October and November Review

The last couple of months have been pretty busy and I didn't have a lot of time at the start of last month to write October's review.   Rather than skip out a month altogether I thought I would roll October and November together and look back at them in this one post...

New Designs...
In October I was working on an exciting new design - I can't wait until I can reveal it in January!
I did make some new designs which are not still a secret though; like some new printable designs in my Etsy shop: Colour in Advent Calendar Village, Christmas colouring in pages, Christmas Foods name place cards and Autumn Leaves name place cards.

On Spoonflower my new designs included; Microorganisms, Cephalopods, Tea Towel Calendar and some other new designs which I blogged about here.

Blog projects...
Last week I shared a tutorial on how to make the mini house boxes in my printable Advent Calendar Village - I'm sharing daily photos of the houses for advent on my Facebook and Instagram pages.
Back in October I also shared a couple of diy projects - an Upcyled Jar Flower Vase and Halloween Cookies.  You could adapt the biscuit recipe for Christmas - add more spices and ice with festive decorations!

Social Media...
As I mentioned above, I am now on Instagram!  You can find me at HazelFisherCreations. I've not posted a lot yet, but plan to share more photos of my sketchbook, works in progress, things I make and inspire me.  It took me a while to work out how to post my first picture and I was thrilled to get some likes and  comments almost immediately!  I like that people actually seem to see the things you post on Instagram compared to Facebook, which appears to hide most of the things I post - and I notice that a lot of the people I have liked on Facebook aren't showing up in my feed so often now either.


Other News...
November seemed to be a month for finally starting things I have been thinking about doing - I also joined Society6!  I've been wanting to expand my range of products and have been looking into the various sites which, like Spoonflower, allow artists to sell their designs on products without having to actually produce and ship the products themselves.  I have a very limited range on Society6 at the moment, and am just learning about how to set up my designs to work on all the different products they sell.  I will get more designs up as and when I can - I would love to have got the store up and running in time for Christmas shopping (and probably should have started earlier, but there is always too much on my to do list!), at least I'll be prepared for next year.
So far you will find my Southwest Feathers and Arrows and Budgie designs in my shop...


I'll end this monthly review with a link to my Christmas board on Pinterest, where I've been collecting ideas for decorations, diy projects and cards.  Are you way ahead with your Christmas crafting, or like me and still have a long list of things to do?

Follow Hazel's board Christmas on Pinterest.

September Review

The weather has been so good recently it's hard to believe it's Autumn and October already!  Here's a look back at some of the things I did in September...

New Designs...

I had fun coming up with new designs for Halloween printables, and released 3 new products in my shop (scrapbook papers, digital stamps and an invitation design).  Here's a peek at my sketchbook...

The other new designs I worked on in September are still a secret so I can't show you these yet - sorry!

Spoonflower...

I entered 2 Spoonflower contests - 90s Nostalgia and Ditsy Lizards.  Thank you if you voted for my Ditsy Lizards design - it came 72nd out of 240 entries (with 137 votes). Spoonflower always have such varied themes for their contests which are great for inspiring new designs.  I would have liked to have had a go at their State Fair theme, but unfortunately didn't have time to enter that week.  I have added drawing fair ground rides to my to do list though (which is getting very long!).

When Spoonflower recently had a free swatch day I sent for a sample of my Botanical Sketchbook design.  It's printed on their new Poly Crepe De Chine fabric; a sheer, light weight fabric featuring vibrant colours and a delicate drape.  This sample shows just a small part of my design, which is now available to buy on a variety of fabrics as well as gift wrap and wallpaper from my shop.

Blog...

I shared a tutorial on how to make a Halloween card with my new printables last week, and I'm preparing more Halloween ideas to go on the blog in the next few weeks.  I'm also preparing a new sewing tutorial, here's a sneak peek...

Baking...

It was National Cupcake Week (14-20th September), which was the perfect excuse (as if any was really needed!) to bake and eat cupcakes with my sister.  We went for rainbow coloured cake mixture, decorated with butter cream and sweets for a sugar overload.  Generally, I do like to cook / bake healthier things though!

Social Media...

