Was feeling a bit dejected this morning - a mixture of cabin fever (too much work and not enough play for the last couple of weeks), too much goal setting and not enough goal hitting (I do this to myself a LOT!) and thinking about stupid comments from stupid people (well, person) about how easy my life is, not having to work for a living, despite having already tried to explain that I work way more hours now than I ever did for anyone else (does anyone else have that problem?). So I decided to take a trip over to Borders.. the smell of the coffee, the millions of books, the gorgeous stationery section.... If I woke up and everyone had disappeared a la '28 Days Later', I would go to Borders, pour myself a latte, turn the music down (they always have it too loud!) and worry about the world ending later :)

I came home with a bag full of nice things, new sketchbooks and inspiration..


..including 'Oh, The Places You'll Go!' by Dr Seuss..

"Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You're off to Great Places!
You're off and away!
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You're on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go."

..words which were well appreciated today.. and I came across 'Leap!' by Ian Sanders, which reminded me of all the great things about working for yourself. The section about being completely free to do whatever you want with your work put a smile on my face again.

If you need reminding too, you can see his blog here.

And when I came back, I had received the following email..

Hi Toni,
Invitations are fab !!! Thanks so much.
I have also recommended you to a few friends, one at work was so impressed she is looking at your invitations for her party next year.
Kind regards,
Maxine

..which put a big smile on my face. It's fantastic to get lovely feedback like this. I really do love what I do, it's just the business side of things that gets me down sometimes, but the black cloud has now been lifted and I'm feeling inspired to go and get on with some work again now!

I mentioned the opening of the florist shop in a previous post.. the opening day was on Saturday and was a huge success. So if you're in Rugby - and need flowers or wedding invitations! - visit Petals4U on Lawford Road. Wendy has done a lovely job of refurbishing the shop and does some gorgeous arrangements, and I wish her every success!

Where does the time go? I have completely neglected my poor blog of late, but I have had a good excuse - I have been kept busy by lots of wedding orders (yippee!), an illustration project, and I've also been preparing for my involvement in a new local florists opening next week. The owner had a brilliant idea to create a kind of one-stop wedding shop, so when customers come in for wedding flower ideas, they can also look at other local wedding suppliers items. Apparently, I'm going to be featured in the local paper next week, following the grand opening, which I am very excited about as so far, I have been purely an online business and I'm not sure most of my local area even know I exist!

Here's a couple of items I've done recently - a 'chocolate and cream' table plan..




..and some thank you cards..



I bought myself a new camera this week, a Sony Cybershot (ickle silver hand sized camera!), which is teeeny compared to my usual Nikon D80 (big professional serious camera!). As I was looking for some recent family photos for a birthday card, I realised that I hadn't taken a single photo of family and friends for around 2 years (as I only had the big camera and it's not something you want to lug around to weddings and get-togethers)! Anyway, since I have been doing the wedding stationery work, I have not taken any photos at all (except to put pictures of my stuff on my blog and website), so I think I can officially stop calling myself a 'photographer' now! So what am I? A wedding stationery maker? Seems a bit of a mouthful.. Plus I intend to make other stationery too - christenings, funerals, etc.. So what do I call myself?! I'll have to think about that one.. I've, cheekily, carried on calling myself a photographer for French class as 'je suis photographe' is so much easier than the reality, especially when I don't even know what the English is yet!!

Well, another scorching Bank Holiday weekend has been and gone.. In typical British style, we braved the rain and wind to go on an open top steam train :oD I also had some time to start a very exciting new project which I can't yet blog about, but it's one of those projects that keeps me awake at night thinking of all the ways I could go with it!

Also...I am over the moon and very grateful for the safe arrival of my new baby nephew Laurence. There isn't a word good enough to describe just how gorgeous and precious he is :)

I also wanted to mention these little characters, from Erica's Attic store, that I wanted to share as I think they're adorable. For some reason, they remind me of happy childhood days and cottage holidays..




You can find Erica's work here.

I have been a busy bee in the last couple of weeks. Aside from wedding invitation orders, and designing more stationery, I also made a table plan - pictures below - for a lovely customer, who I have to thank for asking me to make this, as it was a whole new creative challenge (fab!). I'm really pleased with the result, and table plans will be going on to my website catalogue very soon.

The plan is A1...

...with 3-D 'tables'...


...and has matching table numbers...

Now I'm not usually materialistic, but I have to admit to taking part in a bit of long-awaited retail therapy today.. I found some purple shoes that seem to have magical powers, because.. somehow.. just looking at them makes me feel all sunny inside :)

The next thing to start saving for is the dress that Grace Kelly wore in High Society, although it might be a while before you read my post about buying this one, as it just changed hands for $220,000... worth every penny I'd say?

Another new addition to my esty shop, which you can see here, and which kind of reflects how I feel today ie. lazy!!

Another new addition today - you can see it here - a girl's version of the New Arrival card.

New Arrival (Boy) card posted to my Etsy shop here today.
Happy Bank Holiday!

A new card to add to the collection, you can see it on my Etsy shop here...

Having finally found some time to print them, these stationery sets are now available on my etsy shop - hope you like them. I have lots more designs and will get them on the shop as soon as I can.



I have been busy with wedding stationery commissions, which is great obviously! The most popular design remains the 'Guess Who' design. Here's a particularly cute order that I completed recently.

Thank you to everyone who contacted me to tell me they couldn't view my blog - I would never have known otherwise as it looked fine on my end! I think (hope) it should be accessible to all now, although you might notice a few things missing, like about half my previous posts!! But never mind, I am looking in to getting them back, particularly the most recent ones, but I suspect they are gone for good.. So it seems I've been talking to myself for the past couple of weeks!!

If nothing else, it was reassuring to know that people actually noticed when I fell off the edge of cyberspace, so thanks for that!

I'm very excited to have just got my hands on a 1950s Kodak Duaflex camera.  Am experimenting and hope to add some new pictures soon :)

This is my newest vintage camera, a Kodak Duaflex - a little gift to me! I'm not sure if you HAVE to wear the dress.. Hope to share some new pictures made with it soon.

Hi everyone - my first blog.. hmmm.. what to say!!

Well, I have uploaded some new pieces today - a set of 1950's kitsch images.  I love everything fifties, and have wanted to incorporate this in to my work for a while, so when I came across a bunch of Picturegoer annuals (these are 1950s film annuals that used to give you a rundown of all the year's movies and actors) I got very excited and set to work!  It took me many hours to pick out the images I wanted to use, mainly because I got VERY sidetracked reading every page and every article!!  I then gave each image a faux 'through the viewfinder' effect, experimenting with lots of techniques and colours.  I am really pleased with the end result, and I hope you like them too. 

They look great in black frames by the way, with a nice wide white mount!

Here is the next in the series. This one started life in a 1956 Picturegoer annual, and is sold as an 8 x 8 inch print.

My newest project is a collection of 1950's designs. It's moving away from my usual photography and incorporating more of the illustration side of things. Here is a preview to give you an idea of the style of the project. A lot of this work has involved looking through a lot of old 1950's annuals and photo albums, and doing lots of research, which you can hardly call work at all really! I have been addicted to 50s Hollywood for a long time now and wanted to incorporate that in to my work, so.. here it is!

More designs to follow in future posts..

Here's a couple of cards I made for my niece and nephew's birthdays, both in the next couple of weeks..

You can now subscribe to my blog so that you get an email every time it's updated (and you don't get any other emails, or any 'junk' mail) - just put your email address in the box on the right, and hey presto! Technology, eh!