5 FAVES FRIDAY // SOCIETY6 ARTISTS

Thank god it's Friday again eh! I hope everyone's Friday is more a POET's day (aka Push Off Early Tomorrow's Saturday) than another normal working day and that everyone is looking forward to a well deserved weekend. I posted quite some time ago about starting a Society6 store and although uploading new illustrations onto it has been put onto the back burner for a while, I still log in to explore new uploads from the HUGE range of talented artists, designers and illustrators on there.

I really enjoy having a look through Society6 at the many talented designers, illustrators and artists out there however I seem to return to the profiles and shops of a few. So seeing as it is Friday, and I haven't done a 5 Faves Friday since my Classy Craftoween post, I thought I would share with you who my five favourite Society6 artists are at the moment.

1. CAT COQUILLETTE

Little & Fierce by Cat Coquillette. Buy a giclee print of this lovely piece from Society6.

Gold Tree Rings by Cat Coquillette. Buy a giclee print of this intricate piece from Society6.

I absolutely love the work of Cat Coquillette's and I just can't get enough of it; it just amkes me happy. It has such a distinctive style, often incorporating intricate but bold ink and watercolour designs with metallic gold hints and motifs. And what's more, the motifs are heartfelt and inspiring and the designs are vibrant and colourful. What's not to love?!

2. LAURA GRAVES

Mr Deer gets festive by Laura Graves. Buy a print of this fine festive fellow from Society6.

Koalas love hugs by Laura Graves. Buy a giclee print of these cute little fellas from Society6.

I'm a big fan of monochrome illustrations with hints of colour added here and there in my own artwork and so I was instantly drawn to Laura Grave's work. She has such skill in creating quirky and somewhat vintage looking illustrations, which literally burst with character, feeling and humour. Just look at that boozey deer!

3. VIN ZZEP

Vanishing Elephant by Vin Zzep. Buy a giclee print of this beautiful image from Society6.

Like a Horse in the woods by Vin Zzep. Buy a print of this haunting image from Society6.

Vin Zzep is an artist who cleverly combines different subject matters in his work to create hauntingly beautiful and thought-provoking pieces. More recently, Vin Zzep's work has taken a more surreal like quality, slightly reminiscent of Salvador Dali, but with a style and texture that is markedly different. I'd definitely recommend giving this Society6 store a peek!

4. AMY HAMILTON

Fox by Amy Hamilton. Buy a print of this fantastical fox from Society6.

Feathers by Amy Hamilton. Buy a giclee print of this piece from Society6.

Amy Hamilton is a graphic designer and illustrator who creates lovely whimsical illustrations and portraits of animals and natural objects. I love how she captures such movement and realism in her pieces using splodges, smudges and brush strokes. Her style and technique also seems to give the pieces a unique dream-like quality that you can instantly recognise as hers. I love how piercing the foxes eyes are in the artwork above!

5. DAVID FLECK

I first became aware of David Fleck's work when I saw the piece, Voyages over Edinburgh, which just surely has to be one of the most popular art prints on Society6. With their vintage, quirky and slight architectural-inspired accuracy and subject matter, it's easy to see why David Fleck has gained over 10,000 followers on Society6. Unfortunately I didn't hear back from him about including images of his pieces in this post (I imagine he receives many and as we all know, it's hard to keep track of those emails sometimes!) so go check them out on his Society6 store - I'd particularly recommend 'Winter in New York' and 'Drift II'.

Rather excitingly I recently sold my first product on my Society6 store (eee!) and received my very first payment for it through PayPal. I read many many reviews before joining Society6 which detailed stories of individuals not selling anything for years and years, and the general consensus was that you needed lots of illustrations on there to get anywhere, so I really didn't expect to sell anything myself. It's always been a dream of mine to actually sell some of my art and never have - until now! *happy dance*

Have you got any work on Society6? 

If so, post a link to it below!

Be sure to share this post :)

♥

DIY // CLAY CANDLE HOLDER

Can you believe it's November?! Having flown out to Malaysia on the 5th (so cool to see all of the fireworks from above!) and come back on the 19th, I feel like I've hardly been in the UK and because of that, this month has literally just flown by. I had such a lovely time in Malaysia and would definitely recommend visiting. It's so different out there, which just adds to how surreal it feels to be back. But, with Christmas just around the corner, there is lots to look forward to and it's probably time to start crafting those handmade gifts (yay)! Something which I've been dying to have a go at is an air-dry clay candle holder. I've seen quite a few clay candle holder DIY's on Pinterest however most of them seem to use polymer clay. For this project, I really wanted the nice matte and slightly textured finish that you get with air-dry clay and so used bits and bobs of ideas from various tutorials to come up with the following DIY.

