Fan Art Friday ~ Tomoyo-chan

I finished reading Cardcaptor Sakura this past week and oh my gosh I loved it so much. It's just so adorable and beautiful and I got totally sucked in and attached to everyone. So I wanted to use it for my fan art friday and I chose Tomoyo because she's just adorable and so sensible and kind and excited and I love her. We need more characters that realise just because you love someone doesn't mean they'll love you back. The idea that you can wear someone down until eventually they realise they actually do like you is just stupid and makes people in real life think stupid things, like being able to make someone fancy you if you just try hard enough is a real thing. It's not. Anyway, I love her.



I'm trying to not be too down on this drawing, I got too worked up before hand (drawing characters gets me stressed because people already have an idea of what it 'should' look like and it was a fancy new sketchbook and it was fancy new pens) and I can see how tense and worried I was in the drawing. But I recently spent some money on a better quality sketchbook and some more markers and really wanted to try them out so I ploughed through anyway. It's not the ideal colours I would have chosen because I wanted to use it as practise with my markers and so I had to just use what I had colour wise but I think in the end it didn't turn out too badly.

The new sketchbook I got was a moleskine sketchbook. I've never been keen on moleskine because I prefer white paper (I actually wanted to try a Leuchtturm sketchbook because they apparently have white paper but went with the cheaper option for now) but this isn't at all as yellow as I was expecting and the markers look really nice on it. The new markers I got were a pastel pack of winsor and newton brushmarkers. Again I basically went for the cheaper out of the decent options I had found for markers. I need to practise a lot more with them though, I haven't got a good feel for them yet and keep bending the brush more than I need and going out of the lines which would be fine if it was intentional lol. Practise practise practise. I just need to use them enough that they don't feel fancy anymore and then I'll be able to do more relaxed work with them which always works out better.

You can tell I'm stressed about this drawing today because I ramble on trying to justify it for ages. Nevermind ^_^

InstaSnapLineStoryChat #7

Shiny Pens and Bare Branches

Last year I think I got distracted and a little lost in various ways but also realised/figured a lot of things out about myself. I won't ramble on about it. One thing I've spent time thinking about though... coming back to photos and the blog with my more settled brain feels gooooood.




I think I'll carry on making little update posts that are a bit of everything over the last however many days rather than trying to curate particular topics into a post. Not that I was even managing that but I think having some sort of 'proper' blog with topics and series' and stuff was in my brain and it didn't work out. I'm going to just relax from now on and do what feels comfy. And not in a boring never try anything way just in a comfy is awesome kind of way. If I have a random collection of thoughts and pictures I can lump them together or not and if I have one big thing to share it can have it's own post or not.
I'm just not going to fret about it anymore because that's a waste of energy and takes all the fun out of things.




Trying out some eyeliners, I fancy drawing some colour onto my face. I accidentally scared Snickers and he decided to run up and 'hide' in the corner. He was fine when he realised it was me.
On Wednesday last week I got a new tattoo. It's kind of half of a tattoo but they're separate but anyway it's the first piece or whatever of my Tank Girl tattoo. My arm wouldn't like the stencil for the second piece because my skin gets real angry real quick but on Wednesday yesterday we got it done. Turns out it was just a tough stencil and an awkward arm but we got there in the end. I'm super pleased with them, even in this fresh sore state. Seek out Will for all your tattoo needs, he's awesome and friendly ^_^  (I hear a lot of stories of people having to sit through sessions with tattoo artists telling various sexist stories/making homophobic remarks. Will isn't a twat and mostly talks about dinosaurs or tsum tsums. Being a tattoo artist seems to attract twats, watch out for and try to avoid them, stay safe and don't give bigots your money ^_^)




I've been really into drawing flowers lately I want it to be second nature. I bought some glittery gel pens to use in my art journal but I'm actually having a lot of fun drawing with them in my sketchbook too.
I think because I got really into filming last year I let taking photos slide a bit and in the end it made me sad. Now that I'm taking photos again I don't want to let filming slide so thought I'd do the same thing with video clips as I'm doing with photos during the week and stick them all together and plonk them riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight here

December Wrap Up

I thought it'd be nice to share the Christmas presents I was given that give me a chance to promote an individual/small business type of thing. I couldn't figure how to word that better when I recorded the video either but I'm sure you know what I mean ^_^

Not featured in the video is this Tofu Cute snacks lucky bag I was also fortunate enough to be given. I was saving it till after all the Christmas food was gone, then I got a stinker of a cold and couldn't taste anything but that's on it's way out now so I'm really looking forward to trying all these new (to me) snacks and then sticking all the beautiful packaging in my journal.

Here's the links I added to the youtube description:
Totoro stickers came from this Etsy shop. I was also given some Totoro washi tape from this same shop, it's wonderful.
My leggings are here. The streamer pattern is available on all sorts of other products too ^_^
Sacred Heart by Liz Suburbia and Liz's website
Nimona by Noelle Stevenson. Since recording this video I have read this and it's instantly one of my favourite comics, she's an amazing writer. Her website.
Jumper is in this Etsy shop.

