Tag Archives: colour

Art, color, Wedding

Wedding Decor – balloons and paper sculptures

I’m delighted to have been asked to assist with a wedding of two great friends, looking after the decor side of things. It’s a great project for me, and we’re at the stage of deciding on all the different elements of decorations needed, moving into testing some things.

I’m going to be giving this Crepe and Watercolour flower tutorial a bash. How great would huge, huge paper flowers look, suspended up high, along with some of these giant balloons I found over at

Just found from my ‘balloon research’ how it’s simple to make two toned balloons.

And if you were ever interested in how balloons are made, like I am. There you go!

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The above is another installation, this time made with what looks like loadsa different shaped and sizes balloons. The artist is Piraja Maharaja and the blogger is Lauren Ann Lane. It’s brill and has sparked off lots of ideas for balloon decor at this wedding.

What did we do before Pinterest ay? It’s been so useful to collaborate with people over that in really defining what kind of decor is wanted at this wedding, testing our ideas and tutorials, pinning different colour palettes and texture inspiration. You can follow me on pinterest if you like. My favourite board is the ‘Things I Could Be Doing Instead of Sitting Here’ board. Never fails to inspire me to get off my bum and MAKE.

Did you know that my sister is a wedding photographer? She lives all the way in New Zealand but is looking for weddings to photograph here in England. She’s such a pro at it, so is her man – they’re a husband and wife photo team. 

And finally, here’s a blog I wrote two years back about another wedding I helped coordinate the decor for. This was for a lovely family who I used to nanny for.

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Art, color, Design, Exhibitions, Interesting and Inspiring

Peter Combe’s ‘Pink Interference’ and Rivane Neuenschwander’s ‘I Wish Your Wish’

Peter Combe, Pink Interference, 32″ x 39″, mixed media, 2009. ‘Artwork created from thousands of shredded Architect/Designer size household paint swatches in ordered/random placement.’

To me, this is perfect. The colour – a mix of sickly sweet and delicious – all mixed together, erratically but completely organised neatly, rows and grids, staggered and making the diagonal line in the lower half. How I want to touch it, would it feel like one of those butcher’s curtains? A piece of art where it’s so delicate, it’s only attached at one point, each paper could easily be torn.

This piece seems very similar to Rivane Neuenschwander’s ‘I Wish Your Wish’ where ribbons are silkscreened with one of 60 wishes left by previous viewers. Visitors can take a ribbon to take home, from a hole in the wall, in return for writing their own wish on a slip of paper and inserting it (in the ribbon’s place) into one of 10,296 small holes within the walls.

Rivane Neuenschwander, I Wish Your Wish, 2003. Silkscreen on fabric ribbons, dimensions variable. Installation view, St. Louis Art Museum.

“Rivane Neuenschwander is like a conductor of invisible orchestras: she engages external forces to make ephemeral art with sensuality and rigour but also with the lightest possible touch.

‘Ethereal materialism’

Secondary Stories (2006) consisted of brightly coloured tissue-paper circles of varying sizes that were blown by fans inside a false ceiling made of translucent plastic, creating kaleidoscopic compositions as they drifted about.

A lingering resonance that was hard to shake.” Kristin M. Jones (Frieze.com)

Drops of water, bubbles, sprocket holes, hole-punched confetti, eggs, moons, constellations, and cascading zeros all play a role, sometimes as soundtracks or symbols of fragility. Much of her oeuvre is also about measuring passing time: calendars, both marking the past and rushing to the future.

Her maps, whether tracking visitors’ paths through the exhibition or presenting the blurred boundaries of those exposed to the elements during the rainy season are about creating new geographies for new explorations. New Museum.org

Peter Combe’s Blog,

Peter Combe’s Twitter

An Article about Rivane Neuenschwander’s exhibition ‘A Day Like Any Other’ which contained ‘I Wish Your Wish’

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Art, color, Design, Interesting and Inspiring, Text Project

Exciting Christmas Gift Ideas

You’d like to give out exciting Christmas gifts, correct? I’d love to have the money and time to buy everyone something which will be special to them for Christmas. Something they’ll use, or that will excite or inspire them, or simply make them laugh. It’s tough at Christmas, gifts become thrown to the back of my mind and at the last minute I’m worrying. Or forgetting people. Or getting resentful that my family is so big.

I usually make things, which I enjoy and keeps it cheap. BUT I know I’ll be searching for those few special presents for those special people, so here’s some  things I’ve come across recently which I think would make brilliant gifts, and maybe you will too.

