book and not change a thing, (except for one which is decked out in purple and black Goth. The Goth would have to go,) and the second book has such stunning photography that each page is more gorgeous than the next.My sublimation printing is coming along really well and I'm getting the hang of the material.So far I've figured out that I love the blending of the dyes wet on wet in a semi-controlled manner, and I like a little sharper outline.I've also figured out that I love overlapping the prints for a deeper effect than I could ever get with paints.A few days ago I decided to deconstruct some flowers and try to print them back together.I got four flower petals printed and something else came up.But today I managed to finish this little piece of art.I painted more flower petals today and printed them on.It's always a bit deceptive to see the colours painted as opposed to how the colours turn out when sublimated, but I'm getting used to it.Here is my deconstructed flowers piece.I really like it.This is the first piece...after about seven...where I think I'm onto a style I like.In other art news, I ordered some oil based printing inks and I love, LOVE them to pieces.There may not be any going back to water-based inks for me!The downside is that the print takes a full three days for the ink to dry, so printing with oil-based inks will be a slow process.I also ordered three vintage piano rolls from player pianos and one of them I designated for practice.I carved this rather large moth from lino and printed it on the music rolls.There we are!I love it.When this idea comes together it will be a scroll depiction of the peppered moth turning from a white with black mottling moth to an almost black moth thru the pollution of the industrial revolution, back to a whiter moth post-revolution. Darwin's natural selection in art.I think I will incorporate some graphics and drawings on the scroll too.On Sunday I went to the first car boot sale of the season.I had so much fun running around the three rows. It was a small boot sale because it was just so darn cold and the wind chill made it even colder and the ever-present rain clouds kept threatening, but the reality was that an F1 race was on Sunday afternoon, and that just left 45 minutes for me to run around the boot sale if I wanted to get home in time for the start.And I sure did! It was one of the best races we've seen! Complete mayhem.Anyway, I did find some treasures and only spent about $11.First is this beautiful teapot.It's a vintage Aston Pottery teapot and I love to collect Aston pottery, (the bespoke potters in Aston village very close to us.) I have a whole bird series of teacups which will look lovely with this teapot. And, it has cowslips on it...which are growing all over the hedgerows and meadows right now. I love them.I bought this hand-hewn wooden bowl and five stone eggs about the size of goose eggs.I love crystals and stones and I love hand carved wood of all kinds.This little bowl needs a good cleaning and polishing and moisturizing with some lovely bee's wax, and it needs a little gold to fill a small hole in its side. A sort of kintsugi Veronica style.And the last thing I got at the boot sale are these two large burlap pillows. I loved them! I couldn't help it.Rule Britannia...or something like that. :DHappy May Day friends. I hope May brings you flowers in your little corner of the old globe.