Wise Words: Handmade

With both me and Jamie being big fans of Ed Sheeran, it was inevitable that I would illustrate a quote from one of his new songs! In fact, this is the second one I have done, you can see the other one over on the Bea & Bloom Instagram account. This lyric stood out to me the first time I heard 'Castle on the Hill' and its definitely one of my favourite parts of the song.

No doubt I'll be doing more illustrations like this once the full album is released!

(The illustration is in the style of the Botanica range from Bea & Bloom)

Wise Words: True Friends

I've been working on lots of lovely illustrated romantic quotes over at Bea & Bloom, but its been a while since I worked on one with a different theme. So the first Wise Words illustration of 2017 is all about friendship, and is inspired by the wonderful support I've received from my lovely friends in the last few weeks. Most of my friends live quite a distance from me (including one, my Maid of Honour, in Florida!) so the sentiment of this lovely quote felt very special to me.

Do you have a favourite quote, saying or lyric that you'd like to see me illustrate?

Wise Words: Slowly

Our wedding plans are well under way and its all getting very exciting!

I've made a list of all the things I want to design for the wedding, and its looking quite long! Think invites, table numbers, order of the day, posters etc.

This week I've made a start on some illustrated quotes which will form part of the table centre pieces (along with flowers and candles of course)

I don't want to share everything here until after the wedding but I thought I'd share one of them as a little preview! This one features a lovely quote from one of my favourite books 'The Fault in Our Stars"...

Wise Words: Stars

Its been a long time since I've shared a Wise Words illustration here!

Over the weekend Mum & I watched Lady and the Tramp, and I was inspired by some of the lyrics from the opening song, so opened up my sketchbook!

"Look at the skies, they have stars in their eyes."

Although I'm not going to be doing these weekly again, I do hope I'll manage to do them a bit more regularly from now on. And I'm going to try and remember to take a note of any quotes and lyrics that inspire me before I forget them!

Wise Words: Beginnings

Hi everyone!

I'm back with another Wise Words post today, this time with a lovely little quote about beginnings:

I'd love some suggestions for quotes or lyrics for these posts (I'm starting to struggle to find ones I like!) so let me know if you have any ideas!

The fabric designs are coming along quite well this week, and I'll be sharing one or two of them with you in next week's Over & over post.

Wise words: Someday

This week I've been reading the Hand Lettering Ledger by Mary Kate McDevitt, and practising a few different techniques. So this Wise Words post comes from scanning in one of the phrases I've sketched out in the practise pages of the book. This is basically just a little experiment with a few different fonts and some filigree. I'm hoping to carry on working may through the book and learn some new techniques over the next couple of weeks!

"There are 365 days in a year, & 'someday' isn't one of them."
How many things can you achieve in the 365 days that make up 2015?

Wise Words: So Happy Christmas

I'm a big fan of Christmas songs, as soon as the tree goes up on the 1st of December I start listening to my favourites. But I always try and avoid hearing my favourite one until then, and this year I almost succeeded, until 2 days before I put the tree up it was playing in a shop when I was out buying presents with mum!

I've always enjoyed this Christmas song, and several years ago I actually took the time to look up the lyrics to make it slightly easier to sing along!

There's some great lines in it, some serious, some funny and some romantic, but this is my favourite bit:

Fairytale of New York

by The Pogues & Kirsty McColl 

(Full lyrics here)

Wise words: Life is tough

I'm a few days late with this week's "Wise Words" post, and in fact I'm quite behind on all of my regular blog posts! There's been a lot going on lately, and over the next week or so I'm going backwards and forwards a lot for my birthday, and both mine and Jamie's graduations so it may be a while before I get back on schedule! I do however have a couple of posts planned in that time, including a special shop discount to celebrate my Birthday!

In the mean time, here's this week's/last week's bit of inspiration for you... 

Wise Words: Tomorrow

This week's quote comes from Albert Einstein,

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow."

It'd been a while since I've included some floral motifs in a piece of work so I decided to this image with quite a simple text with pretty leaves and daisies.

I love these kinds of quotes that focus on the past, present and future all in a really positive way. I also love this one:

"Behind us are memories, beside us are friends, before us are dreams" (Unknown)

Next week I have a lovely little quote from Winnie the Pooh!

Wise Words: Adventures

This week rather than drawing a new quote, I found an old favourite and edited it a little.

This was originally a screen print (still available in my shop, reduced to £5) but here I've made it into a digital image and added a little colour...

"Take wild adventures"

I quite like the way this turned out and I think I might go back over some more of my old screen print designs and give them a colourful makeover. Look out for another illustrated quote next week (a brand new one this time!).

Wise Words: A Wish

As promised, this week's "Wise Words" piece is a quote from a Disney movie, or more specifically a quote from Cinderella herself.

For this design I've used a combination of my favourite typography styles: the "wish" is in the style of my Happily Ever After piece (and last week's "Wise Words"), and "your heart makes" is in the style of my Once Upon a Time piece (both of which can be seen here).

Any suggestions for next week's quote? 

Wise Words: You can do it

For this week's "Wise Words" piece I was planning on using a quote from a fairytale or Disney movie, but during my search I found this quote from Walt Disney and thought it was perfect:

I'm working on some wedding stationery using typography in this style at the moment and really enjoying it. As I carry on with this project I'll probably use this style again, but experimenting with using different container shapes other than a heart.

Next week I'll stick with my original plan and use a quote from a fairytale! 

Wise Words: The Dream

So here's the first instalment of my new "Wise Words" blog feature.

Each week I'll be illustrating a short quote or saying and sharing it here on the blog.

Here is this weeks little bit of inspiration: