Easter egg painting inspiration.. and another feature on www.houzz.com

I can't stop being all Eastery and thought to share with you my inspiration for painting Easter eggs.
I can really recommend creating your own heirloom pieces from a simple chicken egg.

The enamel eggs from Halcyon Days are a real inspiration, if you want to move away for a change from the simple stripe or dot  .

                                                         picture credit : www.abitofbritain.com
                                                                      
I would love to get an egg as a present with a ruin painted on it like this one.
Or this adorable one ..

                                                       picture credit : www.figurines-ornaments.com
                                                                        

                                                    picture credit : www.abitofbritain.com
                                                                                
Yet, with  prices like $125,-  to $245,- for an egg like that, this is the time I usually decide to create my own.

This is and Easter egg I did some time ago, covered with butterflies.
You start with a chicken egg, from which you blow out the egg white and egg yolk,( you can read how to do this on this post here )  then cover with a base coat of paint.I used artist's acrylic paint as it has a matt shine and dries relatively quickly.
Then you find a design that inspires you, and draw the design on your egg with a Staedler Technical Drawing ink pen 

or a Rotring Pen 

These pens will give you a very neat line and can draw very precisely and thinly.
Here is an chicken egg with a design drawn on with one of these pens.

You then fill in the colourfields with acrylic paint.An egg with both sides painted takes a bit of time ( it takes me two days ) , so varnish it afterwards so the paint won't run  and your work won't be ruined.
Here's some more Easter egg inspiration for you..

                                                         picture credit : www.seawaychina.com
                                                                               

                                                 picture credit : www.scullyandscully.com
Have a wonderful time decorating and painting!!
XOXO
Bea

ps.
I received another email from the editors from www.houzz.com. that one of my ideas , again for a garden  design ( paving ) had been featured in one of their idea books.

Here is the link.
Happy Easter !
XOXO
Bea

p.p.s.
And the latest adventure of Maud and Millie can be found on their blog here

linking to the 
Weekend Wrapup party
Easter craft party
Bunny Bloghop
Inspiration Friday
Frugal Friday
Feathered Nest friday 

Happy Easter

Happy Easter lovely people! I am still knee deep into finishing orders I took on the Country Living Spring Fair, so I thought to give you a recipe which I have posted before in case you feel like making your own Easter hot cross buns....   and Simnel cake.( recipe is also on the blog).

                                                        

Before I came to live in England, I had never heard of hot cross buns- but I have really grown to love these little buns with dried fruit and cinnamon and orange zest .They are really  

 tasty and quite fun to make- and absolutely delicious straight out of the oven with some fresh butter.

And Simnel cake, basically a fruit cake with marzipan, is very festive and yummy and gets you really into the Easter spirit with a nice cup of tea.
Here are the is the recipe for
Hot cross buns.

This is an overnight recipe so the dough can rise- so remember to start the evening before!!
Ingredients:
150 ml milk
2 eggs
50 gr butter
400 gr  white flour
yeast : 2 x packet of dried yeast ( = 2 x 7 gr= 14 gr)
125 g mixed dried fruit
1 clove
grated zest of 1 orange
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger powder
2 cardamom pods


Preparation :
Put the flour, yeast and dried fruit with the spices in a bowl.
Warm the milk with the butter, zest , clove and cardamom, melt the butter in the milk, then leave to let the flavours get into the milk.
Let milk cool till luke warm, then take the cardamom pods out. Beat in the egg, then add the whole of the milk and egg mixture to your flour mixture.Knead through till you have a nice elastic dough.This is best done by hand, as you can feel the dough change.Form into a ball then put in a covered bowl in the fridge overnight.
The next day, take out the dough out of the fridge and let it warm up- I usually use my airing cupboard- you need a warm-ish place with no draughts.The warming up will take at least 30 minutes.
Pre-heat the oven to 220 degrees Centigrade .
Knead the dough again til it feels smooth and elastic.Then spilt it into 16 ball, which you roll between the balls of your hands.Take an oven dish and line or butter it ,and put the litle balls on it. Cut a cross with an kitchen knife in the top of each ball.Cover  the oven dish with a clean tea towel, then let it rise for 2 hours.

Take 1 egg and beat this into a small bowl, then cover the buns with the egg-wash on the top.
Take 3 tablespoons of flour , 1/2 tablespoon od sugar and dissolve this into 2 tablespoons of water, so you have a thick white paste.Use the end of a teaspooon to dribble this white paste as a white cross on top of the buns.
 Bake in the pre-heated oven for 15 minutes.

Mix 1 tablespoon of sugar and 1 tablespoon of hot boiling water, and brush each bun withthe sticky mixture so the buns are all shiny, then ..
try not to eat them all at once !!

Happy baking !!

Have a lovely Easter weekend!
XOXO
Bea

Springtime at Modern Country Lady and featured in www. houzz.com ideabooks

Wishing you a very happy April!! It's been pretty hot and now pretty cold which makes it for a really changeable Spring here at Modern Country Lady.Things are now really starting to burst into flower and blossoming away like my weeping cherry here above- I just love it best when it's just about to open up and some of the flowers are still into buds.Spring really is my favourite time of the year.

And what about these sweeties.. coming up year after year ! I love these grape hyacinths, never any trouble- not like other bulbs I could mention that never appear again after the first year !

Actually, these tulips here below have surprised me completely, as these are the first that have come back after the first year !

They were waiting for me on my return from the Country Living Spring Fair..aww.. so sweet.
I feel very inspired to make a good go of my fledgling business "My Aunt Agatha" and the fair has helped a lot with loads of contacts and inspiration.
At the moment I working my way through the orders that stacked up on the order-book during the fair , from all the people who wanted " My Aunt Agatha" products, tailored to their specifications.
I am also thinking about and researching into fabrics and designs for  a new collection which wil entail hand embroidery but will still be affordable and which will be interesting for my trade customers as well, so life is very busy.
Here are some of the things that inspire me which I may taking as a starting point. I just love beautiful embroidery....like this

..and like this..

Being surrounded by beautiful needlework when you grow up surely must inspire you- my mum Philomene is an amazing needle-woman..
Here is my beautiful mum with my step-dad with whom she has been happily married for more than 25 years now..

And here is a picture of my mum and me some years ago...

Anyway, I digress..what I wanted to say was, I will be working away on my orders and new designs and hope to keep you in the loop of developments .
And on of the exciting bits of news is that I was emailed by the editors of www.houzz.com a few days ago, that one of my garden designs, for a potager or kitchengarden,  has been featured in their ideas books..
This is the design..

and the link to the idea book on Houzz.com is here.

Hope you have a lovely rest of the week and enjoy the Spring!
XOXO
Bea

linking to photography Friday

Home sweet home.. inspiration, and other bloggers..

Much as I liked going to the Country Living Spring Fair in London, there is no place like the countryside itself once Spring arrives, and I super glad to be in the countryside with everything bursting into flower.
There is just nothing like it!
A nice walk in the countryside is definitely a good way to re-charge your batteries and there is so much to see..the first dandelion...

and then this lovely flower...broccoli I thought :-)

..but seen in the field where some are already flowering,you can tell it will be a whole filed of bright yellow, so this is rape seed, my dear friends ..I was so wrong there with the broccoli, hahaha.

I would not mind having a wallpaper that would be exactly like this, wouldn't you?

I feel very inspired by all that I have seen on the Country Living Spring Fair and have found a few really interesting blogs of fellow standholders which I can really recommend.
One , the Sea Garden, had such a stunning display that is has really made me think about how to plan your stand( instead of paiting the walls just plain white )..They painstakingly pinned the whole wall of their stand ( and quite big too) with old maps, pages from old books, old texts and old prints of flowers.It was magical ! Their blog is called A Mermaid's Tale.You must go and have a look.
You can read their experiences about the fair here and also see some of their work, their stand and their display.

                                              copyright and source picture The Mermaid'sTale
Just amazing, and if I had not gone to the show I probably would never have seen them, as they are based far away, in Cornwall.
Another blogger, whom I did not meet in person, but did "meet" through her blogpost about the Country Living Spring Fair, is Ali from Message in a teacup-Tales from Betty and Violet.
As I had a stand myself, I did not have much time to look at other stands, but I did pass by a stand that I loved with vintage embroidery, that Ali wrote about in her blogpost, from standholder Chloe Antiques or Chloe Vintage.
Such gorgeous cushions!

                          copyright and source picture Message in a teacup-Tales from Betty and Violet.

