Hello 2016!

I hope that it's not too late to wish you a Happy New Year!  I took a couple of weeks off over Christmas/ new year so it was back to work on Monday.  The last few days were spent catching up with paperwork and writing out my plans for the year before returning to my blog.

The new year is a good time to freshen things up and it got me thinking to all the things I want to do, for work and my own personal goals.  I've not exactly set myself new year's resolutions; my plans are more like a continuation of building on things I started last year plus a few new things I want to try. It's easy to be hard on yourself if plans/ goals didn't go as you wanted, so instead I'm trying to look at things more positively and see things I haven't achieved yet as goals to still be worked on, and the new year is just giving me motivation to get going! (I think this might also have something to my sister, who is a Primary School teacher, talking about the 'growth mindset' she teaches to her children; encouraging them, when they find something difficult, to say they can't do it yet!)

I also like to reorganise things (and make them look prettier!) so was looking forward to the start of the new year to tidy up, change things around in my art room (and house), put up new calendars and use new planners.  I had this pretty diary for Christmas to use for work - I love the colours on the cover...

I seem to have been on a mission to make everything more colourful this week!  I designed new planner pages (calendars, to do lists and business records sheets) all in a rainbow of bright colours. So far they are just for me to use, but I will be adding printable planners as a new product line to my Etsy shop soon.

Before I get going with all the new things for this year I thought I would just take a quick look back at 2015...

Last year I set myself a goal of blogging at least once a week, well I managed 49 posts in 2015 so I wasn't far off that goal and it was more than I managed in 2014.  This year I hope to meet, and exceed, the goal of 1 post a week.

I took a look back at the top 5 popular posts of 2015...

5 Printable Advent Calendar Village

In this post I shared how to make the colour in printable advent calendar village I designed.  This will be coming out again next Christmas!

4 How to make 'Celebrate' card

This was one of the first things I made using my Silhouette Cameo cutting machine.  I used the machine to cut some of my designs on my Christmas cards and I plan to use it in more tutorials this year.

3 May Review

This was the surprise entry to my top 5 posts - I didn't think any of my monthly reviews would be in the top 5! In this post I took a look back at some of the things I did in May, like new designs I had been working on and photos from my garden.  I haven't decided if I will continue with the monthly reviews this year, instead I may include the things I covered in the reviews in shorter, separate posts spread throughout the month.

2 How to Make: Dragon Cut and Sew Plushie

One of my proudest moments of 2015 was seeing the Dragon Cut and Sew Plushie design I made rank in the top 10 of Spoonflower's contest and in this post I shared a tutorial on how to make him.  I was also thrilled to recently see that 2 of my dragons had been made up and sent to Spoonflower for their Softies for Mirabel handmade toy drive.  I hope that the children who receive the toys will love playing with them!

1 DIY Upcycled Jar Flower Vase

There were several other posts which I particularly enjoyed working on in 2015; like the Halloween Cookies and 3 DIY Picnic Ideas, but this one for painting and upcycling jars was the most popular post of 2015.  I hope to be sharing many more craft projects and tutorials in 2016!