Texture petals were so much fun. I remember seeing a lady on youtube showing simple shapes you could make with a pallet knife and texture paste. One of the shapes was a flower petal. Not long afterwards I came across Josie Lewis and I fell in love with her work. So bright and colourful. She used a palette knife to layer thick acrylic paint and paste side by side to create amazing 3D sculpture art. Her work is incredible. On pintrest, I found a photo of a simple flower shape made with several petals and I decided this was what I was looking for. I spent countless days and weeks experimenting with all different types of texture paste I could find. Through the night and into the early hours of the morning, I could be found creating mixtures and testing various paint types along with pastes as well as the best way to pick up and lay down the paste with my palette knife. There were no tutorials back then and not much information about what people were using to make these works. Some pastes I tried would shrink once they dried, others looked too glossy, some lost their shape and dried flat. Below are some of my earliest tries. After many, many experiments, I found heavy body paint to be the best to use and my favourite paste was a mix of one part Golden Light Molding paste mixed with one part Winsor Newton Galeria Modelling paste. It gave that light airy texture and held its shape perfectly once dried. I found more artists on instagram trying this style too and its was great to talk to them and share tips. I tried a few pieces with just petals but I love to mix different mediums together and also felt something needed to be added which is when I tried added vinyl as a centrepiece. My first piece in this style was Summer Bride. I definitely got that feeling that this was where my texture art needed to go; a centrepiece surrounded by a frame of petals. I started putting petals onto other surfaces including wooden moons, log slice, vases, and mirrors. I sometimes painted on the centerpiece instead of just using vinyl. My artwork had never been so colourful and vibrant. I really enjoyed playing with alcohol ink and decided to incorporate it into my petal work. It made a lovely background. I chose colours to match my petals or those that complimented them. I thought the metallic gold alcohol ink gave the pieces that extra sparkle. After a few years of this style of art, I was being drawn to something else - drawing. A gentle nudge at first that grew into a need. But that is for another post.

I have been wanting to create a website for my artwork for a long time and I am glad it is finally here. This website is mostly to show the various art styles that I have created and a space to see how my work has evolved and changed over time. Whilst adding pieces to my site and giving each one a description, it has me reflecting on all the different types of art I have made and how I have let go of some that I feel are no longer me. I used to love drawing and making different crafts when I was a child. I took to drawing again when I reached my late teens to early twenties. At that time, there were no youtube channels or patreon tutorials to help me learn to draw. Some of my very early attempts at drawing and painting are very basic with only a little shading and not much awareness of blending watercolours and coloured pencils, or highlights. But my art was, and is now, just for fun and something I do that makes me happy. When I started having children and my beautiful daughter came along, my focus shifted and I only made a couple of pieces as I was enjoying motherhood and spent most of my free time reading about child development and fun games/activities to do with a growing baby. It was only when my third child was about six months old that I felt the bug for art grow again. But when I sat down to draw, I just wasn't feeling it. It wasn't come out onto the page the way I wanted it to. Then one day I randomly came across a page on instagram where a woman was talking about a fluid art group she had started over on facebook. I clicked on it out of curiosity and I was hooked. This group was in its infancy then with only about 500 members and it was a place where people could explore fluid art, share tips and tricks, share discoveries with each other, and try to understand the science behind good abstract fluid art. Back then, it was still a relatively new art form and fluid paints were not mainstream. Big paint brands had not made a line of fluid art products or mediums to use together. It was such a fun group and many of the people I met online through that group I still know today. Fluid art really helped me. It was fun, colourful, and it gave me the freedom to let go. I didn't need to control the outcome or need it to look a set way. It was about play and letting go of control over what the piece should be. This was the first time I shared my art on instagram through the encouragement of the people in that group. I truly am so grateful I joined that group and that there were such wonderful people willing to share what they learnt with me and others. Another style of play I deeply enjoyed was paint balls. I loved the marbled effects and how these paint balls nestled on a soft bed of patterned paint. I loved how sometimes the colours all mixed together making striking ribbons and how other times, the colours would separate into clear bold colours alongside each other. I enjoyed trying to zoom in with my camera and get the best shots before the paint balls popped and they all dispersed. Well, that is it for my first art blog post. If you read this far, thank you and hopefully you will enjoy my next post. Take care and see you soon.