Picture Catch Up #1

Over the past few weeks I've been frantically crafting and sewing ready for the start of term on Monday. This project is based on Mexico so I've been drawing inspiration from Mexican parties, plants, artists, food and crafts so I've been doing lots of colourful embroidery and applique as well as lots of illustration and pattern ideas.

Here's some pictures from my sketch book work, I'll be posting a pattern for my Pinata cross stitch later in the week.

Don't forget to enter my Kelsea Echo Giveaway for your chance to win a $40 gift card for her shop!

Back to regular posting!

I have just moved house and been without internet for what seems like a year (realistically, it's probably only been about two weeks). But I'm finally back on the internet and can catch up on some of my fav blogs and Etsy shops!

I've had a busy few weeks which included; a trip back to my mum's to see my animals and my fav notherners, lots of comedy, fun and friends at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, then returning to London to move house!

We have moved to West London after living in East London for a year, and so far this new house feels so much more like home than the last two! We have a big garden so I'm looking forward to planting some fruit and veg for next year.

Here are some pics from the past couple of weeks:

P.S: how awesome are these pencil socks from topman

PonyChops meets Cheryl Cobb

I've been meaning to share this picture with you for a while now. I got the most amazing present from one of my fav human beings, Wensdi, for Christmas. Wensdi is an illustrator with a mischievous imagination, you might remember her work from this post.

Recently Wensdi created a character called Cheryl Cobb, a creepy but well meaning little boy who just wants some friends to play with! For my present, Wensdi gave me a framed illustration of me meeting Cheryl and his dead cat friend - Mr Soot. Don't worry, I won't be taking any shoe design advice from Cheryl - I think he took "cat shoes" a little too literally.

This is one of my fav presents I've ever received. Wensdi even drew tiny bears on my shoes (like the first ever set of shoes I painted!).

You can follow Cheryl's adventures on his blog or on his facebook page

What's in my bag? Edinburgh Fringe edition.

I see lots of other bloggers post "what's in my bag?" posts, and I've always wanted to do one, but my bag is almost always full of receipts, pens and random flyers I pick up intending to read that just end up staying in my handbag for a year or more.

Last week I visited Edinburgh for Fringe festival, and it was probably the most organised my handbag has been for a long time!

Here's my essentials for a visit to Edinburgh Fringe:
1. A camera or phone! - Edinburgh is one of the most beautiful cities on earth, you'll need a camera to take pictures of it's beauty (and of the fun and odd things you'll get to see at Fringe).
2. I always bring my business cards with me, at a creative festival you never know who you'll strike up a conversation with.
3. An umbrella &/ or a rain mac (the mac is from Primark) - when you're in Scotland (or most of the UK in fact), pack for rain. Don't forget your sunglasses for when the rain disapears though!
4. B.B Cream with SPF (this one is from Superdrug) - After a late night, I really can't be bothered putting much foundation on, BB cream is great for a quick perk up for your skin.
5. A notebook - Edinburgh is so inspiring, I need somewhere to doodle new ideas for shoes and illustrations.
6. Chocolate!! - You'll be doing a lot of walking in Edinburgh. I'm not saying chocolate is the best source of energy, but it's my fav one!

For those of you who don't know much about Edinburgh Fringe, it's a comedy and arts festival that takes over Edinburgh for 25 days each summer. This is my second year going to Fringe and it's safe to say that it won't be my last.

This year we saw some fantastic comedians; Stewart Lee, Rich Hall, Paul Foot and David O'Doherty were my absolute favs. We even found a pub, The Auld Hoose, that served vegan cooked breakfast, including vegan haggis, it was amazing. And to top it off they have a metal jukebox so we got to listen to Rammstein and Mudvayne while we ate our breakfast.

Picnic in the Park - Our Vegan summer picnic!

On Saturday my local park, Avenham Park, hosted a big Picnic in the Park event. Preston Vegan Society thought this would be a great opportunity to get to know each other and share lots of yummy vegan food.

I don't know many local vegans, and had never met most of this group before, so it was really good to meet lots of like minded people and have a day of chatting and eating delicious food in the sunshine by the river.

Everyone bought their own food to share out. I made my chocolate chip cookies and a mint, split peas and quinoa salad (recipe to come if I actually remember what the eff I put in it!). There were so many amazing foods on offer; chocolate strawberry cheesecake, lemon poppy seed muffins, chai cheesecake, bakewell tart and vegusto sandwiches to name a few! We all agreed it was very surreal to be able to eat whatever we wanted without asking the ingredients.

