Oh dear...

I have discovered Pinterest...

I thought Craft Gawker was addictive...little did I know.

The Procrastination police will be coming for me now, I am certain =s

And in other news, I am an inch closer to getting my Etsy shop set up and listing my first products. It is exciting and scary and being the perfectionish and worrysome gal that I am, I still have alot of reading and preparation to do before I get that far. So do stay tuned for an update very soon!

I have had a weird and surreal few days, my head is full of ideas and inspiration, almost too much to handle and yet I have felt emotionally drained, shattered and all over the place. 

But my world is ok this evening and I know what I must do to take it from ok to fabulously awesome!

And just one more thing...on days when I'm unsure of which path to tread, which idea to work on or which kind of biscuit to munch,  I simply ask myself...

R.I.P to a genius acting legend.

~Holly

A catch up on swap spoils... 'Candy Bandit'

This was a swap from a while ago now but from a time when I was unable to upload pics.

I have lots of similar delights to show so will be catching up on some of the things I have received over the last few months.

This awesome little green guy came from the wonderfully creative and ever so lovely Gemma Pobjoy 

at Candy Bandit (the blog is fab so check it out), who put a call out on her Facebook, looking for anyone who wanted to swap their art with her and so I replied and traded a small painting and hand decorated button for this fabulous 'Zombie Frog' felted pin brooch!

I LOVE him, he is made with such care and attention, as are all her inspiring pieces, and I cannot recommend her and her work highly enough!

 Now I have my eye on a few other things in her Etsy store,

which is choc full of fabulous creations that will have you fawning over, I am sure!

~ Hol

Yay!!!

I just had to post as I am soooooo relieved and thrilled that my issue with not being able to post in my own comments or on others blogs has finally been resolved!!!!!!

Since starting my blog I have not been able to reply to peoples comments on my own blog and I have not been able to leave comments on other Blogger blogs! It has been so very frustrating I can tell you.

After trawling the help topics and forums and adjusting all possible settings, I kind of gave up and left it and then today I decided I needed it sorted so I searched again but worded my search more precisely and the first result I found had the answer I needed!

It turns out that (to put it in laymans terms) different settings for the comments section work for different computer systems and the one I was using did not work on my system. So I simply had to change a setting to make the comments section a drop down box and voila! It worked!

I am a happy bunny today, managed to go for a walk with no pain or discomfort and sat with my bunny reading in the garden and watching the magpies defend their tree from the evil wood pigeons =/

And that's me readin, not the bunny...

More interesting stuff to blog tomorow =D

~ Holly

Zentangle zoo!

Since joining 'The Bot' there have been so very many new and amazingly addictive arts and crafts that I have discovered and many more that I want to get into. One of those being Zentangling.

I received this beautiful zentangled bunny postcard yesterday (see bottom of post) from my wonderful friend Courtney aka Chickadeebijoux on Swapbot, and I feel so inspired by it, plus it makes me smile being the most gorgeous bunny =D You can find Courtney's awesome work here on Flickr.

A couple of my fellow Bot friends do the most wonderful Zentangles and it inspires me to the point where I have so many ideas for new ones and am really keen to get trying this for myself.
 I adore the work of my other friend, another Holly, too and she does wonderful zentangled fairytales and dandelions and I love how she incorporates objects, animals and lettering into hers.

 You can see more of Holly's work here!

I have put off having a play with it so far, partly I think because I am stupidly scared I will be rubbish! But then I realise I have been kind of zentangling for years, or at least I had done in my childhood and teens as I would reguarly doodle and fill pages with geometric shapes and kirls and tesselating patterns and so on and that is a main part of what zentangling is! Check out some of the fantabulous zentangling in the Flickr group 'Zentangle'

So I have decided to start a little sketchbook specifically for practicing my zentangling and doodling pattern ideas and notes and such and I am excited to get started. I have already planned to do a zentangle zoo and tangle up some of my favourite wildlife so fingers crossed I have found yet another art form to become passionate about and another creative outlet for my ideas =D

In love with...

'The country diary of an Edwardian lady' after finding a copy in my local charity shop.

 My mum recognised what it was straight away and I am rather embarrassed that I didn't know anything about it! The copy I found was the Marks and Spencer centenary edition, celebrating the original book which was written in 1906 by Edith Holden to record in words and paintings the flora and fauna of the British countryside.

Edith Holden's words, all carefully written by hand, include her favourite poems, personal thoughts and observations on the wildlife she saw surrounding her home in Warwickshire, and on her travels through England and Scotland. On every page her beautiful paintings of birds, butterflies, bees and flowers, reflect her deep love of nature, having been excecuted with a naturalist's eye for detail with the sensitivity of an artist.

I'm bafflled I had not come across it before as it is absolutely my kind of thing and it is just the most gorgeous book.

If you do not have a copy of this I recommend getting one as it is just one of those books that will always be relevant, inspirational and well read.

~ Holly

Projects and things to do...

