tiny happy

After making the hawkweed collage last week, I was inspired to make an entire series of summer botanical collages, all inspired of course by the great Mary Delaney's own paper garden.

For this set, I made paper versions of some of the plants I've been seeing on my walks to town each morning, sometimes growing wild and sometimes cultivated in gardens. Poppies, dandelions, pansies and the most common on Wellington hills: a scrubby purple daisy that my wildflower book suggests is 'sea aster'. Isn't that a beautiful name?

I got the collages printed into sets of postcards- some for my shop and some to take to the Auckland Fair on Saturday. 

Sally, a kind reader, sent me a link to this short film which she thought I might like after seeing these botanical collages on a black backdrop. The film is Le Faune which was made in 1908 by the Pathé brothers. It's a kind of ballet set against a black backdrop, with hand-tinted colours and music by Icelandic cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir. I read that these works were sometimes called fairy films and the hand-colouring was often done by women.