Big Jessie

IF: Bottled

2011-04-09T20:22:00.000+01:00

The Illustration Friday theme this week, Bottled, made me instantly think of the times when me and my sister would make rose perfume and bottle it up in any random jars that were spare. Those who are unfamiliar with making rose perfume and wondering what it's all about, it's basically mushed up rose petals in water.....that's it......and it goes an attractive brown colour......nice!

We only ever made it when we went to visit my nan and grandad, I think we got the idea from my nan in the first place, plus they had lots of roses growing in their garden. We only used the rose petals that had fallen to the ground, thinking about it now, it was probably a sneaky way of getting us to clear the garden. So we'd go out, picking up as many rose petals as we could collect, nan would dig out some empty jars, then we would stuff them full with the petals, add some water and mush them up a bit (to bring out the fragrance of course).

As you can imagine, my mum wasn't overly thrilled to receive a fresh batch of rose perfume, after all, it looked like really dirty dish water with diced rose petal mush, and didn't smell all that great either.......but it's the thought that counts right?

Pencil Portrait

2011-03-17T13:07:00.000Z

It's been a while since I've done any serious drawing so it was nice to be asked by my friend to do this portrait of her and her boyfriend for his birthday. As much as I like to draw portraits, I'm always worried about getting a likeness, so much so it puts me off doing them.

You'll have to take my word for it, but I think I captured them pretty well (huge sigh of relief), anyway my friend was happy with it and so was her boyfriend, happy birthday Stu.

We went to see the Wizard.......

2011-02-28T18:41:00.000Z

.......the wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Me and my sister went to see The Wizard of Oz on Saturday in London, she was lucky enough to win some tickets and I'm glad she asked me to go along with her. The show was great, the effects were done well, especially the tornado scene, and there were no mishaps with the wire work when certain characters were flying or with the dog, actually the dog was very well behaved.

We even saw a couple of familiar faces in the audience, Brian May and his wife Anita Dobson. I'm just glad we weren't sitting behind them, it's quite a hairdo he's got! The major issue I have about going to the theatre is the lack of leg room, I'm 5'11" so sitting through a show can be rather uncomfortable, thankfully they have intermissions half way through so you can get up and stretch your legs.

I'm always intrigued to see what the set design is like, that must be a good job to have, they come up with such good ideas these days, especially when they have to make things move. Just imagine the amount of planning involved!

Me in a giant rocking chair, plenty of leg room!

While we were up in London we fancied a visit to the Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum, it's full of all sorts of wacky and weird things like portraits made from fluff, shrunken heads, chewed chewing gum wrapper sculptures and loads of information about weird and wonderful things from the past. We found out about one chap who made an exact sculpture of himself, capturing the tiniest of details and going to the extreme of plucking every single hair on his body to put onto the sculpture, but he didn't stop there, he also added his nails and teeth...............believe it or not! We also got a bit lost in the mirror maze, funny thing is it's not even very big, just very disorientating! We had fun though, it was a good day out.

Candy Cupcake Bracelet Giveaway

2011-02-18T13:27:00.000Z

For your chance to win this lovely bracelet click here. It's made by Laura Sparling, a fabulous lampwork artist who makes glass beads. She regularly does giveaways and the latest prize is this wonderful cupcake bracelet. All you need to do is leave a comment on her blog post, simple as that, and it's open to anyone anywhere.

New Website

2011-02-07T11:35:00.000Z

Our brand spanking new cake website is now up and running. I've been working on it all weekend and I'm quite pleased with the look of it. If you fancy a look go check it out at http://www.sprinklesandcrumbs.co.uk/.

Quilled Flower Card

2011-01-22T17:27:00.000Z

It's been ages since I've made any cards but I'm gradually getting back to it. Sometimes it's good to have a break from things for a while to recharge the creative batteries. Some days I feel like I've lost the ability to produce anything decent and other days it will come naturally - like today.

IF: Dusty

2011-01-21T16:17:00.000Z

It's been a while since I've contributed to Illustration Friday and this weeks theme gave me inspiration. I immediately thought of the horrible substance that coats everything, which is one of my bugbears - it makes things look so dirty and untidy and needs doing so regularly.

With hating dust so much I didn't really feel that enthusiastic to draw any, so I thought I'd draw Dusty Springfield instead (well, my interpretation of her anyway).

Sprinkles & Crumbs

2011-01-20T09:06:00.000Z

For anyone interested in cakes (eating and making them) I've set up a new blog for our cake business, which you can check out here.

see me over at Sprinkles & Crumbs

I'm still alive!

2011-01-16T14:10:00.000Z

In case anyone was wondering. Yes I've had quite a break from blogging but I intend to get back to it. I've made a few changes to the blog too, I thought it was time to refresh the look a little and clean it up a bit.

I'd love to say I've been busy doing all kinds of crafty things but sadly that's not the case. During my blogging absence I've been on holiday to Northern Ireland, where I caught up with a good friend of mine who I hadn't seen for about five years, moved house, had a birthday, chopped all my hair off (I went to a hairdressers and didn't just do a 'Britney' - although I've felt close to it on many occasions. I had a lot of thick long hair and wanted a complete change, now I have very short hair), got through Christmas and New Year, celebrated my husband's fortieth birthday (I think the shock of turning forty has finally passed) and made lots of cakes.

So that's what I've been up to in a nutshell. Now to get back in the habit of blogging (fairly) regularly, I'm not one to just say something for the sake of it, which is why my posts are quite sporadic, but hopefully I'll have some interesting posts for you all in the furture.

IF:Proverb

2010-09-16T21:40:00.000+01:00

Nothing like leaving things to the last minute! Here's a very quick illustration for this week's Illustration Friday theme. The theme this week was Proverb so I went for 'barking up the wrong tree'.

If you go down to the woods today........

2010-09-07T09:57:00.000+01:00

.......beware the exploding debris! At the weekend I went for a walk with my sister to Friday Woods in Colchester, being a Garrison town we're not short of soldiers and they often use Friday Woods for training. I remember going there as a kid and regularly coming across bullet shells on the ground, my brother had a few that he collected after a trip there.

There doesn't seem to be as much of a military presence in Colchester as there was years ago, maybe I just don't get out as much and don't notice, but even a lot of the military estates have now been turned into new housing estates. And we're not short of those either.

Thankfully on our walk we didn't notice any military debris, not even one bullet shell. We're going swimming tonight so that shouldn't be as risky, but I will keep an eye out for that random plaster you used to get floating in the pool, the one with the hair on!

The latest batch of cakes

2010-08-20T12:32:00.000+01:00

As previously warned, here's another cake post. We've had another batch of cupcakes to do just like the last ones, a Rubik's Cube, a giant cupcake and a Garfield cake.

The Rubik's cube cake was our first go at doing a stacked cake using dowels, it's got a bit of a journey to reach it's final destination so it needed to be sturdy. Also we had to consider how it was going to get cut up, we didn't think having a long skinny piece with either loads of icing or not much at all would be very good so it's basically two cakes on top of each other. They'll be able to cut up the top layer, lift off the board that's nestled inside the cake, then cut up the bottom layer. It was a whopping 40 ounces of cake mixture and 2kg of fondant icing to produce this cake!

The giant cupcake was basically a big version of the latest cupcakes we'd produced, pink and girly. This is vanilla sponge with buttercream in the middle and piped buttercream on the top half and fondant icing on the base. It's decorated with coloured sprinkles and wafer flowers and with ribbon round the base. This is created using a special cupcake shaped tin which you can buy here.

