Trick or Treat?

Hello my lovelies, how are you all today? I hope you're having a brilliant day! Once again i've been the most neglectful blogger I know, I haven't posted anything on here in weeks, but it's been a busy time and i'm also incredibly lazy!

SO SORRY! But i'm here now so let's crack on with it shall we?!

So it's that time of year again, whether or not you celebrate it in any way shape or form you'll no doubt still be aware that today is Hop-Tu-Naa (or Halloween if you're not from the Isle of Man) which means trick or treating, turnips (or pumpkins), dressing up in fun costumes and gathering ginormous heaps of SWEETIES!

I mean just ask Aalish and Illiam, they know all about trick or treating and they just LOVE Hop-Tu-Naa!

I'm well into the Hop-Tu-Naa festivities this year, or at least my desk is! I might have gotten just a little bit carried away decorating it for Halloween...

 you might be thinking, 'Jade what do you mean you decorated your desk for Halloween, are you insane?!' in which case the answer is a most definite and resounding YES!

Yeah so I was (attempting to do some) tidying up and I found a bag full of Halloween decorations that I didn't even realise I had! So I kind of HAD to put them all up. I mean I have mini spooky fairy lights and pumpkin garlands and ghost gingerbread!!!

LOOK AT THIS SPARKLY COLOUR CHANGING GHOST LIGHT!!!

SORRY NOT SORRY! (although I do promise to take it all down tomorrow on November 1st... and i'll try to leave at least a bit of time before I break out the Christmas decorations!!!)

oh but that's not all, you see I also dressed up this year!

I couldn't decide what to be so I put together a sort of spooky eyeball witch type thing (any excuse to wear my beloved Meadham Kirchhoff for Topshop eyeball dress!) with homemade eyeball headband + matching brooches

And then naturally I dressed up as a Ghostbuster, because come on it's ME and really what did you expect?!

WHO YA GONNA CALL?! well not me, obviously!

I'm not actually leaving the house tonight as it is utterly vile weather outside, but that doesn't mean I can't still dress up right?! I'm going to stay in and watch 3 or 4 different versions of Frankenstein and consume my body weight in butter popcorn!

you might have spotted Aalish and Illiam as part of the decorations on my desk, both in their fave spooktacular costumes. Ah but they aren't the only ones up to spooky Halloween shenanigans this year!

As has become tradition over the past few years, this October I decided to have a go at a special Halloween themed illustration and this year I thought it might be fun to design a Candy Doll.

Only this time I came up with two instead of one! I started out by drawing a girly candy doll but as I gave her the angel wings I thought 'hhm maybe I should draw a Devil girl as well!' so... I did.

So meet Trick and Treat, they both love Halloween and dressing up but it's up to you to figure out which is which...

oh alright i'll make it easy for you, technically this is Trick... hence the Devil horns and tail + killer red lipstick!

so I suppose this is Treat... but don't let the halo and wings fool you, that doesn't necessarily mean she's that much of an angel!

I guess they're kind of twins, or at least sisters?! I'm not sure, but they were fun to draw + colour and add in all the colourful brooches and badges on their outfits.

I also decided to have a go at painting Trick and I actually finished the painting late Wednesday night, so here's the result...

What do you think? you can't really tell it from the photo but it's a pretty sizeable board! It felt good to work on a larger board again, although this time it was 2x4 foot instead of the 2x6 foot boards I worked on in quadruplicate for my Degree show last Summer.

It was fun to paint but I'd totally forgotten how tricky it is to manoeuvre a board this size when trying to carefully draw in details and patterns! I had to lug it on and off my desk and twist it around all the time as I added in the lineart. And as you can imagine, the polka dots were 'fun' to do! (spoiler: they were so fiddly and time consuming I probably won't do any like this ever again!)

In case you're wondering, I haven't decided whether or not to paint 'Treat' as well. I suppose it makes sense painting them both (and I do have another board this size, primed and waiting to be painted on!) but i'm not sure if i'll paint her or something else instead.

* * *

so I think that's it for today, I can't really think of anything else to tell you. Despite the massive gap i've left between blog posts since last time, nothing has really happened worth mentioning.

