Back to work!

Well since my last blog post, I haven't done much in the way of illustrating! Mainly because I was finishing up some uni work, and also, because we now have a little pest to look after. Her name is Violet, and I think she might just be the subject of an illustration some time soon.

I finally got back into listing more items in the shop today though. There's now tonnes of big glossy pendants that have my illustrations inside - they're a really modern alternative to cameos, and you can see them by clicking the big yellow shop button on the right.

Key-wah-wah!

Today, inbetween eating hundreds of white chocolate cookies and drinking so much Diet Irn Bru that I think I might be turning slightly orange, I managed to list some new items in my Folksy shop.

I've made tonnes of different keyrings, but the one that I use on my keys is this little chihuahua. If you feel that you need a tiny little guard dogs for your housekeys, you can find them here.

I should be so lucky...

As well as a whole load of other rubbish I hoard, I also have an excellent collection of maneki neko ornaments. More commonly seen in Chinese takeaways, I have a whole host of lucky cats that I rely on to bring me wealth and fortune! I've got white cats, gold cats, black cats, cats that move, fat cats, scowling cats... allsorts really.

A while ago I did a quick watercolour&felt pen drawing of one of my lucky cats, and yesterday I decided to spruce it up a bit in Illustrator. It's still not right, but I think I might change it some more and make it into a lino print when my new supplies get here!

Summer, summer, summertime!

Recently, I've been frantically trying to write about why you shouldn't use a cat to make a painting, because that's the topic I chose for my dissertation at uni! Whilst I slightly regret my choice of subject now, I am more than delighted that it's now all handed in, and it's pretty much officially, the summer holidays. It'll be good to have some more time to spend on my own ideas for drawings rather than coursework drawings, and something I'm looking forward to is doing some lino printing.

The picture on this post is my very first go at multi colour lino printing, using the reduction method, which is when you have just one block and between printing each colour, you carve away more of the lino. I'm not very good at lining up the tiles between prints (or any fiddly, accurate things, for that matter!) so I'm only going to be attempting 2 colour prints for the time being, but I've ordered up some inks and rollers &I'm looking forward to some printing!

Magnetic

Recently I seem to be obsessed with getting artwork into every area of the home, and as inexpensively as I can. I think it would be great to have a house full of amazing originals, but for now, I'm content with these little magnets! They cost just £2 each and are available from my shop link to the right. Perfect for the fridge, filing cabinet, memo boards, the list goes on!

Cardy

Sometimes if you've just moved home, all your cash has suddenly disappeared into fridges, couches and things that you didn't even know what they were (an extractor fan?), but you still need to decorate your new pad and make it your own! An idea that some people on a lower budget have come up with, is to frame my illustrated greetings cards! Ok, so they're not in full colour, but they still look cute in some inexpensive frames either from a charity shop, Ikea, or even the pound shop! I have cards available in my folksy shop (see the link to the right!) and they are available at just £1.50.

Stocked up!

So finally, I got round to putting some items in my Folksy shop! I had forgotten just how time consuming it can be to take photos of things, edit the snaps, and then go about writing a description before completing the listings! I still have a whole load of other things to be listed, but for now, go have a look!