Sadly Little Miss Cinnamon passed away today. She was 18. She came to live with us four years ago when her owner moved abroad. She was a most sociable cat, often meeting and greeting whenever people walked by, particularly during the school runs. She was our beloved feisty minx, extreme mouser extraordinaire and definitely the prettiest kitty in the street. You will be terribly missed by us all xxx

Woohoo!!! So here is my first newsletter for Southwold Tourist Information Online. It's been created using MailChimp which I have used before with a client so I was pretty confident using all the elements... actually it's pretty similar to creating a blog... just drag and drop. Add your links, and Bob's your Uncle or great great Uncle Bob in my case (warning: one crotchety old fart coming up!).

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Naturally the first thing I did was to look up some tasty domain names and couldn't believe no one else had registered them... I figured it was a good sign and that I was meant to do it, so registered a small selection (including both www.ilovesouthwold.co.uk and www.southwoldtourism.co.uk), which currently all point to the main site. What started as a simple idea has grown into quite a selection of information. Of course there are already a number of websites for Southwold (you only have to Google the town), but the difference with my new site is that it doesn't just display those businesses and attractions who pay to be displayed... it has the same principle with the old office in that the information should be freely available even if just a basic entry. Of course advertising still helps pay for my costs.

There is still a lot of work to do with the site but it is live and working, and doing exactly what I intended.
Recognise the logo? It's based on the window sticker which I had previously designed as stock for sale. ​​

Of course me being a fan of all things 'social networking' I set up accounts with Facebook, Instagram and Google+.

Next came the business cards... again based on the same logo design...

... and right now I'm busy managing the information, keeping it all up to date and letting people know it's here. See you in Southwold :D xxx

...Do As I Tell You. Wise words which my dad used to say and very apt as today I am going through a period of mourning for my beloved external hard drive which died yesterday. One piece of advice I tell people more than anything is to back up your documents. Yeah guess who didn't have ANYTHING backed up?? not a single file... I cried. Hard. I could still cry today but I have too much work to try to recover. Every so often I think of something else lost... all of my music - gone, all of my accounts, invoices, spreadsheets, client files, photos, working files of everything I have created going back YEARS!!!! Gone, Gone, GONE!!!
The really stupid thing is a couple of weeks back my HDD had started playing up and I did in fact start to do a backup but then my daughter came home from work, supper was needing to be prepared and so I cancelled it telling myself I would sort it all soon when I had more time.... sometimes I seriously need to take my own advice.
Fortunately I had recently printed all the current client invoices ready for my accountant... I would have been in a right pickle; and lots of client work had been emailed as PDFs so I have managed to save all of those - luckily my publishing program is able to open a PDF as a working file. 
My daughter pointed out yesterday that it was the start of the Chinese New Year and that maybe it was fortuitous as I would no longer be able to rely on reworking old files and that maybe having to pretty much start work from scratch this would allow me to be more creative. Bless, she is such a treasure. Also it could have been so much worse... no one is ill, the house hasn't burned down, the pets are all ok... it most definitely isn't the end of the world, just very inconvenient. 
So today I have ordered a new hard drive plus numerous pen drives. I'm now going to pop the kettle on, roll up my sleeves, pull up my big-girl pants and just get on it... because "After all tomorrow is another day".

It's been a while since I posted about the various colour recipes I created for my favourite pens... and I seem to have produced quite a selection of new ones for UniPosca, Akashiya Sai, Papermate Flair, Stabilo Cappi, and my most recent Kuretake Zig Clean Colour.
These last ones for Kuretake Zig I spent a fair amount of time recreating the logo images especially the paint brush and the brush stroke... these are also colour-matched to each individual colour (it's little things like this which I really enjoy!!).
As always, these are available to view on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest.
​Honestly, sometimes I think I must have too much time on my hands... Enjoy!! :D xxx

...for "Just All Good Things". I had my first Christmas Bazaar two weeks ago on Saturday 5th December, which was an excellent day.... loads of really positive feedback, definitely makes it all worthwhile. Many many thanks to everyone who bought my goodies and came to say hello... it was a great village event and I really enjoyed meeting lots of lovely new people as well as catching up with people I'd not seen for a while.
If you were unable to make it don't worry as I will also be at Woottens Plants in Wenhaston on Sunday 20th December 10am - 4pm (poster). Hope to see you there!! :D xxx

Some of my Bath Fizzers...
(Frankinsence & Myrrh; Rose Geranium; Spiced Orange; Citrus Blend; Lavender, Clary Sage, Lemon & Black Pepper; Vanilla & Vetiver).

