on a trip

I've been a bit quiet here this week, I've been keeping myself busy in production mode. But today we're leaving to go on a little trip to see Mr You's family up North. We're going to drive inland this time, see a bit of the countryside and take a few days to get there. I'll be back in a bit over a week.

I'm taking a few projects with me, hoping that (after some quality cutting and pasting time) there'll be whole stack of these Christmas tags ready for selling when I get back.

Have a nice week everyone. I'll see you soon.

smitten

My Illustration Friday attempt for "smitten".

learning the ways of home school

Mr You is a freelancer and works from home most of the time, now I'm at home we've both being going through a period of adjustment. We’ve been getting used to each others patterns, and noises and shower times, etc. Mr You is having trouble defining the weekends, I usually provided this sense of weekend by not going to work for two days. But now it’s all different.

He’s been informing me in the “way it rolls around here”, like I’m the new girl in the workplace. I retaliate with the odd cheeky “You’re not the boss of me!”. (In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re both grade A smart-arses). Now it’s extended to talking about the office Christmas party, and inter-work relationships.

But last week an issue arose. If there’s one thing that can bring even the most harmonious workplace undone, it’s the kitchen habits of your fellow workers.

We each have our own tubs of muesli, (…it’s a long story which involves me picking giant crusty banana chips out of my muesli (yuck), but Mr You insisting they are glorious). Anyway, increasingly when I reached up to get MY muesli off the high shelf something kept falling off the top of it and landing on me. Most of the time it was a tub of sunflower seeds or almonds, etc. So I approached Mr You about it…

“Hey, would you mind not stacking your scroggin supplies on top of my muesli. Remember I’m short, I can’t see stuff up that high. I get hit on the head.”
“Sorry you’ll have to wait for the monthly meeting to raise that. Bring it up again then.” And left the room with a smirk on his face.

The next morning I opened the cupboard to find this:

(That’s MY untoasted, pure, innocent muesli tub at the bottom!)

And this was my immediate retaliation:

(That's his banana chip infested muesli at the bottom! Ha-Haaaa)

Oh, it’s war baby! Game ON!

trouble

My Illustration Friday attempt for "trouble".

…then he realised that letting his mum knit his parachute was going to cause so much more trouble than when she knitted his deep sea diving flippers.

she's typo

I had a good chuckle at the typo in yesterday's post: "She's is always doing new things". It reminded me of the way Mr You's nephew used to speak when he was younger.

"Is he's going to come swimming with us?"
"Why doesn't she's wear she's hat?

Once when Mr You was going to take him to the beach he told his nephew "I'm just going to tell Flossy where we are going"
His nephew asked "Is she's your mummy?"

This freaked me out a little, I don't look that old (i hope), but ever since I've been mindful to not nag Mr You too much about eating all he's veggies.

illo by kim

I was so thrilled to discover (and immediately recognise) one of Kim Fleming's illustrations in a Sydney paper today. She's famous. What an inspiration!

If you are not yet aquainted with Kim so far I've learnt that she lives in Melbourne, owns a red coat with white poka-dots, and is one of the hardest working, ever-striving, up and coming illustrators around. She's is always doing new things and inventing new ways to learn more about illustration and build her technique. The Creative Cup is one of her initiatives.

Go meet her, she's nice.

gusty sunday

At the end of my first week I feel somewhat unaccomplished. I didn't get anywhere near as much stuff done as I wanted to, and I spent a lot of time wondering if everyone at work was safe and well. I did relax a bit though and also had some nice outings.

The crap comic below is the story of my day today. Started out a little lost, umm-ing and arh-ing, found inspiration in the garden and sat outside in the beautiful sunny Spring weather sketching things in the back garden. Then, suddenly, an almighty wind came out of nowhere, it was like a truck hit me, I was thrown about and absolutely covered in leaves, flower bits and pollen. "Don't be deterred, don't be deterred" I kept chanting to myself, "don't let this put you off".

But the wind kept on, and each time it blew another load of leaf matter poured down the front and back of my top and stuck to my eyeballs. "Keep going, keep going, don't let this stop the roll". I kept on going for a while, until there was so much crap on my paper the pencil was no longer making contact. I packed up my stuff and headed back inside.

"This doesn't have to be the end, keep going"... so I did. I sat on the lounge inside and kept on sketching.

Then I started to itch. All over, (from all the pollen and stuff I guess).

"Don't let this be a bad thing..."

"So I filled up the bath with hot water and lavender bubbles, and sipped on a peppermint tea as I soaked in the first bath I've taken in what feels like years. I remembered passages from The Alchemist, and wondered if the Universe was using the wind to test me, like it did with the boy in the desert...