Alison Day Designs: garden

Saturday, 13 April 2024

Fuchsia Frolic

First pattern: Fuchsia Frolic - using the flower of a favourite garden plant for inspiration and one that I grow each year in my garden.

Created as a result of following a 5-day pattern challenge, using Adobe Illustrator.

Quite a learning curve and it still needs tweaking, but that's all part of the fun.

I love a challenge - the start of many more! 🌸

Website: Alison Day Designs

Monday, 28 August 2017

In week three, we designed home decor products for the substrate: glass. Combining both my bird and flower icons, an overall garden theme emerged. The pieces are a mix of translucent and opaque glass and are decorated with decals, hand painted or have fused elements.
Can you see any of these home decor products in your home ?

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Saturday, 22 July 2017

Currant Fare

I wasn't planning on gardening today, but you know how it goes? Pick up a leaf and throw a twig in a bucket and before you know it, you have a pair of secateurs in hand, you're on a mission and everything gets pruned!

The blackcurrants certainly did need picking, but it doesn't end at that. The plant then has to be cut back right back, leaving the new branches for the next season. In the moment, I thought why not—take the time? Repetitive, mantra-like, as I plucked the tiny, purple, vitamin C bombs from the branches, I found myself thinking about how, I inevitably was destroying the habitat of some bug or other. I could feel the reproach, from an enormous grey spider, swinging from the remnants of her web and of the bright green grasshoppers, pinging all over the place. A plastic-looking earwig looked quite pissed off, or maybe it's just their demeanor. All had to relocate, with one consolation, I left the berries that fell for any passing takers. Immediately, a big fat slug, smelling the berries, advanced, amazingly fast for a slug, out of the poppies, to claim and gorge itself on a berry bigger than its head.

My prize, the berries you see in the photo above, weighing in at a grand 340 g. As I sit on the garden bench relaxing, I wonder what will be next on the harvest agenda, before the leaves start to fall: tomatoes, grapes, blackberries...

Currently, I'm writing an E-Course. It's for anyone wishing to take time for themselves creatively, develop their knowledge, as well as meet others of a like mind. Regardless your artistic experience or creative level—so that includes you!

If you'd like to be kept up to date on my E-Course as it progresses, or have always wanted to take part in a creative class, with an environmental flavour—subscribe to my monthly newsletter. Plus you'll also receive my 10 top creative tips: here

Wednesday, 19 July 2017

Summer Giveaway

UPDATE: prize draw closed - a winner has been drawn !

SUMMER GIVEAWAY!

My Gertrude Jekyll quote notebooks arrived today from my Society6 shop. I think they've turned out beautifully. So, in honour of that and because it's Summer, I thought it would be fun to do a giveaway.

Want to win ONE? - Hop over to my Instagram and find the giveaway post and follow what it says to be added to the draw.

You have until - Friday 21 July then I will draw ONE lucky winner (at random) and send ONE notebook off to that lucky person anywhere in the world!

Instagram

Friday, 12 August 2016

Marine Design

Seaweed—the underwater garden, providing food, medicine and marine life refuge.
These and more flowers and plants can be found on my Instagram as part of the #100dayproject. Tag: #100daysflowersandplants

Wednesday, 10 August 2016

Airborne Offspring

Isn't it wonderful watching the changing of the seasons? Although I have a preference for the seasons which build up to a heady glory, as opposed to the end of year decline, there is something magical about the process and it's repetition.

Autumn is long busy before we name it so, with the subtle turning of the leaves, ripening of fruit and dispersal of seeds. Sitting in the garden, I watch the wind blow tiny butterfly-shaped seed pods everywhere. There is a light sprinkling covering the ground, a guarantee of the survival of that particular plant for next year, with the exception of those that land in my coffee!

These and more flowers and plants can be found on my Instagram as part of the #100dayproject. Tag: #100daysflowersandplants

Sunday, 7 August 2016

Plum Crazy

This year the plum tree in my garden has excelled itself—in comparison with previous years, it has produced more plums than I can use, have inspiration for, or care to deal with.

So far, I have only plucked about a third of the plums from the tree (about 7kg). Seeing the enormity of the process ahead of me, I also googled diverse possibilities of what to do with them. Apart from eating them fresh, I have made: 2 litres of plum vodka, 11 pots of jam, a couple of plum crumbles, some dehydrated plums: prunes and some fruit leather.

I'm pleased with the outcome, but exhausted by two days in the kitchen and daunted by the remaining two thirds, stlll attached to the tree! Then there's the wasps and a couple of Jays, who, although I'm not adverse to sharing, sample several plums each visit and then leave them to rot! All this fruit processing, reminds me of my childhood summers and my mother's jam making.

Luckily... I am able to call on friends, who's stocks of plum jam are dwindling and who are happy to help me pick the rest from the tree. *phew*
As I pick, I weigh, curious as to what the grand total will be, once the tree is bare again.

UPDATE:
As of today (09/08/2016), the tree has been relieved of it's load —20.5 kilos!
Friends have come and gone, taking with them bags filled with plums, destined for jam, cakes and to be eaten fresh. I thought it only fair, to leave about a kilo on the tree for the jays, wasps and any other fruit loving wildlife.
The tree really excelled itself this year —thank you tree!

Saturday, 23 July 2016

Elderflower Magic

When I was a child, during often during the summer we would go to local farms and pick whatever fruits were in season. One for me, one for the basket, was the way my siblings and I passed the time. The visit would end with us, red-mouthed and feeling slightly sick. On other times we would forage in the hedgerows of the country lanes for: wild blackberries, sloes, elderflowers and their berries.
From all this produce, my mother would conjure up jams and jellies, pies, crumbles, puddings and elderflower champagne. Whilst in the basement, my father would wizard up bottles of elderflower wine and sloe gin.

Elderflower champagne was a family tradition and made by my mother. It was exciting to us kids, because it was fizzy, contained a small amount of alcohol and we were allowed to drink it! That coupled with the fact that once made, it had to be stored in sturdy, brown glass bottles with a screw top—because it might explode. Sometimes it did and the mess was extraordinary.
Within a couple of weeks, the elderflower champagne was ready to drink and often accompanied lunch in the garden. Served in dimpled half-pint beer tankards or long drink glasses.

This summer, from the elderflower tree in my garden, I have conjured up five bottles of the wonderful elixir and am sipping on a glassful as I write.

These and more foody illustrations can be found on my Instagram as part of the #100dayproject. Tag: #100daysfoodanddrink

Friday, 22 July 2016

Wonder Flower

Isn't it wonderful how flowers can make you feel?

A select series of flowers and plants can be found on my Instagram as part of the #100dayproject. Tag: #100daysflowersandplants

Sunday, 17 July 2016

Flower Language

All the colourful sketches and watercolours of Zinnia I was making, were for a journal cover entitled The Language of Flowers.
The final assignment, after an inspiring, five month long, bootcamp given by Lilla Rogers of MATS

These and more flowers and plants can be found on my Instagram as part of the #100dayproject. Tag: #100daysflowersandplants

Thursday, 14 July 2016

Cast of Thousands

After a flower's petals have dropped, the left over seed cases and plant pods, filled with a few or with thousands of seeds, continue to make a garden interesting.

These and more flowers and plants can be found on my Instagram as part of the #100dayproject. Tag: #100daysflowersandplants