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1 - New years resolution (ish) is to try to go out walking more often, so far so good! This photo was taken on maybe the first walk of the new year...

2 - Planning! - ahhh new diary and planner, I've been trying to fill it in as much as possible so I can be more motivated and stick to a plan!

3 - Caerdydd - a quick trip down to Cardiff earlier this month, during the winds. Twigs + branches everywhere!

4 - I bought these waterbrush pens so I can do my own lettering, I didn't want anything to make typography and fonts, but something to make nice handwriting for pieces, not perfect type! (if that makes any sense?)

5 - More walks... see, I told you.

6 - Diwrnod Santes Dwynwen (the Welsh saint of love) is celebrated on the 25th January in Wales (google it for more information!) and I decided to get the waterbrush pens out to practice zee lettering again!

More house commissions!

First blog post of 2015 so a very HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all!!! I'm hoping I'll get back into a consistent blogging swing now. Nevertheless...

This is a house commission I did before Christmas, I think this is one of my favourite house commissions I've done actually, and happy with how it's turned out! Remember, if you're looking for a special gift for someone or you yourself fancy your own commission of your home, get in touch with me on the contact page above, I'd love to hear from you :)

Small business Saturday!

Tomorrow is Small business Saturday, yay! So if you're doing your Christmas shopping, on the high street or online, try to support the small and independent businesses :) it would mean a LOT!!! x

*BLACKFRIDAY* and last Christmas posting dates!

20% off orders over £10 with code: BLACKFRIDAY on my etsy shop, visit HERE! Only valid until Monday. HAPPY SHOPPING!

Apologies for the lack of blogging recently, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas over here, and getting busy! I'll try to blog, but they will probably be similar to this one, just short and sweet until the new year! But will be back to blogging normality then hopefully :)

Here are the last posting dates for my shop, so make sure you shop in time! -
2nd December - Asia, Far East (including Japan), New Zealand
3rd December - Australia
4th December - Africa, Caribbean, Central & South America, Middle East
7th December - Cyprus, Eastern Europe, Greece
8th December - Canada, Poland
11th December - USA
12th December - Western Europe (excluding Greece, Poland)
19th December - UK

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New products in my shop!

My christmas cards are back in my shop now, yay! Including the new design with a penguin, available in Welsh and English. Send me a message through the contact page above if you'd like a pack for a special price :) 

You can see my shop here!

This week 9-11-14

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1 & 2 - New cushions!!! I'm selling these specially hand made by me 14" cushions (cover and insert) with my own illustration design for only £25. If you're interested, just send me a message through the contact page above :) I only have limited stock for christmas!

3 - Fireworks night! Ha ha I love how awful this photo is, but we had a night with all the family over with nice food and not-so-great fireworks with funny names!

4 - BEST HOT CHOCOLATE EVRRR! Well, best I've tried anyway. And now that it's getting colder, I get to enjoy it nom nom nom! It's not like that crap thin watery type, but proper thick hot chocolate ahhh!

Cardiau Nadolig / Christmas cards!

Ho ho ho! The Christmas cards have arrived, yay! I'll be putting them up individually in my shop soon, but just send me a message using the contact page above if you're interested in some sooner, or more than just the one :) I'll be selling them for £1.50 each, with 10% off if you buy 10 or more. There are no set numbers in a pack, just however much you fancy. They're available in Welsh and English, and blank inside for your own special message!

This week 2-11-14

November already? Wuuut! I don't have much to post up here this week actually, and it's been a bit a of a strange week, it feels as if it's gone too fast but the beginning of the week seems like an age ago! But this week I've mainly been trying to sort out new prints for my shop (take a look HERE!) and with black and white prints I feel like they were more difficult to get the right brightness and contrast levels compared to the colour prints, so there was a LOT of test printing going on! I might give away the test prints as I have no use for them actually... but I decided in the end to just make the markings in the prints a bit darker than the wish-wash pencil markings, hopefully the photos I've taken of the prints convey this, but taking photos of them is so difficult because 1. I'm not a photographer! and 2. The lighting is so poor now going into winter...so apologies that they're not the best but I tried (3 times over 3 days)! Anyway, that's mainly what I've been up to this week, next week - cushion covers! And now I'm off for Sunday lunch...for supper!

House commission

Recent house commission

Forgot to blog last night, oops! Just a little short one, here's a recent commission of somebody's home. I really enjoy these kind of commissions, if you're interested just drop me  a message through the contact page above :)

This week 26-10-14

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1 - Made a new print design for my shop! You can see it here.

