Fairytale Alphabet - The Beginnings

As summer was here for a bit today I was finally able to take some photos, so, without further ado, here are my prints from Tuesday:





C is for Cinderella.





L is for Little Red.

They will be up in my Folksy shop and my secondary Etsy shop ASAP. (I hope tomorrow, but my List Of Stuff To Do For Friday is already at 8 items and counting.)

Next week's prints will be "Queen" and "King", hopefully followed by "Unicorn" and "Wicked Witch" if I have enough moolah to go back to the print studio the week after, too. The plan is to keep to the same colour scheme, with the two shades of cyan alternating with the red and the pale grey. I printed these on A3 (although the image itself fits on A4) but seeing them here in the frames I may print on A2, with the option of cutting them down for a smaller frame if required.

Decisions, decisions....

Oh, and if anyone can think of anything relevant starting with "X" or "Z", please let me know!

New Nails, New Shoes

I went for a pedicure last Wednesday. Never been for one before, but it was lovely. Felt a bit too girly for me to make it a regular occurrence, though! So here I am modelling new, red, sparkly nails with new, red, shiny flip-flops. A present from Boyfriend. He does do good, that one.

Anyhooooo, after all that retro inspiration last week, I came up with ideas for a new Fairytale alphabet. OK, OK, so I haven't actually completed the last one I started (you know, the Spooky one), but I think having two similar yet contrasting projects on the go will make it all the more interesting. (As long as I don't mix them up, of course. That would be very, very wrong.) I was at the print studio earlier today and printed up "C" and "L". No photos as yet, as the light here is rubbish this afternoon, but I plan to take some outside on Thursday if the summer returns. In the mean time, here's a sneaky peak of just a little corner:

Retrotastic Illos

Instead of actually putting my ideas down on paper today, I've been completely caught up in looking through all 150 pages of the AWESOME "Retro Kid" Flickr group. SO much inspiration there; I'm actually really excited and dying to get scribbling!

Here are some of my faves from the group:


1. Story-A-Day, 2. Dealer News, 3. The Man Who Invented the Helicopter, 4. Fun With Mind Reading 2, 5. Fun With Mind Reading 1, 6. What's the Good Word?, 7. Dan Lawler 2, 8. Dan Lawler 1, 9. Bookmobile, 10. New Sun, 11. Out of this World, 12. Zombie Girl, 13. Pan-Am, 14. Lehigh Cements, 15. Merkin Magician, 16. Naiad 3, 17. Naiad 2, 18. Naiad 1, 19. True Goes Shopping, 20. Lowell Hess 1, 21. Golden Magazine 1, 22. Camel 1, 23. Sauerkraut!, 24. Doctor's Diary, 25. Lowell Hess 2

All these were uploaded by Glen Mullaly, who appears to have exactly the same taste in vintage illustration as I do, the dude.

I have a session booked in the print studio for this Tuesday coming, so I can't wait to get in there and produce something inspired by all this research.

Crochet, Here I Come!

As I said last week, on Saturday we went off to Yarn Over in Eastbourne, and while we were there Lovely Annie taught me how to crochet. So far I have managed a few blocks, a slightly floppy circle, and wait, for it, this AWESOME granny square:



OK, granted, it doesn't look like much, but this is a huge step forward for me. I tried to learn to crochet last year, but my brain wasn't having any of it. This time, it's making sense to me. I even understand the diagrams better than the written instructions, which defintely doesn't happen when I read knitting patterns! It's loads of fun, though. (I must try to remember I have a knitted cardi on the go, and not to abandon it in this flurry of new excitement). My aim is to have crocheted a shawl to wear to Sam's wedding in slightly under two months, so I'd better get a bit more practice in!

Star Pirates Unleashed!

The two pirates books I was working on at the end of last year/beginning of this year are out in the shops today!

Check 'em out:















It is the first time I've done black and white work, and I really really enjoyed it. Can't wait to do more junior fiction titles in the future. I'm really quite chuffed with the finished books (although I think the paper could've been thicker to make the illos brighter, but that's just me being picky), especially with that last spread, which is my overall favourite. Out in the ships* today! Woo!