I had such a fantastic day meeting new people, trading recipes and scoffing. And I hope we have many more events in the future!

Sunny Days and a Giveaway winner!

I've been a little absent from the blog over the past few days. There's a good reason for it though I promise! I've been out enjoying the sunshine!

Where I live in the North West of England we very rarely see a blue sky or warm weather. In fact, the weather in my particular village is so dreary that in the second world war they decided to build a bomb factory here so the cloudy skies could protect it from being seen by planes. I don't know how factual that is, my driving instructor told me about it, but it makes sense to me.

Over the past couple of weeks we have had beautiful, warm, sunny weather. So I've been trying to make the most of it.

I'm so lucky that I live about an hours drive from The Lake District, one of the most beautiful places in the UK. Last weekend I drove up to Grasmere to meet a friend who lives near by. We decided to hike up to Easedale Tarn which was an absolutely stunning walk. There were great views all the way up as we followed the path of a waterfall. We even found a little pool to have a swim in and escape from the heat. When we got to the top we were greeted by a big tarn and even more beautiful views. It was bliss.

Later on in the week I travelled down south to visit my gran for a few days. My gran lives near lots of beautiful countryside too, so I spent lots of time relaxing, strawberry picking and even got to go to a buddhist temple that served yummy vegan food!

And, it's time to announce the winner of my Betty Turbo Giveaway! Congratulations to Tamara! 

My Dr Martens & Uni interviews - An update!

Earlier in the year I announced my plans to return to University and study shoe design at London College of Fashion. I also applied for a years internship in the Made in England factory at Dr Martens.

I originally didn't get the Dr Martens job, so I accepted my university offer at LCF which I am incredibly excited about! So for the past couple of months I've been pretty sure about where my life is headed, and been excitedly making plans to move to London in September.

Last week I got a phone call that is probably going to stick in my head and torment me for a long time! Dr Martens phoned me and offered me the internship. I think someone must have had to leave and I was their next in line for the job. I was stunned, I'd dreamt about having that job for months! Working for Dr Martens would be such an amazing opportunity.

My automatic reaction was to turn it down (literally 2 seconds after I said no I was like "WTF did I do that for??"). I had an encouraging phone call with the lady from Dr Martens, who assured me that I would be able to apply for a design internship there in my third year at LCF, which would be freakin ideal, and actually my dream job! I feel a little less uneasy about turning down the factory internship now. I still REAALLY hope I get to work with Dr Martens in the future, I'm such a big fan of their brand, and I'd love to get expanding their vegan range ;)

Phew, If you just read through all that you probably deserve some pictures. Here's the shoes I designed & painted for my Dr Martens and uni interviews.

A New Years Post (finally!)

After a few days of catching up on my blog reading list I feel like I'm finally back in the blogging world again! Happy New Year everyone!! I hope 2013 brings lots of inspiration and success to my lovely readers.

My Christmas and New Year have been full of friends, family, food, and most importantly dogs and cats! I've been awful at taking pictures this year, there's not even one of our tree! Next year I WILL be more organised.

2013 appears to be off to a good start. Yesterday I signed in to my severely neglected Deviant Art account, only to find some of my Christmas Matryoshka had been chosen to be a Daily Deviation! I couldn't stop smiling for the rest of the day.

I also have a few really fun custom orders I'm working on right now, the new year seems to have brought me lots of inspiration and enthusiasm for my work!

Here are my 2013 goals:

• Sort my health out (last year I was diagnosed with a chronic illness that's limited me a bit more than I would like, this year I'm determined it's not going to get in the way! No more waiting to feel better, I need to just get on with life.)
• Start a range of Christmas cards and do at least 1 Christmas fair
• Work on my own illustration projects
• Give myself weekends off
• Take the dogs on longer walks
• Read my Game of Thrones books
• Go down to London for shoe making classes (eeeeek I'm so excited about this one!!)
• Start a new business (this is all a little hush hush at the moment, I will tell you all about it by the end of the year hopefully, if all goes to plan!)
• Visit my Gran more

I think they're all pretty achievable. The new business is going to be a big and time consuming plan! But I think I have a really original idea, I just need to get my ideas organised into an understandable statement instead of leaving them bouncing about my head or on little memos in my phone.