Air-dry clay  |  Rolling pin  |  Scalpel  |  Cardboard tube  |  Paint brushes  |  Straw

1. Measure the circumference of your cardboard tube. For this I used a toilet roll tube and a measuring tape. I didn't measure the height of the tube as I had a rough idea in my head as to how high I wanted my candle holder to be.

2. Using this measurement, create a rectangle on a piece of paper and cut it out. This will be your template when cutting the clay. Laying the measuring tape out flat onto paper, I used the perimeter of the tube as the length of my paper rectangle and for the height of the rectangle, marked how tall I wanted my holder to be.

3. Knead some air-dry clay until it is soft and then separate into two pieces. Here, I cut the clay into one larger and one smaller piece. The larger piece will make the sides of the candle holder and the smaller piece will make the base of the candle holder.

4. Take one piece of clay and roll it out, elongating it in one direction until it is larger than your paper template. Although I wanted to make sure the clay was larger than the paper template, I also wanted to make sure it was thick enough (approx. 4mm).

5. Lie the paper template on top of the clay and gently roll the rolling pin over it. I've never been very good at keeping templates still as I cut around them and so found that rolling over the paper on top of the clay leaves a nice indent on the clay (that doesn't move around!) to cut around.

6. Using the scalpel, cut out around the paper imprint to create a long clay rectangle. Here, I cut each side of the rectangle in one long movement to try and prevent deforming the rectangles shape.

7. Wrap the clay rectangle loosely around your toilet roll or tube. To do this, I lifted one end of the rectangle and held it against the tube as I rolled the tube over the rest of the clay until the whole clay rectangle was wrapped around the tube.

8. Cut off any excess clay and fix the two rectangle ends together to create a cylinder. Using my scalpel, I cut off any overlapping clay. With the paintbrush, some excess clay and water, I then created a clay putty, which I used to mould the two ends of the clay rectangle together.

9. Using a straw, cut out some holes from the clay cylinder. Here, I pushed a straw into the clay until I felt it hit the cardboard tube and twisted it until I was sure that the straw had completely cut out a hole.

10. Put this to one side and roll out the other piece of clay into a large circle. Using my trusty non-stick rolling pin (possibly the best thing I've ever bought from Hobbycraft!) I rolled out the clay into a circle larger than the circumference of the clay tube.

11. Dip your fingers into some water and lightly spread it over the clay circle. Place the cylinder on top of the wet clay circle. Here I've found that wetting the clay makes it sticky and so when you place the clay tube on top, it moulds together quite quickly.

12. Using the scalpel, cut around the cylinder removing the excess clay circle. To do this, I roughly cut off the excess clay until I was a few millimetres away from the clay tube and then more carefully cut around it.

12. Turn over and fill any gaps between the cylinder and circle. Using the paintbrush, and a mix of clay and water, fill the gaps around the edge between the clay cylinder and circle.

13. Whilst it is upturned, use the wet paint brush to smooth out any marks on the bottom of the clay circle. I had a little trouble getting the bottom of the clay candle holder (formerly the clay circle) off of the acetate and so had to coax it off using my scalpel. This left quite a few indentations on the bottom which I gently smoothed over using the paintbrush and some water.

14. Place the clay candle holder upright and leave to dry overnight. Here, I left the clay holder to dry a little with the cardboard tube in the middle (as support). After a couple of hours, when I felt that the clay was sturdy enough to support itself, I gently pulled out the tube and left the holder to dry for approximately 24 hours.

15. Once dry, smooth the clay with a damp piece of sandpaper. Here, I used a fine sandpaper to smooth out any paintbrush strokes and any lumps and bumps. To minimise dust particles (although as you can see, there were still quite a few!), I dampened the sandpaper.

... and that's it!

I'm really happy with how this little project turned out and think that it would make a nice gift for family, friends or for yourself and if you use a mini star cutter, as opposed to a straw, would make a chic little christmas decoration.

As always, I love to hear what you think so let me know in the comments below!

♥

ART // WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS...

I recognise how extremely fortunate I am when I say it's not very often that life gives me lemons. Recently I've had a few lemons tossed my way and in a fashion that is typical of me, I've either been knocked sideways by them or I have actively (and successfully) ignored them. In my line of work, I frequently advocate mindfulness, but much like the old saying, and to my dismay, I actually rarely practice what I preach. From now on though, when life does gives me lemons, I'm going to try and be non-judgementally aware of them.