2 - Let's just take a second to see how DIFFERENT Aladdin looks on this new dvd cover, that's not what he looks like! Anyways, I bought this to watch with a friend this week, it was just as good as I remember, ahhh I CAN SHOW YOU THE WORLD!

3 - Christmas card design, done! And will be ordering later. If you're interested in some, just send me a message through the contact page above :)

4 - My succulent has little flower buds, eep!

5 - Taking photos of new prints for my shop. I'll be putting up the drawing prints in my shop this week. You can visit my shop here or on the shop page above :)

Kernow Cornwall commission - Work in progress photos

Beginnings...

...a little bit more...

...close up!...

...final drawing before adding colour...

...the final piece!

A recent commission, well a couple of months ago now, but only now coming round to blogging the photos! Apologies for the poor quality on the first photos. I hope you enjoy seeing the progress of the piece!

This week 19-10-14

Started making Christmas cards this week, and will be ordering next week!

My fabric arrived from spoonflower this week, yay! 

Shrinkles! Shrinkies!

Saturday morning - tea, lush bubble bath and face mask.

I started making Christmas cards this week, this year with a penguin! I'll be ordering them next week, so if you'd like to order some, just drop me a message. I'll be posting photos on my instagram and facebook (links below) before ordering. They'll be available in welsh and english!
My fabric arrived from spoonflower this week too, double yay! So I'll be making more cushion covers ready for Christmas, and this time I've decided to sell the covers with inserts. This Christmas 'to-do' list is getting longer everyday! I'm already getting into the Christmas spirit doing these stuff and it's not even November...oops.
I've had Shrinkles/shrinkies (however you want to say or spell it) little A6 sheets for a bit now, but never came round to testing them out. I guess they were at the bottom of my to do list! The photo doesn't really show what they are, but they're basically little plastic pieces with my drawings/images on it, about 1mm in thickness. The overall size of these are about 2-3cm each. I think they turned out pretty well on a first try, but I need to experiment more with the lighting and sizing...and finally deciding what to do with them! Maybe make them half the size and into earrings, pin badges, collar clips, bigger sized ones into brooches... I'm not sure yet, let me know if you have any ideas what I could do with them! 
 

Pineapple tropical love

I feel a bit strange making this post in October and cold(ish) outside...nevermind, it might warm me up a bit! I am not alone in this pineapple and tropical love recently, and I know there's been a lot of posts elsewhere, but I thought I'd just make my own little collection of my favourite photos, products, something to do with pineapples and just tropical-ness in general! So I hope you enjoy this post :)

I love everything in this photo! The pineapple lamp, and the beautiful candles, ahhh! Found on pinterest link here

This is such an amazing wallpaper, never knew pineapple could look sophisticated! Found on pinterest link here

Bathroom in a jungle, eep! Found on pinterest link here

So much prettyyy! Found on pinterest. No link.

Why aren't there things like this in britain?! Found on pinterest link here

This cushion is STUNNING! Found on pinterest - from Etsy link here

I am GUTTED that this is out of stock! Found on pinterest, from Debenhams link here. 

As usual, photos are found on pinterest and are not my own. I have tried to link them all to where they were originally before pinterest but if I have linked them incorrectly please let me know and I will change it!

This week 12-10-14

Bubble bath weather is hereee!

Back to the drawing board this week...

It's also....candle weather, yayyy!

Made some more baking today and made cookies.

Back to the drawing board this week with a new commission, which I'll reveal once the person it's for has received it. It seems the weather before my break was nice and sunny and still kindof summer, but this week definitely feels (and is) autumn! So I've been making the most of it being autumn with bubble baths, can't beat a Lush bath! And...I got my scented candles out ahhh, I think I need more autumn and winter scented candles, because mine are quickly running out :) Has anyone else been getting all cosy with the weather?

Office aromatherapy

Ok, maybe aromatherapy isn't the right word... what's the right word for 'making your desk and work space smell nice and refreshing'?! That's the word I want! Every now and then (or every day if you fancy) I like to do a couple of things that help make the desk and work space 1. smell nice, and 2. lift my mood!

The first thing I do is pour a little bit of hot water into a little bowl, and add a few drops of lemon oil into it (or any essential oil, probably steer clear from Lavender unless you want a zzz), this helps the scent to spread around the area and/or room! I like having the lemon scent because it's nice and refreshing and gives a little boost of energy. You can buy lemon oil and other essential oil for cheaps on eBay. Another thing I like is lighting a scented candle, BE CAREFUL WHEN DOING THIS, THOUGH! Especially working with illustrations on paper...and fire...argh! I really like the Lily Flame candles, and they're not too expensive. Everyone seems to be talking about Diptyque candles at the moment which look nice, but they're around £40!  I'm not MADE of money, sheesh.

