2 images I hadn't got round to posting from the Giraffe zine I made mum for her birthday.

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Christmas

I had a rather hectic few weeks before Christmas (I'm sure I'm not the only one!) and so have taken some time off over Christmas and feel like today is the day I will start to do things again.
Taking time off over Christmas was lovely, I got given some really nice presents and had some really nice food and we went to stay at mum and dad's on Boxing Day which was really relaxing.

I no longer work at the cinema! I am now just self employed. Scary but in a motivating kind of way. Realistically I know that I will almost definitely need part time jobs here and there in the not to distant future but that job just wasn't working with my art so I needed to get out of it to concentrate on my art and properly get started on it.

I'm really looking forward to finally getting my illustration work out there and putting even more effort into the shop too.

New year new start and all that, only a few days now!

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Mum's Birthday

Lots of fog.
A pile of lions.
My mum's adopted giraffe (her gift from my brother).

For her birthday my mum wanted to go to the zoo.
You might think that the zoo in December is a silly idea but you'd be wrong. I think it was the best zoo day I've ever had. We got to see quite a few animals that we never normally get to see, there were practically no people about and some of the animals were not only visible but being amazing.
A chimp came straight over to mum and just sat there looking at her for a while, the lions were in a massive sleepy pile on the other side of the glass, a sloth bear came over to us and tried sucking us up with his tubey termite eating mouth through the glass, the wolves were all lounging around on the close side of their enclosure, we saw the wolverines really close, there was a tiny little baby elephant that was only born in april and another not quite as little but still little elephant that was born last year and loads of other animaly goodness. It was an awesome day.

There are a few more photos on my flickr.
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Website

I am in the midst of playing with my website again.
A few weeks and it'll hopefully be just how I'd like it.

And then the playing with self promotion starts.
I'm rather looking forward to making little packages of illustration and sending them out :)

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Charlie

You might not be able to tell but Charlie is a white dog. He is also a bit naughty and has got himself all covered in mud, hence being in the bath.
He's not really too pleased that his hard afternoons work is about to get washed away but I'm sure he'll have fun putting it right again.

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Prints

I just added some prints to my Etsy.
Go see :)

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Sketchbook

Some scanned sketchbook pages.
We went to the Alternative Press Fair yesterday, it's got me itching to get started on my next zine.

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Birthday

William had a birthday yesterday.

The tea lights instead of cake candles was clearly planned and not just a last minute idea because I thought we had cake candles but didn't. Ahem.

But at least it looked really pretty!

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Hatfield House

We went to the Christmas Frost Fair at Hatfield House on Friday.
Everything was oh so lovely. If I had any money I would have spent it all.









It was really quite foggy when we left. All the trees looked really spooky.
There are a few more photos on my flickr.

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Russell

Russell the Meerkat loves nothing more than taking a day off from keeping watch at home and trying to make his sled go as fast as possible.

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Digby

This is Digby and he is about to head off on his first ride on his brand new trike that he has just been gifted with.
He's rather pleased with it.

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Quote of the Week

"Without Van Halen, none of this would exist"
-Man in music shop

It hadn't been the best week but then I had a lovely day with Will and yesterday I went to the Post Office and we went to see 'The Kids Are Alright' which I highly recommend.

Now I shall draw.

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Zine

My very first 'zine is now available in my shop.
I'm really proud of it so I hope you'll like it too.

I've recently seen in a few different places people complaining about the 'quality' of 'zines they're bought so I thought I'd just share my views on the matter.
Obviously that's quite vague so I don't know for sure what in particular they mean by 'quality' but I've had the feeling they're, at least in part, talking about the quality of the printing and/or the paper. So I just wanted to get it out there that as far as I'm concerned 'zines are meant to be made cheaply, not necessarily sent off to fancy printers to be printed on fancy paper (although I see nothing wrong with that either) but I would never be disappointed with a 'zine that had simply been photocopied from the original drawing, folded in half and stapled together. That's the beauty of them, anyone that has something to share can share it by making a zine without the worry of printers costs.
My 'zine is printed on my basic home printer on regular white printer paper.
I suppose I wanted to say this just to be sure people knew what they were getting, a nice simple homemade 'zine, put together and printed by me with care.
I hope no one buys it expecting a professional quality magazine and is then disappointed that they've got something different and end up classing it as bad quality. I guess my point is, there's nothing wrong with sending things off to the printer and making a fancy 'zine but there is also nothing wrong with photocopying it onto cheap paper but I personally think if you purchase a 'zine it's best to expect 'low quality' printing and paper and see the beauty in those things rather than expect a glossy magazine and then be disappointed.


In slightly more coherent words from zinewiki.com:
A zine - pronounced zeen - derived from magazine - is an independently- or self-published booklet, often created by a single person. Zines are customarily created by physically cutting and gluing text and images together onto a master flat for photocopying, but it is also common to produce the master by typing and formatting pages on a computer. The end product is usually folded and stapled. Zines can be printed and bound in any manner. Offset printing is a relatively common alternative to photocopying, though there is some controversy among zine writers as to whether professionally printed products may be defined as zines.


So there you have it, some people think photocopied 'zines are bad quality and are disappointed by them while hardcore 'zine geeks are out there complaining about 'zines that aren't photocopied.

Each to their own.

I hope you get your hands on a copy of my 'zine and I hope you like it.

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Halloween

During the afternoon I turned this...


into this...

My first time cooking with a pumpkin and my first pie.



During the evening I waited for Will to get home from work then during the night we ate food and watched spooky films.





As much as I love Halloween I can't help but now feel a little sad that it's already November.
I have so much I want to get done by the end of the year and all of a sudden it's passing by really quickly.

Time to really get on with stuff.

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Autumn

Yesterday was pretty.

Look what they found in the tube!

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Fingerless Mittens

New in the shop.

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We went to the library yesterday. They've got rid of the desk where you get your books issued and replaced it with self service machines. I liked that they still used real people and that your books got the due date stamped in the front.
Oh well.

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Dinosaur

I was sorting through sequins and this little fellow appeared. Isn't he awesome?

It's been shockingly warm today but now the sun is going down and it's getting rather chilly, hello slippers.

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Old Hatfield

We went for a walk yesterday to post a letter and went up round Old Hatfield for a wander.













It's a shame the rest of Hatfield is so grotty, it's really nice in this one tiny part. Makes you remember you're in Hertfordshire.
I made those fingerless mittens out of my head, no pattern. I was so proud of myself :)
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The C Word

Today I took what felt like a million photos of my Christmas cards and Christmas gift tags which are now in the shop.
It feels too early for me to be doing Christmas related things but I figure some people like to sort out Christmas early and some people might want my Christmas things that live far away and the post can take a while. Basically I put my business head on and thought that October was as good a time as any to put my Christmas stuff out there.

I hope you like it.

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British Museum and The General

Will and I went into London early(ish) to get tickets for a showing of The General with live piano score later that night and then had to find things to do for the day. So we went and found the British Museum. I've never been before, it was amazing.

We saw Mexican things

(real human skull under there)


Ancient Greek things




Ancient Egyptian things

(the oldest thing we found, 2500 BC!!)


(Will made a new friend)

And the scariest Chinese thing I've ever seen.




The General was amazing. I fell in love with Buster Keaton, he was a genius. It was the funniest film I think I've ever seen. I didn't stop grinning the whole time and for quite a while after.
I'm kind of sad that I probably won't be able to see it like that again. But we're definately going to go see Nosferatu next month.
It's also the first time I've been in the Prince Charles Cinema. I fell in love with that too.

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