Picture books, paper goods & pretty things.
Ah! Look at this little bit of loveliness. Kristyna illustrated Angel's Great Escape for me & I absolutely loved working with her. She's now working with the wonderful Aardman Animations again on this latest campaign for DFS. So cute! Congratulations Kristyna : )
This week I received my first confirmation of sales figures for An Amazing Alphabet of Cake from Amazon. The numbers may be modest but I'm so chuffed that people are buying and enjoying the book. Lots of friends have been sending me photos and videos of their little ones reading about cake. One of the little poppets is even trying to eat the cake from the page : ) Every review and note I receive makes me feel a little bit emotional and encourages me to create more. Thank YOU.
I can hardly believe that it was And So We Begin's 5th birthday a week or so ago. But here I am, five years since I started my company on what would have been my Nana's 100th birthday...
Read MoreThis week my desk has been all about Christmas! I popped my fairy lights on and put Arthur Christmas on Netflix to get me in the mood and got started on the first of my Christmas cards. The four designs below will be in my Etsy shop and on Choosey.com late next week. There are two more designs to come, plus a little collection of Christmas stocking fillers that I am working on. I also used it as a good excuse to have my first mince pie of the season. Let the festivities begin!
I started my little business four years ago today on what would have been my nana's 100th birthday so I'm celebrating this morning with cake for breakfast! I like the fact that my nana is part of my company's story as she inspired me with kindness and creativity. She used to potter endlessly in her garden and would talk to us about the plants. If she wasn't gardening, she was baking delicious shortbread and cakes or knitting us cardigans and leg warmers or letting us play our new 7" singles on her old Dansette record player. I remember making pom poms with her and thinking it was some kind of magic that you could make this fluffy ball out of a piece of wool. And I remember sitting in the kitchen while she listened to the Archers and being told firmly to 'shush'!
Today, I find my company somewhere I didn't know it would be. My love for illustration has grown and grown over the last two years and while I still work in event management by day and write whenever the feeling grabs me, every spare moment I have is consumed by drawing. I am never without my sketchbook and have an ever growing collection of sketches for pretty little products that I am working on bringing to my shop.
I sometimes stop for a moment and wonder how I got here. It's like illustration has come out of the blue and said, "Pick me!" I find it meditative in such a good way. For me it's an antidote to the speeding world and has given me somewhere totally joyful to 'go' when I need to retreat.
As I wrote a few blog posts ago, I thought a lot about what I want my brand to be. I settled on warm, kind and cosy. I want my products and The Quiet Life blog to give people the same feeling I get when I'm drawing. One of complete contentment (often accompanied by cake).