And here's the Garfield cake. He was good fun to make, he's a nice simple design and piping the black detail on really brings it all together, and we've used orange flavoured Matchmakers for his whiskers. Of course we had to sample some of the Matchmakers to check they were OK!

More cakes to do next week, lots of cupcakes, a triple chocolate cake and a tinkerbell cake. I guess August is a busy month for birthdays.

Pretty Cupcakes

2010-08-05T15:14:00.000+01:00

So here's the first cake order of the month, eighteen cupcakes for a hen party in lovely pink, yellow and purple, all decorated with sprinkles and a few wafer flowers. I hope the bride to be will be very happy with these.

They're safely boxed up and ready for collection, one of these would go down very nicely with a cup of tea right now.......

Birthday Cards for Girls

2010-07-29T08:16:00.001+01:00

Here's a few card designs I've been working on, mostly inspired by my niece, Millie, who just turned two the other day. The card I made for her turned out to be quite apt, she tends to carry her dolls under her arm like in my illustration, except it tends to look more like she's got them in a head lock when she carries them!

I thought I'd use the same character done up as a fairy for the next design.

And sticking with the fairy theme came up with this.....

And here's one I did a while back but had forgotten all about it.

I've not been making many cards lately, had other things going on and me and my husband have been busy making cakes, and we've got quite a few cake orders for August too so that will keep us busy. No doubt I'll end up doing a few cake related posts during August, one of the cakes we have to do is a Rubik's cube, I'm hoping it will be fairly straight forward......I'll let you know how it goes!

IF: Double

2010-07-28T17:16:00.000+01:00

It's very rare but it's been known to happen, you select a yummy treat from a vending machine and two fall out! So you end up with a double treat!!

What's more likely to happen is once you've made your selection, your treat teases you as it dangles forward and gets stuck. That's normally what happens to me, but Nutkins has had more luck, he's got two choc and nut bars to enjoy.

Chocolate and Strawberries

2010-07-02T00:31:00.000+01:00

Here's the latest cake we've been asked to make, a scrummy triple chocolate cake and a dozen cupcakes. There's six with chocolate buttercream and crunchy chocolate sprinkles, and six with strawberry flavoured buttercream (flavoured with real strawberries) and topped with a delicious white chocolate dipped strawberry......yum.

The triple chocolate cake is chocolate sponge, with a layer of chocolate buttercream and topped off with a generous helping of chocolate ganache. The message and decoration has been piped on using white chocolate.......just in case there wasn't enough chocolate already!

Last month we had another chocolate cake to do, this time we were asked to incorporate a motorbike, so what better than a chocolate motor bike to decorate a triple chocolate cake? The recipient of this cake is a bit of a chocoholic me thinks!

IF: Paisley

2010-06-21T21:33:00.000+01:00

I'm just back from my holiday and getting back to the old routine. I had a fab time with great friends and lots of laughs, it sure was nice to have a break. So I thought I'd get started with a quick illustration for Illustration Friday.

Paisley is the theme this week and I rather enjoyed making my own paisley pattern, it was a bit like doodling but with a purpose. Then I had to think what to draw to incorporate the pattern, what better than a paisley tie? And seeing as it was father's day yesterday I thought it was quite fitting, I'm sure there were a few ties given as presents. My dad mainly got beer and cider, he's well stocked up till his birthday......in four days time!

Lampwork Bead Giveaway!

2010-05-27T11:11:00.000+01:00

Look at all those lovely glass beads, and they could be yours to turn into some fabulous jewellery.

Laura from Beads By Laura is having another giveaway, this time it's this rather generous strand of her Lonelies beads, that's a whopping 41 beads! Laura's Lonelies beads are one off creations, experiment beads and leftovers from sets, all top quality, and this bunch needs a new home.

All you have to do is leave a comment on her blog, and if you have a blog and want to blog about it and link to her giveaway post, she'll enter you into the draw twice. It's open to anyone anywhere in the world and you have until 7pm (UK time) on Friday 4th June to enter. So head on over to Laura's blog for your chance to win.

IF: Early

2010-05-25T19:16:00.000+01:00

Little is known about the Bouffant-a-saurus, but it is said to be the early inspiration for the bouffant hairstyles seen today.

Magnets

2010-05-20T08:59:00.000+01:00

I've been working on magnets recently, something else I like to make. I've got a few different types, beaded magnets in the shape of flowers, cupcakes and flip flops, magnets based on some of my illustrations and I'm currently working on some magnet sets which will be made using resin.

I've started to add a few to my Etsy shop and will gradually be adding more. For sale at the moment are a beaded flower, beaded flip flop, beaded cupcake and an illustration magnet.

My beaded magnets are made using tiny glass seed beads which are individually sewn onto fabric, then glued onto some funky foam to make it nice and sturdy, then a good strong magnet is glued to the back.

And here's a sneak peak at my designs for the resin magnets, they will be sold in sets with different themes, here's a sample from my baking, fairy, monkey and knitting sets. Each will be given a resin coating which will be slightly domed and then affixed to a magnet of the same size. I can't wait to get these made, I think they'll look great once they're done.

And now for something completely different......

2010-05-19T21:30:00.000+01:00

.....well sort of. Instead of my usual illustration posts of late I came across some old paintings I did as part of a course years ago that I thought I'd show you. They're abstract paintings, not my usual style but I like the freedom of creating a random picture and seeing what happens as you go.

Here's what I came up with.

This is my favourite, I was really pleased with how this one turned out.

Can you see a monkey face in this one? It wasn't intentional but I can see it in red above the three white splodges at the bottom of the painting.

This one looks a bit like a landscape to me, or reflections on water?

This was done using the same technique as the red and green one above, but using four bold colours.

All these paintings were made using acrylic paint and without a paintbrush in sight, only a palette knife, so lots of scaping paint over the canvas in various directions, it's amazing what effects it can create.

IF: Cocoon

2010-05-06T10:25:00.001+01:00

What goes on inside a caterpillar cocoon? Preparing for the big change of course!

IF: Detective

2010-04-21T21:08:00.001+01:00

It's not going to take much detective work to figure out what happened to his dinner!

IF - Linked

2010-04-14T13:08:00.000+01:00

The Illustration Friday theme this week is Linked, so I started thinking of what I could draw that was linked together. Then I remembered playing Red Rover at school.

You'd have two teams, each forming a line linked by holding hands and each team would take it in turns to call out 'Red Rover, Red Rover, send somebody over', then someone from the opposite team would run at full pelt towards the other team and try and break the link between two players. If they broke the link then they picked a team member from the opposite team to go and join their team, if they failed to break the link then they would have to join the opposite team. The winning team is the one that ends up with most players.

Apparently this game is deemed too aggressive for school playgrounds these days and it's been banned from some schools. The health and safety brigade have been out again!

Nosegay

2010-04-08T09:52:00.000+01:00

Nosegay – noun - a small bunch of flowers; bouquet; posy.

Today I woke with the word nosegay rattling around in my head, you may think this is a bit weird but this happens to me a lot. Just like a song that can stick in your head, I can get words or names that I will say over and over in my head - and yes it is annoying. It's not like you hear a word like that everyday so how did it come to stick in my noggin? The wonders of the human brain.

