I'm fortunate enough to live in a gorgeous cottage in rural Lincolnshire, outside the small and delightful market town of Horncastle, with its myriad antique and junk shops and relaxed atmosphere – which is rather perfect for me, as I am a self confessed introvert with a need for green and trees, quiet and wide open spaces. You don't get much bigger than the skies here in Lincolnshire, as the horizons stretch seemingly forever across the fields that I spend a lot of time walking in. I love to incorporate my passion for nature into interior design, and spend quite a bit of time adding even more decoration to my heavily painted and stencilled cottage, which has trees everywhere – and yes, I do mean everywhere.
There isn't a room in the house that doesn't have at least one tree in it, and I'm increasingly fond of deep, rich jewel tones for room and interior design as well, which means a lot of repainting, re stencilling and the addition of interesting paint effects. I paint and stencil furniture as well, and am currently replacing all my furniture with pieces I have picked up second hand or been given and then painted and stencilled extensively. I spend a lot of time outside, grubbing around in the hedgerows and gathering herbs and fruits for medicine making (I'm a practicing medical herbalist, as well as a stencil artist), also taking photographs that I use as reference for the stencils that convey, to the best of my ability, that thin border between natural world and enchantment, here and there, our home ground and what lies beyond the fields we know.
I first encountered stencilling when I watched my mother happily stencilling celtic borders onto a freshly painted green bedroom wall, and later on when she busily added shells and seaside motifs to the bathroom walls. My aunt also has a long love affair with the stencil, and has dabbled in stencilling and interior design for as long as I can remember. I began my own explorations into this art form very simply, first buying and experimenting with stencils from the stencil library website, and then having a go at designing my own, with basic leaf shapes and a couple of simple borders, but just recently I seem to have taken it to a whole different level, creating bold (for me), swirling designs with lots of spirals (a nightmare to cut out, but oh so worth it in the long run!) My first designs were rather tentative, but then one day not so long ago I sat down to design a raven stencil. To my amazement, it practically drew itself, and the resulting design was much remarked upon and admired by a number of people. So I drew a wolf. And then a winged mouse, and an eagle, and an owl, and trees, and stylised ivy leaves. And then I designed my own set of briar rose pieces, which were then stencilled onto freehand spirals and swirls in order to create my increasingly popular briar rose motif. The sky seems to be the limit these days, with more and more ideas and designs cropping up! There just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do with my stencil designing. I take some inspiration from William Morris (no surprise there, eh!) but I try to imbue my designs with my own 'take' on myth, magic and fairytale. I am just as inspired by Brian and Wendy Froud and Kinuko Craft's artwork as I am by the Pre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau movements, though inspiration crops up in the strangest of places sometimes as well!
The future holds vast quantities of stencil design, as I want to have a full range of animal and bird stencils, and more component stencils that can be used to create beautiful and individual designs. I'm hoping to invest in a proper stencil cutter soon so that people can buy the actual stencils off me, and I'm also hoping to do more textile surface design panelled stencil patterns, that can be used to create beautiful and unique fabric for wall hangings and dress making. Oh, and I will hopefully be collaborating in the nearish future with Katmaren Designs, run by my talented dressmaker sister! As long as I have the time and room to continue creating at the same frantic pace I have been doing just recently, I'm happy, and the Eldrum Tree, my company, will continue to put forth new leaves. Watch this space – its going to be huge. And enchanted!
