The organised penguin

I've just come back from a little break in Poland and feel desperately that I should post something...but what? I've yet to download my photos. So here's another little penguin - this one's quite a helpful chap and he's decorating the Christmas tree 4 months before Christmas, I've heard he likes to plan ahead.

Wet dogs

Me and the bezzer went to visit our friend Casey in Stroud on Saturday. Casey has 3 dogs: Tucker, Ted and Phoebe. Being the true city girl that I am I took my handbag along on our wet and windy walk, good job really as I managed to take some nice shots of the groolies.

Ssssh! Phoebe is my favourite, just look at that face!!

Let's think about penguins

Oh it's been a busy time lately, have been working hard for a trip my agent is about to go on and have combined this with a touch of wedding planning. My aim is get everything decoration wise made and sorted by September so I have 6 hopefully relatively stress free weeks in the run up to the wedding...although we still need to get David's suit - uh oh!

I can't think about that now, let's think about penguins. How I love to draw penguins, it's probably my most favourite part of my job. They always manage to cheer me up.

A little sample

It's always nice to receive a sample of how my artwork has been used so I was delighted to receive this the other day from Design Design.

They've done such a great job - I especially love how it's been printed on a lovely recycled stock and comes with a brown envelope, just my sort of thing! I'm very very proud to have my name on the back.
Luckily for me they've sent quite a few and I happen to know of two very important babies due at the end of the year....so they'll be receiving a special card from Aunty* Rachel when they arrive.

* Not technically an aunty to either one but I'm going to to encourage the name!

They've done a really nice job of artworking the inside of the card

Beyond Beyond Chuffed!

I was very pleased to receive a lovely email from Beyond Beyond telling me they'd featured our invites on their 'Design Envy' section of their blog. You can see the post here.

Beyond Beyond are a bespoke invitation company based in London and they've got some lovely stuff!

Thanks Amma!

And they're out!

Hurrah! Hurrah! Saturday was an exciting day for me as I sent out our wedding invitations. Everyone should have received them by now so I can finally share my designs with you. At first I was quite nervous about the task of designing the invites. As well as wanting to represent us as a couple, our tastes and the feel of our wedding, I also felt I had the added pressure of how I wanted to represent myself as a designer. But that's just a personal (perfectionist) thing of mine.

I'm so pleased with the finished result. We're having an autumnal wedding with pie and mash, ginger cocktails* and pale ale. I think the invite represents the general theme of the day pretty well. I've loved designing these and so glad they're out now and I can concentrate on other wedding planning tasks - it's just over 3 months to go and we still don't have completed outfits!

Some little info cards for our guest with directions, gift list details etc

The RSV...Pie card (David's idea - well done David!) means our guests can choose what lovely Pieminister pie they'd like to eat. We first had these pies at End of the Road Festival in 2008 and said at the time 'if we ever get married, this is what we'll have for the meal'

* Specific recipe to be finalised

Lovely Chris and Richard at ibrow media printed the invites for me and they've done a great job!

pop ups, pop ups

I've been a busy bee over the past couple of weeks designing and making (lots of cuttin' n stickin') some new pop up designs. Here's a little sneak peek of some

Cuttin' n stickin'

Oh I do love to cut and stick! My mum is making some cupcakes for a friends party and asked me to do some sort of label to show the different flavours. I don't do things by half when I'm asked something like that so have designed and made these nifty little signs. Hope she likes them....

Glastonbury memories

I'm not going to Glastonbury this year. Instead I'm sat working, listening to Jo Whiley on Radio 1 doing an excellent job at reporting from Worthy Farm. I love going to Glastonbury, it's hard work when you're there but worth it to be part of such a special weekend.

I'm not a negative person but I'm hoping that if I focus on the negatives (the crowds, people walking too slowly, the toilets, the back ache, not getting woken up with a cup of tea by my bed in a real mug) it will take away the nagging feeling I've got that I'm missing out and it's the worst thing that could happen!!

This photo was taken just before Arcade Fire came on in 2007 - it couldn't have been a more perfect setting for one of my most memorable gigs. It was a very special evening being surrounded by my best friends and watching such an exciting and atmospheric band that we all loved. (I even got my face on the big screen!)

Apologies for photo quality - I just raided my facebook albums!

Birthday BBQ

We had a small BBQ in our small garden on Saturday to celebrate my birthday. I left my friend Chris in charge of my camera and have only just got round to downloading the photos.
A very lovely time was had even though it was particularly freezing on Saturday and we were inside most of the time!