I'll leave you all with a WIP screen shot. I've been playing about with some more material patterns, I love the little grey cats next to baby blue. This is in no way a finished pattern though!

Instagram Catch up

I've been a bit of a homebody lately due to feeling ridiculously achey, so I've mainly been taking instagram pictures of Tofu as usual.

Here are my semi productive instagram pictures:

1&2. I've been working on some Justin Bieber shoes for a lovely Canadian music presenter. I'm hoping she'll get to wear them for interviewing Justin next month!

3. My favorite vintage poodle brooch, this picture was taken about 30 mins before I lost it on the way to my friends house. I'm so sad! I don't think I'll ever find such a perfect brooch again.

4. One of my besties came home from Australia, so a few off us had a surprise party. We all dressed as him in geek glasses, flat caps and funny knitwear.

5. I Love NP sent me some beautiful glitter nail polishes! I've been trying them out all week and I can't wait to show you guys how beautiful they are!

6. A sneak peak of some mermaids I've been working on. I'm planning to do customised mermaids in the shop where I can paint them to look like the customer.

7. Ginge's dog bob giving me kisses, isn't he adorable!!!

8. I got to steal this foxy brooch off Ginge at Chopstitch for an outfit post. She's going to be selling them soon!

9. Wensdi from Wensdimade showing off one of her half finished crocheted bears.

10. I modelled a few of Wensdi's hand knitted scarves, I love this little polar bear dude, he's so warm and snuggly!

What I Wore #4 - Deer and the Bear Dog

Apologies for the bad lighting and awful pose. It's been a bit gloomy here in the North of England lately, so not ideal for taking photos. And Effy kept trying to put her head up my dress for the photos, hence the bad pose. That dog needs to learn some photo manners ha! She's such a gross little scruffpot.

Cardigan: Upper 5th for Topshop

Dress: Lavish Alice

Shoes: Matalan

Leggings: H&M

Bag: Miss Selfridge

Brooch: Gusosos

Instagram Update

This is mainly a post with about 100 pictures of stupid dogs and cats haha, but that's pretty much been my life lately. I can't complain, a day spent with braindead Effy is always a fun one (and I mean braindead in the nicest of ways, she makes up for her stupidity in love and enthusiasm).

Tofu has settled in nicely, he still refuses to make friends with the dogs though so I've been taking them out for extra plays to make up for the fact that they get hissed at by Tofu lots. The grey cat is my boyfriend's cat Mojo, he's the coolest dude ever.

I've been trying to make more time to draw, for some reason I've been drawing lots of happy shorts lately. I don't know why.

This Friday I got to meet Paul foot! He's one of mine and Ash's favorite comedians. He let us lift him up and pretend he was our child. I hope when I have children they're as funny and silly as Mr. Foot.

Update time

This week has been a pretty busy and emotional week.

Other than that, I've had a ton of orders! Which is very exciting. So I've been working none stop. Here are some of my works in progress:

On Friday me and Ash went to see Frisky and Mannish in Lancaster with a couple of our friends. For those of you who don't know who Frisky and mannish are, you need to find them on YouTube. They're a comedic musical duo and they're absolutely hilarious, even my boyfriend who is a comedy snob thinks they're amazing.
I didn't get any pictures but here's a picture of Frisky and Mannish looking fabulous:

Saturday and Sunday were full of tears and goodbyes as I said farewell to one of my best friends who's moving to New Zealand. And on Sunday we drove Ash's little sister down to London for her first year of Uni. Life is gonna seem so strange without seeing those girls on a regular basis!

Here's some Effy love! She's such a baby. She's spent most of the week following me around the house watching me.

I also dyed my hair purple! And realised I'm a bit of a hair dye hoarder. I can't wait for the purple to fade and go all lilacy.

 And here's some cool tops I bought that I forgot to show you:

The cat one is from ebay & the bunny one is from Asda.

Instagram time

I've had lots going on the past few weeks! And as usual I've forgotten to take photos of most of it.
Here's the photos I did take:

I returned from New York to the usual North of England greeting, rain, rain and lots more rain.

Tidying my studio, I love it when everything is colour coordinated & I love my owl mugs, they're perfect for storing paint brushes and water for painting.

Presents and a silly pug card that I decorated for Ginge's birthday.

I bought these figurines that I'd seen in New York on ebay for half the price. I like them because Ash likes bacon and I like tofu.

Lots of Work in progress.