I had a search through my most recent sketchbooks and marked all the drawings I thought were worth working up into final designs and I've been working my way through, adding them to my redbubble and society6 shops. These are the first few I've got done. There's a lot more for me to work through too, sometimes drawing in my sketchbook doesn't feel like doing work but it ends up being super useful.
I watched this video by ummmheather about how she makes her pins and I'm really keen to give it a go myself. I've tried shrink plastic before ages ago but couldn't find a varnish that worked out and then never bothered trying the inkjet printable stuff but that Dimensional Magic does look pretty magic. I have a few designs kicking about that I think would look really good as a badge so once I've gathered all the supplies together I'll be sitting in front of my oven being amazed by shrink plastic all over again.
Speaking of sitting in front of the oven, it broke last night .｡･ﾟﾟ･(＞_＜)･ﾟﾟ･｡. so now would actually be a great time to buy something from me. The washing machine is making a weird plastic-y burn smell when it's on too so help me have functioning kitchen appliances and feel awesome about your helpful self ٩(｡•́‿•̀｡)۶
I downloaded Snow and had to delete Snapchat hence the slight name change of these posts. Having not much phone memory means making these tough decisions, but that strawberry milk filter was much needed in my life/on my face.
Drawing in my sketchbook always makes me feel better so to counter my last post which was not very happy I thought I'd also upload some recent drawings from my sketchbook. Not long ago I had a massive sort out in my studio and sitting at my desk now is a much nicer time so I've been doing things in my sketchbook that I like a lot more than I was doing before. I always wonder if other people can see any difference or if it's all in my head lol. Either way, I'm having a nice time with it. I think the main difference is that I have all my markers in front of me and I actually sit at my desk rather than just on the sofa so my sketchbook has a lot more colour in it now.
I've been plodding along with not a lot happening really. I'm still managing to do veda which I feel proud about. Although I just noticed I have one less subscriber than I did yesterday so that's a good mood boost lol. We had easter sunday off together, Will did me an egg hunt, we watched Moana and The Force Awakens for the second times (´ ∀ ` *) and then Avengers Age of Ultron for the first time (o-_-o) and we ate a lot of roast potatoes. It was really nice to have a day off together, we don't do it enough. Being self employed is dumb (but is also brilliant and keeps us sane, for the most part).
I'm feeling very unsure of myself lately and am trying to not let it stop me from working seeing as that will just make it worse. It is very hard to be creative when you feel like you're the least creative person ever to try and create something but I know my brain is just being mean and even if I am rubbish I won't get better if I stop trying.
I've been trying to 'go shopping' more often. For various reasons I prefer to get clothes from second hand or independent places and I guess if you don't look in charity shops often there's much less chance of finding things. Especially seeing as ours never seem to have anything I would want. I always get so jealous when I see people online in their thrift stores or op shops that are huge and full of all sorts of stuff from all sorts of styles and we have tiny little charity shops that seem to only sell the most bland bits of what you could buy on the high street last year.
I always think of charity shops as magical places that sell anything and everything and then in reality they seem to be heavily dictated by the person who runs it deciding 'people won't want that, throw it out'. Which is fine, it's their shop. Maybe it's just the charity shops I can get to, maybe I'm just too picky but whatever the reasons, I often go out thinking "yeah, I'm going to just poke about and hopefully I'll find something, maybe not but it'll still be fun to have a rummage" and once I'm actually out of the house I just get anxious and stressed. I find it hard to be around people and then on top of that I don't find anything I like and I end up feeling very woe is me about it. But it gets me down sometimes wearing clothes I bought 7 years ago that don't really feel like me anymore so I have to keep trying. And we do have Looses Emporium which gives me hope for finding clothes eventually maybe.
It's weird at the minute. I don't feel especially bad but I also don't feel especially good. It's like I've accepted the negative thoughts and feelings and am just like fine, that's how it is, what can I do. Which doesn't feel healthy to be honest. The moral of this post seems to be 'just keep trying' but sometimes it's hard to believe that anything will come out of it. I hate being negative on here but it might help a bit if I get it out and send it away to the internet. Sorry if you've read all of this and I've made you feel down (or annoyed at my whingeyness)! I'm sure things will pick up, gotta just keep trying. haha.
The weather has been so nice lately, dry and sunny and warm and just like you want spring to be. It's much easier to get work done when the weather is bright. (They're listed in my Etsy)
My parents came up for a weekend. It's the first time I'd seen them this year and the first time I'd seen mum since she'd had someone literally touch her spine so it felt super good to spend some time with them and see for myself that she was fixed ^_^
More evidence of the nice weather. I took my sketchbook outside for the day on Sunday after mum and dad left and even though my eyes exploded from hayfever it was totally worth it.
I got my March zine made. I don't know if I say this every time but I love making these. It's really good to pick out all your favourite drawings from the month, put them in one place and think to yourself, "Maybe I'm not all that bad at drawing or super unproductive after all."
