2015 in review ❤

Hello chums, I know that in my last post I mentioned that the next one would probably be Star Wars themed... but as you can see, this is not the case. Since 2015 is now drawing to a close, I thought I'd keep up the annual tradition of taking a look back at the year gone by and writing a little bit about it. 

rest assured I WILL definitely blog about Star Wars in the New Year. I'm going to see 'The Force Awakens' for the third time next week (yes, really) so I'll make time to write about my love for all things Star Wars then instead.

so, on with the post. 2015 was a funny old year, as always there were some highs and lows along with plenty of laughter and tears. But then isn't every year like that?!

this is usually the point where I launch into a list of bullet points highlighting some of the ups and downs of the year... and you know what, I'd hate to disappoint so here you go!

this year I...

• spent two weeks in Larnaca, Cyprus with my lovely parents back in February. It was a really nice trip and it was also the first time I'd been back to Cyprus since I was a child. I got to visit a beautiful 9th Century BC church (read about it HERE) all while enjoying the balmy Cypriot weather.  

• was officially diagnosed with Aspergers. After 10 years battling with ongoing depression and anxiety I finally got some answers this year when my therapist suggested that I might have Aspergers. This kicked off a spate of written, audio and visual tests that culminated in a 3 hour interview in August where I received my diagnosis from a clinical psychiatrist and consultant psychologist from the UK. It's been fascinating learning about it all and why I'm the way I am. 

• got discharged from the local Mental Health Service. I originally started treatment back in February 2014 and I'm happy to announce that I was discharged in November of this year. I know that things won't be easy without the regular help of the service, but I'll do my best to get on with things by myself.  I'm hoping regular walks to the Glen will help.

• saw a great increase in online sales. In 2015 I really pushed myself to promote my work online, especially via Instagram, and eventually it started to pay off because I've had a definite boost in international sales this year. To put it into perspective, this time last year I got 5 orders in the whole of December, whereas this year I've had 111 orders since December 1st. 

• became a Godmother to a super sweet little girl. Back in September, Hayley one of my best friends from my college days kindly asked me to be Godmother to her youngest daughter Imogen. Obviously I said I'd be totally honoured and the Christening day was so lovely (read about it HERE if you like). I'm so grateful to Hayley for letting me be a part of her children's lives, I really love the afternoons I get to spend with her and her lovely girls. 

• dressed up as a 50's style Ghostbuster and spent the day walking around town on Halloween in my customized costume. Yeah I know, I'll never grow up, but this year I literally did not care what people thought of me, and I rather enjoyed my day as a Ghostbuster, I'm sure I'll crack out the outfit again when the new Ghostbusters movie comes out in 2016. 

• read 101 books. This year I managed to complete my Goodreads challenge to read 100 books, next year I'm thinking I might try and push myself to 120, but we'll have to wait and see. It's hard to say what my favourite book of 2015 was, maybe 'The Library at Mount Char' by Scott Hawkins, it was bizarre but brilliant, with an interesting mythology and some brutal characters + well written. 

• reached over 15k followers on Pinterest alone. I'm constantly striving to expand my online audience, it might sound petty and pointless to you if you're not big into the whole social media thing, but I definitely see an increase in sales when I get more followers online so It's worth the work and upkeep. This year my total reach went beyond 21,000 for all of my profiles combined, so fingers crossed that 2016 brings lots more new customers and sales (yes please!).  

• went on local radio and talked about my Art and Aspergers. Yes it might seem odd, but in October I was invited onto the 'Women Today' program on Manx Radio, it was a live show and over the course of an hour I spoke about my artwork, what inspires me and explained a bit about my recent Aspergers diagnosis. It was a lot of fun, a bit nerve-wracking opening up about mental health on live radio but a great experience regardless. 

• still didn't get a new job. I lost my job at the library in May 2014, and I've yet to get another job. I applied to another library but I never got an interview. And to be honest, other than that I haven't even really tried! At first it panicked me, I was starting to struggle financially, but now that the year is nearly over I'm not as down about it all as I probably should be. Yes I have no stable income BUT I get to spend every day doing what I love and that might be a naive viewpoint but It's more positive than getting all 'doom and gloom' about the situation. You never really know what's around the corner, who's to say I won't find a great job in 2016? Or maybe I won't, maybe I'll just continue working for myself instead. Who knows. 

