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Here's a fun illustration I did to go with one of my favourite quotes: "A Journey of 1000 miles begins with one step", attributed to Confucious.

I'm offering it as the first free printable for 2015, to the subscribers of the Floating Lemons monthly newsletter. Last year I managed, by some minor miracle, to create an illustrated affirmation a month for those who signed up - despite the huge changes going on in my life. I was determined to keep my promise and I did it. Yay me.

This year, however, I'm going to be a bit more sensible as I know I'll be moving house again, and I will have assignments to complete for college ... so I'll illustrate favourite quotes whenever I can, and offer those as free printables, as well as intersperse that with a few giveaways throughout the year for all you wonderful friends who have signed up. A bit less stress and pressure until I find someplace to settle down in, eventually.

If you'd like to join in and receive a surprise gift or illustrated quote once a month, please do sign up, HERE.

Hope you're having a wonderful start to 2015. Wishing you infinite possibilities for the year ahead. Cheers.

Wishing everyone a new year full of positive energy!

It's been a year of huge changes, a few setbacks and (multiple) stresses, and a LOT of learning-new-things for me. It's been quite amazing and I've loved every second of it, even those moments (a few) when I felt like giving up completely. Well, I can be pretty stubborn when pushed, and that comes in handy sometimes ... I refused to give up, have ploughed on, and am looking forward to the changes speeding my way (oh yes, they are there) this coming year. Yes folks, I'm taking my own advice and embracing a life full of infinite possibilities.

I received a lovely parcel through the post that wraps my year up beautifully: the calendar created from the monthly free printables I illustrated this year as give-aways for the subscribers of the Floating Lemons monthly newsletter. Couldn't believe how well it turned out, I love it. I haven't got my good camera with me (had to use the trusty iPhone) and of course am still in temporary quarters, so excuse the not-too-great quality of the photos below. Hopefully you'll get a goodish idea of how lovely it looks, up on the wall. A huge thanks to Zazzle for the amazing job printing it ...

"I Choose" Positive Affirmations Calendar 2015 by Floating Lemons for Zazzle

I don't want to overburden this post with too many images, so have placed the last 6 months of the calendar over at the Floating Lemons Treats blog, so if you'd like to see them just click HERE. And if you want to gift it to yourself or anyone you know who might appreciate some positive motivational quotes, click HERE.

Let me know what you think of it, and please forgive me for being just a teensy bit proud of myself at the moment -- not just of having created the art, but for having stuck to my promise and delivered an illustrated quote monthly even through the chaos of moving to a new country and (re)joining College!

So, have a fantastic and safe New Year's Eve and an even more fantastic 2015. Cheers.

____________________________________________

ooops, almost forgot! As of the 30th of January the "I Choose" free printables from 2014 will no longer be available for download, as I'll be starting something new for 2015.

So if you're a subscriber and haven't yet grabbed one of the above, then do so very soon (you can see the 12 designs HERE, though they are formatted as A4 pages for you to download, for easier home-printing). If you haven't subscribed yet and you'd like to be able to grab one or all of them as free printables, please sign up for the newsletter soon as I'll be mailing out an extra issue just before the 30th, with the download link, before it disappears for good. Cheers!

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a fantastic New Year!

This alpaca is one of two that friends of mine are looking after at the moment. I've taken some creative liberties with proportions and perspective, but I'm sure they will forgive me for it. They are sweet, playful, and perfect for wishing everyone a warm, woolly Christmas and a friendly, positive, wonderful end of 2014. Have fun and be safe! Cheers.

As we head into winter I thought it would be good to have a reminder of sunny days and summery good times to keep us warm when the cold finally hits. As I write this the weather is extraordinarily mild (for the UK!), the sun is shining away brightly, I'm not as yet huddled in front of the fire, and am enjoying every moment of light and clarity ... while it lasts. Here's a little print I've made to lift the spirits during the greyer months ahead, or just to provide an extra glow if you're lucky enough to live where it's warm all year long.

I re-coloured my Painted Flowers pattern for this, and cleaned it up further. Seemed perfect for this month, wouldn't you agree?

As always, it's available as a free printable (along with the past 10 monthly designs for 2014) for all subscribers of the Floating Lemons monthly newsletter. If you'd like to sign up, just click here.

Wishing you good humour for the week ahead. Cheers.

I'm counting my blessings. And apologising for being one day late with this blog post and my newsletter! I've had to attend to practicalities and real life stuff. Who'd have thought moving to another country would take up so much time and energy ... ha ha. It's been a mad scramble to get any art or work done. Internet is intermittent at best here in the depths of the beautiful English countryside, so let's hope this gets posted today. I'm counting my blessings, and there are a multitude of those in my life daily.