Not sure why I felt compelled to share this with you.......I don't sound mental at all!

Anyway, thought I'd show you some quilled tulips I made. I made some for some Mother's Day cards last month, I may make some more like this as they'd make good card toppers.

Happy Easter!

2010-04-02T11:31:00.000+01:00

Yes that is a yule log, but who said they were just for Christmas?

We were asked to make an Easter yule log so here it is, complete with fluffy yellow chicks and Cadbury's Mini Eggs. It's been decorated with chocolate ganache which has been made using Cadbury's Bournville chocolate and it smells amazing. My husband's getting rather good at these logs now, he had plenty of practice at Christmas, he had quite a few orders for them. The recipe can be found here, we use a different filling for our logs, just chocolate buttercream, but the sponge recipe is a good one, and so is the ganache topping.

Happy Easter everyone.

IF: Rescue

2010-03-27T13:23:00.000Z

The Illustration Friday theme this week is Rescue, so I instantly thought of superheroes. This hero is a bit smug but that doesn't deter the ladies!

IF: Expired

2010-03-21T15:53:00.000Z

Eight of his nine lives have already expired, if he's not careful, this kitty's ninth and final life is about to expire! His ghost cats are looking on in horror.....well some of them.

IF: Subterranean

2010-03-17T18:13:00.000Z

It's movie night at Moley and Worm's place and they're all set with their bowls of popcorn. I wonder what they're watching........

Novelty cakes

2010-03-16T23:34:00.000Z

Yep, more cakes! It was our first time with doing a numbered cake, it went really well and Jay (my husband) did a very good job with icing that tricky number 2!! (;o) Hee hee!) We had another Mickey Mouse cake to do (and we've got another one to do in a couple of months time) and a strange request for a meerkat cake. Not just any meerkat either, Aleksander the meerkat from those compare the meerkat (market) adverts.

I had to use my painting skills for Aleksander, I'm pleased with how he looks but he does look more like a dog than a meerkat. Our cake version is a bit fatter, otherwise it would have been a rather small cake.

This is the real Aleksander

We've got a little rest before the next cake making session, the next one we've been asked to do is an Easter Yule Log! I've had a bag of Mini Eggs stored in the cupboard for a while now, I'm surprised they've lasted so long!

Prize Draw winnings!

2010-03-15T23:13:00.000Z

A couple of weeks ago I won a prize draw that was hosted by Laura Sparling on her Beads by Laura blog. Laura is a glass artist and makes wonderful glass beads. She put together a big prize draw giveaway featuring prizes that were donated by herself and other crafters. There were three prizes to win, all comprising of three different items. I couldn't believe it when I found out I'd won, and look what great prizes I won too.

I got some Art Clay Silver, donated by Joy Funnell. Joy makes lovely jewellery and teaches classes in Art Clay Silver, click here to visit her website and here for her blog.

I got a handmade purse in a cute cupcake pattern, donated by Lyn from Florspace. Lyn makes lots of these purses, bags, wallets and clutches, they are very well made and she uses a great range of cute patterned materials. She also included a free foot keyring! You can check out her great products in her Etsy shop here and her blog here.

And my other prize was one of Laura's cupcake bead dangles. Her cupcake beads have been very popular and sadly is no longer making them. Laura frequently has giveaways so keep an eye out on her blog for a chance to win some of her gorgeous glass beads. If you'd like to know more about Laura and her beads you can visit her website here.

And thank you ladies for my fabulous prizes, I love them all.

IF: Brave

2010-03-11T18:58:00.000Z

Mitch the monkey had to be brave to put a plaster on in the first place, now he has to be brave to pull it off! Looks like he'll have a plaster shaped bald patch for a while!!

IF: Perspective

2010-02-27T10:56:00.001Z

From the scarecrow's perspective everything seems fine, little does he know there's a naughty bunny burrowed underground chomping through the carrots!

My elephant illustration is pick of the week on the Illustration Friday website! Finding that out this morning was a lovely surprise, it's made my day and I have a huge grin on my face now. Have a good weekend everyone.

IF: Propagate

2010-02-24T22:48:00.000Z

This weeks Illustration Friday theme is 'propagate'. So here's an elephant and a bee, both helping to propagate the flowers. Thought I'd try a different medium this time to give a different look. I shall have to experiment a bit more.......

IF: Adrift

2010-02-16T00:23:00.000Z

This clever frog has found a safer way to cross the river, still better keep any eye on those hungry crocodiles though!

Valentine's cupcakes and Mickey Mouse

2010-02-14T11:51:00.000Z

Here's the latest cakes my husband's been asked to make, some Valentine's cupcakes and a Mickey Mouse cake. As usual I've lent my hand to decorating, he prefers to bake (and is very good at it - very tasty cakes!) and seeing as I love to make things, I'm best at the decorating. So we make a pretty good cake making team.

The cupcakes are vanilla sponge with pink buttercream, decorated with fondant icing discs and I've piped letters on spelling out 'I Love You' and decorated them with a few hearts.

The Mickey Mouse cake took a bit longer to do! But at least he's relatively easy to make, quite simple features so nothing too complicated to make.

He's all cake too, the mouth is sponge (not just masses of icing) and the ears are simply miniature cakes. Only his nose is a lump of icing. Everything's cut out by hand too, no special cake tins have been used or any templates, and what you can't tell from the pictures is just how big this cake is.....it's BIG, beats any shop bought cake any day!

Mittens or gloves? Why not have both.

2010-02-10T10:50:00.002Z

Here's a pair of gloves I've knitted for my sister, fingerless gloves which have a mitten cover. They're so useful when you're out and about as you don't need to keep taking them off when you need a bit of grip to pick things up or take things out of your bag or wallet, simply flip back the mitten cover and voila, fingertips at the ready. There's even a lovely sparkly button to hold back the mitten cover if you want it held out of the way.

They're knitted with Sirdar Escape DK yarn, which is self patterning, and has such vivid colours. It's also really soft and as it's a bit on the chunky side, it makes the gloves very cosy and warm. I used a Sirdar pattern for these gloves but had to make a few adjustments. When knitted up according to the pattern for a ladies glove, it turned out rather small (and yes I did knit a tension square), so I used the pattern for a man's glove (I guess we must have man sized hands!) made the cuff a little longer and knitted a complete thumb rather than leaving it fingerless.

Think I might knit a pair for myself one day, first I have to finish a pair of long wrist warmers.......

IF: Muddy

2010-02-05T23:08:00.000Z

Lots of options for this weeks theme but it made me think of a story that was in the paper last year about a pig that didn't like getting her trotters all muddy (a bit out of character for a pig!). So her owners had little wellies made especially for her so she could walk about in the mud without the fear of getting muddy. Click here if you'd like to read the article and to see a picture of the little pig wearing her new wellies.

IF: Focused

2010-02-03T21:57:00.000Z

Oh Deer! Looks like someone's focused in on these two chaps noshing on some tasty leaves, luckily one's been spooked so I'm sure they'll get away!

IF: Clumsy!

2010-01-23T16:56:00.000Z

Another illustration for Illustration Friday, this time the subject was Clumsy. I immediately thought of dropping things and I was reminded of an incident years ago on a walk home from school.

It was around Easter time, and my Mum was meeting us after school to walk us home. My sister had been at playschool and all the children had been making little card and paper baskets, stuffed with cotton wool, and they were all given a Creme Egg to go in their basket. My sister came out all pleased and happy with her Creme Egg nestled safely in her basket.

