We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!

Here’s how it works:

We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:

• Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
• Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
• Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
• Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet

Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy

Quote of the week…

“Some things I cannot change, but ’til I try I’ll never know.”

—Stephen Schwartz

Inspiration of the week… Tuija Heikkinen

Tuija Heikkinen is from Rovaniemi, northern Finland, which is very close to the Arctic Circle. She studied fashion and textile design, but loves a variety of arts and crafts. She works as a teacher at an arts and crafts school, and at the same time, runs a small company which focuses on printed textiles.

Her crochet hobby started by chance, when she was looking for a new form of expression besides her main work with the printed textiles. To satisfy her creative urge, she one day decided to use a crochet hook like a pen and the yarns as paints. Her grandmother was a skillful, industrious crocheter, and Tuija picked up that enthusiasm in her childhood. She uses simple techniques, and knows the limits and possibilities of what a crochet hook can create.

Handlettering inspiration of the week…Mogu Takahashi

Mogu Takahashi is a playful and creative self-taught artist based in Tokyo. Mogu studied architecture, but it didn’t really capture her attention. She started skipping classes, using that time to draw instead. In 2005 one thing led to another and she was invited to participate in a group exhibition in New York. That experience introduced her to the art world, then she decided to become an artist. Her childhood dream was to deliver mail because she loved writing letters and would check the mailbox many times a day. Now, for her, drawing is like writing a letter to someone dear. She sometimes hides a secret message in her paintings.

We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!

Here’s how it works:

We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:

• Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
• Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
• Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
• Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet

Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy

Quote of the week…

“Art opens the closets, airs out the cellars and attics. It brings healing.”

– Julia Cameron

Inspirational artist of the week… Hung Tung

Hung Tung was born in 1920, in a small fishing village near Tainan, in the south of Taiwan. The land was poor and people’s lives were very hard. Hung Tung’s father was dead when he was born and his mother died when he was four. With no money in the family he could not go to school, and began working at a very young age, keeping cows, carrying water, doing any small job to earn money. At 17 or 18 he left the village to find a job in Kaohsiung, the biggest city in South Taiwan. He went back to the village in 1945, after the island was handed over by Japan to China. He married and had three sons and two daughters, but continued to rely on small jobs in the village to earn a living and support his family. When Hung Tung was fifty years old, he decided he would become an artist. One day, he simply told his wife he was going to devote his life to painting. His wife did not understand his motives and others in his village simply thought he was mad.

Hand lettering inspiration of the week… Carlo Zinelli

Born in the rural Italian countryside near Verona, Carlo Zinelli worked as a farm laborer and a butcher’s apprentice until he was conscripted into the Italian army in 1936. It was during his military service that he first began showing symptoms of mental illness and was eventually discharged in 1941 after attacking his captain. After the war, Zinelli’s mental condition worsened, and in 1947 his family committed him to the San Giacomo psychiatric hospital in Verona. He drew graffiti on the walls of the hospital, and in 1957 a studio for artistic expression was established in the hospital. Zinelli painted in the studio every day for fourteen years. His works, often double-sided, are filled with boldly painted human and animal figures that bear no apparent spatial relation to one another. Letters and words fill the composition as well, but they do not have any meaning. After the hospital closed in 1971, Zinelli was transferred to another facility, but his creative activity all but stopped.

We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!

Here’s how it works:

We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:

• Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
• Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
• Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
• Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet

Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy

Quote of the week…

“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”
– Rumi

Inspiring artist of the week… William De Morgan

With their vibrant colours and captivating designs, the ceramics of William De Morgan (1839 – 1917) are among the most attractive, recognisable, and enduringly popular decorative arts of the late Victorian period.

De Morgan was a highly imaginative and innovative artist-potter, who produced thousands of designs for tiles, vases and dishes, as well as experimenting with the technical aspects of pottery production. A close friend and colleague of William Morris, De Morgan’s work was rooted in the artistic ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, which rejected industrial methods in favour of the handmade, and aimed to improve people’s homes with wares that were both beautiful and functional. De Morgan is probably best known for his prolific production of tiles, which were a mainstay of his business and could be seen in many domestic interiors and public spaces throughout England. However his ambition as a designer saw him successfully adapt his distinctive style to three-dimensional ceramic vessels and dishes, drawing inspiration from the arts of the Middle East, Medieval motifs, Italian Renaissance patterns and the natural world.

