Tag: wooden art

Spring Exhibitions

Hooperhart

It’s been a while!

Needless to say the first couple of months of 2025 have zipped by – I don’t know why I think I’ will’ll have time at the start of each year to do things like read books, do jigsaws and generally chill-out, it’s never happened yet! And suddenly we’re into March (and joyously) lighter evenings, so I for one am not complaining, it would just be nice if time could slow down for a wee while and give me the chance to catch up…

So anyway I’m here to give you the heads-up on a couple of group exhibitions which you should definitely check out if you can:

Whimsical Imaginings, Artisan And, Aberfeldy:

I’m very happy to be back at Artisan And – a lovely gallery in Aberfeldy in Highland Perthshire. The owner Angela thought the theme of Whimsical Imaginings would suits my work perfectly, and I have to agree! The exhibition is open until March 18th 2025, Thursday-Monday 11am-4pm

New Perspectives, Green Gallery, Buchlyvie:

I’m very excited to be showing at the gorgeous Green Gallery, located outside the village of Buchlyvie in Stirlingshire. New Perspectives is a mixed exhibition showcasing work from artists and makers new to the Gallery, so is sure to be well worth a visit! It’s open 11am – 5pm every day except Thursdays until Sunday 30th March.

Also, I don’t think I’ve mentioned that you can now find my work south of the border! I’ve not long topped up the beautiful Blue Tree Gallery in York with a selection of dioramas and I hope to keep doing so in the future, so if you’re in the area please pop in. One day I hope to do just that – I’ve never been to York but it looks a really fascinating place.

I’ll be back to let you know what else I’ve been up to soon – new things are afoot!

TTFN,

Cal

Winter Events 2024

Hooperhart

So once again time has befuddled me and we are somehow on the cusp of the clocks going back and being plunged into darkness once again. Yes, it’s late October and the busy season is just around the corner, so I’m going to cut to the chase and let you know where you can find me and my work in person this winter.

Tea Green at the Burrell Collection:

On November 9th & 10th I will be returning to the glorious Burrell Collection in Glasgow with Tea Green Events which are always top notch, showcasing the best of Scotland creative talent. Open 10-5, free entry.

Something Different For Christmas:

Another Perthshire one, this time in our nearest village, the delighful Dunning! It’s a special occasion, being SDFC’s 25th and sadly FINAL year, so you will not get another chance to visit this lovely, twinkly, super festive event. Doors open at 11.30am on Sunday, November 17th at Dunning Village Hall, Perthshire.

Creative Exchange Winter Market:

Creative Exchange in Perth is where I spend most of my time – home to my studio share and my part-time job! The winter market will showcase work from super-talented creatives from Perthshire and beyond. PLUS there will be an Open Studios event where you can find, among others, my sibling Ceri White and my studio buddy Ali Price. Not only that – there will be mulled wine AND a pop-up cafe! It’s a great building and a hub of activity so this will be a really enjoyable event.

You can find me there on November 30th & December 1st, 10am-4pm.

The Briggait Winter Market:

Back to Glasgow for my second WASPS event, this time at the beautiful Briggait. There’s been a major refurb and development of the Briggait’s Clydeside Market Halls which is due to be unveiled imminently – another reason to stop by on the market weekend of December 7th & 8th. Doors open 11am – 5pm.

Made in Stirling Christmas Market:

For those who live somewhere in between Perthshire and Glasgow, there’s the Made in Stirling Christmas Market, which runs for 2 months starting on November 4th.

Hope to see you at one of these events but remember if you can’t buy from me in person this year, I will be stocking up my online shops Folksy the week beginning December 9th. And you can always drop me a message through Instagram and Facebook.

Ta ta for now!

Cal x

Thank You & Happy New Year!

Hooperhart

Well, that’s the festive fair season over for me for another year, and once again I am pleased and relieved to report that it was enjoyably frantic! Back in October I was quite concerned about how it was going to go, with online sales down and the harsh reality of the Cost of Living Crisis properly kicking in for many of us.

Happily however, people turned out in their hundreds (and sometimes thousands!) to support local events. Fortunately for small creative businesses like myself, folk seem to be really considering carefully how they spend their money and who they spend it with, and they also really appreciate handmade craft and the uniqueness of it…I can’t tell you how much all the purchases, interest, kind comments and general enthusiasm for my work means to me. It gives me such a boost and carries me through the times when my motivation is at a low, and for that I am very grateful.

Some of my favourite HooperHart pieces from 2023

2024 will likely bring many challenges, financially and creatively; Production costs continue to rise, and I need to re-evaluate my materials and range to make everything more streamlined and sustainable…and of course like many creative types I have lots of ideas, some of which I’m pretty sure cannot be brought to fruition using laser-cut wood! It would be lovely to devote some time to experimentation…but I think I might have said all this at the end of last year..!