Whilst walking down the road, my sister trod on something squishy - a Creme Egg - how unfortunate we thought, someone must have dropped their egg on the way home and now my sister had stomped on it. That is until she checked her basket and there was no Creme Egg! Once it dawned on her what had happened, she looked a bit like the girl in my picture.......just before she burst into tears!

IF: Wilderness

2010-01-21T17:10:00.000Z

I've been absent from the blogging world for a couple of months, what with the break for Christmas and New Year. I've just found it hard to get motivated again. I'm gradually getting into the swing of things though.

I've been wanting to get back into doing more drawing and I'm going to be doing an Illustration course soon - very exciting (for me at least!). So to get some practice in I'm going to start contributing to Illustration Friday, each week is a different subject and the latest is Wilderness. So this is what I came up with, it's just a quick illustration using pencil, as today is the last day to post pictures on this subject. Poor Squirrel Nutkins, he's found some tasty acorns but hasn't seen what's waiting at the end of the trail!!

Christmas tree ornaments

2009-11-26T12:37:00.008Z

I've been having a good look through Etsy this morning at the selection of Christmas tree ornaments available, and there are quite a few! Here are my favourites, I particularly like the glass reindeer ornament, and the Star Wars ornaments just make me laugh, I love them. Yoda and Chewbacca are fantastic!

Why stick to traditional baubels? You can find some very unique ornaments to decorate your tree with, head on over to Etsy to take a look at the wonderful handmade creations.

More Christmas cards!

2009-11-25T19:57:00.000Z

Another pack of Christmas cards up for sale in the usual place, this time you get eight small square cards, two of each design, featuring a penguin, a robin, a gingerbread man and Rudolph.

More details available in my Etsy shop.

Christmas tree oh Christmas tree

2009-11-19T10:04:00.001Z

Here's the latest Christmas card design, a festive Christmas tree made from silver card, green paper and diamante gem stones - to add a touch of sparkle! The border at the top and bottom of the card has been printed directly onto the card and the tree has been attached to the card using foam pads so it stands out. It's on sale now in my Etsy shop as a pack of five cards.

30 years and 1 day old

2009-11-17T21:22:00.000Z

It was my birthday yesterday and I've had a great weekend celebrating turning 30. I went to London for the day on Saturday with my friends, the weather was dreadful, chucked it down with rain and hail stones while we were waiting for the train. Thankfully it didn't last too long and didn't rain much for the rest of the day, although it got rather windy.

Our first point of call was to Harrods for a quick spot of shopping, we didn't stay too long as it was very busy and rather hot in there. We stayed long enough to see Michael McIntyre chasing after his little boy (who is a mini version of Michael) and to get some Krispy Kreme donuts. A couple of my friends had never tried these American donuts before and they weren't disappointed!

mmmmmmm donuts!!

Next we were off to the Ice Bar. For those that don't know, the Ice Bar is literally a bar made of ice. They change the design every six months, and it's currently an aquatic theme, the walls, tables, bar and the glass you drink out of are all made of ice. And because the temperature is kept at -5, you have to wear a snazzy cape and gloves. You only get to stay in the bar for 40 minutes, but it's well worth a visit.

Looking good in the capes!

A rare picture of me and my husband, who's not pulling a stupid face!

There's always one, my husband licking the ice!!!

We had a nice meal and cocktails in Chiquito's and a wander round St Katherine's dock, stopping off for a drink in The Dickens Inn before going on a Jack the Ripper walking tour. The tour lasted two and a half hours, which is quite tiring after you've been walking about London all day! Our tour guide was a Beefeater and he took us all round the East End and to the places (or roughly the places) where the murders happened. There is only one murder site still remaining as the other sites have been destroyed or built over, and there is an old pub, The Ten Bells, which has pretty much the same interior as it did when the prostitutes used to drink in there at the time of the murders.

We all had a great time, although knackered by the end of the night, I couldn't wait to get home and have a cup of tea and a Krispy Kreme donut - a rather squished donut, it didn't make it back in the best state, but it still tasted good.

Golf Cake

2009-11-06T19:03:00.000Z

Here's the latest novelty cake my husband and I have created. This time we were asked to do a golf themed cake for a 65th birthday.

I'm getting better at modelling with icing, each person I've had to sculpt has gotten better each time (I think I could've done better at positioning the golfer with his golf club, not sure holding a club like that will be very effective!).

I did have an 'OH NO!' moment whilst piping the shoes on though, my tiny piping bag full of black icing split and a great big blob of icing squirted out onto the cake! I quickly scrapped it off and managed to remove most traces of black but it had left a mark. Luckily it was quite near the edge so I could cover it up with buttercream and make the 'rough grass' a bit wider. Few! Panic over.

It was also my first attempt at writing with icing, which went better than I expected. No mishaps with the piping bag this time!

We've now got a small batch of green buttercream left, I guess we'll just have to whip up a few cupcakes to use it up - what a shame! Cupcake anyone?...............

If you'd like to see the other cakes we've made click here and here and here!

Who said cartoons were for kids?

2009-11-04T16:44:00.000Z

I finally went to the cinema to see Up yesterday and I loved it. The 3D effects were pretty good too, especially the times when they were flying. It was also surprisingly sad in places, something I wasn't expecting, as well as funny.

One of the things I love about these animated films these days is the attention to detail, they think of everything and will painstakingly animate individual items, no matter how many are involved. Like animating more than 10,000 balloons to lift the house! Whilst they didn't hand-animate all the balloons, they had to come up with a computer programme that could cope with that many individual balloons, and how they interact with each other. Quite a task in itself.

If you haven't seen Up already, I highly recommend it. Get down to the cinema, put your 3D specks on and enjoy!

My brain is itchy

2009-10-28T16:27:00.000Z

"You've got to fight, fight, fight, fight, fight for this love" this keeps going round and round in my head and it's driving me crazy......damn you Cheryl Cole!! Another case of itchy brain. This older post will explain what I'm on about.

Children's cards

2009-10-21T11:51:00.000+01:00

Here's the next batch of new cards, this time birthday cards for children.

We have Goof Ball, a hairy monster with wobbly eyes, he's made from fuzzy paper so has a furry feel to him.

Dino Short Arms has made it onto his own card.

And here are some fairies ready to grant a birthday wish.

All of these cards can now be purchased from my Etsy shop.

Fun, Festive Cards

2009-10-19T20:59:00.000+01:00

So here's the first batch of new cards ready for sale in my Etsy shop, I thought it was about time I added some Christmas cards. These ones all have bobbly heads! Just give them a shake and their heads bob about.

I've been busy drawing these chaps, cutting out their heads and making springs for that important 'bobbly head' feature. You can buy them individually or as a set, head on over to my shop for all the details.

Does anyone think the Elf is scary? My husband thinks it is, he won't look at it, gives him the heebie jeebies!! (Guess which card he'll be getting for Christmas? Hee hee!)

I'll let you know when the next lot of cards go on sale..........

Bad blogger!

2009-10-16T20:08:00.000+01:00

I've not been a very good blogger, it's been just over two weeks since my last blog! Thing is I've been keeping myself very busy with card making. I've been very productive and made nearly 60 cards! Some are duplicates of the same design but it all counts, I've even managed to make some promotional magnets and experimented with making my own note pads.

my promotional magnet which is free with every purchase

I'll be adding all my new creations to my Etsy shop over the next week or so, and I hope to have my website up and running soon, I've been working on that too. And I'm very pleased to hear that I've sold some cards in the shop in town (only four so far, but it's a start and that was after 2 weeks).

