Happy Christmas Everyone!!

Hello all, so it's late on Christmas Eve and I'm shattered after all the Christmas preparations, but I couldn't not do a post to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year :)

Thank you to everyone who has supported me this year, I know I'm repeating myself but your support means an awful lot. Sending you all Christmas wishes, hope they all come true :)

And the winner is...............

Number seven which is Lorna! Congratulations Lorna! If you can email me with your address and what two goodies you would like from my shops and I'll send them to you asap :)

Thanks to everyone who entered and left such lovely messages- they made me smile & feel all Christmassy!

Christmas Giveaway!!!

I've reached 50 followers! YAY! Which means that it is indeed time for a Giveaway :) As always I want to say a BIG THANK YOU to all of you who take a little time out of your day to visit me here, it really does mean a lot and keeps me motivated to keep being creative so I can show you more. I still find it so wonderful (and think I always will) when I click on my dashboard and see a new follower :)

This Giveaway feels extra special as it's Thanksgiving day today in America and also because we are sooooo close to Christmas- only four weeks to go- can you believe it? Because I'm starting to feel all Christmassy all you need to do to enter is leave me a comment saying what you love about Christmas. Also it would be great if you wanted to spread the word about my Giveaway, perhaps through your own blogs, Twitter or on Facebook. I'll announce the winner next Friday 3rd Dec and the prize will be not one but any two items from my shops (excluding my originals and Thingamajigs).

Good luck everyone!!

An Autumnal Walk

It's Autumn and I find the colours in nature so inspiring this time of year. Phil and I took "peanut" (AKA Evie ;)) for a long walk recently around a local reserve (once a chalk quarry) and the scenery was beautiful. Evie missed most of it though as she was having a good snooze in her sling (check out the top middle picture), must have been all of the fresh air :)

Back soon with a Christmas giveaway!!!

Christmas is coming!

Well can you believe it? It's nearly November already! Since having Evie, the days, weeks and months seem to be whizzing by at quite an alarming rate. Not sure when I'm going to fit in any Christmas shopping- I think I need to make a plan of action! :)

As promised in an earlier post, I have some new personalised Christmas cards to share with you :) I actually designed these months ago but with some much needed help they are now in my shop. My favourite is the last design- I just want to jump into the picture and give that bunny a great big squish as he's just so cute!!

Sanna Annukka

Hello all! Hope everyone is well and having a good week? Thank you to all my new followers, it's great to meet you! And I just noticed that I only need three more blog followers to have the Giveaway that I promised. Perhaps it'll be a Christmas Giveaway? :)

Whilst out on one of my walks with Bubba a week ago I bought myself another Sanna Annukka tin. I just love her designs! I bought this one which you can currently buy at Marks & Spencers :)

This is the one I bought last year which I also adore (is it possible to adore a tin? Well if it is I certainly do!! ;) )

John Cleese on Creativity!

Hello everyone. All is well here in Baby Land :D

I managed to have a baby break today and catch up on a few of my favourite blogs and thanks to Marisa I found this very inspiring video which I wanted to share with you. Enjoy!

Back soon with some new personalised, Christmas cards to show you :)

P.S I don't know why you can't see the full screen so here is the link for you to see it at YouTube- anyone know how I can resolve this?

First Smiles!

Evie

I have something very exciting to share with you. It's absolutely HUGE in fact, the most amazing and wonderful thing to have ever happened to me. Those of you who read my blog regularly will know that normally my reason for not blogging is down to my work, but for my recent absence I now have a much better excuse! On Sunday 25th July at 2.15 in the morning I became a Mummy!!! Our little daughter Evie was born, weighing a very healthy 9lbs 3! Needless to say the last six weeks have been an absolute whirlwind, Phil and I have been knee deep in nappies, muslins and babygrows! It's taken a while but we are finally getting into more of a routine. We are definitely learning what Evie's little squeaks and different cries mean and getting out of the house no longer takes up half a day! Evie's a very alert little bubba and so is especially keen to do anything other than sleep, therefore finding the time to make a cup of tea let alone write a post has proven to be rather a challenge! Everyday it amazes me how she seems to change a little- I can't believe how quickly she is growing and in the past week she has started to smile which I find so joyous it makes all the sleep deprivation pale into insignificance :)

Workwise I will be having a break so Evie and I can spend as much time with each other as possible. I will still be blogging though but if there is a longer gap in between posts you'll know why ;) Got to go now and wake the little munchkin up for her tea but I'll leave you with a picture! :) Bye bye for now xx

Banksy?

I took this picture whilst walking up my local high street. What do you reckon, could this be an original by Banksy?

Bouncing Baby Girl

And here's the baby girl version for you to see :)

Bouncing Baby Boy

I've got a new design to show you today. Not sure why but my favourite thing about this design is the little shoe! :)

Something to make you smile ;)

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON from Dean Fleischer-Camp on Vimeo.

Summer Fun!

More summer fun today :) This design was bought to be used as gift wrap aimed especially for young children. This is me right back in my comfort zone- as apposed to being way outside it with the last piece I showed you!

It's extremely hot and muggy here at the moment so I'm not enjoying sitting in my little studio- I'm thinking I need to get some sort of fan. Don't get me wrong I am a real sun worshipper, but it's now so hot and heavy outside I've been wishing for a thunderstorm just to cool everything down. Is it just me or do you also love the smell of hot concrete just after it's rained?

Dragonflies

Hi all! This design was a challenge for me to say the least! It is sooooo different from my normal style. Part of me likes it, part of me is not convinced!

Hope everyone has had a good week? I'm really looking forward to having a quiet, relaxing weekend- hope you all have a good one too!

Summer Smiles

All this summer sunshine is making me so happy. Here's a cheery design for you to see that reflects my current mood! Not sure why but I love drawing Ladybirds :)

Pattern Making 2

I've been away far too long haven't I. I've missed my blog and reading all your comments :( Not surprisingly there's been lots going on around here- orders to complete and some very challenging deadlines after which I felt like I needed to re-charge my batteries so I've made sure I've relaxed over the weekends.

Here's a few things that have happened over the last few weeks:

We went to Whitstable for a lovely day out.

I've had to rescue not one, not two but three birds that fell down our chimney and into our wood burning stove! (thank goodness its summer!)

We've had constant sunshine over the last couple of weeks. Yes! It actually feels like summer here in the UK! So I've been trying to make the most of it and gone out for lots of walks and had a few BBQs.

Watched a film that didn't impress :(

Watched a film I LOVED :)

Made some more Thingamajigs. Hopefully I'll be able to show you them soon.

Celebrated my brothers 30th Birthday.

And watched some elephants paint (on YouTube)- amazing!

Hope everyone's having a good week? Thought I'd leave you today with some more of my pattern making, I always like to experiment with different colourways- in fact I can get a bit obsessed with it, but don't worry I've narrowed it down to two versions of each to show you! Hope you like.

Pattern Making

Pattern making has played a huge part in my career so far so I thought I'd share these with you today. Once I got the hang of how to create a design in repeat! (a must for the textile and gift wrap industry) I found the process a very relaxing and therapeutic thing to do :)

Hope everyones having a good weekend!

Happiness

This design makes me feel happy! :)

Squeaky Pig!

More exciting news today! I now have a selection of prints available to buy at Squeaky Pig, some of which aren't yet available in my other shops! If you fancy a gander click here :)

Debbie and Mel sell lovely things for young children, including personalised gifts and they also have a Squeaky Pig fan page which you can see by clicking here.

Presents, presents & more presents!

Hope everyone had a great week? I've been busy printing and making orders and working on another exciting project!

I wanted to share this fun design with you today as I have lots of Birthday parties coming up in June- including my Dads :) Although I can't show it here on my blog this is a sparkly gift wrap as everywhere you can see the colour dark grey is silver foil stamping which brings the wrap to life. Hope you like!

Found Art Friday

"Awe, of course you're not!"

My design for Found Art Friday.

Aspen & Brown

Hello all. I have some exciting news! Recently I've been working on a project with company Aspen & Brown. They asked me to design a range of personalised art prints which would be sold mounted and framed. I'm pleased to say that they are now up on the website and ready to go! Each print is sold signed and embellished with tiny details of glitter and a raised add on text panel. These designs are exclusive to Aspen & Brown so you won't be able to find them anywhere else. Hope you like them and if you have any questions or requests do let me know :)

You can click here to see the different designs:

Birthday Boy, Birthday Girl, Baby Boy, Baby Girl, Christening & Wedding

Footie Mad!

Come on then, hands up who had no choice but to watch the football with their other halves last night? My hands are raised!

I've designed many a football gift wrap in my time so I thought I'd share one of them with you today.

Back again soon with some exciting news on a project I've been working on :)

Awe!

Couldn't resist sharing this pic I snapped today :)

South Farm

Hello everyone- have you all had a good week? I've been super busy trying to get as much work done for Surtex as possible- will probably be working tomorrow too and then I'm definitely treating myself to a lie-in!

Last weekend Phil and I took our parents to the venue we are hiring for our wedding! All very exciting and they were having an open day so we got to sample mouth watering canapes and cake too :) I took quite a few photos if you want to see?

We love this venue as it's just so "us"- we instantly felt relaxed there and it's a great place for a small wedding- they even grow a lot of their own food and keep pigs, peacocks and chickens!

Have a great weekend everyone!

P.S If anyone's wondering I took these photos with my iPhone using the fantastic Hipstamtic App.

Big Thank Yous!

Hello! I've been awarded a couple of blog awards recently :)

This one was given to me by Amanda Lincoln whose lovely blog you can visit here. Amanda is a Surface Pattern Designer so her blog is full of really pretty designs.

I also got this one:

Given to me by the lovely Gabriella of Moobaacluck. She has a fantastic blog where I love to visit because her work always makes me smile. She creates lovely characters which she paints in amazing colours.

Thank you so much Amanda and Gabriella!

Thought I would leave you today with a male design- yes you read correctly! Do you know I don't think I've ever posted any of my work aimed at men! And I do, do quite a bit of it- I suppose I just like to post the pretty stuff ;)

I hope you are all having a good week. Bye bye for now....