May Review

Another month has passed – it’s 2nd June today which means summer (meteorologically speaking) has officially begun in the UK!  It doesn't feel particularly summery here though - very windy, overcast and not that warm - I'm hoping it will be improving later in the week!  The start of the new month means that it is time for a little look back at some of the things I did in May…

New designs / illustrations…

I’ve been feeling quite inspired lately with ideas for new designs – I just need the time to be able to work on them all!  I did manage to add several new designs to my shop in May, filling out some of my existing collections – like the Elephant baby shower designs…

This is the ‘mint’ collection, it is also available in blue and pink.  The set is available as instant download and includes ‘hello baby’ bunting, cupcake toppers, thank you cards, wishes for baby card and baby predictions card.

I also added some new Sunflower themed designs – an invitation and set of cupcake toppers which can be customised with your choice of messages.

As the end of the school year approaches I thought I would add some thank you teacher printables too – so made these Sunflower (Thank you for helping me grow!) and Apple (Thank you for being a great teacher!) designs.  They can be customised with a personalised message too…


My London Calling range of designs continues to be popular in my shop, so I decided to add a couple of new items; a sheet of printable journal cards and a sheet of printable labels…

This printable box design was also new and features my illustrations of budgies…


Spoonflower fabric...

I entered one Spoonflower contest in May, with a Mermaids theme.  Initially when the results were announced Spoonflower only showed the designs in the top ten, but I noticed today that they changed their mind after several complaints and have now posted a list with all the entries.  I suppose that it doesn’t really matter where my entries come in their contests, but it is interesting to see how well they do.  My mermaids design came 158th out of 365 entries.  By the way, I realised that I hadn’t mentioned about the results for the previous Spoonflower contest I entered (Flowers for Mom border print).  My design came 52nd (out of 315 entries) with 159 votes.   Thank you if you voted for my designs! :)

Having created new designs, particularly for contests, over the last few months I had built up enough of a collection to send for a new swatch sampler from Spoonflower.  The samples arrived last week!  I’m always a little uncertain as to how my designs will look printed on the fabric – how the colours will look etc.  I was really pleased with how this batch of designs turned out on the Kona cotton!

The Steampunk Valentine design was already available to buy from my shop, but all of the other designs are new in my Spoonflower shop – like this sheep design…

You can buy them on a variety of types of fabric as well as wallpaper and gift wrap. 

When I test out new designs from Spoonflower I usually order a swatch sampler of 15 designs, so they arrive on one large piece of fabric.  I feel like I can’t spoil the fabric by cutting it up, but the large sheets are a bit unwieldy, so I decided it was about time I made a start on doing something different with them.  I’m working my way through my swatches, cutting them out with pinking shears, I will then organise them into collection by theme and make them into little books – much easier for flicking through myself and for showing other people.  I’ll post some pictures when I’ve finished sorting them out!

Blog DIY Tutorials

Last month I introduced my Silhouette Cameo cutting machine and posted a couple of diy tutorials; making a Dragon from my cut & sew fabric and a birthday card inspired by citrus colours.  I am currently working on some very exciting new DIY projects and I will be sharing the tutorials later this month!

Garden

May is a very pretty month for our garden – although it is a bit overgrown the flower border has been filled with pink and purple aquilegia, corn flowers and forget-me-nots which give it a very cottage garden feel!  The laburnum is lovely too – full of bright yellow flowers which the bees seem to love as well.

My seedlings are growing well – there will be lots of work over the next few weeks to get everything planted out and all the smaller seedlings potted up too.  I’ve been experimenting with some tips I came across for growing different plants, controlling weeds and pests like aphids.  I think I may do a few garden posts in the future sharing the tips I’ve found that work – hopefully they might be interesting / useful to people.

I picked the first strawberries from this year’s crop in our greenhouse – they smell so lovely, I wish I could bottle scents for storing memories as well as taking photos…

Other things…

I’m still trialling Adobe’s Illustrator program, as I talked about in this post last week – 10 days left of the free trial for me to play!  I still want to try Serif’s Drawplus too.

I had the urge to do more drawing last week – actually it was after seeing some amazing Caneletto paintings on The One Show last week.  So I got my sketchbook out in the evening and did some drawing from pictures I found on Pinterest.  They’re just for fun but it did make me think about working on some new illustrations and maybe going back to work on some new Hexley things again…

I will end May’s review by leaving you with one of my Pinterest boards – something for Budgie lovers!

Follow Hazel's board Budgies on Pinterest.