The Hidden World of Eloise

Wonderful Week of Wanders, day 2: In a land far, far away

n this second day of wonders, we travel to a land far, far away for some whimsical frolicking. Down, down, down, down, down under. :) Who knows, you may already be there, in which case see this is a trip to the land far, far away where i'm writing from. :)

After a long and immensley enjoyable business relationship with the beautiful store Made590 in Australia and a charmingly long correspondence, Made590 has now become the exclusive Hidden Eloise retail distributor in the whole wide Down Under! You could say we're goign steady now. ;)

After a hugely successful trade show at the Life Instyle, expect to be seeing special framed 5x7 Hidden Eloise art in dozens of shops around Australia! I will be posting more details of addresses and such when i collect them all so you know where to go shoping for your last minute gifts. :) You can also get the ready framed prints online at the Made590 online store, go have a looksee!

And if you are close to Newtown, do drop by Made590, it is no ordinary shop, it's quite the magical place and i want to visit badly!

Here's a couple of photos from the trade show, clearly portraying that Made590 knows how to put on a show!!

That was the Made590 booth! You can see my side, i suppose! :) Many more talented artists around, extra points if you recognise any! And the stuffed critters are not real, jackalopes have been extinct for quite some time after all.

I helped with the design of this wonderful wall piece and i couldn't be happier with the result!

So ends another day in this Wonderful Week of Wonders! What will the next day bring? Something wonderful i bet!

Bear hugs,

xxx Hidden Eloise xxx

 

 

Wonderful Week of Wonders.

 was a bit on the frail side last week,  i was hit with some nasty coughing fits so everything went slow. I took things easy and went through a lot of bureaucratic chores that were pending as i was not in a creative mood. But, oh my, am i rebounding quickly! A new wonderful week is starting, a Wonderful Week of Wonders!

Last week saw the first of my new jewellery travelling to their new homes! In their little precious teabags and wrapped up in my newest concoction of postal packaging! This latest packaging is my favourite yet and i'm not talking about the teabag!

Yes i do love my little teabags and they have been for many, many months in the making but i'm actually talking about the *other* packaging, the postal packaging... How it looks and how it feels is a surprise because it's somewhat of a Hide n Seek tradition that i don't reveal my custom, hand made packaging. I like surprises! :)

Here's a link, in the form of a pretty photo, of my new jewellery collection:

Speaking of Hide n Seek traditions, my 3rd Annual Huge Pre-Festive Sale has begun! I never liked how the high street waits for *after* you have bought all your gifts to have a sale so i always try to make your gift giving go a bit further. :)

All goodies are up to 30-something % off! Link, link, link! Some of the little jewellery are in very short supply or unique though so keep an eye on the "# in stock" so that you won't miss out on your favourite piece!

I have soooo much more too share, but i'll keep it for later because it's not just a day of wonders, it's a Wonderful Week of Wonders! :D

Much love and sweet wishes!

Bear hugs,

xxx Hidden Eloise xxx

A trip to the Sea

 he was born on the highest mountain. As far away from the sea as any wolf could run before getting tired. She had never seen the endless blue until that fateful summer's day when the whole family begun stuffing the car with all sorts of things from the house. “See how blue the sky is today, sweety?” mother said on the way, “The sea is even bluer, bigger and alive”.

Bluer, bigger, alive... it was. The sky, rather than stretching far to play with the hills, was curling around towards you and transforming into a rippling blue cloth. Even the ground at the edge of this “Sea” was unnaturally golden and playful, flowing like water around your fingers.

Watching the grownups enter the unknown blue of the sea despite her direst warnings, the little girl sat alone on the golden ground, uneasily enjoying the breeze and the handful of oysters that had found themselves around her...

With clacking sounds they seemed to be calling more of their friends to play and the little girl could clearly see that their bobbing and snapping about showed pleasure and familiarity. A minute of playful bewilderment later, the little girl found herself surrounded by dozens of oysters, all with a certain air of excitement about them. The grownups and the forest behind had all faded to a vague haze and the breeze had stopped. The Sea was brighter, bluer and more alive than ever.

