Support your local Girl Gang ♥

that's right folks, i'm back again at long last, after a quiet week spent making things and reading books 84 and 85 of my 2015 reading challenge!But because I love you all, today I took some time out of burying my nose in book number 86 to stop by and put together a quick post for your delectation...

anyway, today I want to share my brand new Girl Gang patches with you all!

that's right, I finally got some PROPER patches made, featuring one of my Candy Doll Club designs. The woven patches were professionally made in the UK and they are so NICE! I really love them, i'm super pleased with how they turned out, the detail is really good!

since my work is ALL about Girl Power, the design features a mix of cosmetics and weapons, perfect for any aspiring Girl Gang leader or member. And naturally it all comes woven in pretty pastel colours!

The design is a slightly tweaked version of the one I designed for circle stickers back in May this year.

As this was my first foray into patch design, I wasn't sure how they would turn out; I had visions of them being illegible or wonky or something. But considering the intricacies of the actual design, it turned out really well as a woven patch! And the patches look PERFECT on my Girl Gang vest (if you're surprised that I own one then you really don't know me at all...)

The Girl Gang vest is a constant work in progress but i've already amassed a pretty sweet collection of patches from some of my fave Girl Gang artists and designers including a bunch of my own designs as well, because if I can't self-promote on my own clothing then where can I?!

I'm really happy with how people have been responding to the patches, so far i've had 100% positive feedback from Candy Dolls all over the world and I sent out the first batch of orders earlier today. If you think you'd like to add one of my patches to your collection, or you know someone who might like them, they're available to buy HERE + I send out cute freebies with every order!

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in other news, it was Hop-Tu-Naa (or Halloween, if you prefer) this past weekend, and of course I got dressed up and walked around town like a prat! BECAUSE IT IS TRADITION!

 Unsurprisingly I dressed up as a Ghostbuster (just like last year) only this year I updated my outfit to include a skirt + some other additions, so I guess I went out as a sort of retro style Ghostbuster, complete with voluminous petticoat, customised converse shoes, epic back patch, personalised name tag + an official Ghosbusters trainee ID badge!

To my surprise (and delight) when I met my friends in town for lunch it turned out that my friend Simon had dressed up for Halloween as well. So he was the Babadook while I was a slightly terrified trainee Ghostbuster! Simon's costume was a hit with shoppers in Strand Street, he scared a few small kids, one boy high-fived him and some women even stopped to have their photo taken with him.

I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed by how few people had bothered to dress up this year, considering Halloween fell on a Saturday i'd expected to find town full of people in costumes. As it was there were plenty of kids dressed up but very few adults. We did bump into a group of teenagers dressed as a whole host of brilliant characters including the Doctor (from Doctor Who...), the Joker and Harley Quinn AND Supergirl + Ash from Pokemon and a few others that even I'm not geeky enough to know!

here's a close up of my 'uniform'. All I need now is a proton pack, PKE meter and ghost trap and i'll be all set!

here's hoping that next year more people dress up so I don't look like such an eejit wandering around in costume!

and on that note i'll say goodbye for now.
So until next time, cheerio and thanks for reading!

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.

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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!

College Creativity ★

Well hello there merry readers...

how has your day been?

I've had a surprisingly productive day today at college, i'm quite chuffed with myself actually because I got LOADS done today!!!

which makes a nice change really considering I spend most of my time at college staring into space while listening to playlists on repeat...

I mean, yeah I do looooots of work

anyway, back to todays post

I have another new crafty creation (or two) to share with you all

there wasn't much on the TV on Saturday night and I figured i'd spent long enough watching Disney movies so I stuck on my iPod and started a new sewing project

I had only intended to work on it for an hour or two but I ended up working until about 3:15am on Sunday morning!!!

but she is sort of finished now...

would you like to meet her?!

of course you would!!!

well here she is

what do you think? 

well before you make up your mind maybe you should meet her little friend that turned up on Sunday evening 

these little felt dolls are the latest fruits of my recent seemingly endless sewing missions... 

but just in case you were wondering where i got the idea for these girls, check out this page from my children's picture book 'Where's Charlie?'

i know the outfit isn't exactly right but it's as similar as i could get it (at 2am in the morning!)

and as for the other one, well she's supposed to be the little girl with plaits from the dance school...

so far as names go, i'm not sure what to call them!

they're based on my little cousins so maybe i should go with their names for now!

the redhead is based on my god-daughter Bonnie who turns 6 in March

and the brunette is based on my little cousin Sienna who turned 5 at the start of this month

for the time being i'm settling on Little B and Little S 

(and NO 'bs' jokes please!!! these are for kids after all!)

anyway, i'm pretty pleased with how they turned out

i've never really sewn anything quite like this before or made dolls this small (they're about 7.5 inches tall) but they were fun to make, albeit rather time consuming!

anyway, i've had great fun with them at college today, it's almost as if they've kept me company!

they've had lots of fun though, this morning they went to the fun fair...

little B got some yummy cotton candy

and little S won a big cuddly duck

they had a really great time but then the fun fair is always fun! that's the point!!!

and then... in the afternoon they played at dress up for a bit

Little S found some super girly, hot pink accessories to prance about in (since pink is her absolute favourite colour) like a little princess

and Little B decided to have a go at being a Pirate... aaarrrrrr!

wow... what a busy day they've had!

i wonder what adventures they'll get up to next!

you'll have to wait and see, but i'm afraid for now, they have to say goodbye...

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in other news, i also whipped up a new version of THIS illustration today

i love the colours in the original version but i felt like something a little bit girlier was needed, so i went for a somewhat softer option on the colour palette...

she truly is quite a super duper sweet girly girl...

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also, something equally as super duper arrived today!

i'll give you a clue...

no, it's not a Miu Miu handbag (sadly) however it is... my BRAND NEW GLASSES!!!!!

i don't wear my glasses all the time since i wear contact lenses but i've needed glasses since i was 7, just in case you were wondering why there are zero photos of my in my spectacles...

anyway, aren't they pretty! a whole lot  smarty pants looking, but that cute little sparkly M on the frames brightens them up looooads!

i love love love them! AND they arrived in a pretty pastel pink Miu Miu box lined with a gorgeous golden pattern and a kitschy gold velvety case.

here's a teeny tiny photo of me wearing them

although sadly, i don't wear them quite as well as Kirsten Dunst does...

oh well a girl always needs something to aspire to...

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and that's it for today faithful followers and remarkable readers

i hope you've enjoyed todays post, i know i had fun writing it + editing the photos

until next time

that's all folks...

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благодаря ви и Довиждане

(that's thank you and goodbye in Bulgarian on behalf of Bulgaria, Мерси ♥)