Hello and happy Friday! This is the first in a series of weekly blog posts where I'll share what I've been up to in the studio this week.
What's been happening this week?
If you don't follow me on Instagram, you won't know that this past two+ weeks I've been working on two commissions for the lovely Joe's Ice Cream parlour here in South Wales. The beginning of this week I finally wrapped up the last of the illustrations. Hopefully some time in the summer if you visit their St Helens or Mumbles store, you'll be able to buy merchandise with my work on.
Monday was an inset day for the kids, so it's been a shorter week for me as I only work when they're in School. Tuesday was spent packing up a couple orders that I'd had over the weekend and filming a 'pack an order with me' reel/video.
Wednesday I was busy printing lots of thank you teacher cards ready for the market I have this Saturday (Rhondda arts festival in Treorchy) and trying super hard to calibrate my Cricut machine, and failing miserably... I think I'm going to have to contact Cricut about it as the vertical alignment is out massively.
Thursday I started drawing out the lino block for the #blockpartywithgina week 3 theme (Solstice/renewal). When the themes were announced weeks ago, I had a little brainstorm of what I wanted to do each week. I knew straight away I wanted to carve a square block, a sun with a face in the middle, and the astrological star constellations around the sides. I spent Thursday afternoon/evening and Friday morning carving it and printing it. I'm thrilled with how it turned out and will be listing them for sale here next week when they're dry.
What's the plan for next week?
As soon as the Solstice prints are dry I need to get them photographed and listed. I'm hoping to drive down to Swansea to deliver the Joe's Ice Cream parlour paintings in person (they're too big for an A4 shipping box and I don't trust an A3 hardback envelope), I also need to finish just a little detail on the last painting. But my focus will be mostly on week 4 of #blockpartywithgina, the theme is 'Perspective/Moment in time'. I have a print in mind but needs a bit of development - it'll be one for all us parents <3