I've certainly been getting through some ink, my printer's never worked so hard! I'll update soon with some pictures of what I've been making.....

Why are some books harder to read than others?

2009-10-01T13:50:00.000+01:00

Why are some books harder to read than others? You know the sort, it sounds like it'd be right up your street, it has loads of great reviews about how good it is, yet some how you just can't get in to it. I have a few books at home that I've never managed to read, I've tried on a few occasions to get through them but it just felt like such a chore.

I generally find that if my mind wanders quite a bit when reading, I'm either not that interested in the book or I'm not in the mood for reading. I love to get stuck into a good book but do find I have to be in a reading mood. I can get through a few books relatively quickly when the mood strikes though.

I have a few books by the author Val McDermid, and I really want to get stuck into her books as they sound like they'd be very good, just my thing. I have managed to read one, 'The Distant Echo', it was actually quite a good book but it was a bit of a struggle to get through it. I'm mid-way through another, 'The Mermaids Singing', which features the character Tony Hill from the tv series 'Wire In The Blood' (which I haven't actually seen). I abandoned this book some time ago so I probably won't ever finish it, I've forgotten what's happened and can't bear the thought of re-reading it! I haven't even attempted the other book I have, 'Beneath The Bleeding'.

She has a new book out, 'The Fever Of The Bone', and it sounds really good, maybe I'll have another go at reading one of her books, but for now I'm enjoying Tess Gerritsen's books featuring the characters Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles. I'm currently reading 'The Mephisto Club' which has some rather nasty murders in it!

So are you the type of person that can read just about anything or are there any books you've given up on because you couldn't 'get in to it'?

Cards in local store!

2009-09-27T11:46:00.000+01:00

For anyone living in the Colchester area, a selection of my cards can now be purchased at Shalamar Bazaar, the handmade craft and gift shop at Long Wyre Street, Colchester (opposite Game Station). They go on sale from Monday 28th September.

Toilet Tube Sculpture!

2009-09-24T12:03:00.001+01:00

I thought I'd share this article with you from the Daily Mail, it's about an artist, Junior Fritz Jacquet, who makes head sculptures out of toilet roll tubes! Once they've been sculpted they're coated in shellac, coloured and then mounted onto flexible metal stalks.

From the comments, people think this one looks like ex-president George Bush!

I think they look great, I really like this sort of thing, like when people create pictures out of food and other materials you wouldn't usually think to use.

To see more of his work click on this link. There you can see more of these great toilet tube sculptures, paper figures and illuminated sculptures.

Long time, no post......

2009-09-23T18:55:00.001+01:00

I haven't blogged for just over a week but that doesn't mean to say I haven't been up to much. I had a great week off work (my day job that is) last week. I sorted through all my cards, made more cards and embellishments (although not as many as I'd planned!), had a custom order for two birthday cards to do, celebrated my first wedding anniversary and went out to dinner, went to the cinema a couple of times, met up with friends and finished off the week with a trip to the hospital!

Some handbag embellishments I made - I did 10 of each design

I started getting a pain in my left leg late Thursday evening and by Sunday it had gotten worse. As I had a DVT a few years ago, and the pain was similar, I thought I better get it checked out. I didn't consider it an emergency so instead of going to A&E, I went to the NHS walk-in clinic - a mistake - I waited nearly an hour just to be told there was nothing they could do for me there, I'd have to go to A&E. But if I'd have turned up on Friday they would've been able to help! That's the trouble with being ill at the weekend. So off I limped to A&E, for an even longer wait.

Over an hour had passed and then I got called through. Great I thought, that wasn't too long to wait, then realised I was just being assesed by the nurse at this stage. She measured my legs (this is to check for swelling which is one of the symptoms of a DVT) but my leg wasn't swollen - it didn't swell the last time as I'm a bit of a freak, and have two popliteal viens in my left leg, which meant my symptoms weren't as severe. Then she took some blood, which has left a big bruise, and then it was back to the waiting area for more waiting, till I could see a doctor.

More time passed, sitting listening to people moaning about having to wait so long - it's A&E, notorious for waiting long periods of time to be seen. You'd think that given the amount of time you have to wait they could provide you with more comfortable seating, my bum was incredibly numb, and you couldn't get up and wander around for fear of losing your seat.

Finally I got called in to see the doctor, went over the same things as with the nurse, he checked to see if my blood test results were back - they weren't - so guess where I was sent off too....that's right, back to the waiting area!

Yet more time passed, then a nurse called my name.....but this was just to inform me that they hadn't forgotten about me and that my blood was being tested as we speak, and it should take 15-20 minutes. So I went back to waiting. By this stage I not only had a pain in my leg, but a numb bum, was very thirsty and getting hungry too. Not to mention being very fed up of waiting.

At last I was called through for the results (I'd been at the hospital for a total of 4½ hours!), blood test was positive which wasn't good news. They said it was likely to be a DVT but I'd need a scan on my leg to find out for sure. So I was given an injection of Heparin (to thin my blood) and sent on my way. I was being referred to the DVT nurse so had to wait for a call the next day for my appointment.

After having the ultrasound scan on my leg the next day (which was a bit of a palarva, someone had to come in and squeeze my leg to get the blood pumping through the veins!), they couldn't find any signs of a clot, which was good news.

So I was referred back to my GP, for her to say I'd either pulled the tendons or it was just one of those unexplained pains! So I've got to hope it clears up all by itself. So far there's not been much change and I'm still limping about, but at least it's not a DVT afterall.

Shop Swap & Blog

2009-09-14T11:52:00.000+01:00

What's it all about? Well the Shop Swap & Blog has been organised by Pattie from Structured Chaos, here's what she says

Hello everyone!

It's that time of year where every shop owner wonders how they are going to get the word out about their shop because they know that if someone at least saw their work that they would love it!

Well, I had an idea that we could do a shop swap and blog! Basically this is where you send your partner something from your shop, along with some information about it by mail, and they in turn blog about the experience!

Come check it out, and join in the fun!!
www.mystructuredchaos.blogspot.com/2009/09/shop-swap-blog.html

For more details click on the link above. If you would like to see who has already signed up click here. If you have an online shop and would like more exposure, this is a great opportunity to get noticed, you never know who will be reading about your wonderful products!

If you would like to help promote the Shop Swap Blog, Pattie has created a button so we can display it on our blogs (I've already added mine on the left hand side of my blog!), you can get the code here.

If you want to join in, make sure you sign up by 30th September, and look forward to receiving some goodies in the post!

Beware of Custard Creams!!

2009-09-11T09:34:00.001+01:00

I've just read this article 'Named: the UK's deadliest biscuit' on the internet. A research company has done some very "valuable research" into which biscuit is most likely to cause someone an injury during a tea or coffee break.

Here are some of the injuries they came across:

people poking themselves in the eye with a biscuit
falling off a chair while reaching for the biscuit tin
sustaining burns after dunking a biscuit in scalding tea
being hit by fragments flying through the air
choking on crumbs
damaging a tooth or filling on a hard biscuit
and one person managed to get stuck in wet concrete after wading in to pick up a stray biscuit!

