In my sketchbook: 14/01/15

This is the first 'In my sketchbook' post of 2015. I'm hoping to keep up with these a little more regularly this year!

As I've mentioned previously, I've spent the last couple of weeks working on my new card collection (which I am aiming to have ready to launch in February!), so I've been doing a lot of drawing lately and filling up my sketchbooks! 

Here's a few of my favourite pages:

Over & over: Succulent

I doodle these little succulents a few weeks ago for an idea I had for a card design (and one of them may still be making it onto that design soon). I liked the way they were all arranged on the page so I thought I'd make a little pattern with them:

Succulent

Snap snap: 09/01/15

This week I've been working hard on my new card range, as well as doing a bit of reading and making a start on new projects. Here's a few snaps from my week:

- Hello 2015!

- Reading and note taking rom Kari Chapin's great book Grow Your Handmade Business. I really enjoyed this and its motivated to me to carry on with my business and get all the "boring" bits well organised!

- Sketching for this week's Wise Words post.

- Attempting a new mini-project where I try to doodle something in my diary every day. By the end of the year this should be pretty fun to look back through!

- A little preview of one of the new designs. A lovely lady on Instagram used this as inspiration for some nail art!

- A few weeks ago I won a $100 gift card to spend at the lovely Micush Etsy store (I won it as part of Decor8's #12DaysofGiveaways) and this week my chosen goodies arrived! I definitely reccommend checking out the shop, its all a great quality and the illustrations are beautiful.

On my Bookshelf: December '14

For my birthday last year I was given the book of Our Zoo by June Mottershead (after I had enjoyed the BBC Drama version). I hadn't read a book for (embarrassingly) a couple of years before that, but once I got started I read the whole book in two afternoons.  After that I was hooked on reading again, and went online to order myself three more books.

Here's a little summary of what I read in December '14:

1. Our Zoo - June Mottershead

As I already mentioned, this was the first book I read for a long time, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Its a sweet story and its filled with one of my favourite things: animals! This is definitely not a very dramatic story, but its beautiful written and has lots of wonderful descriptions of the animals and the zoo.

2. Before We Met- Lucie Whitehouse

In contrast to the previous book, Before We Met is much more dramatic. I bought this one as I'd just been to see Gone Girl at the cinema (I haven't read it yet but its next on my list!) and loved it, and the description for this one said it was prefect for Gone Girl fans. Personally I didn't find that much similarity between the two story-lines, however it is certainly very gripping, and kept me intrigued all the way through. The story has a few interesting twists and turns, and the ending was pleasantly unexpected. 

3. The Fault in our Stars - John Green

This has been by far my favourite read so far, I barely put it down and had finished it in one long afternoon! This is one of those stories that makes you laugh and cry at the same time, and the characters pull you in al the way through. 

On a side note, I mentioned to Jamie several times about how much I enjoyed this story (he arrived home just as I finished it and I rambled on for quite a while!) and so he bought me the DVD of the film for Christmas. As well all know film adaptions of books aren't always the best, but this one was very pleasing. The characters and scenery are exactly as I pictured them, and it too managed to make me cry and laugh at the same time! I definitely recommend both the film and the book.

4. The Shock of the Fall - Nathan Filer

This one was very different from anything I've read before (admittedly I haven't read much for a long time). Its written from the perspective of a character slipping into mental illness, so the style of writing is very unique. The fonts change throughout out the book, as Matthew moves between his own home, where he uses a typewriter, and the hospital, where he uses a computer. There are letters and drawings dotted amongst the pages and the story is written in an unconventional order. A book about mental illness may not sound too appealing but this is a lovely, creatively written story about a very intriguing character, I definitely recommend it.

I also read An abundance of Katherines by John Green, and Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan. As you can probably guess, I purchased these two after reading The Fault in Our Stars. These two are both enjoyable and have some great strong characters, but not quite as interesting or emotional as The Fault in Our Stars.

I have several books on my shelves waiting for me to read them this month, including Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, and Wonder by R J Palacio. At the moment I'm reading Grow Your Handmade Business by Kari Chapin (and very much enjoying it), but as soon as thats finished I'll be making a start on Gone Girl.

What books have you enjoyed recently?

Any suggestions for me?

Wise Words: Shine

We're over a week into 2015 now (where did that go?) but I'm keeping with the New Year positivity for this Wise Words illustration.

