PS Bun, Tsundere Dog and Rats Pattern ~ Shop Update

I'm not sure why I hadn't seen a rabbit face in my playstation controllers before now but I'm glad I finally did because I love my PS Bun ^-^
I made PS Bun stickers and to go with them some memory card badges, deco'd with tiny stickers obviously (❁´◡`❁)

This dog looks like they might be a bit tsundere but at least they're giving you a positive message. I love key rings, I have more stuff hanging from my keys than I have actual keys and I love to hang things like this on my bags too and we can all do with seeing more positive messages as we go about our days (・ω・)

And lastly I made a pattern out of all the rats I drew and added it to my redbubble shop. I love using patterns on redbubble, I feel like they suit more of the items better and editing them is less stressful because however they get cropped during manufacture I know it'll still look good!

If you buy anything from me I love to see photos, be sure to tag me @_beckygarratt_ on twitter or instagram and maybe even use #beckygarratt on there too ^-^

A Sort Of List

I have been reading so many comics (21 already this year!) and this week I read Bee and Puppycat vol1, Fruits Basket vol9 and Yostuba&! vol6. I love them all.
Bee and Puppycat has qr codes so you can listen to the music boxes in the story! It's so precious.
Fruits Basket has a new anime coming out this year and it looks beautiful.
Yotsuba honestly makes me think about how I approach my life. She may be a fictional 5 year old but I try to be more like her. Things are hard, I want to spend my time seeing the good and being excited.

Sharky had his check up and has been given the all clear!! It's a chronic condition but for now he's good, which is very good. (I've never used the blogger video uploader before, I wonder if it'll work...)

I drew this PS Bun. Maybe the best pun I will ever come up with.

The weather was really nice today and I was going to go out on my bike but I managed to let all the air out of my back tire and can't figure out how to make the pump work. Never mind, I'm sure there'll be other nice days for bike rides lol.

I'm feeling like a boring little house goblin lately and not in a good way. Need to sort that out.

Desk Mess Is Good

I love to be surrounded by things that I like and my desk is a pretty good example of that. Although this first photo is a bit too many things, there's no space for me lol (＝⌒▽⌒＝) Every now and then I have a big tidy up and make a big clear space on my desk and then just let it fill back up as I work until it's not usable anymore and then I start the cycle again. I like it, it's a good system for me.

I do tidy up at the end of each day. These stickers and pens got put back in their places and mugs get taken downstairs but somehow there's always a few things that get left out.

I love ephemera and bits and bobs and I think that just means I will forever be surrounded by little things that make me feel cosy. One of the constants my whole life is my love for cutting up bits of paper and sticking them down somewhere else. I remember going to the library after school for my half hour of free internet and printing out pictures of my favourite bands, taking them home and pritt sticking them into diaries and notebooks. I think that's just how I want my surroundings to feel, like I've cut out all these things from the world and put them where I like them.

Hearts, Rats and Gacha ~ Shop Update

Some new things are in my shop! These cute heart girls come in two colours and started life as a tiny doodle in my diary at a coffee shop. That sounds like such a normal thing but I actually don't go out much and going out for a drink is a bit of a treat. It reminded me that getting out of the house is actually really important for being creative. I know it's just a simple drawing but something felt different about the process. A change of environment just gets your brain working a bit differently. Being stuck in the house is a bit of an evil circle, I don't go out because I have no money but not going out is maybe holding me back in my work so how will I get money...

I had this gacha idea, doodled it out, worked it up and made the badges all in one day. It's fun to make something quickly without letting it drag on for ages, getting over-thought. These were so difficult to photograph, the colours just wouldn't photograph accurately, I'd get the text right and then the background would be wrong and on and on. I had trouble with the rat sticker photos on the same day, I think the light was just really blue or something? I always feel like my stuff is much better seen irl but how do you get that across in a photo? I will keep practising though!

And some rat stickers! I've wanted to make something with rats for a while but I think I let myself get intimidated by how much I love them and just couldn't get the drawings right but then it just suddenly clicked and I ended up with enough rats for two separate sticker packs and I'm really proud of them.

