April Review

April has flown by!  I've not been very good at keeping up with my target of one post a week on the blog, but on the up side I have been getting ahead and preparing new blog posts for the next few weeks.  Here’s a look back at what I did in April…

New designs / illustrations…

It has been a busy month for new designs and I have been listing lots of new printables in my Etsy shop.  I have been filling in some of the gaps in some of my existing collections as well as working on new themes.

I already had printable party collections listed in my shop, which contain a combination of customised and non-customised items (invitation, cupcake toppers and wrappers, thank you cards, name place cards, straw flags, bunting, water bottle labels and welcome sign).  I decided to start making ‘small’ party sets too which are available as instant download – so they’re great if you don’t need customised designs and want to be able to print them straight away.  Each ‘small’ party set contains; bunting, cupcake toppers, name place cards, water bottle labels and straw flags.

I added a small party set to the Ball Games range as well as designing a new collage sheet…

The Hot Air Balloons party collection has been filled out with new water bottle labels, bunting, straw flags and name place cards…

 One of the new themes I have been working on is the Safari Animals collection, which so far includes an invitation, bunting, cupcake toppers, name place cards, water bottle labels and straw flags…

I also made an invitation and set of cupcake toppers with just the lion, which I think would be really cute for baby showers or a first birthday party…

And finally I thought I would show you a couple of new invitation designs which coordinate with the papers I shared on Monday – I’ve made these as samples for a 21st and 30th birthday, but they could be used for other occasions too like bridal showers or weddings.  The one on the left matches with my ‘Abigail’ papers and the right one with the ‘Martha’ set…

I have been enjoying drawing flowers recently  and playing around with new ideas.  Larger flowers with lots of petals (like dahlias) can be tricky to draw but it has been good to practise my drawing.  As well as the floral pattern I used for the invitations above (and in my entry to Spoonflower’s Bee themed contest) I have been working on a larger flower border design for Spoonflower’s Flower’s for Mom border design contest.

Garden…

It’s a busy time for the garden, trying to get the borders and vegetable patch tidy and prepared for all the plants I will be growing this year.  I have been sowing flower and vegetable seeds in pots and more of them are starting to sprout.  I sowed some sweet pepper seeds early in the year but nothing came up so I tried some new seeds from a pepper we had eaten.  They were up quickly (within a few weeks) and I now have far more than I need!  So if you’re planning to grow peppers I would definitely recommend using fresh seeds!

It’s exciting to see my flower seedlings appearing too – these are zinnias, I’m looking forward to seeing them bloom as they were lovely on my doorstep last year…


Other things…

Last month I mentioned that I was looking for a new phone, well I eventually made my mind up and chose the Motorola Moto E (2nd generation) and not the Microsoft Lumia 435 which I was looking at.  The Moto E came out on top in a lot of the reviews I read so it looked like a good choice, even though it cost more than the Lumia 435.  I did manage to get a discount using a voucher code I had in an email – so my indecisiveness paid off in the end!  It’s my first smartphone and I’m still learning how it all works but so far I’m really impressed with it.  Now I’ll have to add a new project to my craft ‘to do’ list and make a case for it!

I will leave you with this photo of my birthday cake which my sister and Mum made me at the start of the month…

Spoonflower Contest – Bees

I’ve had a couple of weeks off from entering Spoonflower’s weekly design contests but am back this week for their ‘Bees’ themed challenge.  I had been working on a new flower repeat pattern and decided to use it along with some spotty and chevron patterns to create a patchwork design.  I then added my drawing of a bee in random positions across the patchwork honeycomb.

You can see all of the other Bee themed entries on Spoonflower here (and vote for your favourites too!)… http://www.spoonflower.com/contest_voters_temp/new?contest_id=300

Here’s a larger view of my new floral pattern design in the yellow colour scheme from my Patchwork Bees design…
I have been enjoying playing around with different colour schemes and variations with this design – the possibilities are endless!  I have used the pattern in some new designs in my hfcSupplies shop on Etsy, including these sets of printable scrapbooking papers; Abigail (floral and other patterns on kraft paper backgrounds), Jessica (yellow, orange and green coloured set) and Martha (floral and other patterns in shades of blue)...

Colour Inspiration #21: Bright Birthday Flowers

I had this beautiful bunch of flowers for my birthday this week and thought they would be great for using as the inspiration for a bright, bold colour palette!