So when life does give me lemons, I'm going to draw them. And just look what can happen when you do decide to make something positive of those pesky lemons! I was so pleased with the resulting pattern, that rather uncharacteristically of me, I decided to upload it onto my Society6 store. This means that you can now get my illustrated lemon pattern on stationary cards, cushions, phone cases or as a simple art print. If you know someone who has had some lemons chucked their way recently, a lemon greeting card might be just the thing to cheer them up!

How do you cope with lemons? And what do you think of my pattern?

Let me know in the comments below!

♥

BAKING // MOJITO CUPTAILS

It's getting close to party season (yay!), which can mean only one thing; cocktail-flavoured cupcakes or cuptails as I fondly call them! I've made these for almost every party I've ever thrown and every time I have, they have always gone down a treat. Mojito's are my absolute favourite cocktail and at my last party, where I made both Mojito cuptails and Chocolate Vodka cuptails, the Mojito cuptails were not only my favourite, but also my party guests'. They are actually pretty easy to make and as they make a nice little addition to any party or gathering, I thought that I would share with you how I made and decorated them. I found the recipe from the Good Food Channel's website. I often get my recipes from here because it has such a good variety of interesting recipes and explains them so simply that even a kitchen-phobe like myself can understand them.

After making and baking the cupcakes, I left them to completely cool. Once they were cool, I broke off some mint leaves and gently rubbed it across the top of each cupcake. I then poured some brown rum (unlike white rum as the recipe suggests!) and lime juice into an egg cup and using a pastry brush, brushed the rum-lime mixture onto the top of each cupcake. This is such a good method of infusing cakes and cupcakes with alcohol without having to adjust the proportions of the mixture - I don't know about you, but that always confuses me. Leave the rum-lime mixture to soak in thoroughly before brushing on another layer. I repeated this quite a few times (haha!) so that they were thoroughly alcohol infused, however you can alter this to your own taste.

Before the final layer of the mixture was completely absorbed, I lightly sprinkled on some brown sugar so that it dissolved into the mixture on top of the cupcakes. For the icing, I mixed up some flora buttery (instead of butter!) with icing sugar and added a drop of green food colouring gel and the remainder of the rum-lime mix. I found that adding these in, as well as using Flora instead of butter, meant that I needed a bit more icing sugar than the recipe suggested. Once I was happy with the consistency of the icing, I put the icing into a piping bag and using a round tipped nozzle, piped a high cone shape into the middle of the cupcake. Then, starting from the outside edge of the cupcake, I piped in a spiral towards the centre of the cupcake, going up the sides of the cone until I reached the top.

To decorate the icing, I sprinkled some brown sugar over the top, cut up some straws and pushed these into the centre of the icing at an angle. I then added a sprig of mint and cut up some lime into small wedges, which I pushed into the icing around the straw to give it more of a 'cocktail look'. Sadly I didn't take a photo of how they looked before I served them, as guests started arriving whilst I was finishing them up and I dashed off to get changed so I'm sorry there's no final picture!

What cocktail would you like as a cupcake?

Have you ever made cuptails?

Let me know in the comments below and don't forget to share and subscribe!

♥

ART // PURRFECT PEPPER

So I've been feeling super creative recently and really enjoying blogging about the bits and bobs I doodle or make in my spare time, which along with my recent pledge to be more organised with my blog, means you may have noticed a bit more activity on here. I've wanted to share this doodle for ages but got caught up with all my other blog post ideas. Last year my sister and her (then) boyfriend bought two gorgeous and ridiculously cute kittens, Poppy and Pepper, which did absolutely nothing to lessen my desires of getting my own kitten.

However, seeing as I couldn't have one at the time (or now - the woes of living in a flat), and because I had probably watched enough 'adorable kitten' videos on youtube to last a lifetime, I thought I would continue to fuel my cat obsession by drawing Pepper. Pepper had (still has!) such lovely markings on her face and I couldn't help but find her absolutely hilarious as a kitten. Whenever I went round, she would alternate between creepily staring at me (well, as creepy as a pink nosed fur ball could be) and licking me.

Licking. And staring. What a little weirdo. Anyway, I was pretty pleased with my final doodle and my sister was too. 

What do you think? 

Is it worthy of my Society6 store?

Let me know in the comments below! It's always really valuable to hear your opinions and get feedback :)

♥