How dumb do you have to be to poke yourself in the eye with a biscuit? As for falling off a chair while reaching for the biscuit tin, that's just laziness. Sustaining burns when dunking biscuits, did these people reach into the mug of boiling hot tea with their hands, to retrieve a piece of biscuit that'd fallen off mid-dunk? And look out for those fragments flying through the air, just imagine the terrible injuries you could get from biscuit crumbs. Choking on crumbs and damaging a tooth or filling are the only reasonable injuries on the list. I can only hope that this one person that managed to get stuck in wet concrete, was trying to remove the stray biscuit because it had ruined the freshly laid concrete, and not to eat it.

Fifteen types of biscuit were tested on their physical properties, along with aspects of their consumption such as 'dunkability' and 'crumb dispersal'. They then compiled a list of 'riskiest biscuits' with a 'danger rating' from their tests. To see the list click here. Custard Creams have been discovered to be the riskiest with a danger rating of 5.64! The least dangerous is the Jaffa Cake with a rating of 1.16. But is the Jaffa Cake a biscuit or a cake? The name suggests cake but that's not where you'd find it in the supermarket, no, Jaffa Cakes hang out with the dangerous biscuits.

So the next time you reach for a biscuit on your tea break, think twice, are you going to risk the deadly Custard Cream or play it safe with a harmless Jaffa Cake? Thanks to this valuable research you can now save yourself from a terrible biscuit related injury - money well spent obviously!

How on earth did you find me?

2009-09-10T11:51:00.003+01:00

When checking out my web analytics for my Etsy shop I love to check what keywords have been used that have brought people to view my shop. Whilst there are the obvious ones: big jessie, big jessie cards, big jessie on etsy, beer birthday cards etc there are some unusal ones that crop up.

Here's the top 20 of unusal keyword searches that have brought views to my shop

alligator clips lining
chef wall decor
child fingerless gloves
emery sand
evalicious (what the heck?!)
felt purses for little girls
hershey kiss rubber stamp
lampwork beach
magnet slogans
medieval charm bracelet, etsy
mens tweed long coat
method of flower making by using glaze paper
ring bearor pillows, silk flowers
rubber ducky your the one
tajmahal scrapbooking paper
uk wildcat stained glass
upcycled shoes
vintage baseball canvas
wolf hair bow
yippiekawaiiyeahs shop

It's quite amazing how my card shop featured in the list of results when these keywords were entered, the mind boggles!

What strange keywords have been used to find your shop or blog?

500 Days of Summer

2009-09-09T11:09:00.000+01:00

I went to the cinema last night to see 500 Days of Summer and it was great, I really enjoyed it. It makes a change to have a romantic comedy told from the guy's angle and in this particular film it's the guy who falls for the girl and the girl who doesn't believe in love (it happens!). This isn't your typical rom com, it's more 'real' which is what makes it funny. So if you like your films funny with a touch of quirkiness and a splash of romance then I recommend you go see it - it's worth a watch.

Cupcake beads

2009-09-04T19:00:00.001+01:00

I'm now the proud owner of one of these fabulous little glass cupcake beads which have been handmade by Laura Sparling. The pink one I got for my sister, and I got the green one for myself (I had to treat myself of course!).

Look how tiny they are!

Laura makes fantastic lampwork beads and her little cupcakes have been a big hit. She's currently having a giveaway, so if you would like the chance to win one of her cupcake beads, head on over to her blog and leave a comment stating what your favourite real cake is. You have until Monday and it's open to anyone anywhere. As Aleksandr the Meerkat would say, simples!

Mountfitchet Castle

2009-09-01T12:31:00.022+01:00

On Sunday, me and some friends went out for the day and we went to Mountfitchet Castle in Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex. It's a reconstructed wooden motte and bailey castle situated on it's original site, that allows you to experience what it would have been like to live in 1066. Living in those times wouldn't have been fun, it must have been very cold, smelly, dirty and miserable. They only bathed once a month and god help you if you were injured in any way, no anaesthetic, nothing would be sterile and they had some rather nasty looking tools to perform surgery with. It got me thinking about OCD, would anyone have suffered with that in those times or is it a 'new' illness that's come about from our way of living today? How on earth would someone cope with a cleaning obsession living in 1066?

In the village area you can wander in and out of all the buildings, the prison, kitchen, church, brewhouse, and other areas including the gallows and stocks.

My friend Mairghread in the stocks - we did let her out!

And they have animals roaming around just like they would have back then, they have sheep, goats, hens, deer, peacocks and ducks.

And you get to try on some helmets too.

I don't think they needed to worry about the helmet fitting over glasses back then!

And dare you sit in the fertility chair?

According to the sign,

'A chair similar to this, has been used since pagan times to help with the fertility of both men and women. This ancient ritual was handed down from generation to generation over the centuries. Persons wishing to try the magic of this mystic Fertility chair must follow the strict instructions laid down by the Sorcerers:-

First you must be seated on the chair
Cross your right foot over your left ankle whilst keeping your knees tight together
Hold your right earlobe with your left hand
Place your right hand on your left knee
Close your eyes then repeat the word 'magog' five times for the spell to work

Can you feel a tingle?'

I wonder if it'll work....time will tell........

Not only do you get to do all this, you get to visit the House on the Hill Toy Museum too, guaranteed to bring the kid out in you. See if you can spot some toys you used to own, and have a go on the old penny arcade machines.

After all this fun it was time for us to have our picnic, we'd all brought some food with us and it ended up looking like a banquet! And of course the moment the food was out, so were the wasps. Needless to say that the picnic wasn't enjoyed in a peaceful calm manor - there were a few yelps, screams and a bit of running away!

Featured Artist!

2009-08-31T12:09:00.005+01:00

I'm this weeks featured artist on Snowbell Jewelry's blog. I was delighted when she contacted me and asked if I would like to be featured, so of course I said yes. Head on over to her blog to read the interview, and while you're there check out her other posts, they're definitely worth a read, she has some funny tales to tell.

You can also find Snowbell on Etsy. She's lucky enough to be away on holiday at the moment so be sure to visit her shop after 14th September to see her fantastic hand made jewellery.

Water Drop Pendant - Snowbell Jewelry

Orange & Lemon Loaf Cake

2009-08-27T11:57:00.027+01:00

After my recent posts about cakes I thought it was time I shared a recipe with you.

I had a hankering for ginger cake yesterday and thought I'd have a go at making some, I was certain I had all the ingredients but when I checked, I was missing the ground ginger, a rather important ingredient for making ginger cake! I checked to see what else I had and decided to make an orange and lemon cake instead.

I only wanted a small cake so I thought I'd make it in a loaf tin. So here's my recipe for an orange and lemon loaf cake.

Ingredients

4oz butter or margarine

4oz caster sugar

40z self raising flour

2 medium eggs

1 medium orange

2tsp lemon juice

2-3oz icing sugar

Method

Turn on oven to 180°c/350°F/Gas Mark 4

1. Measure out the butter and sugar and mix together in a bowl, then add the flour.
2. Whisk the eggs and add to the bowl with the butter, sugar and flour.
3. Grate the orange and add the peel to the mixture, save a little for the icing.

4. Using the orange, squeeze some juice into the mixture (about a table spoon).
5. Mix all the ingredients together until smooth.
6. Grease and line a small loaf tin, I use butter and flour to line the tin.