Here's "I Choose to Count my Blessings", the illustration/affirmation for September. It is now, of course, another of the monthly free printables that I'm offering to all subscribers of the Floating Lemons newsletter. To sign up just CLICK HERE, and you'll get access to the previous 8 free printables as well as this one.

Wishing you a wonderful day and week full of sunshine, love and delight. Cheers.

Remember the exciting news I've been holding onto these past few months? Well, it's all happening now: I've moved from France to the English countryside. Why? I'm going back to school! To be precise, I'm going to attend, for the first time ever, art college. There's a ton of reasons for my doing so, and I'll chat about them as we go along to classes together this year, but it's a huge step for me and wonderfully exciting. I'm looking forward to learning tons, and to adding depth to my work and my life. It's never too late.

Which is why everything has been slightly haywire, upside-down, inside-out and choatic lately, and I have to apologise again for the lack of updates here, but you'll have to admit that it's for a brilliant reason and that you can't help but feel happy for me ...

I did manage to find time here and there to tackle a few more Spoonflower daily drawing challenges, though I was left far behind during the packing and moving bit of my journey. I'm still going to carry on and complete their themes despite the fact that the spoonchallenge is officially over today. Still, it keeps me therapeutically content having my pencils, pens, and trusty moleskine journal in hand.

Here are another 5 of the Spoonchallenges:

#SpoonChallenge 6: LEMON

#SpoonChallenge 7: BOOK

#SpoonChallenge 8: ARROW

#SpoonChallenge 9: TEA

#SpoonChallenge 10: TOAST

I have a ton of mundane practical things to take care of before courses begin mid-September, but today is Sunday and it's lovely and sunny here in the English countryside, something not to be taken too much for granted. So I'm having a short but, I think, well-deserved break with tea and the papers in the garden of wonderfully welcoming friends where I'm staying for the moment. Join me ...

Wishing everyone a glorious week. Will update again very soon! Cheers.

This piece was drawn in coloured pencils as an assignment for my MATS Bootcamp e-course. It started off as a preparatory sketch in my moleskine, but I got carried away and ended up putting down layers and layers of colour. This was the result, "I Choose to Embrace the Unknown":

As always, I'm offering all the "I Choose" designs monthly as A4/A3 free printables to those who sign up for the Floating Lemons newsletter, so if you want to print them out at home for your personal use, or pass them onto friends, just click HERE to subscribe.

I sketched out quite a few ideas before the drawing above insisted on picking itself as the final. Here are some of them, and the prep sketches that refused to stay preparatory ...

All in all a wonderful nautical exploration. Hope you've enjoyed a peek at it as much as I enjoyed working on the whole project. Wishing you a fantastical day. Cheers.

I can't believe that it's already June, the year seems to have flown past and it's once again time for our monthly text design which is, "I Choose to Make a Difference". Because I do. Do you? We can all begin with doing one positive thing daily, and bit by bit we can, together, change the world.

Just a quick recap for those of you who may have only just started reading my blog ... I decided at the beginning of the year to illustrate and post, on the first Saturday of every month this year, a positive affirmation beginning with "I Choose ...". I used to be pretty skeptical as far as affirmations are concerned but have placed cynicism aside and am now a convert. They work.

I'm offering all the designs as A4/A3 free printables to those who sign up for the Floating Lemons monthly newsletter, so if you want to print them out at home for your personal use, or pass them onto friends, just click HERE to subscribe. We've had a really great response, which is wonderful, thank you to everyone who signed up!

Here are the newsletters so far, from January to June 2014:

Choose to make a difference today ... and spread the positive energy. Cheers.

Seven years ago I mustered up the courage to make a huge change in my life, despite having been offered my "dream job". I left Australia and moved to France to instead work on my art and build a career and business from it. It's one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life.

I can't say that it was easy, and I've encountered quite a few bumps along the road, but I learned tons, and dogged determination has gotten me this far, with a small but thriving business and a huge love for what I do. Now, however, I'm again faced with massive new decisions to make, both in my work and personal life, and it's time to once again find the courage to make changes for the future. To follow my dreams. So this text design is particularly appropriate and will be my mantra for the days to come.

I've also placed it against a white background for the free printable that will be made available to the subscribers of the Floating Lemons monthly newsletter, as all that black may be a bit of a problem for home printers to handle. Both will be available, so you have a choice of whether to print it against white, or black if you think your printer can handle all that ink!

To sign up for the newsletter and get access to the previous free printables as well, just click here.