I'm having a go at veda, vlog every day april. I'd been planning to do it and on the first I didn't feel like it but by the fifth I did feel like it (I'm so complex) so I started late but I'm doing it now and trying to not be weird about how it won't actually be every day. I won't post every video here but they're all on my youtube if you'd like to look and I'll probably dot my favourites into my other posts during the month. I really enjoyed doing vlogmas but my december is busy in a repetitive work kind of a way rather than an interesting fun time holidays kind of way so I feel like april is a better time for me to get my daily vlog achievement feeling while making more interesting (? maybe) videos. It's still only the random shambles my videos ever are but maybe that's just my style of video making, random shambles. I know I prefer watching youtube videos that feel a bit more one person powered and like there isn't an agency somewhere behind it at some stage so I shouldn't be so hard on myself while I'm judging my own videos, I'll just get better with practise.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with people getting an agent and making youtube their job and having all fancy equipment and getting sponsered and what not and not everyone with an agent makes boring (to me) videos, I'm just saying the huge polished youtubers don't tend to interest me. I've seen it happen with blogs I love too, the more readers they get the more revenue they get from advertisers so the more worried they are about alienating anyone and the more bland the content gets. Youtube seemed to be an amazing way for people to make their own videos whether that be homemade stories or vlogs or tutorials or whatever and to also have the chance to see what some random person was up to that they otherwise wouldn't be able to share and then advertisers realised they could make money from this cool new thing and now 'youtuber' has become like a style of video making and people are pandering to companies (or just general clickbait *eyeroll*) and it sometimes feels a bit stale. I wish they'd at least change the search algorithm so it was easier to find stuff that doesn't have millions of subscribers and views already. It's a shame there must be so much great stuff getting lost underneath the videos that already have a massive following and don't really need to always be the top results.
One type of video gripe I really do have is seasonal/monthly favourites videos being in the middle of the month. It's not your favourite thing that month if the month isn't over, it's something you bought a week ago and there's some broken part of your brain that feels the need to let people know about it so they too can go out and buy it before the month is up. Stop doing free work for companies that can afford to spend thousands on advertising. I like seeing things that people have enjoyed, whether it's something that is or isn't available anymore but buying something and making a video about how awesome you think it is even though you haven't actually used it yet is so weird to me. There's a difference between sharing something because you enjoyed it and think other people might want to know about it too and sharing something because you hope to eventually make money from sharing things. It also feels super wasteful if people are buying things for the sake of making a video. I don't know, people can do what they like, I don't have to watch it, it just makes me uncomfortable when people pander to massive corporations. We shouldn't be trying to make companies like us, companies should be trying to make us like them. (I've realised that the 'like's in that sentence could be read as 'similar to' which is the opposite of what I mean and much more like what is actually happening and now I can't stop reading it as that lol)
Anyway, I don't want to end on a negative rant. I love watching videos people have made. It's amazing and awesome. Please share you're favourite videos/channels so I can find more awesome things to look at. My liked videos/subscriptions are public on my channel so feel free to have a nosey through that if you'd like to see some of what I watch ^_^
Not really anything to share image wise this week but I wanted to keep up with what I've been doing here. The reason for it is we had a really horrible, sad Saturday a week or so ago and it just made me not very interested in things for a while. The short story is we had to have Bernard, our rabbit, put down and it broke my heart. Pets are strange and wonderful things and he was really important to me and now he's not here anymore and it's the weirdest thing.
It turned out I didn't feel like looking at any social media after that. It wasn't like a conscious decision, I just noticed that I hadn't looked at anything for a few days and then I figured I'd intentionally take a break from it for another few days. So I didn't look at twitter or instagram at all for just over a week. I don't really use them that much but I definitely waste time on there so I thought it'd be a nice break, even if I was going to sit and stare blankly at something I'd have to do with just myself and not the hundreds of voices sharing hundreds of things.
It wasn't hard actually. I kept thinking I should be sharing things because of self promotion/work but generally I was alright without it. I like seeing all the things people share, I try really hard to only follow people that are interesting in one way or another so my social media isn't a bad place to be anyway but I feel much better for not looking at it all the time. And now that I'm allowing myself to look again I find I haven't that much anyway. I love the internet and I love seeing all the things but, I don't know how to describe it, my brain feels fresher or something for having not looked at so much stuff for a while. I'll definitely be careful how much time I spend just mindlessly scrolling through things from now on.
Speaking of feeling like I should share things for self promotion, I listed the pattern for these bunnies in my etsy. I thought people might like it before Easter.
When I was filming this past week or so I was kind of making myself do it when my heart wasn't entirely in it but I had an idea for making some sort of quick little clips type of thing and just concentrated on that to get me picking up the camera and filming little bits of video. I'm not sure it turned out how I had it in my head but ain't that just the way. At least I managed to make something.
I tried all sorts of relevant titles for this post and they all sounded so dramatic I just couldn't stick with any of them.
