Escape to the country.

We’re sneaking away for a week, for some mid-term coastal action. Meet you back here a week from today. Synchronise watches. Aaaaaand…GO!

New Colourway – Wedding Congratulations Card

Illustration Friday Submission

Illustration Friday is a weekly creative outlet/participatory art exhibit for illustrators and artists of all skill levels. Here’s my first submission.

Freehand illustration using a white gel pen on A4 black textured card.

New Design – Wedding Congratulations Card

Musing on a Monday

Two New Anniversary Card Designs

Greetings Cards & Bespoke Gifts

Did you notice the two new pages on this site? No. I wouldn’t have done either. Which is why I thought I’d let you know right here. If you click on the button at the top of the page ‘Social Stationery’, you’ll see what I’ve been working on lately. And if you click on ‘Bespoke Gifts’, you’ll see the one lonesome picture I finished the other day. There’ll be more to come. All in good time.

Autumn. The British Way.

The farm we wanted to visit was closed on Tuesday. So instead, we ventured into the countryside for a little wander. Here are some of the autumn colours we experienced. Autumn in England. Perfect. Hope you enjoy. We did.

Twitter = It’s Not All “What I Had For Dinner….’

Twitter. It’s a funny little gremlin. Lots of people loathe it. Others love it. I’m a lover. Not a loather. The beauty of it is that you can create your own little world of friends within it. You surround yourself with people  you want to be surrounded by. Different industry specialists. Stephen Fry. Friends. The Dalai Lama. (I know….it can’t actually be him tweeting from his temple. It must be another brother. But I like to think there’s a little chance.) You become immersed in that world that you made, which is a strange feeling. The moment you close the ‘Twitter’ browser window, that world is gone. Until you type those letters into the address bar once again….h.t.t.p.:././.w.w.w.twitt…….and then…whoosh……20 new messages…..What’s been going on….? What have I missed? Well actually, you don’t miss out on anything….you scroll down, and you read what your world has been talking about in your absence. You don’t even need to be involved. You can simply sit back, and take in what everyone else is talking about. For me though, I like to feel involved. It makes you feel more part of the world you’ve nurtured from your first tweet. I also feel inspired and motivated by what others share. What books people have illustrated. What they’re working on. What’s in their sketch book. Its amazing. What other way would we be let into other peoples worlds, whom we’ve never met and probably will never meet. You wouldn’t. It just wouldn’t happen. I’ve thrown my arms around the Twitter-gremlin. Its my friend and I’m staying a while.

Which leads me nicely onto Carys of Carys Ink. She’s an illustrator, based in Bristol and by following her, I won a little giveaway she was holding. This is a bonus for three reasons. 1) I get to see the work of another amazing illustrator. b)  I won a pack of 9 nicely-printed, beautifully drawn notecards/postcards, which dropped through the door on Saturday morning. 4) I received something in the mail that wasn’t a bill and wasn’t addressed ‘To Someone Who Cares’ for the ‘Save The Worm’ charity.

So I wanted to show you. Because when I won, I got excited. And when I opened the envelope, they made me smile. And I knew you’d like to share my childish enthusiasm.

Thanks Carys, you a doll. (And no, that’s not a typo. I’m saying it in my New Orleans dialect. Obviously.)

Snip. Cut. Glue. Stick.

When I was very young, one of my favourite pastimes was cutting, sticking, sellotaping, stapling and colouring in bits of paper. On the rare occasion my dad would take my sister and I into work on a Saturday, after filling an A4 envelope with melon flavoured chewy sweets from the packaging machinery factory for us as a treat, he would settle us in his office with paper, pens and sellotape. Of course, after trying out his wheelie, spinning desk chair, we would then happily sit and cut and stick whilst he got on with whatever business he needed to. My most favourite masterpiece to make was a folder for whatever ‘club’ I was in at the time. The Licorice Allsorts Club was one. Not because we liked the sweets, but because we did allsorts. Genius. We even made ourselves badges with licorice allsorts drawn all over them. As for the folder, I would stick two pieces of paper together, down three sides. Or for extra rigour, I would also staple over the tape. Obviously, that was in case I had reams of club paperwork to put into my folder. I would also create little pockets on the front of my folder, one large pocket, with a small pocket over the top. Then, it was time to decorate it. If I was at home, the, what seemed like it was a metre long, rainbow pack of felt tip pens would come out. If we were at work with dad, it would be highlighters. Whatever the case, my eyes would have looked strangely bulbous, with a crazed, wild look in my eye and my heart would start to race at the prospect of all the forthcoming colouring in and bubble-writing I could draw.

These days, I still love cutting, sticking and colouring in, but hopefully, on a slightly more sophisticated level (although thats subject to opinion). Here are some of the mini-projects I’ve been working on the last couple of weeks.

A Wedding Anniversary Card

A New Baby Card

A Birthday Card for a one year old little girl

A Pregnancy Celebration Card – ‘There’s a New Bunny Coming To Town’

A Mothers Birthday Card

A Thinking Of You Card

A Birthday Robot

Twitchy Tuesday

I’m feeling twitchy. Not in a Seven Year Itch kind of way. But in a blog-design-overhaul kind of way. So if you see a few strange changes……now you know.