WIshing you the courage to follow your dreams. Cheers.

Yes, I'm in London. Which is wonderful, especially as I'm with family, about to go on an amazing trip to celebrate my dad's 80th birthday ... yet a wee bit frustrating as well, as I'm missing two whole weeks of the e-course that I've been so thoroughly enjoying ... But yes, I am definitely counting my blessings.

I did manage to take some time off and doodle. We're having a few internet connectivity problems so I'll keep this short and sweet, and post it before I get cut off. Here's the black and white sketch:

I'm not sure if I'll be able to carry on blogging much till I get back home, but I'll be posting photos and updates over at the Floating Lemons Facebook page so pop by there if you'd like to accompany me to Istanbul ...

Have a wonderful day. Cheers.

Still working on sketches for my e-course, The Art & Business of Surface Pattern Design Module 4 ... I did some doodles and sketches with geometric, floral, and typography themes in mind.

I'm not sure if the final results below would be considered strictly geometric but hey, I drew grids and shapes and then got carried away filling them up. There are florals there too, so perhaps I managed to work on two of the themes at one go. Oh, and some typography too ...

The second one is still unfinished. I 'work' on it whenever I have time, i.e. when I'm uploading designs onto stores. I used to have a dodopad in high school, and used to colour it in with magic markers, does anyone remember those? These grid doodles reminded me of that, and the whole exercise is teaching me tons about colour, and is fun to boot.

I did some typographical sketches with a holiday theme:

I love playing with text design. And some of you may know that this year I've decided to do a monthly design based on "I Choose ..." as a positive affirmation, that I make available as a free printable to the subscribers of the Floating Lemons Newsletter. It's a hugely wonderful experiment in typography for myself, and these are the ones I've come up with so far, for January till April:

They count as typographical exercises, wouldn't you say? Next month I'll be doing "I Choose Courage", as I'm going through huge changes in my life that require a large amount of deep breathing, and I'll be plunging into a different life and lifestyle. Scary, but also very exciting. I'm thoroughly enjoying the text designs and the affirmations that are emerging, and hope to do a calendar with them at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, I'll be away for two weeks as of next week. I shall try to blog as much as possible, but as it's my dad's 80th birthday that we're celebrating, I may not be able to do that, so forgive me in advance. I'll be posting up at the facebook page, so follow me there if you want a peek at my updates, and to see photographs of whatever inspiring bits I pick up from the United Kingdom and Istanbul (yay).

Meanwhile, have a fantastic week and don't forget to experiment joyfully. Cheers.

I loved working on this text design - it really strikes a deep, personal chord, as I've been using this as an affirmation for the last year and it has worked wonders in my life. So I'm passing it on, and hope that you choose to fill your lives with the possibility of facing all its challenges fueled by positive energy. It really does make a difference.

As always, this monthly illustration is available as a free printable for subscribers to the Floating Lemons newsletter, (next issue will be out on the first Saturday of this month, the 5th of April) so go ahead and sign up by clicking on the image above, or right HERE.

Here's the original sketch that I scanned in and then worked on digitally to get the finished piece:

Wishing all of you a day full of brightness. Cheers.

I'm working on a few different projects at the moment, all in progress, all squeezed in whenever I have a few minutes free. Here's where I was at the beginning of the week:

I'm glad to say that I'm pretty much done with the "I Choose to Fill Myself with Positive Energy" text design for the April free printable (for subscribers to the Floating Lemons monthly newsletter of course!), and I'll reveal all when the time comes. Meanwhile ...

I went a completely different direction with my Jelly assignment for MATS Bootcamp, and have managed to totally confuse myself. Should I go with something more along the lines of last weeks sketches, here, or stick to a slightly more geometric rendering of jelly moulds, as above? argh. We shall see. I may have to sketch a lot more jelly before deciding.

Meanwhile, here's the progress on a sketch I'm doing that will, perhaps, end up as a Thinking of You card up at the Two Smiles for HP (Hewlett-Packard) site.

I drew it, scanned it in and decided to experiment with some brand new digital pastel brushes that I purchased from Kyle T Webster. Oh my, I love them. Now that I've been deprived of Corel Painter (it just will not work since the last OS update and I don't want to invest and buy the upgrade only to discover that doesn't work either. I was, needless to say, hugely disappointed) these, along with his real watercolour brushes, are making digital painting a delight once more.

Here's a quick peek at what I've done so far ...

I'm using them exactly as I would my pencils on paper and there are layers and layers of colour being built up. Still have a way to go as yet, but I'm quite pleased with the way it's turning out so far.