With one whispering voice, the splashing of the waves seemed to call: “We are here... to take you back home...”

...but she really does look like a really nice girl..

ou would think just by looking at her calm sleeping face that she is a really nice girl.....

....That's what I thought too at least..... I was wrong...

 

Resting on the woods....

A renowned mischief-maker throughout the black forest she is..... a little rascal trickster with not an even match..... *something which she boasts about a lot of course*

.....but no one believes me....

...maybe it's because she wears her doll-like dress with unequalled casualness like she is doll-like her self or even worse like it's hers..........maybe it's because she delights every time upon looking down at her velvet deep red ribbon n treasures it like no other...but believe me she's seeing other things than we do in every deep red ...

..or maybe it's because you get to only see her calm face right now....the other face is not much to capture on paper and any artistic mind around would agree with me as inquisitive or intrigued that might be.......but one is able to observe her dreaming peaceful face exactly and precisely during only her sparse but long hours of sleep....

Resting on the woods....

....luckily for all woodland creatures of the location...such times do come...when the forest whispers and the clock strikes and at once she feels the need to take a long rest *on* the woods.....

This specific hour is greatly anticipated by most living beings around the woods as you rightly have guessed, cause all other hours.....that girl...she's spreading havoc n disorder in a grand scale! ...bigger than her unique and somehow bigger than life scale...!

But what went wrong...?? some blame her misdeeds and wrongdoings on that last “tiny” detail that has never left her......her huge scale!

“...poor thing! She must feel so lonely...” they say....

“everything must feel small and insignificant to her”.....others try to reason...somehow... how a forest girl came to have such destructive patterns of behaviour towards the forest....

For sure all agree that she's indeed beautiful while she sleeps and everyone gathers to take a glimpse of her while she does or make a drawing of her for that matter......from far away might I add, just in case.....

...they are even prone to forgive all her mischievous n naughty demeanour up until then...

....but maybe....,  the forest puts her to sleep for another reason than to stop the obvious pandemonium she happily creates ...

..maybe the forest knows that in her dreams she's dreaming of being like a doll...and resting on the woods really makes her feel small.....

..maybe...it's not just the others that think it's fortunate she gets to have those deep sleeps...

A Dark Fairytale...

 just realised i never wrote about one of my latest artworks, called "Seduction", so here is my dark fairytale for you :)

Seduction

Seduction utters just an instance, a tiny small and frail fragment of a dark fairytale of the enchanting, mystifying (and soon to be) relationship between a forest type of a girl and an untamed type of a bear.

..........."

wo wondering creatures of the dark forest, both always prying behind the heavy tree shadows, inquisitive and intrigued of all strangers that dare to reach this deep into their woods, suddenly cross paths and then they glimpse each other for the first time........

The ticking of the time stops....the forest quiets and listens....the leaves rustle to the air a secret.......”.those two.... are destined.....to .......”....

They look each other intensely, never daring to move their eyes away or let the feelings of timidness and fearlessness to truly show.......and although they seem nailed to the ground, as if they claimed their own *for at least the next few centuries* this particular piece of earth (one tiny and one huge respectively) ................ in reality, they both fight their biggest battle...!

 

Seduction

Folks around these places say that this is not an unnatural or atypical happening in the misty dark forest...it happens every once in a while but the outcome is messy and unclean and never gives birth to a nice fairytale..! only to warnings they say, warnings and curfews around this misty woodland.

...but there is a tale, told only by a hermit old lady that lives away from the village and dangerously deep into the forest.... that no one else whispers to a sleepy child at nights.

She claims, that every a hundred years a girl comes that her spirit is stronger than a bear's and if they ever meet...... her strong will, her untamed spirit, her hair flowing one with the forest wind, her provocative scent travelling in the air, will seduce and tame even the hugest wildest bear that emerges from the misty forest......She says to know of the secret the leaves whispered to the air....

