Ignorance and Want

 

Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' has long been one of my favourite stories. One of the most stirring parts of the tale is the appearance of Ignorance and Want beneath the robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present. 'A Christmas Carol' is relevant and poignant every year, it has helped make me a more generous person and generosity always seem to be something we could do more of along with love, kindness, patience, compassion, forgiveness, peace ...

 

Doctor Who Therapy

Dr Who therapy belongs to the wider concepts of time therapy, sci-fi therapy and TV-box-set therapy. The BBC has provided me with comfort on numerous occasions. I have long listened to BBC radio dramas and talking books to help me sleep before I discovered brainwave music and guided meditations. My favourite episode of Dr Who is Blink. A poignant episode dominated by the beautiful Carey Mulligan as Sally Sparrow who must save the world from the dangerous and scary weeping angels in the absence of the doctor. Other favourite episodes are Midnight, A Christmas Carol and Listen. Below are photographs of my daughter in front of the tardis and inside it, from a visit to the Doctor Who exhibition centre in Cardiff, which we visited in 2013.

Virtue Haiku

I started my virtue project in 2007. First I was using wise quotes from wise people like Mother Theresa and the Dalai Lama. Then I started to write my own Virtuous Haiku inspired by these wise quotes and wise people.

The four cards at the bottom were also inspired by a book of typography. Diligence is a great virtue, but Humility, Patience and Kindness are often what I need to get me through life, as well as a lot of love, peace and forgivenss.

Sweet dreams

The above picture is one of my favourites from Amy's story 'The Legend of the Dream Box'. It hung above her bed for a few years before being replaced by one of her abstract teenage paintings, shown below.

Get well soon with sympathy

Older customers at the craft fairs I attend have suggested that I create a selection of 'Get Well Soon' and 'With Sympathy' cards. They had reached a time in their lives where a lot of their friends and loved ones were either sick or dying. I created my own botanical flower drawings, backgrounds and lettering to use on the cards. My customers were right, they do sell quite well.

ALF Books

ALF Creations has produced ten booklets since I started the project in 2007 with my young daughter Amy.

These seven booklets have appeared regularly on my arts and crafts stall.

The Magic Gallery: Pictures at an Exhibition
This story concerns a little girl called Grace and her adventures in the magic gallery. The animated pictures she encounters can be found on my YouTube channel, under titles like The Planets, The Tudors, Phoenix and Through the Seasons. You can find the entire film on my Vimeo Channel and also on homemade DVD.

The Need Fairy
Written by me and illustrated by Amy. this is a ghost story concerning a newly wed couple, Tony and Cleo, and the old house they have just moved into.

The Legend of the Dream Box
Amy's illustrated story about three little girls who climb a stairway to heaven and bring a box of dreams down to earth.

Still Life
A trilogy of my poetry selections that you can also find on Wattpad, Teenage Troubles, An Anatomy of Love and All Grown Up. Illustrated by Amy and Lorna Finnigan.

Something More
I created ALF's first book of poetry, 'Something More', in 2012. It is thirty two pages of poems and pictures by Amy and Lorna Finnigan, including Upside-Down World, Just Looking and A Feminine Embrace.

Of Dragons and Fairies
Amy's pictures and descriptions of imagined dragons, fairies and other creatures including the magical lands where they live.

Emotional Life
A selection of fifteen of my songs, lyrics and music, including Island of Happiness, Stargazing and Alive at Last. Many of them can be found on my LornaJHart YouTube channel.

The following booklets don't appear on my craft stall, but I have given them out to relatives as Christmas presents.

What do people do? 
Amy's pictures and poem illustrating the twelve months of the year.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Amy's illustrated retelling of the traditional Grimm's fairy tale.

On the Twelve Days of Christmas
A book of Amy's pictures illustrating the well known Christmas carol from twelve drummers drumming to a partridge in a pear tree.

Lucy Vale

 

I was writing Lucy Vale over ten years ago, in 2006, just before I started work on ALF Creations @ the Star Heart Cafe and embarked on various social media projects. For years I couldn't work on my story, I felt it was a big mess and I was busy being a working mother, I had a lot of grief to deal with and I was also nursing a big broken heart. Then on her ten year anniversary I felt once more able to engage with Lucy and came up with a year long plan for her dream diary adventures which I am still working on.

  

The Greatness of the Everyday

I have written various poems about the seasons over the years starting with one of my early childhood poems 'Out of the Door'. From then I wrote a piece for an early PowerPoint presentation in the late 1990s called 'Through the seasons' which eventually became four seasonal haiku. Amy has also written and illustrated a seasonal poem called 'What do people do', which has been used as a YouTube video to accompany my song 'For What I Am'. Some of my short poems have developed to encompass the seasons; poems like 'Nature' and 'It must be the weather'. 'The Greatness of the everyday' was originally one verse about Spring, but I have since found something good to say about summer, autumn and winter too.