"This is your time to shine"

A little bit of motivation to make 2015 an amazing year.

I've made some good progress this week with the new card range, and a little collection is starting to come together. Next week I'll be sharing some images from my sketchbook with you, and hopefully very soon I'll have a finished collection to show you!

In the mean time I'll be trying to keep up with these Wise Words and Over & Over illustrations, as well as sharing little snippets of my work over on Instagram (@EmmaMargaretIllustration)

Over & over: January Brights

For the first pattern of 2015, I've gone with a brightly coloured floral pattern (because January is grey enough already!).

This was quite quickly put together as I'm still in the process of getting back on track with working again. I haven't made any decisions yet on what the next few patterns will be, so any suggestions will be very much appreciated!

You can view all of my past 'Over & over' patterns here.

Life: Hello 2015!

Happy New Year!

Hope 2015 is treating you all well so far!

So Christmas has flown by yet again! Did you all have a good one? I had a quiet Christmas with Mum, Dad, Jamie and Beabea, and also spent a few days with Jamie's family down in Portsmouth. I was treated to lots of lovely presents this year, including:

-A few additions to my Disney Classics DVD collection

-Some lovely clothes and a pair of boots

-Some Tombow brush pens

-A great selection of books including 'Grow your handmade business' by Keri Chapin, and 'Gone Girl'.

What was your favourite gift this year?

I didn't manage to take many pictures over the last two weeks, but here are a few snippets:

-I made lots of these this Christmas! This batch in particular were for Jamie's office.

-I also did a lot of wrapping as you can see here!

-Beabea got a little snowman rope toy for Christmas which she barely stopped playing with.

-New year was a quiet one with a take-away, chocolate fondue and party poppers.

Today is my first official work day of the year. I'm spending the morning doing a bit of planning and organising, getting my self ready to get on with the rest of the new designs. I'm aiming to have everything finished and ready to put in the shop by next month, so these next few weeks are going to be pretty busy! To help keep me organised, I'm making myself both a weekly planner, and a year planner to map out what I aim to achieve each month in 2015.

The shop is now re-opened, and there's 10% off everything all through January with the code JANUARY23, as well as lots of Sale items up to 50% off.

As always I'll be sharing plenty of updates on Instagram (@EmmaMargaretIllustration), and I'm going to try very hard to keep up with blogging too!

Wise Words: Merry & Bright

Happy Christmas Eve everyone!

I didn't think I'd be sharing any more "Wise Words" post until the New Year but I've managed to squeeze in one more to wish you all a Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone has a magical day tomorrow, and I'll be back in the New Year with more "Wise Words" and other work to share with you!

In my sketchbook: 19/12/14

As promised the other day, I have a few snippets of my recent sketchbook work to show you.

I'm still working on a new range of designs to have ready some time in January (as I mentioned in my last post, time seems to be getting away from me lately and I'm not as far into this project as I'd hoped, so I'll be working extra hard after Christmas!)

(The last image is the drawing I did for Jamie's Christmas card. I started a little tradition a while ago that I always draw me and him as animal characters on his cards. This time of course we had to be standing in front of a Christmas tree in the snow!)

Over & over: Gingerbead Men

Just a quick one today, and probably the last "Over & Over" post until the New Year.

Christmas is approaching faster than I'd realised and I'm quickly running out of time to do all the things I had planned! So I probably won't be doing any more of these or the "Wise Words" posts until the New Year.

You can still keep up with what I'm doing and see snippets of my sketchbooks (as well as Christmas baking and present wrapping!) on Instagram: @emmamargaretillustrtaion

(Speaking of sketchbooks I'll be sharing an "In my sketchbook" post later this week!)

For now those, here's my latest festive pattern, inspired by my recent baking fun!

"Gingerbread Men"

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)

Over & over: Deck the Halls

Continuing with the Christmas theme, this week's pattern features a collection of festive ornaments and candy canes!

"Deck the halls"

Next week, Gingerbread men!

Snap snap: 06/12/14

Its been well over a month since I wrote a "Snap snap" post!

I think its time to catch up...

-Drawing animals in party hats

-Pretty flowers on the dining table

-Packing up the new Christmas cards (available here)

-Sketching out new ideas...

-...And the final coloured illustration (this will be part of my new collection in January)

-Animals with balloons!