Whatever happens I will be back next year with news of what I’m up to over the coming year.

For now I’ll take my leave with a massive THANK YOU to everyone who supported my artistic endeavours this year…I wish you happiness and good health in 2024!

HooperHart 2024 Calendar

Hooperhart

It’s nearly a whole month since Open Studios finished and I am happy to say it went very well.

There were lots of new faces, interesting chats and healthy sales, all of which I am very grateful for. It was the first time I’d taken part and I didn’t really know what to expect, but it was all good, and the (mostly) warm and sunny weather definitely helped!

But looking out of the window this morning those sunshine-filled days seem very distant now…

There are weather warnings in place for most of Scotland with roads and railway lines closed due to flooding. The vibe is wet, windy and wintery! With weather like this there’s no denying we are approaching the end of the year, so it’s a good time to let you know that my 2024 calendar is now for sale online!

I’m very excited about this – it’s the first time I’ve designed a calendar and I wish I’d done it before! It was a hit at Open Studios and is selling fast in my Folksy and Etsy shops. It features 12 photographs of my original dioramas, with each month illustrated by a miniature scene reflecting the time of year – all inspired by the wonderful wildlife, countryside and coastlines of the British Isles. The calendar was printed by a small local company in Perthshire and £1 from the sale of each calendar to Hogscroft Hedgehog Rescue.

I hope you like it!

I’ll be back soon with more new products and a timetable of events for the coming months. In the meantime coorie in!

Thanks for reading

Cal 🙂

Hello February!

Hooperhart

I don’t know about you but I’m usually quite relieved to get January out of the way and this year is no exception. February feels to me like the start of the year proper, so to celebrate I’m offering free postage on everything in my HooperHart Folksy and Etsy stores! No need for a discount code – zero postage has already been applied, and will continue for the whole month.

Dream Wheels

A wee update on what I’ve been up to as Rudy and the Rowan Tree, the offshoot I use as a place to experiment and try out ideas which are unrelated to my Hooperhart work, and often more playful – I love creating my HooperHart pieces incidentally, but sometimes it’s nice to mix things up a bit! I’m currently loving making spirograph-inspired hanging decorations using embroidery thread and wooden discs – I call them Dream Wheels and you can find them on Folksy and Etsy Free postage also applies to my Rudy and the Rowan Tree stores for the whole of February!

Gift vouchers are go!

In other news, I wanted to draw your attention to my newly launched Gift Vouchers.They can be emailed directly to the recipient so make gifting super easy! They are exclusively available from my HooperHart Folksy store. There’s so many gorgeous products on there you might want to make it your go-to for gifts in the future though – all made in the UK to boot!

Thanks for reading and have a fabulous February!

Happy New Year Sale!

Hooperhart

Hello and a Happy New Year to you! I hope you all had a lovely festive season and are gently easing into 2023. My start to the year went a bit awry with our Hogmanay plans being stymied by heavy snow – of course it was the first year in a long time that we decided to venture outside! Let’s hope this is not indicative of the rest of 2023.Anyway, I usually like to kick off the New Year with some cheeky wee reductions to give things a bit of a boost, so I’m here to tell you about the HooperHart and Rudy and the Rowan Tree January sales!

For the whole of January you can get

20% off EVERYTHING

in HooperHart’s Folksy and Etsy stores

using the code: FAREWELL2022

And to make way for new work, there are a sizeable reductions on selected pieces in the

Rudy and the Rowan Tree Folksy store

(no code needed)

January and February are usually a quiet month and therefore a good opportunity to plan ahead and start new work – I’ve already got a list of things I want to get started on so watch this space!

Thanks for reading and all the best for 2022 x

Thank you!

Hooperhart

Well, that’s the busy season over for me for another year and I have to say it was rather frantic, but in a good way! Coming into it I was quite concerned about how it was going to go, particularly as online sales in 2022 had taken a worrying nose-dive even before the harsh reality of the Cost of Living Crisis started to kick in. However I’m pleased and relieved to report that I was very pleasantly surprised (on some occasions completely gobsmacked!) at just how many people turned out to support local events and small creative businesses. Maybe this year folk are really considering carefully how they spend their money and who they spend it with, possibly buying less but buying thoughtfully…I don’t know but whatever it is I am extremely grateful!

There is no doubt that many challenges lie ahead for most of us financially in 2023; the price of everything is rising and there can’t be a single small business in the UK who will not be affected by this. For myself, production costs have already increased substantially over the past few months…this plus a countrywide shortage of my main material (plywood) has been preying on my mind, and I know that at some point soon I will have to sit down and seriously consider how I can make changes in order to continue doing what I love and what I have worked so hard to develop over the past six years. Looking on the bright side, reflection and re-evaluation are not usually a bad thing, so I’m hopeful I can up with a workable plan!