..”...those two.... are destined.....to ...be one......”

“....she's a crazy old hag!!!! “ Village folks say......but all admit that no bear ever hurts her....

..........."

Seduction is one of the goodies of my seductive Friday give-away! Not too long now :)
Bear hugs :)
Eloise

Wee little redhood....

h!! Bavarian little houses and deep forests of old Scandinavian and alpine fairytales... are my latest love!!! I get all cheerful n fuzzily smiley when i'm drawing them  :)
Fairytales, fairytales, fairytales!!! I've been putting Bavarian Tales on paper for some time now! Is there a better way to enjoy a fairytale from creating your own or your own interpretations of them??
(apart maybe from being read one :)))
 
In my latest artwork, "My! What big heart you have..." Little Redhood travels across the Black Forest to be-friend the wolves. She said...
" Grandma...I'm crossing the Black Forest to make up with the wolves..." and she did !
But Black Forest has 2 sides.... The bright and cheerful fairytale and the dark and mysterious one.
This new piece is of course on the bright side of things as little Redhood is on wolf's back and not his belly... but I'm thinking of creating the dark side too.
Most old fairytales were quite brutal n shocking in the old days anyway, but generations of psychologically scarred little wee ones came to change them into milder versions that we could handle! :D

For the  time being, i enjoy the warm feeling i get, thinking their unique encounter and connection!
It must be so fluffy n warm on a wolf's back :)
"My! What big heart you have..." is right now in the shop!! You'll be seeing many more of my tales very soon :))

xxBear hugsxx
♥Enjoy♥

Guess what Mr Whale had for his last meal.....?

long long time ago in a land far far away, lovely Ms Paula send me a sweet mail about how she was after a custom artwork for her soon to be lovely shop!

Well..... it was actually just a month ago, but I'm always inclined for a fairytale opening ehhe.... you know how it is :D Plus!  time runs so frantically irregular in my latest adventures that even a month ago seems like ages.

Anyway......

Lovely Paula from Baby Swan Desing Studio makes the cuddliest vintage-style mohair teddy bears!! Just toooooooo cute! How do i know you ask, since her shop has not opened yet? Well, one of the bonuses of doing custom projects!! :D

Hooray!! for special previews !!!

Can I share them with you ..??? Hmmm let me think...

....NOPE! You'll have to wait to get the first glimpses...all i can say is that they are worth all the waiting :D Her lovely shop will be open in the next couple of months. You might want to fave it now cause you're bound to get a teddy to cuddle :)

There are really few things as enjoyable and gratifying as working on commissioned projects!! And even fewer that are *more* enjoyable!! Like, ....guessing the content of old apothecary jars or playing thumb-wars or painting faces on aubergines, for instance! :D

But anyhow, the fulfilment of bringing your playmate's dreams into reality is indeed priceless!

We worked on it and sweated over it and had long discussions about it and here's the outcome just for you:

Lovely Ms Paula had kindly agreed for me to sell the finished artwork in Hide n Seek, but as i was putting the first pencil strokes on paper, i knew where my whim wanted to take me..... so i let my runaway creativity rest for a while and i focused on the project....

After it's conclusion, i did some drastic changes to it and created my new artwork "Dad, this is the friend i told you about" "...he brought the fish you like..."

Dad, this is the friend I told you about -- Print

I love, love, seriously LOVE whales, especially the antisocial ones!...and believe me,  Mr Whale here is quite the grumpy type. He also happens to be little cute girl's dad... *hungry* dad, might i add!

So let's hope he really likes the fish the little boy brought him..heh hhehehe lol!

You can find it now in my shop along with with many many new goodies :)

I'm currently working on tons of commissions that are very very exciting, but in between i'm working on some new artwork too!!!! hooZza!!!! lol !! So not long for some new surprises! ;)

xxxxEnjoy sweeties and many hugs to sweet  Paula for the lovely project!!!!!!! xxxx