New Website Image - Bobby Holding Welcome Sign!

As I mentioned a few posts back I have been busy building new website to promote myself as an Illustrator, and it is now very nearly ready to go live. So this week I have been working on the finishing touches, which are a couple of images that will be placed on a few of the pages. One of which I have just finished ready to go on my homepage as you can see below, and the other I will be able to share with you in a few days.

I hope that your week is going well and that the weather is looking up where you are! We have a very chilly breeze at the moment but do actually have some sunshine, which feels quite alien after the weather of late! x

An Appeal!

Some of you may already know about this if you read Julies blog over at Little Cotton Rabbits but for those of you that don't. There is a little place in Lancashire where a couple have set up an Animal Sanctuary for Saving Rare Breeds. They take in neglected, unwanted or abandoned farm animals and horses and are working towards opening an education centre to teach the next generation to care for these animals properly.

Unfortunately though as the project is self funded money can get tight and at the moment the owners Stephen and Tracey are having a particularly tough time, having have lost allot of their animals over the past week or so to a mystery illness.

So to help cheer them up a few blogger including myself, are trying to get them the most votes in a competition on Facebook to win £5,000. If they were to win it would enable them to them finish their new Animal Hospital, plus it won’t cost you a thing! All you need to go to the following link: http://www.facebook.com/FeelGoodPark?sk=app_440439032678865 add the app, like it and then place your vote for Saving Rare Breeds.

The competition is run each month by Animal Friends Insurance and they choose four charities to win a cash prize. Saving Rare Breeds are 3rd out of four this month, and there are only a few days left to go now. I know that there are allot of good causes out there but if you can spare the time to help I know that they would be very grateful. x

Snowy Walk!

Well as I hoped we, along with the vast majority of the country did indeed get snow! In comparison to allot of other places though I think that we got off quiet lightly here. We have probably had about 5-10cm max since last Friday, enough to build snow men and go sledging but not so much that it's caused too many major problems. It has stayed with us for most of the week and only really started clearing in the past few days with the sleety rain.

Though inconvenient for many the snow has given me the perfect opportunity to go out on some country walks and capture some snowy photos. I love photography at the best of times but find it extra special and magical in the snow! I particularly love wildlife photography so I went out to find some animals in the snow, which as you can see below I succeeded in. I saw robins, squirrels, a song thrush, and bunnies playing in the snow! (Trust me to find the bunnies!) I also saw a Jay bird which I have never seen before, but was rather peeved as it was in prime position just as the batteries in my camera ran out, just typical! I hope that you like the pics, I know that there I quite a few but I couldn't decide which ones to use!

A Lucky close-up shot of a Robin on a branch, and the church where I married looking pretty in the snow!

I took a photo of the lamp post because it reminded me of a snowy Narnia, and the picturesque river.

An old sign with a pretty backdrop and one of the squirrels that I saw playing in the snow.

Again these scenes reminded me of Narnia, and felt quite magical.

Pretty ice patterns that had formed on the pathway and more of the snowy river.

An ethereal looking tree in the snow & icicles that had formed along the side of the river's waterfall.

The tree walkway, and the area by the train tracks where I found the bunnies playing.

It was lovely to see the wild bunnies playing in the snow. They were quite skittish and easily spooked, but I manage to get gradually closer overtime to get these shots. I was quite pleased that I saw them relaxed enough to get the pictures I did, washing their paws and reaching up to get food from the bushes; as this is behaviour that I haven't seen in wild rabbits before.

I hope that wherever you are that you are not snowed in and that the snow is causing you too many problems. Keep snug x

Website & Logo!

This week I have been busy creating a new website to promote myself as an Illustrator. I did have one after I graduated but it was only very simple and became a little dated, so I shut it down just before I started this blog.

This time round I wanted something where I could have more freedom with the look and style of the website as well as having links to my blog, Etsy shop and Facebook page, when they are eventually up and running! So I am being a little more adventurous and building it myself this time almost from scratch! I am gradually getting to grips with it and it is looking good, but it is very time consuming. I spent the best part of an evening trying to get a button to click the other night. But like I say it is coming along now and should be ready to launch within the next week or so!

In other news I have also been putting together a new stand alone Bobby Bunny Logo, to be used on the back of my greetings card designs. I have still used the same image of Bobby dragging his blanket in pyjamas, but wanted something that would also incorporated my name but still go with my blog banner. After a bit of playing about with different text and image placement to see what worked best I came up with the image below, any comments as to what you think of it would be welcome.

I hope that the weather hasn't been too bad where you are. Here we have had some lovely crisp sunny days but no snow as of yet, however that may change by tomorrow. When it comes to snow I’m still a bit of a big kid, and as inconvenient as it can be I still like the magical feel of waking up to see everything pure and white. Have a good day and wrap up warm! x

Happy New Year!

Wishing a very Happy New Year to all of my readers, and I hope that you all had a lovely Christmas too! I can’t believe that it was nearly two weeks ago already it really did fly past.

Over here at Bobby Bunny headquarters we had a nice quiet Christmas with my family Christmas Day, and the hubby's Boxing Day. Unfortunately I didn't really get much of a Christmas break apart from these two days as I was back to work, but it was better than nothing. It would have been nice to spend more time together with the hubby since he had a longer break but both he and his family have been ill since Christmas Day, so it worked out quite well as I have been trying to avoid the lurgy!

