Merry Christmas

It's Christmas day! Merry Christmas to you all.

I will be spending mine with my family and my other half's family.
Enjoying good company and plenty of laughter, not to mention a lovely Christmas dinner.

I hope you all get to enjoy a wonderful day too.

Postcard Post - A Christmas Bauble

I've finally got around to sending out my seasonal greetings. This year it had to be in the form of a Christmas postcard - what else! I had my Christmas Lights postcard from earlier, but couldn't resist doodling another.
Christmas baubles come in all shapes and sizes as well as colours and patterns. I've doodled a few little baubles for a Christmas card before, so this time I decided to doodle one large bauble. Here it is...

With the doodle done, the fun bit is to colour it in and see it develop.

Add a background colour, some Christmas text and a bit of shadow detail, to bring it to life...

It also needs a back design...

Oh, and then I can't resist a little play around with the colours to produce another version.

Merry Christmas to you all.

Another Advent Calender Update

Here's another quick post to show you the doodling progress on my advent calender. I've reached the tops of the trees now, and slowly moving into the enchanted forest of Christmas trees...

Only 9 more sleeps!

Birthday Girl

This week, my partner’s Granddaughter, Grace, celebrates her very first birthday. She is a little ray of sunshine.

For her birthday card I wanted to design something original but also personal to Grace. I had seen some embellished photographs and wanted to do something along those lines.

With this in mind, my starting point was to find a suitable photograph. This one is of Grace playing on a musical piano mat.

From here, I cropped out some of the background and turned it into a black and white image.

 Adding more black space to the left of the image gave me plenty of room to add some white text for her age and the lyrics to Happy Birthday, which includes her name.

With an extra border, the image has a bit more impact and a frame to sit in.

 To add some finishing touches, I couldn’t resist a little doodling using a white gel pen and pink chalk pastel pen.

 Happy Birthday, Grace.

Advent Calender Update

Hi there, this is just a quick post to show you the latest doodles, on my advent calender. The days seem to be going by very fast....only 20 more sleeps to Christmas Day!

Further updates will follow later in the month, showing my doodling progress. Thank you for stopping by at this busy time.

Its the 1st of December

Have you opened the first window, or emptied the first pocket on your advent calender? Who got the chocolate or the treat? This year I've decided to make my own advent calender, with no chocolates or treats involved. I eat too many as it is!

My idea was inspired partly from a mood board that I had seen, using a lot of luggage labels and the beautiful patchworks, made with pockets for each day of advent.

Using a punch and some printed numbers I designed a label for each of the days, which would then be hung from a pin to form an overall design on a pin board.

Each label has some space where snowflakes or Christmas trees can be doodled each day, gradually building into a snowy forest scene.

That's my theory, anyway...

The pin board consists simply of a few layers of corrugated cardboard stuck together, a layer of patchwork wadding and some linen material, wrapped over and stapled onto the back of the board.

 Trying to achieve neat corners as I go.

The numbers are printed on to sheets of card, leaving plenty of room for the label punch.

Each label needs a small hole punched out, in order for them to hang from individual pins.

Next, the technical bit, the pins need to be positioned in just the right place on the board for the overall design to be achieved.

All the labels are hung from their pins in the correct order to form the overall size and shape of the original idea.

Now, the fun begins...I get to doodle the label of the day, starting with today's.

My tools of choice are silver pens and glitter. It wouldn't be Christmas without some sparkly glitter!

With doodles complete for today, I can put my number one label back on it's pin and wait for tomorrow.

Now...where did I put those chocolates!

Postcard Post - Christmas Lights

Why is it, when you see some song lyrics written down, you try your best to just read them but you inevitably end up singing them. These lyrics then get stuck in your head, on an endless loop, and you sing the same bit over and over again, driving you (and anyone who can hear you) a little bit madder each time you do it.

For once, this worked to my advantage and sparked an idea for a Christmas postcard.

What I needed was some Christmas lights.

Switched on.....

And then those all important song lyrics, to get us into the spirit of things.

Are you singing it yet? Enjoy.

We Have Very Fine Peas

In amongst my collection of old postcards, is this one.

I bought it because I found it amusing, also a little strange that anyone would pick this image as something to send to another. Saying that, maybe they picked it for exactly the same reasons I did...hmmm does that make me strange...?

Anyway, I find peas happy things, not sure why, but I do.

This sparked the start of a doodle...

Which grew...

and grew...

Until I had some Very Fine Peas of my own.

Postcard Post - Ace Brill Fab!

I love postcards!

I have quite a few pin boards and wire rack thingy-ma-jigs full of postcards and art cards that I've collected from all sorts of places. They act as constant inspiration to me whilst I potter about my house.

I pick them out, initially, because of the image on the front, but in the case of postcards, especially old, used postcards, it is also the design of the 'blank' back, the stamp and the handwritten message. Here is one from my collection. A photograph of a very windy Newquay, with a bit of a cryptic message for a Miss Hill.

As well as the fun of collecting them, I like to design my own. This too, is a collection that keeps on growing! I hope to bring you a series of 'Postcard Posts' showing you my designs. This first one is simply called Ace Brill Fab!

I think I must have been feeling pretty good at the time. There is also the 'blank' side.

In this day and age of texts and social media, it is easy for us to keep in touch with friends and family. But I don't think you can beat the joy of sending or receiving a hand written postcard 'the old fashioned way'.