Colour is where it's at...

You can't beat a juicy bit of colour. The autumn sunshine has been highlighting the colours around and you only have to look at my work to know how important a strong block of colour is to me.
Strong pastels against beautiful brights at Bridlington beach last Sunday (top 4 images).
Fantastic coloured formica school desks in my local vintage shop (may well be going back to buy these  tomorrow!!)

This week has mainly been about planning my pending photo shoot, website updates (finally getting around to planning/creating much-needed changes), delivering framed prints to Art&Rose Gallery (my local gallery in Pocklington - owned and curated by my next door neighbour Emma-Jane) and new designs/products. And of course sending out orders of both everyday and Christmas cards. A wonderfully varied week!

Busy organising

I've been missing from here the whole of the summer holidays I'm afraid. It's not that I've just had the whole summer off - far from it in fact. With it being the summer holidays I had my daughter at home with me most of the time (or lovely grandparents and holiday club looking after her also) so working has been somewhat sporadic. I have managed to work quite a lot but having had a busy period of orders concentrated over the whole of August I mainly spent all my working time keeping on top of despatching orders and doing admin jobs. All the other more lovely parts which make up my working day have had to wait. 

Yesterday Martha started in reception so I now have 5 clear days a week for the first time in over 4 years and I'm delighted. Obviously I'll miss her hugely but I feel very fortunate that I spent a lot of time with her when she was young while growing my business at the same time. I've spent 4 and a bit years juggling work and being a mum and I feel I had the best of both worlds. She's been at nursery/pre-school and grandparents a lot of the week over the past couple of years but it's all been a bit more ad-hoc and required strategic planning every week. I'm really looking forward to the straightforwardness of dropping her at the same place every morning and being in the studio bright and early.

So the past 2 days I've been doing some serious organising. In a way it feels like the start of term for me also - new beginnings and all that. I've finally finished painting and installing back in the old metal shelving unit which was in my studio as part of the former owners storage. I like the fact that a part of this once very dark and boring shed is back in use again. A little bit of it's heritage before it became a studio. It looks a bit office-y but I need somewhere for the files I use to keep my designs in and it's perfect.

There's been a steady stream of deliveries to the studio all week resulting in finding room to store over 10,000 envelopes! (6500 cards on their way next week!) Beth (my new and very sunny studio assistant) has been busy picking and packing orders and I've been putting away the new stock of Christmas cards (oh yes - it'll be upon us in no time!)

All in all a busy and organising sort of week so far. And I have many plans which I'm making too. 

That's for next week..... can't wait!!