Sacrilege

shop sale

get 20% off your order in my etsy shop until fri 20 january with coupon code HELLO2012. there's prints, cards, notebooks, zines & more - i'll be adding to this over the next few months, but for now you can get a nifty deal on current stock.

26 things

i'm blogging this a little later than usual, but i've been trying to whittle this list down & i think i'm there now. since 2009 i've come up with to-do lists that coincide with the age i'll turn that year; some things on the list are big, some are smaller. i managed to complete just over half of 2011's list, which is what i did the previous two years, so here's to 2012 being the year i do everything.

1. train to run 5k 2. get used to having tinnitus 3. reach 700 sales on etsy 4. do taxes quarterly 5. make a minimum of ten things on my sewing machine 6. including a dress 7. including a tie for alan 8. find a dentist & doctors in glasgow 9. start flossing again 10. join the library 11. make a recipe box/book 12. make at least two out of three of my workday lunches a week 13. organise and manage my freelance days 14. learn a new knitting stitch 15. start blogging more regularly 16. escape the city at least once a month 17. read thirty books 18. host dinner for some friends 19. experiment with limited colour pallets 20. get my wardrobe down to 200 items (clear out/manage over time) 21. take a life drawing class 22. take up yoga again 23. finish my needlefelt fox 24. learn to love (or at least like) cooking 25. get some plants for the flat & become greenfingered 26. get better at coding

i've made a start on several things already, & you can help me nudge goal three in the right direction - there's just a couple of days left of my etsy sale - enter coupon code 'hello2012' at checkout to get 20% off your order.

sister

everything i've been working on for the past few months has been in black & white, so i thought i'd add just a little colour to one of my sleeping on the sleeper images.

(thank you to anyone who purchased some! if you have no idea what i'm talking about, head here.)

teapots & paper

today was spent cleaning out my old flat; mainly our spare room, the studio. after two trips to the recycling centre to offload paper that i've had for at least four years, my paper-hoarding problem was finally brought to light. i found scraps of paper that "might come in handy", & paper that i've used for uni projects but then kept the remnants because i didn't want to bin them. at least my younger self saw this coming; i found a folder of paper titled nice paper to keep even though i'll probably never use it. & what do you know - i found it under a pile of paper that i haven't touched in about two years.

i was justly rewarded for my ruthlessness today. along with the recycling, i took several bags of clothing, kitchenware & art materials to a charity shop, where i found this beautiful teapot. clear-out-karma. joy.

pocket-sized palm reading. i made an edition of little lino prints for the wonder that is crawl inclusive (the second coming), taking place in dundee this friday. they'll be distributed by the lovely ones of pitch & strike because they are nice like that. so, y'know, if you want one, maybe show up? that said, you might not be able to come, so there's another way you can bag yourself a tiny fortune. i'm going to include one with the next five orders* (over £6.50/$10 inc. shipping) from my shop. yes? yes. *EDIT: all gone! thanks guys.

animals that i did not meet #3

pushpin bookmark

i was pretty happy to find an email in my inbox last week from marceline of asking for trouble, querying whether i'd like to produce an artist's bookmark for her new zine distro, pushpin zines. of course, i said yes. above you can see some detail from my image, a girl engrossed in nick hornby's high fidelity whilst curled up in a cosy reading nook. you can get one of the bookmarks from pushpin for £1 or free when you spend £6 or over on zines.

a week off of sorts. we're journeying to the end of a peninsula on the very west coast tomorrow, to celebrate my favourite person's birthday with campfires, marshmallows, walks & trees. as much as i like normality, i'm excited to get away from it for a bit.

new ways of living (i)

the looking for trouble exhibition - mentioned in my last post - opened in nottingham today. at long last (& it really has felt like forever) i can post some new work online.

i produced a small body of work for the show, collectively titled new ways of living; the pieces are an illustrated exploration into the notion of simplicity in modern life. a hint at how convoluted things can get & perhaps a reminder to step back & evaluate. or something like that.

above is a piece titled haircut, an edition of twelve (because at the time of drawing it'd been twelve months since my last haircut) giclée prints. i'll be posting the rest of the work over this coming week.