I'm still working on my goal of learning to use social media better.  I'm planning on joining Instagram soon, something I've been thinking about doing for a while.  As I'm more of a visual person I think it might work well for me. Apparently Instagram is the fastest growing social media network, which is encouraging and it was interesting to see BBC Breakfast talking to the co-founder of Instagram this week too: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34399089  Do you use Instagram?  Which social media network is your favourite to use?

Before joining Instagram I want to get a few other jobs ticked off my list first, like updating my website which I'm in the process of now.
I've found lots of inspiring articles on Pinterest on using social media, business tips and ideas on how to be more productive (which is particularly useful!).  See my Pinterest board on business, blogging and social media tips here:

Follow Hazel's board Tips - Business, Blogging & Photography on Pinterest.

I'll finish off September's review with some photos I took of the "supermoon" and lunar eclipse.  Since the event is rare, and won't occur again until 2033, I thought I would make the effort to wake up in the early hours of Monday morning (around 3am) to watch it.  We were fortunate to have mostly clear skies so had a good view of the Earth's shadow crossing the moon and the moon turning red/orange...

I was only using a compact digital camera, so didn't get the best photos, although I did manage to get some better shots of the moon the following night...

August Review

Another month has flown by and it’s September already!  That means it’s time for a look back at some of the things I did in August…

New designs, Spoonflower…

I don’t like to waste things so when I realised that I was running out of space in my current sketchbooks I decided to make myself a new one from spare pages left at the back of some old uni sketchbooks.  I used to like making books but hadn’t done any in a long time, it got me thinking about putting together some different book making tutorials – I’ve added that to my ‘to do’ list!

I used my newly made sketchbook for drawing ideas for Spoonflower’s annual Fabric8 contest.  This year the theme is Botanical Sketchbook, so I took inspiration from my garden and drew some of the plants, flowers and vegetables which I grow…

Here’s my final fabric design… Unfortunately it was not picked to be one of the 100 semi-finalists (there were close to 800 entries!), but I will still be making it available to buy from my Spoonflower shop in the near future.  (I took advantage of Spoonflower’s Free Swatch Day and ordered a sample.)  I am also planning to create some coordinating designs to form a small collection around this one.  The 8 finalists in the Fabric8 contest have now been chosen.  They are all lovely designs, you can see them here.

In August I also entered Spoonflower’s ‘Butterfly Coordinates’ contest – thank you if you voted for my design!  My entry came 78th (with 109 votes) out of 274 designs – you can see all of the other entries here.

Baking…

I baked a banana, blueberry and walnut cake which I shared the recipe for last week.  You can see more recipes I have shared on my blog in the past here.

Knitting

When I was recovering from being unwell in July I started knitting a cardigan.  After a bit of a false start (when I got in a muddle having dropped some stitches only a few rows in and had to start again) it’s going well now.  I’m knitting with Sublime Extra Fine Merino Wool DK which is a gorgeous soft yarn.  I would usually avoid wool because I’ve found it irritates my skin, but this yarn is so soft – hopefully it will feel good to wear too!

I’m using this Drops pattern, which I’ve pinned to my Knit and Crochet board on Pinterest along with other knitting and crochet patterns and tutorials…

Follow Hazel's board Knit and Crochet on Pinterest.

Other things…

A few months ago I wrote about trialling Adobe Illustrator and wanting to try Serif’s DrawPlus X8, well I now have the full DrawPlus program and have been really happy with it so far.  Learning how to do new things is so exciting and satisfying too – there were a few things I wanted to be able to do with DrawPlus but I wasn’t sure if I could.  It doesn’t work in exactly the same way as Illustrator but I have worked out how to convert my scanned line drawings to vectors and draw scalloped circles!

Well, I think that’s about it for August!  August was a bit of a disrupted month work wise, but I'm starting to get back into a more normal routine again now it's September, so hopefully you'll soon be seeing more new designs and craft projects / tutorials I have planned to do on my blog.

July Review

July started off well for me but ended with an unplanned (and very much unwanted) break when I came down with the flu.  After a couple of weeks of doing nothing at all, things are slowly starting to return to normal this week.  It’s taking me a while to get my brain back into gear so this month’s review will be particularly helpful in reminding myself of all the things I was working on before I got sick and I hope you find it interesting too!