+ I think i've blathered on for long enough, see you next time (hopefully!) byeeeee

Paper Dress-Up

Hello there, yes back again, not blathering on about the Glen again this time, although i DID visit it last Sunday with three of my friends, we picked a few blackberries and had far too much fun spinning around on the rope swing in the middle of the Glen and hurling conkers and sticks at one-another. But that's a tale for another time, maybe.

Anyway, you might have noticed that we're already into October now! That means a few things, 1) I can now wear boots, hats, gloves, scarves and coats in public WITHOUT getting weird looks from people, 2) the nights are getting darker, it's colder and leaves are all turning orange and falling off the trees and most importantly 3) it's Halloween this month!!!

so... LET'S GET SPOOKY!

oh they look a bit familiar right?! Well you remember those paper people cuties Little Aalish and Little Illiam, well what better way to celebrate Halloween (or Hop-Tu-Naa as it's known here on the Isle of Man) than with a super special spooktacular dress-up sheet!

So, that's just what i did, and I'm rather happy because the clothes sheets got delivered today which means I spent the past half-hour snipping out the costumes and playing dress-up with the little paper people.

i had a lot of fun designing this sheet and even more fun actually testing it out on the dolls. What makes this sheet so fun is that every single costume on it is interchangeable for both paper dolls, so that means you don't have to get a sheet for each doll, they can share!

Don't get me wrong, I had a whole brain full of wondrous outfits specifically suited to each character, including a fancy Witch and a Sailor costume for Aalish

but then I thought it would be more fun to make the costumes suitable for both Aalish AND Illiam, saving on paper and snipping costs!

I also didn't want to make gender specific sheets of clothes. I know there's nothing wrong with being girly and feminine but I don't like the way most costumes for little girls and women nowadays are overtly sexualized in comparison with the nice normal sensible boys ones. Case in point, here's a Ghostbusters costume for boys vs the one for girls.

 and yeah, ok so it's not as terrible as some out there but still, it's hardly as practical as the boys one is it! You might be thinking, 'it's just for kids, it doesn't matter' but what about when they grow up, look at the Adult versions for men and women! er... I don't think so. WHERE am I supposed to keep my PKE meter and hook my ghost trap while i'm chasing after spooks in a getup like that!

i'll shut up ranting. So yeah, gender neutral costumes were the main agenda for this sheet! And that way there's none of this 'is it for boys or girls?' nonsense, because it's for EVERYONE! yay!

I love Halloween and i'm sure most of you do as well, but I remember when I was a kid (who am I kidding, I basically still AM a kid!) every Halloween I would dress up in generic creepy witch costumes, or a bin-bag monster (thanks mum) with a cheap plastic frankenstein/devil/ghost/werewolf mask and some glow in the dark vampire teeth from the local newsagents. My point is that it wasn't about being girly or pretty, it was about being scary or at least a little bit spooky! BOO!

so that's what this sheet is all about. And in case you're wondering what that thing in Aalish's hand is, it's a TURNIP lantern instead of a pumpkin, because for Hop-Tu-Naa Manx children carry little carved turnip lanterns around as they go trick or treating and singing Hop-Tu-Naa songs to collect their sweeties and treats.

Once again these lovely dress-up sheets are available to buy exclusively via Sweet Ginger Emporium in Ramsey, hence why the sheet is titled 'Hop-Tu-Naa' and not 'Halloween'

so if you want to get your hands on a set, you'd better head to Ramsey or Laxey!

and on that pumpkin themed note, i'll head off. Expect more Halloween stuff later in the month, but for now that's all folks!

Paper People

Hello chums! Back again. As per usual I can't think of anything terribly clever or witty to start off today's post with, so i'm just going prattle on for a few lines then crack on with posting some photos instead.

So I haven't done much art lately. That sounds like the best way to sum up my total lack of creativity since the tail end of last year. I barely draw, I barely edit stuff on my macbook, other than the occasional bit of graphic design, I don't really do anything remotely creative.

But over the past few weeks i've been trying to shuffle-clamber out of my creativity-less malaise so i've been working on something new. It's been a bit of an agonisingly slow process but bit by minsucle bit the designs have begun to grow and develop into something actually printable.

So I thought, why don't I actually get some printed?!

And well, I did, and this is the result.

So without any further ado please allow me to introduce you to my newest creations, Aalish and Illiam...