The Past Week Or So

I got some patches back in the shop and I also made my December zine. I've made one of these scrappy little zines every month since July now so I also put up a 6 month pack because I thought that was kinda cute.





We had to walk to the doctors/chemist which is pretty stressful because they have stupid ways of doing things and I also had a cold and was feeling grotty (the cold isn't why I was there, just a lovely coincidence) but at least the weather was good. Cold and clear, just how I like it.



It's a stressful time of year because how little money I'm making is in stark contrast to the pre-christmas rush but at least I have still had a few orders to wrap. I can look at this picture and remind myself to just take a breath and keep working hard. I finally spent some time sitting at my desk to draw again which is one of my favourite things to do ^_^





It snowed! Very briefly, a little bit, then melted. But it was pretty none the less. I know in reality I wouldn't want to cope with the problems a lot of snow can bring but it's so pretty, I love watching the snow and I like walking around in it while it's fresh. We get hardly any here so I guess it's still a novelty.



New octopus', I thought it'd be fun to do some sort of colour block with the tentacles and the head. The fact I haven't tried it before is kind of dumb because it turned out really nice. I feel like I'd discounted it ages ago, thinking there wasn't a good point to change the colours over but obviously I was wrong lol.
I was home alone the other day and I heard keys in the door and thought 'that isn't Will's key noise' so I had a look and there was a man at the door trying to get in and I was all ready to be mad at some sort of un-notified landlord visit and went and angry opened the door but what was actually there was some random guy that had the wrong house being embarrassed and quickly leaving. It was a pretty non-event but afterwards I was a little wibbly armed because I don't cope well with any contact with people let alone something so weird. Will surprised me by bringing home cakes to make me feel better and they had rings on the top! I have adult fingers and these are wrongly *cough* aimed at children so Will heated the ring piece with a hairdryer and stretched them out for me. They're so cool!!

Art Journal Flip Through ~ December 2016

At the start of the month I was very busy and felt like my art journal was lacking because of it but already I look back at those pages and think better of them than I did at the time. I'm just glad to be doing it. Plus the month ends with the Christmas pages so it makes up for it. I gave up on trying to do individual days over Christmas and just stuck in a weeks worth of stuff over the right number of pages, letting the days all blur together kinda like they did off the page ^_^

Fan Art Friday ~ Smashley Simpson

There's a group of films on our dvd shelf that are probably my favourites even though they wouldn't necessarily come to mind if someone asked but they should (and will from now on), screw having a 'proper' favourite film. I have no time for that. They're my go tos when I just want to watch something that I know I enjoy and will make me feel better and/or inspired for watching it. Whip It is one of those films and I re-watched it for the first time in a while the other day and it was just as cool as remembered. It always makes me want to get some skates but I don't know that I actually have anywhere to skate so I never do. I mean we have a derby team but I'm too much of a wimp to actually block people, plus the non wimp reason that I can't fuck up my wrists, they're my job. I should get some skates though, I used to love just skating about when I was younger and the idea of doing it again gets me all excited.

InstaSnapLineStoryChat #6

Christmas 2016

Yesterday was twelfth night so I hope it's not bad luck to share Christmas photos today. I imagine most people aren't interested in anything Christmas by now but I felt a bit sad when I took the decorations down yesterday and going through my photos and videos is like a nice, gentle, last little nudge back to non festive life. Plus I'm slow at blogging lately and I didn't get around to doing this any earlier >_<






These first photos were the week before Christmas. Pinhead always gets festive and we always have a day out for festive drinks and to get some sort of joint gifts. We do this instead of buying each other presents and it's much more fun. Glittery marshmallows!!







The light tunnel was really pretty. I did vlogmas all through December so our festive treat day got it's own video, you can see the light tunnel do it's thing.






Christmas morning. Will has pretty much looked like this since he opened that present. He loves his grumpy Stitch so much.



Spreads made of leftovers and various lovely Christmas foods are pretty high on my list of favourite things about Christmas.





Our first year with a nutcracker and oh my gosh is there something satisfying about cracking a nut. Plus nuts are good for you so it totally balances out all the vitamins you're not getting from chocolates, maybe?
I strung together all my bits of video too. Again, it's more of one for us to look back at rather than a video made for sharing but I like it ^_^



Anyway, back to normal now. Kinda sad, kinda exciting. I love starting a new year and this one is nice and relaxed and productive so far. I hope the new year is treating you good too ^_^

Boomerang 2016

Boomerang is one of my favourite apps but there isn't really a lot you can actually do with those little 4 second videos. I thought stringing them all together would be a good way of keeping them to watch later and seeing as we're at the start of a new year I figured now was the time to organise them. I enjoyed watching the video when I put it together so I'm sure when I come across it again at some point it'll be just as fun. It's mostly me, Bernard and Snickers. Boomerangs seem to be the most 'authentic' way of capturing Snickers, how he moves is just as erratic when seen with your eyes lol.



I still feel weird putting videos online generally but this one I especially think "it's not going to interest anyone else, people are going to think I'm stupid for putting it up" but as ever I've done it for myself, adding things to places like youtube and here make it easier for me to look through, and if you want to have a look too I hope you like it but if not then that's fine. It always amazes me how much time people spend looking at things they don't like >-<