I'm having some ups and downs but generally I'm feeling pretty good about my work so far this year, I just want to keep making as many things as possible. Let myself do whatever pops into my head without worrying too much about whether it's what I should be making.

Thanks for being here and please check out my shop and remember sharing artist's work is super helpful even if you can't buy anything yourself ^-^

Here's a vlog from when I made the heart twin tails stickers.

A Sick Rat

February didn't start great and has so far just been super stressful and very tiring. Right at the start Sharky got really ill, fast. It was so awful, I thought he was going to die. He's still ill but he's so much better.
He was breathing really fast, his sides were sucked in and he'd stopped eating and drinking. His behaviour was strange too, he seemed confused and he basically refused to be in the cage, he spent a few days just sitting on our necks/shoulders.

So, back to the beginning. On Sunday evening I thought he seemed a bit off but wasn't sure because I'm super paranoid about them and sometimes think something is wrong but they're just asleep. On Monday morning it was obvious something was really wrong so we made an appointment at the vet. We saw the vet, got home and just knew something wasn't right. It felt like we knew rats better than her, it just felt wrong. It didn't feel like he'd really been seen and all she did was re-prescribe what was written on his file from last time he was in, we only got the anti-inflammatories because I asked for some. We had a lot of trouble getting Sharky to take his medicine and Will phoned the vet to ask if there was anything else that could be done for him, he was in such a bad way. She told us no, they don't do exotics. !  Thinking about it makes me so angry. She didn't tell us that she basically didn't know what she was doing and then tried to tell us they couldn't help us full stop.
Will went back on Tuesday and there was a different person on the desk and a different vet on duty and they told us the person we'd seen isn't trained for rodents, we never should have been given an appointment with her and booked us in with the other vet.
I can't understand why the first vet didn't just say "here's antibiotics to get you started but you should come back tomorrow and see someone that knows rats". I'm so mad. I'm really happy with our vets in general but this was awful.
Anyway, Tuesday we saw a decent vet and she checked him over so thoroughly and talked us through everything. She even gave him an injection of the anti-inflammatory to get us started and a bit of fluid because he wasn't drinking. She counted his breathing rate and told us to count it at home so we would know if he was getting worse and to come back if he did. She was just super helpful and we went home feeling much better. Sharky might still have been really ill but at least we knew we were doing everything we could for him.
By Wednesday we'd got him hooked on cucumber. We wanted to get him re-hydrated and he wouldn't drink but he loved cucumber. Then he started to perk up, he started drinking and eating and eventually spent more and more time back in the cage rather than hiding on us.

We're still having to syringe the antibiotics because the first few times we had to syringe it into his mouth because he wasn't eating and he got such a taste for it that he can smell it in anything we put it in and he refuses to eat it. We are managing to hide the anti-inflammatories now though so at least that's one less syringing he needs.
Syringing the medicine is so stressful. It took a few goes to get the hang of it (it's weird to shove something so much in his mouth) but he's also learning how to avoid it. Most of it is going in now but he does end up with a wet chin which he rubs all over the sofa first chance he gets. It's for his own good but I feel so sorry for him he must be so confused, why are we doing this horrible thing to him. He's such a good boy though, and aside from trying to spit it all back out he does really well at it.
We're just over a week into the two week course now and his behaviour is back to normal and his breathing has slowed down a bit. We're going to get him back into the vet soon to see how he actually is and what needs doing next. Hopefully not much, hopefully he's magically better. She talked of x-rays and I just don't even want to think about it.
And me, I'm really fucking tired lol. The stress is wearing me out, we're getting up earlier to give him his meds and staying up later to keep an eye on him so am tired and being so tired and stressed is making me all crazy negative and thinking bad things about myself and my work and then that stresses me out even more.
I'm actually not feeling as bad today, hopefully I can ride it out without too much damage. It's at that point where every tiny thing adds onto it and it just feels like everything is happening at once and can't we catch a break and oh my god the mushroom bag broke and there are mushrooms everywhere, has anything this bad ever happened before, how will I survive!!! And yeah, I'm tired lol.