Hand Lettering Inspiration of the week… Michael Chandler

Born in East London in 1985, Michael John Chandler has always been curious. Early in life, Mr. Chandler sought to elevate the mundane, to make every day somehow extraordinary. By the age of 10, needle-work, sewing, flower arranging, gardening, breeding tropical fish, painting, doodling & wood-working were part of his repertoire. Through storytelling, with the magic of gesture, Michael found that day-to-day objects could be imbued with a spectacular joy.

Michael moved to Cape Town in 2000, where he eventually went on to earn a Bachelor in Arts at the University of Cape Town. There, he reveled in the expansive worlds of Literature, Classical Mythology, Media, Film History, Philosophy, and Art History. While completing his Honours degree in Art History, Michael began working at Stephan Welz & Co. After a year spent cataloging antiques, paintings, ceramics, and silver at the fine art auction house, Mr. Chandler went on to work for the esteemed Everard Read Gallery.

It was later, as Michael sat frustrated by the limitations that are so often tied to tradition and its ideals, Chandler House soon came to be. Space has allowed Mr. Chandler to curate and creates with wild and expansive abandon. His work has been exhibited at the South African National Gallery, he has collaborated with local retail giant Mr. Price, creating whimsical homeware and bespoke textiles. He works with ink and paper, cobalt blue on porcelain, intricate hand-painted ceramic murals, and the novelty of his patrons’ commissioned dreams.

We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!

Here’s how it works:

We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:

• Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
• Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
• Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
• Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet

Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy

Quote of the week…

“Life is very short, and there’s no time For fussing and fighting, my friend”

-The Beatles

Inspirational Artist of the week… Ulla Bodin

Ulla Birgitta Eson Bodin née Ericsson (1935–2009) was a Swedish textile artist who designed textiles for everything from interior furnishings to costumes for the stage. For over 30 years, she worked at Almedahls AB where she became head designer. As professor of the Swedish School of Textiles at the University of Borås, she helped to establish the international reputation of her department as well as Sweden’s association with smart textiles. Born in Gothenburg on 11 May 1935, Ulla Birgitta Eson Ericsson was the daughter of the architect Karl Harald Ericsson and Sara Katarina Rosina née Norling. She was brought up in Borås where her father worked. After studying pattern making at the School of Textiles, from 1955 to 1958, she studied textile art at the Gothenburg College of Art and Design (HDK Högskolan). In 1958, she married Gustaf Harald Bodin with whom she had three children: Johan, Sofia and Josefina.

Hand lettering Inspiration of the week… Teesha Moore

Teesha Moore is a mixed-media artist, creating visual journals, and a true entrepreneur. She created Zettiology, a line of rubber stamps and collage sheets featuring her work. In 2000 she hosted the first Artfest as we know it today, in Port Townsend, Washington. From that success, she has also organized Fiberfest and Journalfest. Teesha Moore is a well known Art Journal Guru. Her collages are colorful, bright and personal.She has developed her own special journaling style which consists of a few different elements that she repeats over and over again. Her style is recognized by her cool handwriting paired with collaged imagery.

Kenzie and I did a super fun FREE ZOOM class this week as a sneak peek to one of the techniques that will be shared next Oct. 17-24, 2025 at our Portugal retreat. You have probably noticed that we have been marketing our hearts out for this adventure as we KNOW it will be AMAZING!!

Here is what I’ve learned from teaching these creative retreats:

• It is WONDERFUL being with creative kindreds. We right away GET one another! At most of my retreats, the groups bond SO MUCH that they stay in touch long after the experience.
• I LOVE sharing techniques and materials and encouraging each person to bring out their own authentic style in what they create. We PROMISE to inspire and encourage you!! We LOVE teaching and sharing with creatives at ANY SKILL LEVEL. Last year, a woman attended my France retreat with her friend who had just retired from 30 years as an accountant. It was SO FUN to coax her along and see her totally surprise herself!!
• Sharing a room with someone is not a big deal. It’s like having a mini slumber party. You will most likely make a new and lasting friendship. I have shared a room before with folks I didn’t know… and I used to snore (pre c-pap.) I was nervous about it, but… I provide ear plugs and creative people tend to be kind. PLUS… you won’t be spending much time in your room!!!
• There is something MAGICAL about being in a gorgeous setting. It sparks so much inspiration. I will share how I use the beauty of what we see to inspire your work. Concentrated creative time like this leads to major aha moments.
• The memories created on a retreat like this are precious. I’ve had many former students say that the retreat was LIFE CHANGING!!