I love thinking up my Christmas cards. I start in August which ought to be a hard call in the sunshine but once I start, I can't stop. It involves a lot of experimentation and in this case I ended up with an adjustable back leg flap before I got it right!
See the end result and more cards at the Terriers' Club shop.
Just sitting on the boiler and drying off! Just a few more coats and we're ready for off....
I have been messing about turning my drawings into stickers. In my desperation to see the finished result, I applied it hastily without bothering to remove all the bubbles and took a quick photo. Mysterious processes had been at work - the back of the seat has cleverly suggested itself into the dog shape, helping to create this ghost bull terrier in the back seat!
Inspired by the weakest glimmer of Spring sunshine (essential here - it might be all we get!), flowers are bursting out all over at the Terriers' Club.
This is my "Bargee's Dog", a painting on board which has given me the chance to reproduce the lovely strong patterns of traditional canal boat art.
Narrowboat art is found throughout the inland waterways of the UK - on the paintwork of the canal barges and on the utensils of those who live this itinerant lifestyle.
Typified by stylized roses, castles and organic patterns in strong colours, this artform originates perhaps in Romany/Gypsy or nautical art.
More to the point, I would love a dog who looked like this!
I have just added a page on my new website dedicated to my lovely customers and their handsome dogs. http://www.bullterrierprints.com/mycustomers.html
I've called it a Hall of Fame but maybe it's a Rogue's Gallery.
I just love it when people send me pictures of their dogs!......
I have loved making this! Now that he's done, we exchange glances now and then in a most companionable way........
What better way to spend a few hundred years than with your little dog curled under your feet? This is the faithful dog of Sir Richard Pembridge, Knight of the Garter and veteran of the Battles of Crécy and Poitiers in the Hundred Years War. He died in 1375 and this is his tomb in Hereford Cathedral. His canine guardian despite being 14th century, looks a little like a bull terrier.
The carving on his nose is worn smooth from the affectionate pats of passing admirers across the centuries....
It's just this sort of propensity to sit in unusual places (whether or not a photographer is present) that attracted me to this vintage photo. I was thinking of much the same thing when I positioned my bull terrier precariously on a stool beside the parrot. There is something of the circus elephant about it.....
That aside, it seems to me that unlike most other animals caught by the camera, dogs are usually posing......
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/175966490/bull-terrier-notecards-parrot-bull?ref=shop_home_active_2
The Terriers' Club now has its own website - Bull Terrier Prints, which has given me the chance to do the fancy footwork above! See more at: http://www.bullterrierprints.com
Here's something I've started. It's inspired by a cat (ceramic) of all things. Any right thinking bull terrier would be ashamed.....
I have just been designing a shopping list (which of course features a bull terrier) and remembered the dog with a bag of Maltesers which used to wait patiently outside my local shop. He even carried them all the way home intact!
I have never been to the shops with a dog and a wicker basket though my shopping lists always end up with a doodled bull terrier beaming from beneath the brussel sprouts! I always enjoy a word with the marooned dogs I see tied up outside.
Shopping lists coming to my Etsy store soon!