* Unintentional typo, but thought I'd leave it in as it was rather appropriate!

There's Something Fishy Going On Around Here...

This is an aquarium display I was asked to make for Whitehawk Library a couple of weeks ago; they've been running a colouring competition for the kiddiwinks. I also drew the outlines for the fish that they've been colouring in and it's just plain bizarre seeing my work coloured in by lil'ins! I'm pretty chuffed with how the poster turned out as I was limited to Publisher and I hadn't used it for a good 10 years! All in all, four libraries across B&H have my lil' fishies up. Cool, huh?

The Aprons are Up!

These two aprons are now for sale in my Etsy shop:





And this one in my Folksy shop:



Go make me rich. Or, at least, give me a little yarn-buying money. I need it, as several of us Brighton Knitting Belles are off to check out Yarn Over in Eastbourne this coming Saturday. A trip out! I'm all of a dither. As much as I LOVE Brighty, with the sea to the south and nowt but the road to London to the north, I often feel a bit "hemmed in". The only way to go for a bit of an escape is sideways, so Eastbourne here we come!

I'm Getting All Profesh With The PS, Like

Since discovering Pioneer Woman and her FAB Photoshop tips last week, I've been all excited about fiddling around with Actions and Masks, something I've never done before. Usually when I alter a photo, I'll just adjust the Curves to make it lighter overall, up the Contrast to make the shadows a bit more interesting, then Sharpen if it needs it. I took some photos of the lovely Sam modelling my aprons yesterday (which will be up in my Etsy/Folksy shops ASAP) and spent a couple of hours experimenting with all these new ideas last night. Although I know it's only start and I still have plenty to learn, I'm quite chuffed with my first attempts. Here's what I did to make one photo more interesting:

Here is my original photo straight out the camera:



Perfectly nice, but not all that exciting.

First of all, I upped the Curves and Contrast as I usually do to make it lighter overall, and the shadows darker:



Here comes the fun part. I duplicated the photo so there were two copies of the same thing, just on different layers on top of each other. Then I put the Gaussian Blur filter on the top copy, like so:



Then, using a Mask on this top, fuzzy layer, I "rubbed out" the blur on Sam herself, leaving the un-blurry layer underneath showing through:



Blurry background, sharp foreground. I then Flattened that so it was all one layer again, then added Pioneer Woman's "Warmer" Action and adjusted the Opacity down 30% or so so it wasn't quite so obvious:



I then lightened the whole thing up again a little:



As the "Warmer" actions makes things yellow-tinged, I used the Lasso tool on Sam's teeth, then upped the Brightness on them a little to whiten them back up to their natural state, then used Unsharp Mask on the whole thing:



Et Voila. To summarise,

Before:



And After:



Cool, huh? Simple, yet effective. By the last few photos I had my working methods down pat, so hopefully I can make this a quicker process from now on. Not that I think I'll do it on all my photos - I'd be there forever! - but for special ones I think it will make a difference.

Now, just have to measure up my finished aprons and they'll be up in my Etsy/Folksy shops in no time!

My Flat - An Ode to Awesomeness

I have now lived in my flat for a year and a day. That's the second longest time I've spent in one place (barring the family home). In my previous flats, there was always something "wrong" - the neighbours, the landlord, the kitchen floor, the leaky shower. Even though this place is, shall we say, somewhat idiosyncratic, I love it to pieces. I can live with the dated kitchen tiles, I can cope with the tiny, tiny, tiny shower room. I can go out when Upstairs starts drumming practice in the middle of the afternoon. It's the first place in a long time I have been able to call home and have been happy to come back to everyday.



I never thought I would be able to live by myself as successfully as I have. Yes, it can be a smidgen lonely on occasion, but I have a wonderful group of friends I can then go and knit with. The fact that I have to do everything myself - all shopping, cleaning, cooking, washing - can get a little overwhelming when I have deadlines, but I wouldn't change it. If I went back in time just over a year, I would still do everything the way I have done it in the past 12 months. I have learned so much and have become - without wanting to sound too cheesy and vomit-inducing - much stronger and sharper as a result.