I seem to be on a creative roll and have ideas coming out of my tiny ears! I have been stuck indoors alot recently due to physical restrictions of a yet-to-be-diagnosed 'disorder' and so I have been making certain to keep my creative brain engaged and try to occupy myself on a daily basis.

I have a HUGE list of crafts and projects I really want to do and an even bigger list of ideas and inspiration and, being the procrastinator that I am, I am useless at moving past the 'planning' stage and putting these ideas into practice!

So, I am going to try and change that and attempt to do 'something' with my ideas each day, while keeping track here.

I am currently carving a little stamp for a friend on SwapBot so I shall get some photos uploaded later and make a start!

Sunday is Bun day.

So obviously anyone that knows me or has merely glanced at my blog, will know how enamoured I am with the creatures with the cotton tails. I am forever finding things of interest to the bunny lover and my Etsy favourites definitely have a running rabbit theme!

I thought perhaps I could share a few things rabbit related and make it a regular post, even simply to keep me in the habbit and motivation of regular posting! My hands are bad today, I cannot uncurl the fingers on my left hand as it is swollen so I am unable to do the stamp carving that I had planned, blergh. Anyway, hopefully tomorow will be better and I will get some crafting done and also post some pics of recent projects.

Actually, I would really like to make some little origami rabbits! I have seen a few images and tutorials but this one below is my favourite, though it looks more complicated, the end result is gorgeous. So that is another challenge I am adding to my notebook of projects!

 Image: Google images

I am, mostly, not a fan of rabbits in clothes, or personified in general. The work of Beatrix Potter is an exception for me, probably mainly because of the amazing eye she had for natural detail and keeping the realistic rabbit look and feel even when humanising her characters, to some extent they stayed wild.
One place I still have yet to visit is The world of Beatrix Potter up in the Lake District. Annoyingly, some years ago I travelled up to visit the lake district and we were near to the attraction but only had limited time so I could not visit. Not driving is really a curse for me as there are so many places I want to visit.

However, recently I got to go to the wonderful Beatrix Potter exhibition - Peter Rabbit: The tale of the tale - at the V&A in London, and my what an amazing thing that was. To see the original sketches and artwork of Miss Potter, her original manuscripts and the beautiful and perfect natural studies, it really took my breath away and made me feel quite emotional! How strange and unexpected it was.

 I took so many pictures, and for some reason I cannot currently upload them, but they can be seen on my Flickr, so do take a look if you are at all a fan and if you ever get the chance to see her work in person, I implore you to do so. Nothing will beat seeing them in person as you see so much more in real life and up close, the subtlety of her pen and pencil work and the use of watercolour, the accuracy of her sketches and the tiniest, lightest of markings, all up close and so clear still. She was indeed an artist of the finest kind and so obviously inlove with her subject matter that it jumps right out of her work and captures your heart.

I also just purchased the lovely Beatrix Potter Prestige Postage stamp booklet and a set of the loose stamp pages, from Ebay (my first Ebay purchase would you believe!). I was not 'into' postage and stamos when these were first issued in 1996, so I really wanted to get my hands on some now and preferably also some loose ones that I could frame. They are lovely and the book is a great keepsake for any fan. Now I am getting into Mail Art and Postal related things, I find myself searching for various stamps and related ephemera and so far I am hooked. Just as well I am accepted by the Mail and Postal art comunity on SwapBot, who I blame for this of course.

~ Holly

Lost followers =(

Well I haven't posted since before Christmas. It has not been because I have been short on things to say or share, I just started to loose the motivation and after problems with my health, my computer and my camera I found that I had lost my 'mojo' and everytime I signed in to Blogger I more or less signed back out at the daunting thought of having to 'write a new post.'

Now I decided to log in, expecting to log back out as per usual these days, but noticed I had lost a follower. Strangely this made me sad. Then I realised that I had my 10 followers who had not gone and who had obviously chosen to click 'follow' for some reason or another (and not just because one or two may be friends or relatives!!) and I realised how important this blog was to me and how much I wanted it to progress and to be an important part of my place in the world, the cyber world. blah blah blah etc etc...

So tomorow I am going to start my year of blogging off with a post and a few pics that I have been meaning to share and then hopefully, my plan (planning is dangerous if you are used to letting yourself down!) yes, my plan is to blog at least a small amount every other day. Even if it is without pictures, even if it is short and just a catch up kind of post. Maybe I can post the odd random thought or poem, afterall why on earth do I have in my head that this blogging lark needs to follow a strict pattern of words and pictures and certain themes and nothing different, nothing less, nothing outside the box will do.

Pah, I am nothing if I am not outside the bloody box and the last thing I want is to be inside the bloody box or any box of any kind for that matter!

So please, dear followers, if you have followed thus far then please do stick with me a little longer and hopefully I will once again locate my mojo, feed it up on hearty meals and sugary treats and make it rich and full and bursting with creative juices =D

Now my bed and my latest read is calling, nighty-night.