Whatever happens I will be back next year with news of what I’m up to…in the meantime check out the sale in my Folksy shop – starting on Boxing Day!

I’ll take my leave with a massive THANK YOU to everyone who supported my artistic endeavours this year…I wish you happiness and good health this festive season!

Autumn Almanac

Hooperhart

Another summer of record-breaking temperatures comes to an end…spectacularly in Perthshire with torrential rain and flooding replacing scorched earth and water shortages.

As we move into September, I’m trying not to focus on the implications of these extremes in the weather and staving off the melancholic thoughts by looking forward to my birthday (it’s a big one!), enjoying the changing colours on my daily walks, and planning the rest of the year’s making.

Wooden Autumn Decorations by HooperHart on Folksy
Fox Brooches by HooperHart on Folksy
Starlit Fox mini framed diorama by HooperHart on Folksy

The calendar is filling up with festive events and it’s looking like I’ll be a bit busier with these than last year, now that things have returned to normal (whatever that is!). Keep checking my ‘SHOP’ page for details of where you can find me in person this winter. See you soon 🙂

My favourite month

Hooperhart

Well, I think we can safely say that autumn has definitely arrived in central Scotland: the temperature has dropped, the leaves are turning, and darkness descends at a frighteningly early hour. The end of summer seemed to happen strangely quickly this year, and an Indian Summer looks like it’s off the cards. Despite all that, there’s something about September that I really love, even though it signifies the end of summer and the beginning of the long dark winter to come.

It’s a month for wrapping yourself in cosy knitwear, going for long walks amidst a kaleidoscope of colour, and coming home to a glass of sherry in front of a crackling fire…or in my reality it means donning waterproof trousers, traipsing along muddy pathways with the dog and coming home to spend half an hour cleaning said dog and draping dirty towels over the radiators! Either way, there is a certain atmosphere about the autumn which has long been a source of inspiration for creative types, and as a result I’ve been making a few items in warm, autumnal colours to mark the change in the seasons.

To see all my work currently available, click on the link in the top right hand corner or go to my ‘Shop’ page.

So here’s to a happy, cosy few months ahead, and I’ll leave you with one of my favourite photographs of the afore-mentioned dog, Rudy (aka Mr Biscuits), looking all autumnal…

Screenshot_2018-09-29-15-54-34

How it’s made

Hooperhart

It’s mid March and the snow has started falling again, so it seems like a good time to snuggle up under a blanket and write another blog post! My subject today is the making process, which in my case has many stages, but it’ll give you a rough overview of how I make my pictures and dioramas.

Each piece I make stems from a black and white line drawing in my sketchbook, or more often a series of drawn shapes and patterns rather than a fully formed ‘scene’. I photograph each drawing and piece them together using Photoshop on my laptop. From here I can create layers and manipulate them to give me a rough idea of how the finished picture will look.

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In a way it’s like working out how the layers for a screenprint will look, but each layer will become a ply shape rather than a silkscreen. Each piece has to fit into a frame or a box so a lot of measuring and re-measuring takes place; in the case of the above design where some shapes will touch the inner frame top and bottom, the tree sizes have to be exact to fit perfectly. Once I’m happy with this stage I can then turn each separate piece into a vector drawing using Inkscape, ready for laser cutting. Depending on the size and complexity of the finished work, the number of shapes needed can vary from 4 for a framed picture to 27 for a box diorama! When my vector drawings are finished I can then email them off to my lovely laser cutting lady who goes by the name of LaserFlair

I spent many hours at the start of the year working on new drawings which this week arrived in the flesh, so to speak. It’s always exciting when a parcel from LaserFlair comes, and I can’t wait to get started printing, painting and glueing! (But before I do that I like to lay it all out at right angles aka ‘knolling’ – I can’t help myself!)

IMG_20180108_094330_607

So the design process is the most lengthy part, but once that is done there’s lots of scope within to allow me to create a very different look for each piece I make, whether it’s through use of colour, pattern or even the placement of the ply shapes. Each item I make gets a unique twist! First off I decide on a general colour scheme, but that sometimes changes halfway through and goes off in a different direction! The smaller areas of wood are painted, while larger ones are printed. It helps to be working on 2 or 3 things at the same time so there’s no waiting around for ink to dry…once each piece has colour and pattern I can start placing them in their frame or box, which involves creating something of an infrastructure (ie lots of little bits of ply in strategic places) to attached the layers to.  With the smaller boxed dioramas this can get very fiddly indeed, and the tweezers are usually on standby!

And that’s more or less the process – it’s laborious at times but every piece is a labour of love. I get so much satisfaction from my work; my favourite days involve sitting in my wee studio, listening to arts programmes on the radio, and making my dioramas.