7. Pour the mixture into the tin and place in the middle of a pre-heated oven.
8. Cook for 25-30mins or until cooked through and golden. You can test if it's cooked by stabbing it with a skewer or knife, if it comes out clean it's done, if it comes out gooey then it needs a bit more time.
9. Once it's cooked, take it out of the tin and leave to cool on a cooling rack.

Icing

1. Sieve 2oz of icing sugar into a bowl and add 2 tea spoons of lemon juice.
2. Mix together until smooth. You may need to add a tiny bit of water to make the mixture runnier. Aim for a thick consistency, if it's too runny it'll run off the cake, if it's too stiff it'll be hard to spread. If your icing is runny, add more icing sugar (a little at a time), if it's too stiff add a couple of drops of water or lemon juice.
3. Add the left over orange peel to the icing and mix together.

4. Spread the icing over the top of the sponge.

All that's left to do is put your feet up and enjoy a nice slice with a cup of tea, well, that and the cleaning up!

Another Birthday Cake

2009-08-25T13:22:00.007+01:00

Here's the latest cake creation, and I'm pleased to say this one went a lot better than the last one. No disasters in the kitchen this time and I was getting on better with the icing.

We were asked to do a cake featuring a man playing on a PlayStation, I had a photo of the man in question so I could get a resemblance (hope he's not too offended!).

I was told he had a PlayStation 2 and that he liked playing war games and racing games, I opted for the war game to display on the TV screen.

So here he is enjoying a game on the PlayStation.

My husband had to make do without his mixer for this cake, he had to put some good old fashioned elbow grease into it. Despite his worries the cake turned out well.

The only bad thing is, we won't get to have a piece of this cake :(

Strange week

2009-08-20T09:26:00.008+01:00

It's been a strange week, very hot and boring. I don't seem to be able to get motivated at all this week. It's quite rare that I feel bored but I have been suffering with that feeling this week. I've got so many ideas running through my mind that I don't know where to begin. I think I need to start making a list of the ideas I've got, then maybe I can free up my brain!

I did manage to make a card last night and I thought I'd try something a bit different. I dug out my watercolour pencils and started playing about. I did this little drawing/painting of a bird.

And then I made it into a card

And I know just the person to give it to, she likes birds, just hope she likes my strange little bird!

Children's Cards

2009-08-15T12:55:00.011+01:00

The latest card project is children's cards. I want to make a range of cards suitable for young children, preferably a printed card without having things stuck to the front which could be pulled off and swallowed!

So I want to have nice bright pictures that are fun, I've been working on a few sketches, here's what I have so far

Pirate

Fairy

Spaceman

Princess and Mermaid

And here's a completed one, I've done the pirate card first and I'm quite pleased with the finished design. I scan my sketches into my computer and work on the images in Photoshop, that way it gives me greater flexibility on moving everything around and customising.

Now for the rest of them........

Birthday Cake

2009-08-14T12:42:00.015+01:00

It's my sister's birthday today and to celebrate we're having a get together with some friends at my house tonight. My husband likes to bake so he said he'd make her a cake (which means I help out with the decorations and cleaning!). As we both have to work today we were busy cake making last night.

We'd come up with a fairy garden theme, complete with a little cottage, pond, gnomes and toadstools, and of course a fairy. I did a sketch of what we had in mind. A bit ambitious perhaps but we thought we'd have a go.

My sketch of the cake

It took a long time to decorate and the kitchen looked like an icing sugar bomb had exploded with some butter cream and food colouring mixed in! As if that wasn't enough mess, Jay's hand mixer decided to burn out (literally), the motor started making a funny noise, then I noticed it glowing blue and orange through the vent! He turned it off just in time before the whole thing went up in flames, but there was plenty of smoke and a rather strong burning smell. Time to move the cake out of the kitchen while we tried to get rid of the smoke! Come to think of it, I've been involved in a few incidents in the kitchen where something's caught or nearly caught fire, maybe I should get a fire blanket or extinguisher!

Things weren't going too bad, although mixing coloured fondant icing was a bit time consuming, so I reverted to painting some of the objects with the food colouring. Sculpting with fondant icing is quite tricky, it's too soft, I managed to make the fairy (just) but had to give up on the idea of gnomes and toadstools as they were too small and fiddly to sculpt out of fondant icing. I'm sure there're plenty of people that could manage it but I was losing patience and time was getting on.

Edible fairy wings!

The fairy wings are made out of edible wafer paper with coloured sugar sprinkles glued on (yes glue - but an edible version). I made the sugar sprinkles by putting some granulated sugar into a food bag, added a few drops of red food colouring and mixed it all together, and there you have it, some pink sugar sprinkles! We've used these coloured sugar sprinkles on top of cupcakes before, which adds a nice bit of sparkle and crunch.

Yummy cupcake with home made sugar sprinkles!

With everything pretty much finished, the cottage was done (which is basically a mini cake, sponge, jam, butter cream and covered in icing), the fairy was done, as were the pond and flowerbeds, all that was left to do was the piped icing shells around the bottom of the cake. For this we needed royal icing as it sets nice and firm, providing you get the mixture right. I don't think we'll have any problems with the royal icing setting firmly, the mixture was so stiff it was a job to pipe! I think it's safe to say that things weren't going too well with this cake, and we've done a few novelty type cakes in the past, none quite as eventful as this one.

So here's the finished cake

It's hardly in the same league as Ace of Cakes (a tv programme about Charm City Cakes, a bakery in America that do amazing novelty cakes) but I'm sure it'll taste great....I love birthday cake and can't wait to try a piece of it.

We've got another cake to do in a couple of weeks time, I hope that one goes smoother than this one did!

Brain Itch

2009-08-13T10:40:00.008+01:00

I woke up this morning with a song in my head, as I woke I found myself repeating the chorus of Lady Gaga's Paparazzi over and over, rather annoying! I don't even recall hearing that song yesterday but somehow my internal jukebox decided to select that song. This seems to happen to me a lot, waking up with a song in my head.

I got to thinking about how songs get stuck in your head and decided to look in to it. I found this article on the BBC website which explains all about it. Apparently it's called a brain itch (or earworms which sounds gross!) it seems once you get a brain itch the only way to scratch it is to repeat the song over and over! And women are more susceptible to them than men.

So, does anyone have a song playing in their head today?

New Cards

2009-08-10T10:34:00.013+01:00

Another weekend over! I had a rather productive weekend though, I managed to work on some new card designs, clean the house, do some gardening, socialise with friends and went to the cinema to see The Proposal. The film was your typical chick flick but enjoyable with a few laughs.

I've got some new cards made up, I will be adding them to my Etsy shop this week. The first one is a checked shirt male birthday card which has been added this morning.

Here's a sneek peek of the new cards.

Pencils and Portraits

2009-08-06T14:38:00.069+01:00

I've always enjoyed drawing since an early age, it's the first taste of art you get, from the time you get your first set of crayons. I quickly became a fan of pencils, I have lots of sets, graphic, metallic, watercolour, sketching, pastel, colouring, charcoal and a furry pencil case full of my original Crayola and random colouring pencils (of varying lengths, they've had a lot of use!).

Did you know that there is a museum dedicated to pencils? The Derwent Cumberland Pencil Museum, located in Keswick in the heart of the Lake District, where you can find out about the history of pencil making, and it's home to the world's longest pencil at 7.91 metres (25ft 11.5inches) long, it weighs 446.36kg (984.05 pounds). Now that's a big pencil!