Banter Banner believe we should celebrate the everyday. “no longer only for holidays, but for the everyday. As art. As design. As inspiration”

‘Good Times’ banner. Loads more sayings available: Joie De Vivre // Sweet Dreams // Celebrate The Everyday

$10

Buy it here at BanterBanner.com.

‘Wild At Heart’ Rosette. Hot pink ribbon with gold text: ‘Wild At Heart’ A quote from Lula, in Lynch’s 1990 Wild at Heart: “This whole world’s wild at heart and weird on top.”

$16

Buy it here at BanterBanner.com.

Fake Poo

Makes for a brilliant present. Nearly everyone ever finds this funny “This pile of brown doggie doo looks so realistic you can almost smell it.”

Cheap from Amazon/Ebay/Jokeshops.

‘Coast’ by Marco Suarez: “These photos capture the beauty of Northern Ireland. Framing this photo in a circle creates an awesome composition that is sure to be a highlight in any room. The circle has a diameter of 13″ and is printed on Somerset Velvet watercolor paper with archival inks. This photo is part of a limited run of 50 and each print is individually signed and numbered.”

$60

Buy this print and others at Marco’s Etsy shop.

Hand painted geometric pendant. Painted on wood with a silver chain. By Vickygonart

$24

Buy this and other jewellery at Vicky’s Etsy shop.

‘Crap’ Text Artwork. Shamelsss plug here! I made this. Each piece is completely unique, with the fine lines drawn freehand and each letter individually hand-cut.

£23

No Etsy shop at present, but email me if you want to buy this- hello@lucybarfoot.co.uk

Mountain Δ Triangle Necklace by Adrienne Wroath. (made-to-order with love and care.) Adrienne makes handcrafted precious metal Jewellery. Her inspiration for is drawn from simple lines and shapes found within her environment, often focusing on geometric forms.

$42

You can buy this and other pieces from Adrienne’s Etsy shop. And here is her blog

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Collage, color, Light Box

Sketchbook Scans: Collage

Fantastic new studio (photographs soon) and a successful Light Box mean that life is good. Here’s some stuff I’ve been making in my sketchbook recently. Now I have some big space and a fortnights holiday, I plan to make some big things, get out of the sketchbook and onto the floor.

Here’s the Collage stuff. I can’t get enough. I have some beautiful origami paper from Muji which supplies the vibrancy.

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Art, color, Interesting and Inspiring, Process

Ian Davenport

One of my favourites! His use of colour / performance aspect / loss of control / control / huge size

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color

Dr. Ph. Martin’s water color



I adore Dr. Ph Martin’s radiant, concentrated water colors. They are in all good art shops, and I have found this great online shop: Graphotism, which sells them in both 15ml and 60 ml sizes, for great prices. AND great speedy postage too. I’m very pleased with their shop!

I’m using the ink for my ladles, they have really vibrant color, which has minimal fading, and can easily be mixed with both glue and water. I also will use them for drawing with and for color washes.

And what gorgeous packaging! I don’t know if i am more excited about the inks themselves or having the empty bottles when the ink runs out.

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color, Exhibitions

Surface/Space/time at the Crypt


My London show is fast approaching… It’s at ‘The Crypt Gallery’, London, August 26th – September 9th.

The Artists whom I’m exhibiting with:

Sam Clift
Eve Wheate
Richard Jack
Sue Hotchkis
Mary Louise Evans
Simone Wallace
Lucy Fergus
Mark Houghton
Joohee Hwang
Luke Stones
Rona Smith

I’m creating my glue molds, something I find very enjoyable and is of course all process-led. I used to do lots of this mould making whilst at uni. I have some old pictures, and once some of the current molds are dry, I’ll take some pictures. but for now…

Thinking about color here -all these colors together, one for each mold. some quite pastel-ly, very aesthetically pleasing, and fitting into The Crypt well. It reminds me of stained glass.

More good color?


This was as far as I got whilst at uni, but I want to make a large piece, about 4ft squared. Need to think about transportation, glue consistancy, how to speed up the process.

Also need to buy about a hundred ladles. Watch this space.

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color, Interesting and Inspiring, Organisation

Beautiful Graphs


Lucy Duggan found this article in The Times Magazine, written by Jonathan Richards. You can view the full article by clicking here, it’s about the popularity of different baby names, but I was just amazes by the beauty of these graphs. I wrote to Mr. Richards and he told me about the graphs:

“The Baby Name graphs were of a type known as a Stacked Area graph.

It’s actually a relatively rudimentary graph type. You use it when
you’re trying to how the share of a given set of fields changes over
time. You’ll find it as one of the charting options in Excel, among
other programs.“

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