Treasury Feature: The Birds

Here's a new Etsy treasury my 'Storytelling of Crows 2' ACEO has been featured in.

Titled 'The Birds', it's full of atmospheric pictures of stormy skies and flocks of crows. You can see the treasury in full here. :)

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.

Moo samples

A couple of weeks ago I sent off for a free pack of 10 business cards from Moo. I had each card printed with a different image and uploaded my own design for the backs (as they were free they also had the moo logo across the bottom). I tried the Moo Green card - 100% recycled, 350gsm. I was very pleased with the print quality and how quickly they arrived!


I've also been thinking of having some greetings cards printed with my work on, so have been doing a bit of research. I found Tesco photo printing to be the cheapest, so sent off for 4 cards to see what they were like. Although I was pleased with the quality of the print (and they arrived quickly) I did feel like you get what you pay for as the cards seemed very thin and I could only choose one image per set of cards.
Although Moo isn't the cheapest place, I was impressed with the quality of their cards and the ability of printing many different designs. So I contacted them to see if they could send me a sample card before I decided to order... and I received this exciting package a couple of days ago!

Inside were samples of greetings cards, postcards, business cards, mini moo cards and stickers :D

So very soon I am planning of having a set of greetings cards printed and maybe some stickers too!

I thought I'd do a little market research, I've just got a couple of questions:

What sort of things would you be interested in buying with my work on - postcards/ greetings cards/ stickers? - and would you prefer to buy sets or individually?

What illustrations would you like to see printed - Hexley work/ animals..?

Any feedback would be welcome! Thank you :)

Sunshine Blog Awards

A while ago I was awarded a Sunshine Blog Award by Nat of 'Tales from Nats Nest'. Thank you Nat for the award - it's really nice to know that my blog is appreciated :) I'm sorry for taking so long to post this, there are so many great blogs to read it's taken me a while to decide which 12 to nominate to pass the award on!

Here are the rules for accepting the award:

Sunshine Award Rules

The Sunshine Award is awarded to bloggers whose positivity & creativity inspires others in the blog world.

To accept the award:

Place this award on your blog or in a post

Pass the award on to 12 bloggers

Link the nominees within the post

Let the nominees know they have received the award by commenting on their blog

Share the love and link to the person from whom you received the award.

Here are the blogs I have chosen to nominate (in no particular order), they are just a few of the blogs I follow and enjoy reading - I hope you enjoy taking a look at them too!

1) Cabin and Cub

2) The Ardent Sparrow

3) Ponder and Stitch

4) Nakisha is Blue Dog Rose

5) Brandi Girl

6) Gooseberrymoon

7) Little Kitten

8) My Lazy Apples

9) Purple Sparkle Crafts

10) Charlotte Hupfield Ceramics

11) Quite Contrary Crafts

12) I Love Handmade

Rabbit ACEOs No.32-37

A new set of rabbit ACEOs! All drawn in pen and pencil and painted in watercolours these were great fun to make :)

These are all part of my series started this year and are numbers 32 to 37.

I've started adding these original ACEOs to my Etsy shop, so if you don't see them there yet they should be soon.

Treasury East

Just discovered Etsy's new Treasury East today so thought I'd have a go at making a treasury since it's been so long since my last one! With treasury East there's no waiting for hours to catch a slot and I like the new layout. Not sure how it will work in the long run if there are no expiry dates - but it's still in testing so I'll have to see how it goes!

My new treasury started by picking a couple of favourite items and I noticed the peach theme so filled the rest of the treasury with similar colours. Click here to see the treasury in full and some of the great items by Etsy artists! :)

Treasury feature

If you're a dog lover then you'll like this Etsy treasury! It features dog art chosen by funretro and includes my golden retriever ACEO :) You can see the treasury here until 18th April.