Goodbye cards

For my best friend at work who has been transferred to another school :(
The red card is from all of us, the cloud is from me.

Goodbye card for a chemist

My chemistry stencil came in very handy here! This card was a lot of fun to make.

It's for a colleague who is being transferred to another school - I'm very sad to see her go after working with her for 17 years.

Retirement card

For a friend who is retiring. We've been working together for 17 years. Luckily she will be coming back to do supply work after the holidays!

Elizabeth Blackadder

On Saturday I went to an exhibition of art by Elizabeth Blackadder. I'd known her paintings of cats and flowers (in fact I sat under one when having my lunch at the Christian Aid book sale back in May). But I'd only recently become aware of how much her art was influenced by Japan.

I really enjoyed the exhibition, especially the room devoted to the Japanese influence. I love how she paints groups of objects, not as a traditional still life, but just as individual objects. I like art showing collections of objects, and some of my own drawings are on this theme, so it really appealed to me.

I was intrigued by the fact that she doesn't erase all her pencil lines in her watercolours, but they still look finished. Maybe I'll be more lazy and not erase mine in future!

Before I went to the exhibition, I downloaded the iPhone app that the gallery had produced. I found this really useful, because it had a plan showing the layout of the exhibition, and audio commentary for some of the paintings. The only problem was that I was worried the staff would think I was trying to take photos of the paintings!