Mocked Up Butterfly Dreams Thank You Card!

Once again it has been a busy old week here at Bobby Bunny Headquarters! I have mainly spent my time working and attending a course associated with my new role, which so far seems to be going well. The downside to this though is that not much illustrating has been going on, but this should change once I have settled into my new routine. I have however found the time to mock up my Butterfly Dreams card, as you can see below.

 

After being pretty pleased with the outcome of my "New Baby Boy" card design, I wanted this one to follow the same style. Again I used the 250gm canvas effect linen card to print on and used a pretty heart button, sewed on with taupe thread as an accent. I have to say that I had fun shopping for the right button and think that I may be getting a button fetish, as came away from Hobbycraft with quite a few different button designs to use on future cards. Again I am pretty pleased with the results, and now also have some plastic wallets and envelopes to package up my cards. So once I have a few more designs, I hope to be able to start selling them in the not to distant future.

I hope that you all have a lovely week, and that the weather is being as kind to you as it is to us at the moment! x

Butterfly Dreams!

I can’t believe that it has been a couple weeks since I last blogged! Things have been pretty busy here since my week off, particularly at work. I have mainly spent my time preparing for a promotion interview, which has been in the pipe line for a while now. I have to say that I was pretty nervous about it to say the least as it has been a long time since I was last interviewed. However I am pleased to report that it all went fine, and that the hard work and stress paid off as I got the job!

Obviously I am very pleased about this not only because I felt that I would be good for the role, but also because it's more hours and better pay. This means that the hubby and I can now feasibly begin to save for a mortgage deposit, rather than rent again. It's going to take us a few years or so to do, but I feel like we have a goal to aim towards now and that we are moving in the right direction to eventually having a family.

The role of the job does mean that I will have to work every Saturday, but I will still get Sunday's off and two full days in the week to draw. So really it will give me the best of both worlds, as having full days off rather than my current half days will mean that I can properly settle and get my teeth into a project from start to finish.

On another note, in amongst all of the business I have managed to get a new illustration done, which is going to be used as thank you notes for my birthday. The image features Bella bunny looking up at a butterfly as you can see below:

The image is taken from a sketch that I did back in 2010 which I have been meaning to work it up into a finished image since. So I thought that using it as a thank you card would be the perfect opportunity.

 

Back when I did the original sketch I named it Butterfly Dreams, I think because I felt that it was quite a dreamy scene. The image is pretty much the same as in the original sketch I have just updated the face shape, so that it is more in line with the style that I have used in my more recent work. I am pretty pleased with the outcome so now just need to mock it up into a card and it will be done. As always any feedback you may have will be much appreciated.

 

I hope that you all had a fab weekend, whatever you got up to and that you all have a good week. Thanks for dropping by! x 

Mocked Up New Baby Boy Card for Joshua!

I thought that I should get round to posting the card mock up of my New Baby Boy design that I showed you a couple of posts back. So here it is:

 

We met up with the new parents of baby Joshua last weekend and had a catch up and lots of cuddles with the gorgeous little man, which I have to say made me more than a little broody! They loved the card design and prezzies that we bought them, which consisted of: A Jellycat ellie rattle ring, a Gisela Graham "cute as a button" photo holder, and a lovely Olly & Belle muslin cloth; which I chose because it had blue star's on it to match Bobby's baby grow. I also found an Emma Bridgewater "Starry Skies" gift box to put it all in, again to keep with the star theme.

I have to say that I am glad that they liked the card, as I am  pretty pleased with it too. It's the first time that I have mocked up a card and felt that it is exactly the way that I would like the range to look. It took a lot of fiddling around with fonts, colours and sizes to get the look and feel that I wanted on the finished card, but I got there in the end.

I don't know if you have noticed the little sewn button detail, but this was a little addition that I made to the design after I had given the card to Joshua's parents. The version that I gave them had little sparkly star stickers on it, as I felt that I needed something to finish the design. But even though I liked the design that I gave them, I still didn't feel that it looked quite right. So I started thinking what else I could use to enhance the design, but not over power the image. I tried a bow, but thought that it was a bit girly, and other baby related items such as bottle stickers etc, were to over powering and distracting against the image. Then inspired by the "the cute as a button" gift that we gave Joshua I thought buttons! I was originally going to use blue ones, but the pearl looked more subtle. Then I was going to glue them but thought that sewing them with a coordinating thread might look better & so it did! Ta dah the design was done.

Like my movie themed wedding card design featured in my Happy Easter post. This card is printed onto 250gm canvas effect card and measures 13x13.5cm.

I hope that you have all had a good week and for those of you that are in the UK, I hope that you are enjoying the long Bank Holiday weekend. The weather has been lovely here all week, which worked out nicely as I was off work. I was intending to clear out my spare room/studio and get lots of drawing done, but it was just too nice to stay indoors. So I spent most of the week catching up with friends and spending time in the park with them and their children.