-Ideas for "Wise words" posts

-Lucky dip 10 screen-printed cards for £10 in the shop.

-Designing some new animal characters, including Hermoine the Horse (see the full set here)

-Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas! The tree is up and the festive candles are out!

-Speaking of which, this Freshly Baked Shortbread candle I picked up in Camden Market smells absolutely amazing!

-Mini succulent doodles for a new card idea

For more snaps of life lately, follow my Instagram account @emmamargaretillustration

Hopefully it won't be another 6 weeks before my next post!

Over & over: Frozen

Now that December has arrived, things will be getting more Christmassy around here! I'm a big fan of Christmas, and always have my tree and decorations up on the 1st of December!

So, the "Over & over" and "Wise words" posts over the next few weeks are all going to have a bit of a festive theme to them, starting with a snowflake pattern today! 

"Frozen"

Next week I'll be sharing a pattern featuring a variety of Christmas ornaments!

Art: New Animals

A couple of days ago I started doodling a new elephant character in one of my sketchbooks, and I realised it had been quite a long time since I drew a character that wasn't a deer, giraffe or rabbit! There are so many animals I could and want to use for my characters, so I decided to make a start on coming up with some new ones.

Here's the finished coloured illustrations of 6 new animals:

These are just ideas for now and I'll probably develop them a little more before I use any of them in any of my designs. But for now my favourites have got to be the panda and the horse! What do you think?

Over & over: Winter Berry

Now that my birthday and graduations are out the way, I'm hoping to get back on track with all of my regular posting, starting today with a new "Over & over" pattern design:

Winter Berry

Life: I graduated!

On Thursday I had my official Graduation ceremony back in Southampton.

Seeing as we actually finished back in June, it had been a pretty long wait to officially graduate!

Me, Jamie, Mum and Dad all went down the night before and stayed in a hotel (which happened to be right next to our old flat!) and got up early in the morning to and get my robes (and hat of course!) and have our official photographs taken. I had a bit of an issue with my sash as it kept falling off my shoulders, and Jamie had to run into town to get me some pins!

The ceremony itself was great, we all went up one by one and shook the Vice Chancellor's hand and were given our degree certificates (all with lots of cameras pointed at us!) and then there were a few speeches, including one from Sir Peter Blake who was given an honorary Doctor of Arts degree at the end of the ceremony.

Afterwards it was outside for lots of photos! Including the obligatory throwing our hats in the air, of course. Here's a few of my favourite snaps from the day:

So thats it! I am now officially:

Emma Simpson Ba (Hons) Illustration!

I should also now be getting back to my regular schedule of illustrations and blog posts. And I'll also be carrying on with designing my new range of cards ready to be launched in the New Year!

You can keep up with all of this easily by following me on Instagram @emmamargaretillustration

Life: 22

Tomorrow I'm turning 22! 

To celebrate, there's 22% off any orders over £5 in my Etsy shop using the code:

CELEBRATE22

(Expires at midnight on Monday)

(And the above illustration is a little peak at the new range of card designs coming soon!)

In my sketchbook: 13/11/14

My sketchbooks have been filling up quickly over the last few weeks as I've been continuing to work on my new Greetings Card range, as well as few other new products coming in the new year. I've been drawing cakes, flowers, animals in party hats and lots of other fun things.

Here's a few snippets of my recent sketchbook pages:

(Excuse the poor lighting, writing blog posts at 4pm means the sun is already starting to go down!)

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... 

Shop: Christmas Cards

Over the weekend I listed all of the new Christmas cards in my Etsy shop and on my website!

There are 6 new designs, all £1.75 each, 3 for £5 or one of each for £9.50 (+P&P)

To see all of the designs in full, head to my Etsy shop (which has also received a little festive makeover!) or my website!

Over & Over: Odd Socks

I've mentioned a couple of times now that I'm really enjoying making patterns that involve drawings lots of the same object over and over again and adorning them with different markings and shapes. A collection of socks seemed like a great way to do that again, so this week's pattern is "Odd Socks".

I went for quite a wide range of colours for this one (as opposed to last week's limited colour palette for "Tea & Coffee") to try and make this a fun, colourful collection of odd socks!

I'm starting to struggle with ideas for these patterns, so any ideas for themes would be appreciated!