As we are so lucky with the glorious weather we are having right now it's fabulous to be able to relax in the garden with a nice coffee..and to ponder on all these creative people and their inspiring work...
                                             

And go for lots of walks....to relax and be inspired....there is nothing like a little walk in the countryside...

and if no-one is coming..then Maud will simply go on her own .Don't you just love this little bottom ;-)

Have a great weekend!
XOXO
Bea



                                                                  

The fabulous adventure of the Country Living Spring Fair in London

Phew!I am sure you would love to know a little bit about the The Country Living Spring Fair in London last week and how it all went...It was a very busy week last week- and pretty exciting! ...The fair was pretty packed and super busy.There were more browsers than buyers and the fair had even been busier last year ..:-( I guess it's the recession which bites all of us ! )  ... but overall it was quite an exhilirating experience !!

Here's the fabulous architecture of St Pancras station near which we were staying...I just love the architecture in London, it's so amazing and impressive.
And here below is my stand for My Aunt Agatha on the Country Living Spring fair.

I am very glad I went and explored the Top Drawer Trade fair in January in London , as it showed me a stand without spotlights really does not stand out enough- so I decided to go for two spotlights .

Here below you see a bit of the hustle and bustle of the fair, it's sometimes a real stampede of people! And the fashion and the accessories the ladies are wearing are really something else- a real pleasure to look at!Not for nothing they call London the fashion capital of the world! 

I would not have been able to do the show without my fabulous and supportive mother-in-law to be, Theresa.
She decided to come with me at the spur of the moment when I , at the last minute realised that just manning one stand all by yourself could actually be quite difficult- as when you have to leave the stand for a break, or to chase things up.What a woman !

She was just so great to have around, as she has a great sense of humour, a good business sense and a super sweet disposition- and she is great with people.
We had some great and fun people around us on the stands in the same area,all with fabulous products.
We were right opposite Zinnia Shoes.

Aww!! Aren't these fabulous?I have stood opposite these shoes the whole show and I can't tell you how hard it was to resist them and how people love these!!You must check out their website!!Nagi, the fabulous chap who runs the business, was super and so supportive as this was my first year and he was full of handy and insightful tips about pricing, body langauage and running a business.It just makes the whole thing so enjoyable when you have great people around.
Next to me was Whinberry and Antler
I was so impressed as this was their first show and the stand looked super and had loads of sales and interest.
It was all really lovely with a rustic feel and so very well done.I think they did spectacularly well.

Then at the end of the row was St Gabriels , run by a lovely girl called Miranda.The stand was amazing and super clever , and the bags were just fabulous! You really must have a look and check out their website- this picture is a bit too small to get an idea.

Right next to us were two girls with their fabulous fake flowers, but sadly their business, "Funky Bunch" does not have a website yet!
To sum up the Country Living Spring Fair : not as many sales as I would wish- but that seems to be the case with others as well... but on the first day, and on Saturday, a lot of interest from the press, - about 4 journalist took my details and my card ( although you never know if this may come to anything but we will see..).. and some trade enquiries too, and some sales...so not too bad :-)

Here are some of my bestsellers at the fair by the way :
 

                                                                   and

                                                                           and ( Cafetiere warmer )

                                                                           and
                                                     

You can find all these on the My Aunt Agatha shop here


Sunday was a crazy busy day at the Country Living fair with people queueing around the block.... and in the evening the great surprise of being visited by the assistant editor for the "Home" section of the Evening Standard who wants to write about My Aunt Agatha ..AND a visit from the lovely lady from Country Living Magazine who would like to feature me in the "Emporium" pages.....!!!!! Yippee!!

I think it's time for a cup of tea and a relaxing evening in the garden after all the hustle and bustle in London,as the Spring weather has arrived while I was away..and then tomorrow we start with new plans and new designs!
Have a great week!
XOXO
Bea 

PS I just noticed there was already some coverage about My Aunt Agatha, in a review on the Sewing Directory Website..here is the link in case you would like to take a look!

Preparations ...

Phew! I can't believe I have neglected all your lovely people for so long, but I have been head down making stock for the Country Living Spring Fair show next week , so here are a few shots with apologies !!
 ..some embroidered hearts....

And some more Spring -themed ones...can't wait to get back into the garden !!

Some snowdrops to keep in Spring mood :-)

..cute little child's aprons and some more embroidered hearts..and of course there will be loads more on the show like tea cosies, oven gloves,laundry bags and all kind of pretty things ;-)

..and this is what I would like to say to all my lovely followers for keep on hanging on :-) : " Thank you, darling ! "

Hope you have a great week this week and .. keep your fingers crossed for me for next week!!

XOXO 

Bea