I do like a new year, it really does give you that feeling of a fresh start and gives you that bit more motivation to change things within your life. I don’t tend to make New Year’s resolutions as I find that they get broken to easily, I prefer instead to make goals for the year and this year I have many. First and foremost I really want to continue to push my Illustration and hope that one day it will be my day job. I really do feel a bit stuck in a rut at the moment on the career front having been, between college and higher education in the same retail job since I was 16. Some days I feel more positive about it than others, but I knew that it was never going to be easy profession to get into. At the end of the day it's a dream that I have and I know that I won’t be happy until I have achieved it, or at least had a good go at achieving it!

Secondly both Mark and I would love to be able to be in the position to move into a rented house this year, as we really are growing out of the flat and would like start to think about having a family. We would love to get a mortgage but that's just not a realistic prospect at the moment. I have many other goals, but as to whether they will happen or net remains to be seen. But either way I hope that 2013 will be a good year for us all, and that if you have any goals or resolutions that you achieve them too! X

All Wrapped Up!

So Christmas Day is nearly upon us! Usually by now my presents would be bought, but despite my best intentions they are normally hastily wrapped at the last minute. This was no truer than last year; having just got married Christmas was a bit of a rush. So this year I thought I would be organised, and give myself time to wrap them in the loving way that I have always intended to. I know that they are just going to get ripped open, but I do enjoy giving a nicely wrapped present.

Being quite into the whole Scandinavian Christmas craze that’s going on over here at the moment, I fell in love when I saw this lovely Christmas wrap pack in M&S. It came with all the traditional paper, ribbon, tags and cute stickers that you can see below. I am rather pleased with how it all turned out, and am looking forward to giving them all to my family & friends.

I am hoping to have the time to blog again before Christmas, but if I don’t I wish you and your families all a very happy and peaceful Christmas x

 

Christmas Designs 3 - Bobby Wrapped In Christmas Lights!

So today I have had a rare weekday off of work, which has given me time to finish off the last of my Christmas card designs for this year. My final design features Bobby Bunny this time wrapped up in Christmas lights and quite frankly looking a little confused. Once again he is sporting a little knitted Christmas jumper. Well it just had to be done! I hope that you like, and that all of your Christmas plans and shopping are coming together, only 11 days to go! Have a good evening x

Christmas Designs 2 - Snow Angel Bella!

Good Evening! I am pleased so say that hot off the press, I have my second Christmas card design of this year to show you! I hope you like!

This is the first time that I have created a Bella design since my Christmas card in back 2010 which was featured in; "The Story of Bobby Bunny & My Illustrating so Far....." post in September. For those of you that don’t know Bella is Bobby bunnies little childhood friend. It was nice drawing her again, I like drawing a girly bunny here and there as it mixes it up a bit, plus I like being able to draw her in pretty little clothes. Me being me I thought that this would be quite a straightforward image to do, but as usual I underestimated the task in hand. As it so happens trying to make Bella look like she was making a convincing snow angel, was quite a challenge but I go there in the end!

On another note thanks for the First Anniversary wishes! We both had a lovely day and the hubby even sent me flowers to work which was very unexpected, as it's not the sort of thing that he normally does! In fact it almost made me tear up it was that unexpected, but what a lovely surprise. I think that he thought I was a bit ridiculous tearing up, as they were only flowers as he put it. But I don’t think that men realise that it's the thought behind them that means just as much, if not more to us women than the flowers themselves. We also enjoyed our meal out at a new restaurant near us, then went back opened the bubbly and stuck on our wedding DVD to reminisce as planned. All in all it was a great First Anniversary and we hope to have many more in the future!

I will leave you with a few pics of the flowers, have a good evening x

 

 

Christmas Designs - Ice Skating Bobby!

Hello there! I hope that you well and thanks for popping in! Sorry that I haven't blogged for a bit again. My absence was due to the fact that I have been busy working away on some new Bobby Christmas designs! I love designing cards for Christmas as it's always been my favourite time of year. I love the cold nights, snuggling up on the sofa, the smells, lights, food, spending time with family, and the general magical feel you get in the air. Up until this year I have only ever done one Christmas design a year, as I usually end up running out of time. This year however I have had so many ideas that I have been working on three Bobby designs, one of which I have finished and the others will be soon to follow as they now just need colour. The first design that I have just finished this morning is Skating Bobby as you can see below:

I am pretty pleased with how he has turned out, although it did take a little while to get him from start to finish with generating the ideas, deciding on clothing, colour schemes and particularly the pose. As I had decided in my mind that I wanted him skating in motion, (oh how I like to make life difficult for myself!) It was a little challenging to get the pose of the feet right, but I persevered and after a few sketches I manage to crack it I think. Please let me know your thoughts.

Right I am now off to carry on with my next design for a bit before work, then I’m off for a meal with the hubby this evening as it is our first Wedding Anniversary. I don’t know where the time has gone, this last year has flown by it doesn't seem possible that it has been that long already. It was such a lovely day filled with so many happy memories and beautiful weather. I think that we may have to crack open a bottle of Champers tonight and reminisce watching our Wedding DVD. Have a good week x

A Busy Few Weeks!

As the title suggests we have had a busy few weeks around here, hence my lack of blogging! Both my husband and I have had a few weeks of which have been packed with three 30th birthday's including his, visiting and staying with the in-laws, and generally getting things done around that flat that never get done when we are working. I also finally got around to sorting out our wedding photo book now nearly a year after we got married. Still better late than never! As lovely as the last few weeks have been I am looking forward to getting some time to carry on with my Christmas card designs next week, which I shall put on here as soon as they are finished. Have a good weekend, and I will leave you with a pic of the 30th birthday football themed cupcakes that I made for the hubby, complete with a little Crystal Palace figure (his favourite team.) x