A little tribute to Ellen 2025 — Sum of their Stories Craft Blog

March 28th was my late paternal grandma Ellen’s birthday so today I’m sharing something she created with you.

I got the blog name “Sum of their Stories” from a line from a poem about mothers and daughters. When I started the blog back in 2013 it was to share my enthusiasm for all things craft related and also to pass on the crafts and skills that my mum and both of my grandmas had shared with me as I grew up.

As a little way to thank and honour them, each year on what would have been their birthday I share something they made or inspired or something with a connection to them.

This year I thought I’d share this watercolour painting that my nan painted.

a framed watercolour landscape prompt against a white tiled wall

I’ve propped it up on this shelf to photograph it for you because where it normally hangs in my craft space has too many reflections on the glass.

Normally I might take art out of the frame and remove the glass to photograph it but this is sealed into this frame properly so I didn’t want to disturb that.

You can just see her signature hidden a little bit behind the mount.

My nan was a prolific painter but watercolour like this was not her natural style at all. I’ve shared some of her art before and you can see it was varied but she tended to prefer acrylic paints for their bright and bold colours. But she was someone always open to trying something new and when she went to watercolour classes produced some really lovely pieces like this landscape which hangs above my desk now.

Here are some of Ellen’s other pieces and some creative projects I’ve done with some of her less successful and practice pieces.

So today I’m remembering my nan, Ellen, she was always very encouraging and enthusiastic about everything, not just crafts. You can see more of the tributes from past years here, you can also read the poem that the blog name is based on there too.

Julie