 I can't really think of any more bullet points. But art and design wise, it's been a busy year. In 2015 I produced 100% girly and feminine work because I don't see why I should pretend that I want to design stuff for boys (newsflash, I don't). I added more new members to the 'Candy Doll Club' + developed brand new sticker, patch and pin designs and patterns to expand the Candy Doll Club as a brand. Feedback has been really positive and I love getting messages from customers sharing snaps of their new Girl Gang goodies. So yeah, I think I'm getting there, it might be rather slow progress but it is progress nonetheless. Here's a look at 12 of the new Candy Doll additions from 2015.

as always, it's also been a year of selfies! (For my views on why I think selfies can be super positive, check out this post HERE) Wherever I went on my travels, I made time to snap a pic of my face (I like to remind my Instagram followers that I'm a real life actual person, not just a machine mindlessly churning out girly illustrations) and like I've said before, I don't get many days where I feel good about myself so on the occasions when I look in the mirror and don't burst into tears, I like to take a photo to remind myself that I too can look like a mostly normal human being from time to time! So here are a few of 2015's selfies...

so that was 2015. Books, dressing up, Larnaca, Coventry, Dublin, Cork, France, Andorra, shopping, painting, packaging orders, good friends, great family, medical stuff, psychiatric stuff, airplane rides, boat journeys from hell, road trips, floods, good times and not so good ones. All in all, not a terrible year.

come on 2016, you can do better, I KNOW you can, don't let me down!

I don't have any plans for New Years Eve tomorrow night, my friends are all busy I think. I'm not sure whether or not to make an effort and leave the house, or just lock myself in my room and sleep through the midnight countdown etc. NYE isn't a great night for me to be without plans, I tend to go a bit loopy, I've no idea why but NYE just has that effect on me. It's like everything that's happened in the year comes crashing down on me and It's a bit of an emotional overload that I can't always deal with.  

I'm a bit scared to be honest, but hopefully this year I'll handle things a bit better than I did last year.

thanks for visiting, see you next year...

So Long 2014 ❤

Hello dearhearts, Christmas has been and gone for another year and now we turn our selves towards the imminent New Year ready to see what 2015 will bring to us all (hoverboards hopefully).

I for one am fairly happy to say goodbye to 2014, it's been a bumpy year for me, lots of tears along with times of laughter, some ups and even more downs. So I thought I might take some time to look back over the year and share a bit of it with you all.

To kick off the post, here's a recent illustration I did...

 In case you can't tell, it's supposed to be me, only as a member of the Candy Doll Club. I've never been very good at making my girls actually look like real people but I tried to make this one resemble me (although i'll admit I was very forgiving at times with the design!) so there you go, something vagulely resembling what it's supposed to look like, just like all of my work.


So what else have I been up to this year? Well do please allow me to tell you via the magic of bullet points!

 in 2014 I...

• started the year with an amazing job as an assistant Librarian at a really lovely Library
• slowly but surely continued to unravel mentally (as i'd been doing for the last ten years) resulting in the inevitable need for actual treatment and medication
• carried on working and socialising with real people
• dressed up as Mary Poppins and got to hold a real live Owl
• got to spend some time with my amazing nieces
• kept taking the many prescribed pills
• tried to keep calm and carry on
• failed miserably and got signed off from work indefinitely
• cried 
• read some books
• bought a lot of crap I really didn't need
• began to enjoy creating again, painted, produced new work, started to feel a lot better
• found out my contract had been terminated and suddenly lost aforementioned amazing job
• spiralled lower and lower and lower and lower and lower and lower
• moved out of my flatshare in town
• moved back home with my very generous and nice and understanding parents
• read some more books
• spent over two weeks indoors without leaving the house once (i'm not proud, but it happened)
• cried
• watched more than my money's worth of netflix
• ate my way through more pizza and popcorn than is ever necessary
• started writing a book
• gave up on that and started writing another book instead
• realised how ruddy difficult it is to write a book
• read a LOT more books
• spent way too much money on Ghostbuster Lego (so worth it though!)
• only left the house for appointments and trips to the cinema
• tried to get old job back
• failed to get old job back
• continued trying to keep calm and carry on
• failed miserably once again
• cried
• went for long rambling walks alone (*sad violin music*) 
• went for long rambling walks with friends and had stick and conker fights
• lost touch with new friends while reconnecting with old ones
• truly learned who my real friends are (dramatic pause)
• visited my fabulous nieces again and again
• read even more books
• ate too much chocolate
• cried
• dressed up as a Ghostbuster
• painted and drew and designed and sewed and created
• cried
• ate more pizza
• read all the books
• wrote this blog post