Back to work! Wishing you a wonderful day loving what you do and doing what you love. Cheers.

Be joyful! March always seems such a transitional month for me. Winter hasn’t quite shed its icy coat but there are signs of balmier spring weather sneaking into the air. A perfect time to choose to feel Joy, especially on those grey, cloudy mornings.

I wanted this illustration to feel natural, simple and spontaneous, so out came the watercolours, and I painted using bright, cheerful pinks, greens, oranges and blues, ending up with the above piece. Here are a couple of sketches:

The above text illustration is available as part of a series of monthly free printables for the subscribers of the Floating Lemons newsletter. If you'd like to sign up to receive them, just click here.

Wishing you a day full of brightness and joy. Cheers.

Some of the students from my wonderful Make Art That Sells class decided to get together and hold a Blog Parade, thanks to Linda Tieu, and I'm honoured to be a part of such a talented group.

I've been struggling these past couple of years to get my business up and running. The first year was difficult and hugely disappointing as I depended on the wrong people. My bad. It set me back, and not only did I have to start all over again, but I had to pick up the debris left over from that big mistake. Still, I refused to get depressed over it and carried on, strengthened by my love of what I'm doing and faith in where I'm going with the business.

It's not an easy thing, getting the right-brain creative side to work hand-in-hand with the left-brain business side of things, but I'm now getting help from a good friend who has the professional background and is whipping me into shape, as well as direction from a brilliant e-course I'm taking at the moment, the Right-Brain Business Plan.

Apart from that, the classes I've taken this last year have been an incredible boost to my art. I feel as though I'm still searching for a 'style' and the journey, full of adventurous experimentation, is absolutely wonderful.

So my latest piece seems particularly apt for this Blog Parade. It speaks for itself.

There's a lovely, positive energy in the air, and the support of fellow students is a bonus I hadn't counted on and consider invaluable, even though haven't yet had the time to fully engage with everyone in the groups. I'm hoping to participate more, very soon!

Meanwhile, head on to Gabriella's site next, and enjoy the blog parade!

Wishing you a wonderfully creative day. Cheers.

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." -- George Bernard Shaw.

Simply handwritten.

"Coffee makes it possible to get out of bed. Cupcakes make it worthwhile." - unknown author.

I worked on this yesterday, so haven't had a chance to properly clean it up. You're getting pretty much the raw deal here! I'd normally finish it off by moving around and smoothing out the words and letters, but as I haven't the time at the moment, here's what I've managed to complete so far ...

I started off with a very rough pencil sketch in my Moleskine squared journal:

The quotation seemed perfect for my Coffee Cupcake illustration, so I printed it out and glued it on as a guide around which the text would flow. I then inked it in, ready for scanning:

This is the scan, and here's where I'd work on the final cleanup, the icing on the cake if you will, and the addition of decorative elements. Not done. Let's hope it still tastes good:

I'm looking at it here and can see all the mistakes I'd love to fix ... making some of the text less angular, some of the spaces between words less awkward ... when I finally get around to it I'll post the cleaned version! Right now it's time for my second cup of morning coffee. Cupcakes, anyone? Cheers.

I'm now going to (try to!) take a few days off to clear clutter, relax and renew myself. I'll be back on the 3rd, ready for new challenges!

Resolutions? To spend more time drawing and painting this coming year ... what about you?

I hope you have a wonderful New Year with your loved ones, and that the coming year will be filled with much positive thought and action and be a fulfilling one for us all. Cheers.

Sketched this out a few months back, actually, and I thought it would be perfect for this time of the year ... as it's time to let go of all the clutter and reorganize for the New Year.

Which is exactly what we're trying to do for the business (and personal life, not that I have much of one!). A lot has happened this past year and now we have to look back, reassess, and cut out what isn't working. Then cross the fingers and hope that the coming year will be even better than this one has been so far.

Are you letting go of clutter in preparation for the New Year? Any New Year's resolutions? I'm still working on those ... Cheers.

Wishing everyone out there a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Season's Greetings.

Be safe and be happy :)

This was actually doodled some time ago. I've resurrected it and finally cleaned it up, so here are both the original Happy Birthday very rough text design sketch and the final cleaned up version I worked on this week:

I liked it! Curls and all. So I tried it out in some of the trend colours for next year, in Poppy Red, Dusk Blue and Emerald Green, to see how it would look ...

What do you think? Fun and cheerful? Would you buy those on cards for someone celebrating a birthday? I think I would ... so I'm going to put it up at the stores once the festive season celebrations are over with :) Cheers.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

From LEISURE:

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

-- William Henry Davies