March Review

I have noticed a few of the blogs I read doing reviews looking back at their week, month or year and I thought it would be an interesting thing to try myself.  So I decided to take a look back over the last month – reminding myself about some of the things I did in March and sharing bits which I haven’t blogged about already…

New designs / illustrations...

I was quite productive with new designs and illustrations in March, although I still can’t share the Christmas ones I worked on and submitted to Phoenix Trading.  You’ll have to wait until I know if they are interested in publishing any of them!  My Horses card design was released at the start of the month though.

In March I created 3 new designs which I entered into Spoonflower contests; Coral, Mint, Black and White, Beagles and Southwest Baby Bedding.

I finished changing over all my non-customised digital items to Instant Download.  It was quite a time consuming process changing over all the old listings, but should save me time in the long run.  I designed some new printables to add to the Easter range in my shop; some ‘Happy Easter’ bunting, Easter egg digi stamps and a set of pastel bunnies scrapbooking papers.  They’re all available as instant downloads, so there’s still time to use them this Easter weekend as they can be downloaded within minutes of buying!

Sewing...

I ordered a print of my Dragon Cut and Sew Plushie design on Silky Faille fabric from Spoonflower and tested out the design to check it all worked ok.  It did!  So I was able to make it available to buy from my Spoonflower shop.  I’ll be sharing more photos of that soon, with the instructions on how to make it.

I also stitched 2 projects which came with the Mollie Makes magazine I buy – a needlebook and bear embroidery.  I didn’t like the colour of the yellow felt which came in the kit to make the needle book so decided to use some of my own felt instead.  I loved making the little hexies though and trying English Paper Piecing for the first time.

Another sewing project I am part way through is sewing a dress in jersey fabric – my first attempt at sewing stretch fabric!  I’ll share some pictures from that once I've done a bit more.

Baking...

I baked some cheese muffins with my sister using this recipe which I blogged about back in 2013.

Garden...

Spring arrived and it’s lovely to see the blossom and flowers appearing.  I wish I could somehow bottle the scent from this tree covered in blossom as it is going all too fast.

 I started planning what to grow this year, so far we have sown herbs, tomatoes, peppers and aubergine seeds.  I had a herb growing kit for Christmas, but waited until last month to sow the seeds – the basil and chives have come up and I’m hoping the others will start growing soon.

 

Other things…

On Pinterest I have been pinning ideas to my Easter board – including lots of lovely baking ideas, although I probably shouldn't try making them as I have been trying to be healthier after watching a documentary on how much sugar is in our food!

Follow Hazel's Easter board on Pinterest.

I’ve been looking for a new phone but there is so much choice, I can’t decide which is the best to get.  My first and only mobile is getting on for being nearly 10 years old and the battery doesn’t last so long now so I thought it might be time for a new one!  My mp3 player also died so I would like a phone to listen to music on too but I don’t use my mobile a lot so don’t want to spend too much.  I’ve been trying to narrow down my choices by looking at budget smartphone reviews – the Microsoft Lumia 435 looks like a possibility but I’m not sure.  Do you have any suggestions?

I mentioned at the top of this post about reading other people’s blogs – I like using Bloglovin’ to keep up with new posts from my favourite bloggers and still use the reading list in Blogger too.  How do you like to keep up with your favourite blogs?
These are some of the blogs I have been reading recently:
Wonder Forest
Messyla - a lifestyle blog by La.
A Beautiful Mess
Scientific Culture

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Spoonflower Contest – Southwest Baby Bedding

Last week’s winner of Spoonflower’s Beagle contest was such a cute design!  It had beagle dogs along with bright flowers and cats - you can see it along with the other top ten designs here.  My entry came 40th (out of 200) with 154 votes – thank you to everyone who voted for it!

For this week’s contest, Spoonflower teamed up with Carousel Designs and the challenge was to create a Southwest Baby Bedding Design.  The winning design will be used in a new range of nursery decor by Carousel Designs – it would be so exciting to win that!  All of the top ten designs will also get a pillow made up with their design.

I wasn’t sure what a Southwest theme meant, but Spoonflower had put together a helpful Pinterest board which was a good starting point for me.  I did a bit more research to help me choose a colour palette for my design and give me inspiration for some patterns to use which I combined with pen and watercolour drawings of feathers and arrows.  I used watercolour textures when I made the geometric patterns too.  It isn't so easy to see the textures on the small screen image of my design, but I’m interested to see what it looks like printed on fabric.

See all of the entries to the contest, and vote for your favourites, here: http://www.spoonflower.com/contest_voters_temp/new?contest_id=296