Halcyon Days

Halcyon Days by Jo Bradford

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It has been a fun week for the Poppytalk Gang as we celebrate summer colours week.  I have had a great time making new work especially for the occasion and including a few recent pictures from my back catalogue too.  Halcyon Days was a quick something I knocked up for Mondays Pink theme.  It has turned out to be something of an unexpected hit as it was selected to be an Utata Front Page this week.  What a lovely surprise :)  

Halcyon Days in now for sale in my Etsy shop

And my DaWanda Shop

xoxo

Deeply Inserted into Existence

Beneath the Trees by Jo Bradford

I am reminded today of the wisdom of John Berger.
Bergers' writings were required reading for my photography degree many moons ago, yet much of what he says still resonates with me as I roam the world armed with my camera....
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“That we find a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone,
that we are more deeply inserted into existence
than the course of a single life would lead us to believe.”
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Thanks to Dava, who featured Green Island Studios as one of her Etsy shops of the week, on her blog "Treasures From Hawaii" today.

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Middle Earth

Idyll by Jo Bradford

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Cornwall is a place of rolling green landscape and turquoise sea. It is so enchanting. This land of fluffy clouds, quaint stone cottages and majestic trees are all exactly how I imagined Middle Earth to look, as a child reading Tolkien. His stories of the shires and villages of Middle Earth, were inspired by the British Midlands area where he grew up around Warwickshire and Herefordshire.

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The idea of a middle earth comes from Old Norse Language and appears in ancient Germanic mythology.

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The world of Men is known by several names in Old Norse, such as Midgard, Middenheim, and Middengeard, and is located in the centre of the universe. It was believed that Bifröst, the rainbow bridge, extended from Middle-earth to Asgard, the land of the gods. Beneath Middle-earth lay Hel, the land of the Dead.

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Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements such as Britain, during the Viking Age, until about 1300.

Rainy Days Mixed Tape

Blue Butterflies by Jo Bradford

My work has been selected for Poppytalk Handmade this month. The theme is Mixed Tape! ~ A compilation of those wonderful Poppytalk Handmade peeps, Jan & Earl's, favorite things from emerging design talent from around the world. The market will feature papergoods, affordable art, ceramics, housewares, gifts and jewelry and will be running Sep 08 - Oct 10, 2008.

This is my third Poppytalk market this year. This time I was inspired by the rain (kind of).

Although it has been an unbelievably wet summer this year, I am not letting it get me down. I have been making the most of what is around me for inspiration, and recently it's been big seas, storm clouds and raindrops. The best thing about lots of rain during the warm months, is that Cornwall has never looked so verdant, the rich greens in the landscape are gorgeous and inspirational... it's a jungle out there!!

Le Paon

"What is riches to him

That has made a great peacock....

.....Adding feather to feather

For the pride of his eye"~ WB Yeats

Title: Le Paon (The Peacock)

Size: 8 x 8 inches

Media: Photography