so yeah, that's pretty much it. 2014 in a slightly unstable nutshell. If You know me in real life then you might have already heard about some of the ups and downs i've had this year, but if you don't know me 'irl' then I guess now you know a bit more about me than you did before!

so THANKS for listening/reading new found friend! (oh look it's my face!)

but hey let's not dwell on those silly negatives, oh no, for there have been many positives this year, none more fulfilling than my ongoing attempts at illustrating ladies with colourful hair and painting them onto bits of wood, but other than that one of the main things that has kept me going this year has been my ever growing 'to read' pile of books.

as I often mention on here, i'm rather fond of reading (understatement!) and for the past few years i've tried to challenge myself to read as many books as I can in the space of a year.

Well last year I set a challenge of 50 books... but by NYE i'd only managed 42 (boo!)

so this year I thought i'd better up the ante and on January 1st I set myself the challenge of reading 100 books before 2015, keeping track of them all via Goodreads.

I'm happy to report that this year i've read 116 books (yay!) and i'm currently on the 117th which I will no doubt finish at some point tonight or tomorrow (I actually surpassed the challenge about a month ago, only when I hit 100 books I decided to try and push to 111 instead).

Right about now i'm thinking I should probably have pushed to 120 but i've run out of time and although I do love to read if I overdo it I tend to give myself vile headaches and that's not really how I want to see in the New Year tomorrow night thank you very much!
no i'll no doubt be seeing it alone wrapped in several blankets surrounded by chocolates and toffees and of course, books.

I've ready some really teriffic books this year and I thought it might be nice to share a few of them with you all.

Now i've never been any good at writing reviews for books as often once i've read a novel it grows to exist tightly inside my mind and I struggle to explain it to people without rambling or giving away the plot. So these 5 books rated particularly highly for me this year, they kept me gripped and continue to stick out in my mind and so I can only recommend them to you purely on that basis along with a sentence or two!

The Martian – Andy Weir – 2011 – if you like Space, science and sarcasm then read this book. Very funny, very clever and very gripping! That's all i have to say, it's really good, read it.

Ready Player One – Ernest Cline – 2011 – Packed with more 80's Pop Culture references than you can even begin to comprehend, perfect for anyone who likes movies, music, tv shows, video games or the 80's (So basically everyone!).

The Girl With All The Gifts – M. R. Carey – 2014 – A clever twist on the Zombie genre this one's a Zombie story like no other, really heartbreaking stuff. Dark, chilling and undeniably haunting. Will probably stay on your mind long after the last page.

Red Rising – Pierce Brown – 2014 – Dystopian civilization, a cruel ruling upper class, the planet Mars, rebel uprisings and rebellion along with lashings of greek mythology and heaps of fierce combat and savage brutality. It's hard to describe this book but it's brilliant! It's like Dune meets the Hunger Games with parts of Brave New World and Ender's Game sprinkled in for good measure. Cannot wait for the next book in the series!

Good Omens – Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett – 1990 – The end of the world is nigh and now it's down to angel turned book seller Aziraphale and too-cool-for-his-own-good demon Crowley along with a host of other brilliant (and hilarious) characters to find and stop the antichrist before he tries to destroy the world! Also, let me say that I am appalled it took me this long to actually get myself a copy and read it, i mean i was born in 1991 the year after this came out but still, that's 23 years i've neglected to read it! But take it from me that this book is great and that it will make you laugh your socks off!

if you're particularly nosy and you would like to see the full list of all 116 books i've read so far, click HERE, some of the books on the list are actually dreadful but some are utterly marvellous!

ironically enough the book i'm currently reading (and subsequently the last book i'll read this year) is Then We Came To The End - Joshua Ferris which was honestly a total coincidence but seems like the perfectly titled book to see the year out with!
 
next year i'm wondering if i should set the goal at 150 and see what happens! I already have a teetering pile of books to read and i'm eager to get cracking so roll on 2015, let's read ALL THE BOOKS!!!

and on that note, i'm going to sign off for today. This is the point where i should probably make a lot of promises I won't keep about how i intent to blog more next year and post better content etc blah blah blah. But i'm not going to do that.