Amy's game of life

We have been playing Amy's game of life on holiday since she created it in 2014. It was a most memorable time playing it on holiday in our rented apartment in Whitby, on the Yorkshire coast.

The game begins with birth and ends in death. At the start players wait in limbo until they draw the birth card and then their game begins. On life's journey you earn money, buy property, have children, get into debt, get into trouble, get sick. The game ends when someone draws the death card. At that point the amount of love and money earnt in a lifetime are calculated and a winner is nnounced.

Amy's pictures on the cards are fantastic and playing the game is quite absorbing, however Amy does usually end up being the winner.

Only Us

I have written many romantic poems over the years, some about having trouble getting started on relationships like 'Valentine's Day' or 'The Valliant Knight'. Some poems are about trouble at the end of relationships like 'Human Remains' or 'Anything but love'. Different aspects of romantic love can be found on my 'Anatomy of love' seven poem cycle, available on WattPad. 'Only Us' is about the time in a love affair when coupledom is all important. I feel it is a brief poem for a brief moment.

Mindful Colouring and Doodling

     

Life has been very stressful lately and one of the ways my daughter and I have been de-stressing is to take part in mindful doodling and colouring at the local leisure centre. Above are my initial doodles and colouring. Below are two mindful doodles based on Buddhist philosophy.

       

This doodle is based on the fruits of the spirit as explained by St Paul in Galatians. I thought these spirit fruits would work well in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, as these are the sort of values I would like to fill my life with.

 Below are two of my mindful doodles mindfully coloured in.

     

Pulsar

 Pulsar has been a work in progress for some time now. I wanted the illustration to look something like a 1950s sci-fi film poster, but I think my picture above looks more like 'Scooby Doo' than 'When Worlds Collide.' I have recently completed a more successful science fiction picture called 'Out of this world', I have used it as background for my poem 'Pulsar Observation'.

The most successful 1950s Sci-Fi inspired poster I did, previously, was for 'Destination Deep Space'. 

The Abandoned Baby

Amy came up with this sweet, but sad picture story a few years ago now. I have since put it together into a nine picture cartoon strip.

Poems for Yin

I spent some of the late 1990s and early noughties trying to get to grips with what femininity was all about. It was also the time in my life when I became a mother and was also trying to get to grips with being the best mum I could be to my baby daughter. With hindsight maybe the best thing to do with femininity is just be it, if that's how you feel and maybe try not to analyse it too much. My 'Poems for Yin' are written at a time when I was trying to analyse femininity. I heard an Indian saying once, intended for both men and women, which states 'Walk in the feminine but be mindful of the masculine,' so maybe this subject is worthy of deeper thought.

Wedding Poems

The Beautiful Way was read out by me on my Wedding Day in May 1997. Looking back I would say married life has been more like the previous three verses than it has been a beautiful way. My mum likes this poem and my parents' marriage was more 'The Beautiful Way' than mine ever was. The below picture and poem were done by Amy and me for my parents' Golden Wedding Anniversary which they celebrated in June 2012. It now feels like they got this celebration in just in the nick of time, as my dad died the following year, in January 2013.

Tea and Poetry

'Tea and Poetry' was a specific SubVerse passivity; an extremely mild alternative to an activity. It was an interesting idea based on the notion that certain flavours of tea were well suited to certain flavours of poetry. These are the combinations I came up with.

 

ALF Christmas Cards

I worked out that the best time of year to work on Christmas ideas was in January. You are not caught up in the pre-Christmas rush, the taste of Christmas is still in the air, there is a bit of a lull in many other areas of life and the memory of the festive season is still fresh. I started on my batch of Christmas cards in January 2015.

And Amy's were developed in October 2015.

Madeleine

I fell in love with Edgar Allan Poe after listening to the BBC radio drama production of 'The Fall of the House of Usher' in the 1980s. Although Poe's stories were written nearly two hundred years ago I still find them fresh and meaningful, written in a first person narrative that is very relatable, even when we are in the mind of a murderer. I was working on Madeleine, my musical based on the Fall of the House of Usher, while visiting my boyfriend in Ramsgate and the house I was thinking of was Charles Dickens' 'Bleak House' in Broadstairs. I have attempted to get it performed in the past; at the moment it exists as an eight minute musical on YouTube.

This is my small collection of Poe memorabilia that I really enjoy reading, watching and listening to, including an edition of Tales of Mystery and Imagination that was published over one hundred years ago.

Star Heart Virtues

While working on my virtue project I came up with six Star Heart Virtues inspired by the words and concepts I was dealing with. I have based a collection of cards and dolls on them. Joy is represented by a pink rose, Faith an orange cross, Grace a yellow book, Hope a green leaf, Peace a blue bird and Love a purple heart.

Turning Japanese

While working on 'The SubVerse Poetry Tea Room' I became fascinated by Geisha Girls, the Japanese tea ceremony and writing haiku. Below are my two haiku homages to Japanese culture 'Geisha' and 'Sado Haiku = Tea Poetry'.