I will miss this place when Boyfriend and I move in together come November - the first flat I will - but then we will both be moving on in a way we have talked about and planned for so long, not on a whim hoping for something better. I'm looking forward to it.



(I've been playing around with some free Photoshop actions I downloaded from Pioneer Woman. They are fab!)

Fire Socks are Done!

Yet another sock project that has taken me months and months because I got distracted by other awesome yarns in between cast-ons. These I started at Christmas. And finished two days ago.





This yarn is one of the Kaffe Fassett-designed range from Regia. The colourway is "Fire" (Landscape version, not Mirage version. Much prefer the stripes.) Check out all the other fab colours here. I have my eye on the Exotic Ember....

Lovely Lilies..

...making my flat smell delish.

Fabulous Fabric

Right now I am enjoying a rare two consecutive days working at home! I've been doing a fair bit of library work recently - now that the big projects are done and I'm just working on a smaller writing project I've been packing in the extra hours to keep the bills paid.

Today, though, I've been able to work on said writing project. However, I had to pop out to the post office (and the tea shop, obv) this afternoon to post off one of my monsters I sold on Folksy (hurrah!), and walking around the town I came across this:





Weeeeellllll, I couldn't leave that in the shop, could I? Two metres of it accompanied me home and will be made into one AWESOME apron ASAP.

It was one of those days where I didn't want to come back home, as the sun was shining so nicely after a gloomy start and I liked the look of everything I saw. One of those afternoons where I wish I had brought my camera. Maybe tomorrow.... ? The best thing about time out like that in the middle of the working day is the opportunity to recharge the creative batteries, and I'm already bubbling with ideas for new prints (probably incorporating owls somewhere as I LOVE them right now) and some kind of stencilling. Watch this space.....

London to Brighton 2009

Yesterday the sun shone for a whole two hours, so Boyfriend and I went down to check out the Minis on their annual trip to the seaside. I live just off the course, so we got to watch them all the way down, too. I used to have a Mini (a lovely 1992 1.3 cherry red Mini Sprite - chrome wing mirrors, chrome GB on the boot, CD player - all the essentials a girl in her late teens/early 20s requires) and even though I lived at the beginning of the route for two years, never joined in. Dagnammit I wish I had. Anyway, regrets and nostalgia aside, there were some BEAUTS to be seen yesterday. Even briefly stopped to seriously consider purchasing one that was for sale (Turquoise, convertible, 12 months MOT, 6 months tax, only £2250) but only briefly. Boyfriend got even more excited than I did and he can't even drive!



This one has gold glitter in the paint. And check out the sparkles on the engine!






















I can't get over how clean these engines are! They must wash them down after every trip. Or they're fake engines they just swap in and out.

Overall, had an awesome weekend with Boyfriend. Popped in on a few Open Houses up at Fiveways, went for tea (twice), found a lovely park, ate ice cream, looked at potential areas to move to come November, saw beautiful cars, had two consecutive lie-ins, walked a lot. What more could you want?

Pirates & Socks Rock

The Hummingbird Spiral socks are done and dusted. I actually finished them last week, but had to wait for Boyfriend to turn up before I could get a proper photo of them in all their glory. I am very chuffed with these - hand dyed and knitted in a funky new (to me) pattern. Awesome.



I got home today from a full-branch-library-day-with-annoying-cold-bunging-up-my-head to find this uber-awesome surprise waiting for me:





A screenprinted postcard from the fabulously talented Debbie. Can you believe my card here is no.3 out of 149?! ALL hand screened?! The girl is crazy. Brilliant, but crazy. He's going straight up on my Wall of Cool. I love the Henry VII stamp, too. Hmmm....screenprints, stamps, Tudors, pirates, postcards.....ticks an awful lot of my Nerd boxes. Thank you, Deb!

I Heart New Stationery

Makes doing your accounts just that little bit more enjoyable.