If I'm ever up that way I may have to pay it a visit, I bet I could spend a fair amount of time (and money) in the gift shop!

Pencils have always been my favourite medium when it came to creating a picture, pastels are OK but I never found them very good for doing detailed pictures, same goes for paint, I feel I can't do small intricate details (even with the tiniest brush), not like I can with pencils. I have better control with pencils, you can create thick or thin lines, faint or dark lines, smudge it, blend it, and with watercolour pencils even turn it into a painting! I like that you don't need to wait for anything to dry and it's portable, as long as you have a trusty pencil sharpener with you........and an eraser comes in handy too.

I used to draw on a very regular basis but it's been a long time since I've done some proper drawing. I sketch almost daily but that's usually when coming up with ideas for cards and other projects. The last drawing I did was a portrait of Wesley Snipes as Blade and that was nearly two years ago. I think I need to start making time for drawing, I really enjoy it and I find it relaxing (when things go right) and it'll make a change from constantly thinking of card design ideas, I need to learn how to 'switch off'.

This is my drawing of Blade (Wesley Snipes)

I love drawing portraits, but I tend to worry about not getting a likeness, even if I manage to pull off some sort of resemblance I can always find faults with my work (and that's true of anything I create - it can be the tiniest detail that I can look at and think 'that could be thinner, thicker, straighter, smaller' etc, the list could be endless). I'm probably the harshest critic of my own work, always looking of ways to improve, but I guess that's why 'practice makes perfect'.

So I thought I would dig out some of the portraits I've done over the years, and we're talking over the past 20 years, since the age of 10! Some are good, some aren't so good and some may make you laugh.

Snowbell Jewelry: The wonderful world of (online) dating

2009-08-06T10:24:00.005+01:00

Snowbell Jewelry: The wonderful world of (online) dating

I've just read this great blog and thought I'd share it with you, she certainly tells it like it is! While I haven't had any experience of online dating I know some people who have and of course the date part we can all relate to. You should also check out her blog posts Don't get your knickers in a twist - moving to London (part 2) and Weird, wonderful and not so wonderful foods of Britain they make for amusing reading - especially if you live in the UK. Besides writing great blog posts, Snowbell makes jewellery (if you hadn't guessed already!) which you can buy from her Etsy shop snowbell.etsy.com

It's the weekend!

2009-08-02T00:18:00.009+01:00

How's everyone's weekend going? As usual it's going quick, time certainly flies when you're not at work!

I've been doing a bit of card shop research (I want to get my cards into shops) and there's a local shop in town (Colchester) that I'm going to sell some in, yay! It's an unusual set up, as I just rent a shelf. The shop sells all sorts of handmade goodies from local artists and they just rent space, so anything that sells, the profits go straight to the artist. It's worth a try, I just need to pick a good selection of my cards and drop them off.

I saw a film yesterday called Cadillac Records, here's what it's about:

"Cadillac Records" chronicles the rise of Leonard Chess'(Adrien Brody) Chess Records and its recording artists including Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright), Little
Walter (Columbus Short),Chuck Berry (Mos Def), Willie Dixon (Cedric The Entertainer) and the great Etta James (Beyoncé Knowles). In this tale of sex,violence, race and rock and roll in Chicago of the 1950s and 60s,the film
follows the exciting but turbulent lives of some of America's greatest musical legends.

It's not bad, worth a watch if you like this kind of music, I particularly like the Etta James song 'At Last', Beyonce does a good version in the film, as well as some other songs.

I'm off to a BBQ tomorrow round my parents and it's my sister-in-law's birthday, so hopefully the weather will be good, just hope the rain holds off! Have a good Sunday everyone.

Something Fishy

2009-07-30T21:34:00.033+01:00

I have a thing about fish, I don't have any but I find I am drawn to fishy items (maybe it has something to do with being a water sign, who knows?). I particularly like glass paperweights (I have a thing about glass too), I have a few that feature fish, my favourite being a tiny one I picked up in Venice earlier this year. It's tiny because that's about all my budget could stretch to(that and the fact that it was too cute not to buy), there were some amazing pieces for amazing prices too!

And here he is, I just couldn't resist him!

So, I thought I'd have a nose through Etsy and see what fishy items I could find, there were plenty to choose from! I had a good look and I've gathered up a few of my favourites, what do you think?

Just click on the items for more info, it'll go to the sellers item page on Etsy.

Craft Robo

2009-07-30T09:11:00.004+01:00

How I would love one of these nifty machines, it's a bit like a printer but instead of ink it has a blade which cuts out your designs! Just imagine how much time that would save me, and it can do so much more, there are so many design possibilities I could come up with. I better start saving the pennies as they don't come cheap, a Craft Robo machine costs £229.99.

Finished!

2009-07-29T22:35:00.013+01:00

My invites are finally complete, all 100 of them! They may look like a simple design but when everything you see on the card has been cut out by hand I think you can start to appreciate the time it takes to make them.

The champagne glasses were drawn and scanned into my computer, where I tweak them in Photoshop and print them out onto sheets of card, add some clear crystal lacquer to give them a nice glossy finish and leave to dry. Then the fun part.....cutting out every single one by hand (that's 200 glasses).

The background is made up of white pearlised paper mounted onto deep red Bazzil card stock, then mounted onto silver mirror card (holocard.co.uk has the best prices for mirror card that I've managed to find). All these pieces of card are again cut by hand (using a guillotine, if I cut them out with scissors they would be rather wonky!) Everything is stuck together using double sided tape (no messy glue to make the paper soggy) and attached to the card. A few diamante gem stones are added for some sparkle.

The 'Ruby Wedding Anniversary' wording has been printed onto special paper in order for me to make my own transfers, it's dry rub off decal paper from Crafty Computer Paper (they have some great products).

And last but not least is the 'Invitation' wording, printed onto white paper and mounted onto silver card, with 2 ruby gem stones. This has been added using foam pads to make it stand out.

All that was left to do was print and trim the inserts with the details on and stick them inside the cards, oh and add my business labels to the back, very important, it's a good way to advertise (a potential 100 new customers!).

So now that job is done, I better get back to my other cards, and do some work on my website, which I really should have had up and running by now!

New York 2010!

2009-07-28T10:57:00.002+01:00

I have a new mission, to find an apartment to rent for a week in New york for next year. Me and my husband and our friends (and my sister) are hoping to spend New Years Eve in New York next year, I'm so excited! I've never been before and it'll be great to go with friends. So far Jay (my husband) has found this place http://www.holiday-rentals.co.uk/p87180?uni_id=72719 sounds ideal but the price seems a bit too-good-to-be-true, will have to contact them for a price for the week we want as something tells me it could be a bit pricier at that time of year!

If anyone out there has any suggestions on where to stay I'd love to hear from you, just leave a comment. I'm off to search the web for more accommodation......

Big Jessie Blog - The Beginning!

2009-07-27T15:01:00.000+01:00

I've been toying with the idea of starting a blog for some time now, so I finally decided I'd do it. So here we are, my first post. I'll be posting about the latest news regarding my cards and anything else that takes my fancy.

I've been rather busy lately creating 100 invitations for my parents-in-law, they'll be celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary in December! They're nearly finished, so I'll be able to get cracking with my regular cards soon. I've got so many cards I need to make to add to my range, I want to have a good selection for people to choose from.

I'll try and post a picture later of the invitations but for now I'd better get back to making them.......