I will try to blog more frequently but that's about as much as I can offer, so until next time, or in this case next year, so long and thanks for reading

and I would also like to wish you the Happiest of New Years tomorrow evening, however you do or do not decide to spend it!

So long 2011... ★

well, it's been a funny old year hasn't it! Some ups, some downs and as my blog will tell you, lots of colour!

I figured that a little look back over the year was in order, i don't normally fuss too much with New Years stuff but this year i'll be home alone, cooped up watching TV all night so i thought, might be fun to have a look back at it all!

2011 has been kind of a busy year for me, i've been working as a freelance illustrator and designer for just about 3 years now but 2011 has been my busiest year ever commission wise!

i've also altered my work style a little bit this year. this time last year i could barely scan an image to edit digitally and now almost everything i do is digitally edited/coloured/finished whether it's based on a scanned drawing or is drawn directly into photoshop or illustrator.

i'm still in college, which is evident from a lot of my posts, shots of my messy college desk and board frequently pop up over the year, but running the blog as a student helps me tick off units for my course as well as being able to share some of the more mundane parts of my day with you all!

i've always been a fan of all things cute, girly and kawaii, but in 2011 my work went to whole new levels of sweetness (i think it has anyway!) and everywhere you look on my blog there are sweets, cupcakes, princesses and lots of pinks, blues and reds!

other than college, it's been a quiet year for me! from time to time i do like to post about my family and friends but although this has always been first and foremost a personal blog, i try to keep family posts to a minimum, however i hope the ones i have posted haven't been too tedious for you all!

it's been a fab year networking wise as well and i'm fortunate enough to have made many creative new friends via Twitter (mostly!) as well as lots of new clients and contacts. oh and thanks for the kind words, emails, tweets and comments from all of YOU over the year as well! 

time for a list! i love lists and to try and cheer myself up i thought a sort of '2011 achievements' list might be a good idea!

so, this year I have...

• gotten some of my pieces and merch stocked in a local shop here on the Isle of Man

• been included in an exhibition at the Isle Gallery at Tynwald Mills, with my artwork hung up the rest of my HND class from college as well as alongside some of the islands best artists, sculptors and photographers.

• completely re-designed my website (along with the help of a local web designer) and set up an Etsy shop to sell my handmade stuff + merch

• designed a winning t-shirt design for 'All Tropical'

• set up POD shops on RedBubble, Artflakes and Society 6 and sold lots of stickers, prints and t-shirts + nearly 60 iPhone cases! i don't who's been buying them but thanks all the same!

• designed quite a few logos, flyer, poster, banner and advert designs for various clients both local and international

• built up my paid commissions portfolio (and subsequently spent most of my commission fees on business cards, postcards, prints and merchandise... i may be addicted!)

• learnt a lot more about 'professional practice' + how to gain new clients and network with artists, galleries, collectives and shops.

so what are my plans for 2012 I hear you cry?

Well next year I intend to...

• finish my HND and get a move on with my last year of the BA at college so i can finally achieve my degree in Fine Art

• produce more' fine art' so that i actually live up to my course guidelines!

• finalise the characters and story for a little children's picture book or maybe even FINALLY finish the pages for 'Where's Charlie?'

• get more merchandise items featuring my work produced to sell in my online shop, in local shops + at local craft fairs

• learn to use my bamboo tablet and further develop my digital illustration skills and techniques using photoshop and illustrator

• learn to drive! 

and i think that's about it! if there's anything else... i've forgotten it so oh well!

thank you for visiting the blog, whether you stop by to read about my artwork, my boring life or even if you just check in to see the pictures i post, i'm glad that you visit at all so THANK YOU!!!

all i have to do now is wish all of YOU + all of my friends and family a very HAPPY NEW YEAR 

may 2012 bring you everything you wish for!

so until next year, i guess that's all folks... ◕‿◕ ★ xX