Anyway, these are just somethings I've found that help lift my mood and energy when I'm stuck at my desk, so I hope you might find it a bit useful too :)

This week 05-10-14

Chocolate whoopie pies!

BAGELS (again)! - Avocado, cream cheese, salt & pepper. Avocado, tomatoes, and grilled cheese.

Banana bread - my excuse for making this is there were 2 bananas that had turned brown...

Chester!

Yo Sushi! for lunch in Chester, I did have sushi too...honest!

This is the LAST food/cake photo! Chocolate cake I made today (need to decorate it with icing...), just a normal sponge but I put some chocolate chunks in there, so crossed fingers it'll be nice! 

Maybe I should change the name of this post to "The week I basically just ate and baked." or something... 

I took last week off work, both my part-time office work and illustration/art work. I'd been really busy recently and had just finished a lot of stuff and hadn't had a holiday or break this year (my illustration e-mails 'out of office' hadn't been on since July 2013 ,oops!), so I thought it would be the perfect time to take a week off all work before the Christmas stuff needs to be done! 

If you saw my previous post (if not, have a look here!) you would know that I went for a long weekend away to Wells in Somerset with a little stop off to Cardiff on the way back, so that was my little 'going away holiday' and it was lovely! Luckily it was actually really warm and sunny there at the time, PERFECT! And the rest of the week I just did whatever I wanted, which by the look of things was baking (and a bit of cooking...), but also catching up with a book I was reading (nothing big, just a holiday read kind of book!) and a little shopping trip to Chester! Mainly Lush and...maybe Jo Malone... I have a problem!!! And that was it :) I thought I had more photos than this, sorry if you don't like seeing photos of food and cakes, probably not the best post for you to see!

When in Wells

Warning! This is a photo heavy post. I had a lovely long weekend away in Somerset (plus a quick stop off in Cardiff), and here are some photos along the way... 

Hwyl fawr Cymru! Bye bye Wales!

First night

Nice view to wake up to, ahhh!

Breakfast is served, nom nom nom!

BLUEBERRY PANCAKES SO GOOD!

Panoramiiiic

Glastonbury Tor in the background

Bishops Palace, Moat

...more moat, and a swan sculpture

Inside Bishops Palace!

This week 28-09-14

Autumn is hereee!

Birthday gifts from my friend :)

Ordered these two fabric patterns! (soz for blurry photo)

This post is scheduled as I'm currently away for a long weekend, yayyy break! But I thought I would still make a 'This week' post with photos up to now (Thursday). If you follow me on instagram (@AnnaGwenllian) I might've/hopefully will have posted some photos of my weekend away, and I'll make a little post about it next Wednesday :)

So Tuesday was the first day of autumn, and the weather proved that it was officially here! Wind, rain, gloomy... And leaves are already changing colour and falling, I can't believe it's nearly October, waaa! But I do like autumn, halloween, bonfire night, and the run up - including - Christmas. 

I had a lovely lunch with my friend mid-week, and we both had each others birthday gifts which we kept forgetting to give each other, so we finally had birthday-gift-exchanges and lunch on Wednesday :) She knows me so well with the gifts, and I LOVE the kitty ears make-up bag... SO CUTE!

I ordered two different patterns (both birds...) for more fabric this week, so I can make some cushion covers! If you're interested in one - send me a message via the 'Contact' page above. Don't worry I didn't use this blurry image for the upload! Hopefully they'll arrive within the next month :)

Commissioned piece - Tan y Graig

The mock-up to start off...

...the early beginnings...

...finished drawing, before adding the colour...

...and the final piece!

This is a recent commission I made and its progress from the early mock-up to the final piece! I tried out my own handwriting for this one, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, so I think I'll try to experiment more with my own handwritten style from now on. I think they flow better with the drawings when I do them myself, but I definitely need some practice! Off to my sketchbook...

If you're interested in commissioning me for a piece, feel free to send me a message through the 'Contact' page above :)

Sketchbook 18-09-14

Rue Des Halles street sign

Flatiron building

These are just a couple of sketches from my sketchbook which I drew recently, if you follow me on instagram then you might've seen them already :)

I love having sketchbooks to experiment with different styles, try out different methods or just drawing with a biro/felt tip/charcoal instead of my usual pencils! Even though they're just little sketches in a sketchbook I still feel like I need to be happy with every drawing I make, but I think I need to learn to just draw and sketch, and if I'm not happy with it then it doesn't matter because I can just make more drawings! If that makes sense? It makes sense to me anyway hehe :)