Autumn is definitely here and Celestine is enjoying wearing her red coat and looking at all the red berries. She likes autumn especially because it is her birthday season.
I made Henry the scarf that he is wearing in that picture. I made it for him as a surprise. He was very pleased with it and her wears it every day to work if it is cold enough. I guess you can't really see the colours that well in the picture above but it is all autumnal colours, browns, greys, oranges. I like to make surprises for Henry.
The evening that we took those photos was a beautiful evening. I barely did any photoshop on any of those photos! We went to a place that we don't often go to I think because we needed to get out of the house. To get there we drove past the place that we are moving to and had a peep at the house we are (hopefully) moving to. We are so so so so so so so SO looking forward to moving into our own house and we have all our fingers crossed that we will be able to move in soon. It has seemed to take a while to get everything though- it has been almost 3 months now what with all the bank stuff and solicitors etc. I don't know why it takes so long!?! Anyway hopefully I won't jinx it by talking about it because we haven't actually signed anything yet so it could still fall through at this point.
Please don't let it fall through!
A few weekends ago - I know I am really behind! - Henry and I went up to Derby to stay in his mum's house while she was away and to visit his gran in Nottingham. We took a trip to Dovedale park in the peak district which was quite nice though for some reason we both felt really lethargic so just walked slowly up the side of the river for a couple of miles. Last time we went we were scrambling up the side of the steep hills!
Dovedale park is really nice. There's a river with these wooden pontoon type walkways along it in places and it's surrounded by hills. The weather wasn't particularly great, it was a bit grey, but it was still nice to go. This would have been just at the beginning of autumn I think so Celestine was wearing her special autumnal cape and she also had her brown satchel with her that she's never actually used before, even though she's owned it for well over a year. She has so many clothes and bags that she struggles to use them all- what a hard life!
Also here are some close ups of some of the cards Celestine made and wrote when she did her great card making spree the other week.
One to Polly,
And one to Steph who is an old schoolfriend and who had been doing amazing things lately like skydiving for charity.
Workwise I have been doing various different things including character designing for a new picture book which is turning out to be harder than expected. These are NOT the final designs by any means! (still haven't got a final design but I did think some of these were cute)
I got the f & g's for my second witch's cat book in the post which was exciting to see. That's coming out next July. Still quite a while to wait...
Here's a very small snippet from it, don't think I should show more than that at this stage. It's sort of appropriate as we are coming up to Halloween. I am looking forward to this book coming out. I created and finished it over a year ago now!
They are in a fancy dress shop and there is lots of glitter and multicoloured fairylights.
Been seeing the Glitterbelle books that I illustrated popping up online recently. They're out in January or sometime around then. There's four. Three are activity books and one is a picture book. I am especially pleased with the princess secrets one. I can't wait to see them in real life!
Also my secret project that I mentioned a while back has been sent to publishers now so I have my fingers crossed that someone likes it!
Here's a teeny snippet from it:
So I have lots of little things going on at the moment work wise but I am not intensely stuck into one major project, kind of flitting about doing little things for a few projects. That doesn't actually work well for me, I like to get really focused on one main thing and see it though until the end. Sometimes things don't work out like that though and then it's a juggling act. Which I hate and my brain find hard to do. I am compulsive that's why.
While I seem to be listing all the things I'm doing right now I may as well also mention that I am writing a YA book to practice my writing. I find Wednesday nights are very good for doing this when Henry is out at Tai Chi. For some reason I find it really easy to get into the mood for more adult writing then.
ALSO been continuing with my Celestine book. Really want to get that finished but I'm not sure if I'm going to manage that before Christmas.
Here's a couple more spreads from that:
A few people mentioned in the comments that they would like a Celestine book when it is finished so I will address that here. I am going to make it on blurb.com becasue I've used them before and I like the quality of their books. It's going to be a pretty long book, may even need to be two volumes so I think it's going to be very expensive to buy. I printed my Witch's Cat book on there when it was a university project and that cost me about 30 pounds for a 32 page book. This one is going to be waaaaay longer! I imagine it's going to end up being about 50 pounds upwards. Maybe. So I'm not expecting anyone to want to buy it apart from me! What I will do though is I will make it available on blurb in case there is anyone who still wants to buy it. There's nothing I can do about the price though, that's just the cost of printing on blurb unfortunately.
Anything else I can add to this mammoth blog post? Oh yes I know, I went to a miniatures fair last weekend and picked up loads of different coloured mini wool so now I am doing more mini knitting which is fun and relaxing. Rainbow scarf here we come! I find knitting to be very therapeutic. I remember the days leading up to the wedding I sat furiously knitting haha.
So yes Celestine is going to get a rainbow scarf at some point when I've finished tying up all the ends.
Also I broke my toe!
Also I broke my toe!
And that is all.
Have a lovely weekend!
★★★★★★★★★