Here comes the sun

After becoming a little impatient and wondering if my samples from Spoonflower would ever turn up… tada! They arrived yesterday.

A couple turned out well a couple not so well but I guess that’s the joy of being able to order samples. Reassuringly, the ones that I was sure would work did work and the ones that I wasn’t so sure about didn’t work so well. However, as a first try I’m pretty pleased.

All of the designs I chose to have printed on the Quilting Weight Cotton which looks pretty good. It’s a bit stiff but I haven’t washed it yet to see how it feels after a wash. It may soften up a bit.

Here’s a few snaps of how they turned out starting with what I thought were the more successful ones.

On another note, I’m feeling pretty run down right now. I had a cold a couple of weeks ago and it was pretty full on but short lived. The cough I didn’t really get rid of but now It has come back with a vengeance. I think I may be having a sinus malfunction. Now, where’s the paracetamol?

Solar Power

Yep, I know I said I was done with etsy a while back but I think I’m going to give it another shot. I haven’t actually been looking on there recently and found myself having a look around the other day and saw that there are a lot of new features. How did I miss those?

So, I have 3 new prints ready to go into my new/old etsy shop – and they will go in my other shop too.

These are variations of a few illustrations I have worked on over the past couple of months.

“delicate”

“sunshine”

“stay for tea”

Oh, and I re-did my etsy banner too.

A new Illustration I’ve been working on.

For quite some time now I have been almost fearful of creating new stuff. I could put it down to the upheaval and disruption we’ve experienced as a family over the past 18 months. I could put it down to not having enough time. I could put it down to not having the space to create without little hands getting involved. I could put it down to being fearful that I’m not good enough or I could put it down to being fearful of what I might actually achieve. I’m not quite sure what has been blocking me, what has caused this barrier. But I want to try and get through that barrier. Whatever it is.

I want to rid that fear and I’ve been trying to think of how to, how to let it go and just do. So I’m going to try, try really hard, to come up with (at least) 1 illustration a week. I may use Illustration Friday as my prompt or guide or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just make it up as I go along.

My very good friend, Fiona (or Fonar as she was affectionately known back then) from uni has just started her own new blog. I can’t wait to see her progress as the blog grows and we see more and more of her work.

I love her drawing style and the colours she uses. I would encourage you to keep visiting her blog as I know she will be producing some beautiful work.

This is one of her illustrations.

I needed a bit of sunshine to give me a lift today and there’s not much of it about. So I brought the sunshine here by creating this little ray.

The past couple of days have been a struggle for me. Poppy has brought home yet another bug from daycare and this time it picked me and Lexie to live in for a while.

So for the past two days I have been the zero energy lady, the exhausted mum.

But today I’m on the mend.

I might add this to the shop as a print. What do you think?

Have a good weekend folks. I hope this brings you lots of sunshine.

I ordered some samples of fabric I’d designed on Spoonflower aaaages ago and I’m waiting very patiently for it to arrive. In the meantime, I thought I’d have a play and see what they might look like on finished garments.

Have a great weekend wherever you may be.

Paperless Post.

I found this website today through Jessica’s blog How About Orange. What a great site.

Maybe for my birthday or even Christmas. I mean I know Christmas is a while away but there’s no harm in asking now is there?

You can get it on Amazon you know… and they’re doing free delivery to Australia & NZ until August 15, 2011.