Body Butter, Detox Bath Soak, Hair Balm, Lip Balm, Sugar Scrub and Soaps.

Soaps...
(Pumpkin Spice; Patchouli; Chamomile; Citrus Blend; Frankincense & Myrrh; Lavender; Rose Geranium; Chocolate Bugs).

Once again it's been ages since I've posted anything but oh well you know what I'm like by now... huh?? huh?? Anyhoo I've been quite busy prepping for some Christmas Fairs... yup it's that time of year again; buying packaging and wrapping materials, new labels and new ingredients (you know how I love online shopping!!). I've made a new product 'Moisturising Hair Balm' containing 20% Organic Virgin Argan Oil which is currently being used by my daughter who swears that her hair is noticeably softer (she has been using coconut oil anyway for some time). She also uses it on her skin... brightens her tattoos, softens her skin and leaves it feeling really silky... yeah I know she's family but she definitely wouldn't say so if she really didn't think it had made a difference. I like that my products are tested on family not animals. 

I've also got some other new products coming along.... Sugar Scrub, made with Fair Trade Raw Cane Sugar and Bath Fizzers. I have also been making homemade soaps... however there has been a personal issue with these as although I have used an SLS Free Soap Base, I've still not been happy about the other ingredients so although I will still gift these and sell what I have made (not available online), they won't be labelled under "Just All Good Things" and instead will have their own labels. 

Instead next time I make some soaps I am going to try making with vegetable oils and lye (NB. no lye is present after the process of saponification).

Gahh!! It's been far too long since I've posted anything but I'd been super busy working during the summer, then since my contract finished in September I have been knuckling down doing work for several clients. Anyway I'm now getting into more of a working routine having set sessions for client work, time for decorating (I'm finally converting the spare room into a studio/office - long story so I'm not even gonna go there!!), and creative time for me.... and you know what?? it's really working for me.
So I'm getting back on track with my monthly desktop calendar (sorry there wasn't one for August or September - my bad) annnd seeing as October = InkTober I figured I'd combine the two.
​What's InkTober? it's a month long art project (daily or weekly etc) of ink drawings and sharing them via your social media of choice... dead easy! This year it's being sponsored by my absolute favourite brand of pens and paint 'Kuretake', so of course I had to join and am sharing my drawings on Instagram.

The October 2015 Desktop Calendar has been exported as a .png and will fill a 1920 x 1080 screen (do I need to still tell you all this??). Just click on the image, or the link in the text, to open the image. Right-click your mouse and choose to 'save as' to save the image on your computer. Then all you need to do is find the image in your 'Downloads' folder and again right-click over the image and just select 'set as Desktop background'. Happy Inking!! 

Ok so I'm not that great at using recipes for foodstuffs but I totally love that there are recipes for creating colours.... think about it, the possibilities are endless!! 

I had so much fun creating my Pantone Colour Recipes and I love, love, love all the colours of my Letraset ProMarker sets that I thought I would do the same for them (I've still a long way to go before I've done them all). I even loved picking fonts to match as close as possible and having the little black lozenge with the colour name (and the colour code where possible). It's getting little details like that which really make my day.  

So once again there are recipes for CMYK, RGB and HTML and are all available to view on a new Pinterest board 'ProMarker Colour Recipes', my Facebook page and Instagram.

I've included a few recipes below. Just click on an image to view the gallery. My favourite set so far is Summer 2012... it is just so tropical I can almost taste the palm trees!! Hope you enjoy :D xxx

...Awesome. So get out there and Make shit happen!!
You see what happens when you don't?? Yeah no calendar for June *sad face*. Well I did eventually get it sorted but so much of the month had gone that it didn't seem worth posting about it... 
Anyway so here is the July 2015 Desktop Calendar. I think this is going to be my new daily mantra and combine it with a Power Pose (and YES those things really DO work!!).

As usual this has been exported as a .png and will fill a 1920 x 1080 screen. Just click on the image, or the link in the text, to open the image. Right-click your mouse and choose to 'save as' to save the image on your computer. Then all you need to do is find the image in your 'Downloads' folder and again right-click over the image and just select 'set as Desktop background'.

Right well I'm off to do a quick two minute power pose and be all productive :D xxx