is it a boy or is it a girl?

After months of waiting we finally found out yesterday we are expecting a baby boy! we were very much convinced it was going to be another girl, we had even picked a name, and now, after the initial disbelieve, we are ever so thrilled about the news. 
And since I have been vary lazy lately, I’m posting the last three weeks of my growing belly too.

The Vintage Garden

This has been my labour of love for the entire month of February, and I love how it turned out! I like the symmetry of the topiary, the details of the garden furniture and even the colour scheme, with which I struggled a bit at the beginning. I’m getting more and more accustomed to this style of painting, and I think I might have found my perfect match. Hope you like it to!
The original painting will be available for purchase in my Etsy shop, but I’m planning to add postards and prints as well.

9/52 + 10/52

It’s playing catch up again this week! but this time I have a very good excuse…we have been to Italy for 10 days and despite my intentions of carry on with my daily/weekly routine, I hardly checked my emails, Instgram feed, let alone publishing a blog post. So here we are, the best of the past two weeks.
In Rome, eating a slice of pizza at every corner
Olivia – week 9: She got very excited when we told her we were going to Rome. And screamed with joy when she saw her trolley ready to be packed in our living room! 
In Pisa, wearing zia Marty’s handbag after her graduation
Olivia – week 10: She loved spending time in Italy and seeing family (lots of it!) and friends. She has been a joy to be around and made our stay there very enjoyable and relaxing.

Linking up with Jody from Practising Simplicity.

twinkle, twinkle

My little nephew is truly smitten by the owl of “twinkle, twinkle little star”, a very popular English lullaby. So my sister-in-law asked me if I could make a painting of it, and I agreed. She asked me back in November, and although I made an effort to get it done by Christmas, that didn’t work out very well.
But after three months, it’s finally finished! And I hope they will both like it.

Fabric canvas art

I cannot remember how I came up with the idea of making fabric canvases. The first time I experimented with this technique was before Olivia turned 1. I was looking at making my own party’s invitation cards and tried gluing some fabric to a piece of cardboard. And that was it! I liked the process and the end results, although I didn’t use the card at the end, because I couldn’t figure out a way to scan the image properly and get it printed out on time. But that is a different story.
During the past year, I had another go at it, this time using a canvas as a background and introducing gel medium in the final process. I failed twice; first time I used too much gel, second time I tried a matt gel that didn’t quite work.


But, as they say, third time lucky, I finally managed to produce something I was pleased with. So that so, I gave it to my friend’s baby girl as a present for her first birthday.

The process is a bit messy, but fun, and I’m planning to write a short tutorial on how to make a simple fabric canvas soon.

This is something I enjoyed doing very much; it combines my love for printed fabric and my inability to sew properly. And it gives me a good excuse to keep buying pretty fabric.

As I made two identical canvases at the same time (I like to work in tandem!), I’m putting one up for sale in my Etsy shop.