Hello 2012!

Hello, and Happy New Year!

Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas, a Brilliant New Year's Eve and are getting 2012 off to a excellent start...

I don't generally make any New Year's Resolutions, as I spend most of the year trying to become better at things (the key word there being 'try'!). But it's always lovely to turn the page when January rolls around with a fresh start and a chance to be more organised and productive in general. This year this culminated in me extreme list making, buying a giant pinboard for my studio and planning on painting an equally giant patch of wall next to it with chalkboard paint. There are a few other adjustments I'd like to make to my studio, but it's a race against time until baby arrives in February. So if I do anything amazing with it between now and then, I'll show you :)

So...Christmas! Seems like forever and an age ago now, but it was quite chaotic here over the month of December with various Christmas Stalls, a really busy period with my work, a poorly husband (who made a miraculous recovery just in time to cook for ten people on Christmas Day!) and heaps of antenatal classes!

I did two new Illustrations in December as Christmas Gifts - one was commissioned and the other was a drawing I did as a present to send someone special myself :)



(Apologies for the sub-standard photography!) This is the commissioned Illustration, which is of a Colonial Style Hotel in Europe (The Aija, Turkey) where the lady who commissioned the piece got married. She gave it to her husband as a Christmas Gift (how sweet!!) It was a bit of a larger Illustration than I am used to so I was quite worried about the level of detail I would be able to achieve but I think it turned out nice.







And this is the one I made as a gift...shamefully on Christmas Eve (as some of you may recall me tweeting about at the time!) It didn't take quite a long as usual and I had a nice little workstation set up in the dining room so I could listen to Christmas Movies while I worked - couldn't miss out on ALL the fun could I now?!

I would have liked to have offered more commissions over Christmas but I was realistic about how many I could get done bearing in mind all of the preparation for stalls, my own gift buying and other things in life which keep me busy. And I decided not to list any more for the time being because I'm inching (literally) ever closer to my due date! (Six weeks to go).

Which leads me on to say that I have NO idea how much free time I will have once I become a Mama, and naturally I'm thinking about where my Dotty Noggin escapades will stand. I'm fortunate enough to have been given six months off work with baby, so I'd like to honour that by taking time off from everything (apart from the wee nipper of course!) There's a little something which tells me I'm still going to probably want to make and draw during my maternity leave, but it will only be for fun. I can imagine this being quite a nice way of keeping hold of myself a little bit during a time which a lot of new Mums have told me is very easy to lose yourself a little bit. However I don't plan on blogging during that time, and it's quite probable my Etsy shop will have to be put on hold for a while. So I guess I'm saying I hope you'll bear with me and come back to me in the Summer :)

I'm sure I'll get a chance to blog at least once before the big day, but if I don't I would imagine I can take a moment to make an announcement and maybe slip in a photo! ;) Exciting!

Finally here's some photos (montage stylee) of my Christmas!




Take Care all and speak to you soon x