May Drawing Challenge - Day 10

today's theme was 'an Ampersand'. now i won't lie, i'd been looking forward to this theme purely for the chance to doodle one of my favourite typographical characters.

i'm a bit of a self confessed type geek so i apologise in advance if you really don't give a hoot about type and fonts in general. you should really care though!!! if more people cared we wouldn't be surrounded by ridiculously overused (not to mention wrongly used!) fonts like Comic Sans, Curlz, Lucida Handwriting and... Papyrus (shudder)

anyway i digress, here's my Ampersand...

it's a messy rainbow version of a Caslon Ampersand (my personal favourite) created by British type designer William Caslon in the 1720's

so why this one and not another i hear you cry, well it's quite simple. i adore this kind of Ampersand purely for it's decorative loops and swirls

+ the fact that unlike most modern '&'s this one looks like the word it was originally scribbled to replace (credited to a shorthand writing method proposed in 63BC)

you see, the ampersand is actually two letters combined. The E and T of the Latin 'et' literally meaning 'and', hence it's lasting use as a somewhat flourished abbreviation for that little joining word.

if you look at the lovely Caslon ampersand you can easily make out the E and the T.

And that's why i like it + believe it or not, it's much easier to draw than one like this &.

end of typographical rambling.

so until tomorrow, that's all folks... xX

Polka Dot Love ♥

so yesterday afternoon for no particular reason other than the fact i was a little bit bored, i sat down at my desk and started sewing!

not entirely sure why but who cares! i ended up making 3 pretty little lavender hearts using polka dot felt, lots of embroidery floss, some ribbon and looooooads of dried lavender!

they're all hand stitched with the word 'love' (in my own handwriting) and blanket stitched but i whizzed them through the sewing machine as well to make sure none of the lavender will spill out! 

i messed up the lettering on the first one though so it's whip stitched while the other two are just stitched normally.

the only problem now is that my room absolutely stinks of lavender!!!

they're kind of cute though right! well i enjoyed making them so that's what counts i guess, they're all hanging from my wardrobe doors at the moment

not really sure what to do with them! should i gift them or make some more and sell them?!

who knows!

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in other news, i got kind of bored again today so in between working on commission files i ended up having a go at some weird little text manips using photos and magazine scans and craft knife cut out letters smoothed out on my macbook

 i made about 10 altogether but these were my favourites, using some quotes from song lyrics, Shakespeare's Macbeth and a quote from Mary Poppins. 

not sure why i made them! boredom clearly does crazy things to my mind!

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that's it for today i think, i'm heading out this weekend to pick up a few more goodies for the giveaway bundle but apart from that, no exciting plans going on in my world!!!

that's all folks... ★ ◕‿◕ xX