Hearts and Flowers

St Valentines day, The 14th of February is fast approaching, so I have spent some time in the last couple of days thinking about hearts and flowers.  If you have been reading my posts over the last few months, you will know that I have a liking for simple black and white.  Either by creating black and white line drawings, or by paper cutting, I like making things where colour is minimised and pattern and form are everything.  I started my hearts and flowers theme along these lines.

Hearts and Flowers by Karen Mehta

Once the drawing was finished I wanted to experiment with some colour but keep the original black and white.  To do this I scanned the drawing into my computer and then used some software with my graphics tablet to add colour.

Hearts and Flowers 1 by Karen Mehta

Hearts and Flowers 2 by Karen Mehta

Here are two variations created in this way, and I have altered the size and shape of the background to allow for different greetings card dimensions.  Who will you be making Valentines greeting for?

Too Many Apples!

So It's that time of year again...there are apples everywhere.  Piles on the kitchen counter, windfalls all over the lawn, and still a whole load on the trees!

It's fair to say I have apples on my mind. I ended up drawing them in my art journal the other day.  I was thinking of the Keats poem about Autumn, Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness.... such inspiring words.  I ended up making this black ink drawing on a mottled water colour background, a Zentangle.  I then mounted the piece in my journal page after first preparing the page with pastels to match the watercolour. Finally I added some black zentangled leaves and finishing them with holographic embossing powder.

Of course thinking about apples and drawing them does not do anything to get rid of the glut sitting on the kitchen counter!  So how about some apple sauce muffins?  Really simple and so tasty.
Ingredients:
 3-4 apples depending on size
75 g raisins , 1/2 tsp cinnamon and ground cloves
15ml of honey or to taste
300g self-raising flour
150g firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
180 ml buttermilk or plain yogurt and milk mixed                                                                                125 ml vegetable oil
Method:

1  First make the apple sauce by peeling coring and chopping the apples and adding them to a saucepan with a little water.  Add the raisins and spice and cook until the apples have become completely soft.  Add the honey and taste to see that you are happy.  set aside to cool.
2  This will make about 9 generous muffins, so prepare 9 holes in a muffin pan either with paper cases or by greasing them with oil and dusting with flour.
3  Sift the remaining dry ingredients into a large bowl and then stir in the wet ingredients. Muffins do not like to be over agitated so combine by stirring not beating or whisking.
4  When the mixture is nearly combined add 150g of the apple sauce, and stir in so that the sauce is rippled through the mixture.
5 Divide the mixture up into the prepared pan and bake for about 20 mins in a moderately hot oven

So now there are three less apples to deal with, and if you make extra apple sauce it is a really tasty treat served warm with vanilla ice-cream. Yum!