In case you haven't figured it out yet, Aalish and Illiam are 'paper dolls' or to be more neutral 'paper people' (since Illiam has nothing against playing with dolls, he just isn't sure that he wants to be one. Aalish doesn't really mind either way, as long as there's chocolate cake available afterwards. There is cake isn't there?).

Those of you that have kept up with my work for a while might remember the Pinup Paper Doll I designed 2 years ago for local craft heaven and haberdashery treasure trove Sweet Ginger Emporium.

Well in many ways Aalish and Illiam are a small continuation of where 'Sweet Ginger' left off (who knows, maybe they're her children?!) and unsurprisingly they've been designed and created with the Sweet Ginger shop in mind.

They're a nice size for little hands, each 'doll' (sorry Illiam!) comes printed on a neat A4 sheet with a teeny tiny little matching button badge with their face on!

And they already have lots of nice clothes to choose from + some fun dressing up costumes! At the moment there are 2 sheets available for each doll (but I have so many more outfit sheets planned and in development!)

First up there's a Dressing Up sheet for Aalish + a Fancy Dress sheet for Illiam

And also a more casual Summer sheet for Aalish and a general Everyday sheet for Illiam, with LOTS of nice outfits to pick from each sheet.

I've wanted to design a paper doll aimed at both girls and boys, and although all of Aalish's clothes might be a tad too girly for Illiam (he doesn't much like it when I make him try on a dress, but Aalish thinks it's hilarious) ALL of Illiam's clothes will fit Aalish perfectly, they're completely swappable, so that she can have a go at being an astronaut or a dinosaur as well, should she want to (which she definitely does) but sometimes Aalish just borrows some of Illiam's normal clothes.

That's why there's a Pirate costume on each dress-up sheet. Most of Aalish's costumes are on the girly side, (because who wouldn't want to dress up as a mermaid or a princess?!) but that certainly doesn't mean that she doesn't like to dress up as a swashbuckling Pirate captain and run around with a sword every once in a while. Or all the time. Sometimes they both dress up as Pirates and go off in search of buried treasure! But so far all they've succeeded in doing is making a mess of my desk...

Sometimes when Illiam puts on the Dino costume, he pretends he's a fire-breathing dragon instead, but Aalish doesn't mind, she just acts like a fearsome Princess ready to defend her kingdom from any and all perils!

Other times they just put on their Superhero costumes and fly off to save the world, you know, just a typical day really. But they're always home in time for tea, especially if there are fizzy sweets for pudding (those are Illiam's favourites!)

 Ahem. You can probably tell that I had a LOT of fun designing the clothes and costumes! Aalish's were kind of a doddle but Illiam's were particularly challenging since I never ever really seem to draw anything for boys, so coming up with nifty little outfits for him was tonnes of fun.

Probably one of the most fun parts of the entire process was coming up with all the colours and fiddly little details for each outfit, like the pirate medallion on Illiam's costume + the treasure map. I got a bit carried away sometimes but it was worth it when I opened the box of prints and saw how fun they looked!

Although they're maybe a bit fiddly for very little hands to snip out (looks like mummy and daddy are the lucky ones to get to wield the scissors) once they've been freed from their paper confines, Aalish and Illiam are a perfect treat for little kids and big kids alike. (I for one am most definitely a big kid and i've had heaps of fun dressing them up on my desk!)

And at the end of the day they can peg up their lovely clothes and pick something new to wear on their next big adventure! 

So there you have it, Aalish and Illiam, two brilliant little people, i've no doubt that you'll be seeing an awful lot of them in the future (keep an eye out around Halloween and Christmas in particular!) since they're definitely the coolest kids around!

Hopefully the Doll and Clothing sheets will soon be available from Sweet Ginger in Ramsey here in the Isle of Man. I don't have any immediate plans to try and sell the sheets via my Etsy shop (although it's full of lots of other nice things you CAN buy) but if anyone was particularly interested in getting their hands on a set I could probably be persuaded.

And on that note i'll draw this post to a close. I'll no doubt be back at some point next week to tell you about the other little creative things i've been working on (spoiler alert: I may or may not have attempted a small painting) and whatever else, if anything, happens between now and then.


So it's goodbye from me, and goodbye from Aalish and Illiam!

Until next time, cheerio folks!