handpaintedmagic is a hobby of mine that grew from creating personalised stable plaques for my own horses, then being asked to do them for friends, to now offering a variety of hand painted miniature horse portrait plaques and gifts to customers from around the world!

I originally started painting house signs, and then stable signs – my early signs were simply text and an outline graphic or silhouette. I felt my forte was my very fine detailed lettering (many people think I use stuck on transfers for all my lettering, but everything I do is hand painted with paint and a brush!) but some fifteen years ago I was asked to paint a portrait of a horse alongside her name on a stable plaque instead of a graphic/silhouette, and with some trepidation I agreed to try a monochrome portrait created from a photo… Not long after that, I was asked if I could paint two horses in colour. From there, my portrait plaques, hand painted from a photo to exactly replicate the horse, snowballed and are now by far my most popular request.

I am a self-taught ‘part time’ artist, and handpaintedmagic remains a hobby, fitting in around my other work, my horses and my family commitments. It has been a great joy to develop as an artist, and to create an entire line of miniature portrait items, which are treasured as keepsakes by so many ❤