New designs…

I worked on several new designs in July which unfortunately I can’t share with you yet, although I did design a new set of Lavender flower themed scrapbooking papers (which you can see in my shop here).  If you follow me on facebook you will have already seen a picture from my sketchbook when I started designing these papers.

I also created some new surface pattern designs for Spoonflower, to coordinate with my existing fabric designs.  I  received the sample swatches last week and am in the process of making the new designs available to buy from my Spoonflower shop as fabric, gift wrap and wallpaper.

I added a new colour way of the ditsy sheep design with a lemon yellow background and 2 coordinating flower and spotty patterns…

These designs are part of my Rabbits collection…

I also designed a star pattern to coordinate with my Rocket in Space design, a snowflake design (which would be great for Christmas projects!) and a new blue flower pattern…

These cloud designs were created to go with my hot air balloon collection. I also decided to add a new fish pattern as my existing fishing flies design has been quite popular…

Blog…

In July I shared some ideas for teacher gifts, I was able to reveal the secret project I had been working on for 3 Picnic DIY Ideas and I posted a colour palette inspired by a photograph of a beetle I found in my garden.  Hopefully August will run a little smoother than July and I will be able to share more of the craft projects and tutorials I have been planning to do.

Other Work...

July was a time for catching up on admin and taxes, not very exciting but it had to be done!  I also decided to make a few changes to the design of my pages online - I changed the background to my blog from a basic chevron pattern to a hand drawn floral pattern (hope you like it!) - I thought it reflected my work a bit more, being hand drawn, and was more interesting than the old pattern.  I also tweaked things like my cover photo and profile image on facebook and the banner in my Etsy shop.  I'll probably continue making a few more changes to things in August.

Other things…

At the start of July we had 2 gorgeous new additions to our house – these cute guinea pigs! :)  The one on the left is called Lily and the one on the right is Rosie.  We soon noticed they have different characters – Rosie is the shy one while Lily is bolder and more curious.  Lily is also a lot more lively and wriggly, whereas Rosie is quite happy to sit still while you hold her.  They haven’t squeaked much yet, although they do get very excited especially when they get new hay – it’s funny watching them popcorn and dashing about!

June Review

As the year goes by I’m sure the months are passing faster - I can’t believe it is July already!  I spent a lot of June working on an exciting project which I was hoping I would be able to share with you by now, but unfortunately you will have to wait a little longer to find out what I have been up to.  Working on secret projects is one of the reasons why I failed to blog during June, but I have been planning more posts for the next few weeks.  Although I can’t show you everything I have been doing, here are some of the things I can tell you about…

New designs…

The summer weather and thoughts of picnics outside inspired the beginnings of a new collection of printables; so far I have created a set of scrapbooking papers, invitation and set of straw flags.  You can see the ‘Summer Garden’ collection in my shop here.

I have added some new printable recipe cards to my Rule Britannia collection, the set contains 2 designs (one with a corgi and the other with a crown) plus a design with extra lines for printing on the backs.  They’re the first recipe cards I have designed but I am sure I will be making some more soon.  What do you think of them – are recipe cards something you like to use?

Social Media

I’m determined to learn how to use social media better, I think my main problem is I get stuck for something to say and end up being so inconsistent.  Goal 1 is to update things more regularly!  I’ve been pinning useful tips and articles to this board on Pinterest.  I have also been working my way through my Pinterest boards; updating cover photos, pinning new things and checking that all my boards have proper titles / descriptions.  Do you have any business tips for using social media?  Or just personally, what are your favourite social media sites? What do you like to see on them?

It’s a fairly short review this month, so I’ll end it with 5 of my favourite things from June…

• Strawberries picked from the garden (over 1kg so far and the biggest was 30g!)

• Blue skies and long hours of daylight
• Picking fresh herbs like basil which I have grown to use in salads and cooking
• Planting marigolds in my garden - I love the smell of marigolds too.  Is that weird? I hear lots of people hate the smell!
• Seeing adorable baby birds – like this family of partridges...

What were your favourite things in June?

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.

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…

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

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