Moo Greeting Cards!

I had a very exciting package in the post today - my Moo order arrived (well the greeting card part anyway)!
I had some technical problems placing the order, but the customer support at Moo was excellent and at last I have received my cards (the stickers will hopefully be on their way soon).

About half the cards feature my animal ACEOs and the other half is mostly Hexley illustrations along with some dragons and elephants.
If you like these cards you will be able to buy them from my online shop very soon (I'll blog to let you know when they are ready!)

Literacyhead

This week my 'Storytelling of Crows 2' ACEO is appearing in the Write StARTs feature in the Literacyhead online magazine!

Literacyhead was created as an online resource for teachers and uses art to help teach different reading and writing concepts. You can view the site here, although the magazine is subscription based they do now offer a free 2 week trial. (If you know any teachers please pass this site on to them!)

In The Woods and The Front Page of Etsy!!

Yesterday afternoon I went for a cycle ride with my sister to the woods. The bluebells are still out and looked wonderful! The woods aren't far from the village where we live and it was lovely and peaceful. It's definately a place I should visit more often. Although next time we might leave the woods by a different route - since yesterday's trip involved negotiating a stile with 2 bicycles - not the easiest thing to do!!

Later on I discovered that the treasury I blogged about yesterday with one of my prints in had made it to the front page! I found out from a message on Facebook and then noticed that there was a huge increase views and hearts on my shop. A couple of weeks ago I had another message on Facebook to say one of my prints was on the front page, but as there were no extra views I think it was only an alternate. So yesterday was the first time I've ever had anything actually appear on the front page - it really made my day! :D

Darwinian Treasury feature

Having had a few days of no emails it was nice to find a message today letting me know that I've been featured in an Etsy treasury! :) My Hexley Solo Dirigible Balloon print is in this treasury with a Darwinian theme:

You can view the treasury here. Made by Juanitas, it features a collection of items inspired by 'old-world science and exploration'. There are some great items here - I especially love the miniature journal! :)

Manningtree High Street - new work

Since I've been having a go at a few different things recently I thought it was time I did some more drawings/ paintings of buildings. It's a subject I enjoy working on and I'm generally quite pleased with the results.

So I've been looking through my collection of photos for inspiration and decided to start with a painting of Manningtree. This was drawn in dip pen and peat brown ink, then painted in watercolours and Quink.

Manningtree is England's smallest town, located on the banks of the River Stour at the Essex/ Suffolk border. It is also a place which has provided me with a lot of inspiration for my drawings of Hexley street scenes!

I'm planning on making some more paintings on a similar theme - so keep an eye out for those. I expect there will be more old buildings as I much prefer drawing those to newer ones. Old buildings always seem so fascinating to me - much more character and I can't help but wonder about the people who used to live there and what the buildings have 'seen' over the centuries.

By the way, if you like this painting it is now available in my Etsy shop as a 5x7 print (if you would like another size please let me know). :)

New Work - Greeting Card designs

I haven't uploaded much new work recently but I have been working hard on some new greeting card designs. Here are just a few of my new illustrations (more can be seen on my website):

The designs are all painted in watercolours, I have also used a combination of pen, ink, acrylics and coloured pencils. I really enjoyed making these, it was a great opportunity to try some different ideas and experiment with making patterns.