Guest Blog; Liane Payne

 Our guest blogger for 2016, Yellow House artist Liane Payne, is an experienced designer with a wealth of experience and writes her latest blog post about recent projects and where she draws her inspiration, read on to find out more...

 "A really juicy commission has been keeping me busy over the last few months – a range of Christmas boxes for Elite Gift Tins (thanks Sue and Jehane!). It’s been enormous fun developing 2-D designs into three dimensions, although quite a challenge to move from my usual flat world to working in the round. And it’s always a bit weird to be immersed in Christmas when there’s blossom everywhere and trees are bursting into leaf.

However, my head has been so full of robins and berries and figuring out how to make sprigs of holly go round corners that I didn’t fully notice how the season was changing…it wasn’t until the artwork upload button was finally clicked that I realised it was almost midsummer– and how far things had moved on outdoors. The allotment is full of weeds, I’m running late with seed sowing and what I do have growing has been chomped by pests!

Luckily though, it’s now the allotment plant sale season so help is at hand for gardeners who are behind the curve.

Cheap seedlings galore, all ready to put in the ground. Once they’re planted nobody ever need know that you’ve cheated.

  

And the National Open Garden Scheme is now in full swing. Nosing around other people’s gardens is a great way to get ideas if your own garden is as neglected as mine, not to mention getting inspiration for new images. Here are just a few lovely plants I’ve seen recently and wish I’d grown myself, and plan to work up into finished designs.

And if, like me, slugs have annihilated your radish and carrot seedlings, why not knit some instead? Pretty tasteless in salads of course but inedible to molluscs!

Here are some bestsellers from my silly handmade collection – novelty vegetable bags and bunting: made to order and currently flying off the shelves at Killick Stores in north London:

Enjoy the summer!"

June 2016, Liane Payne