Hopefully the weather is being kind to you too and enjoy the rest of the weekend! I'm back to work tomorrow, but after having the week off I can't really complain about working on a Bank Holiday. x

Birthday Times!

I am pleased to say that the better weather that began to come our way last week, fully showed itself at the weekend with temperatures up to 20 degrees at times, positively tropical compared to those of late. I was particularly pleased about this as it was my birthday weekend, and it was one that didn't disappoint.

I started off going shopping with my mum and nan in Chichester on Saturday for a few pre birthday goodies which was lovely, as I don't often get the chance or have the finances to go shopping. Before then going out in the evening for drinks and a dance with a few of my close friends. On Sunday I went up to Croydon to celebrate my hubby's nans 80th birthday, and had another enjoyable day with his family, so it was a busy weekend all round.

My actual birthday was yesterday St. Georges Day. Once again the weather was beautiful so I spent the morning with a friend and her two year old twin boys at the park. I then had to work in the afternoon, but went out for a lovely meal in the evening with my family. I was thoroughly spoilt and got all sorts of prezzies and cards from family and friends, especially those of the bunny variety as you can see below.

 

I hope that you all had a lovely weekend as well, and that the weather was kind to you too! Enjoy the rest of your week! x

New Baby Boy Card Design for Joshua!

I am not sure where the last few weeks have gone since Easter, but they just seem to have flown by! Within these weeks I have spent most of my time working extra shifts at my retail job, as Easter is meant to be of our peak times of the year. However since the weather hasn't been to fabulous to say the least we were actually still pretty quiet. But now the schools are back I have returned to my usual shift pattern, which has meant that I have had some time this week to embark on a new card design.

A close friend of my hubby's has just had a new baby boy so I thought that I would make a new baby card for them. I set about sketching a few ideas and different poses, and eventually settled on a sleeping Bobby pose. I have been working on the image on and off for the last few days or so and have just finished it, so I thought I would share it with you!

Luckily it has turned out exactly as I hoped it would, as you never really know how an image is going to turn out until it is finished. Now I just need to fiddle about with design and composition for the actual printed card, and it shall be ready to be posted. Hopefully that will happen within the next few days and I will pop a photo on when it is finished.

 

I hope that you are all having a lovely week, and I am pleased to say that so far this week the weather seems to finally be looking up! We have had some lovely sunny days and even when it's been wet it has been much warmer, so I am hoping that spring shall be here to stay very soon! x   

 

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! I hope that you have all had a lovely day, whatever you may have been up to. I have spent the day with the hubby's family and our three gorgeous nephews. We had a lovely roast cooked for us, with plenty of Easter treats for dessert. All in all it was a relaxing and enjoyable day which was much needed, since I have had to work most of the bank holiday weekend and again tomorrow. No such thing as bank holidays in the land of retail!

On another note since I have been out of the loop of blog land for the last week or so, I must update you on the wedding design sketch that I featured in the last post. The design was finished on schedule and the movie themed wedding that the card was designed for took place just over a week ago now. It was a beautiful day that was enjoyed by all, the highlights of which included: The Bride and Groom walking out of the ceremony to the Star Wars theme tune, the groom and best man speeches, the girls that were on the hen night including myself performing a flash mob style dance in our pink ladies jacket to a mash up of all of the Grease hits, and towards the end of the night the men serenading the bride to you've lost that loving feeling in tribute to the film Ghost. The weather even though overcast and windy held out for most of the day, not that it really mattered too much though as it was all held indoors at the same venue.

So onto the update of the wedding card design itself! As you saw in my last post the initial sketch worked out quite well. I then went onto colouring it and there were a few moments when I wasn't sure if the design would work out or not, particularly when it came to deciding how best to crop the background for the layout of the printed card. I also had some issues with deciding which text would also look best within the printed layout, but I think I pulled it off in the end.

Aside from these minor issues I did really enjoy making my design up and putting it into print as it had been a while since I last did this. Plus it was also the first time that I had printed out my cards using my new logo design on the back.

For the card size itself I settled on a square format measuring 13.3 x 13.5cm which is generally my favourite card layout to use, as it tends to work quite well with the proportions of my work. Plus I think it looks a little more modern and interesting than standard sized cards.

I then used a thick good quality card stock with a canvas texture to print the design. Again I tend to use this when printing my cards, as I find that this finish presents my work in the best way and gives it a professional look.

Once printed I then cut to size and finished off the design with some glitter accents. See what you think of the final outcome below.

 

 

Finished Card Design  

 

Printed Card Front

 

Printed Card Back

 

Close-up of Glitter Accents

 

Enjoy the rest of the bank holiday weekend! I am off to start my next project now x

 

Getting Back To Normal!

This week I am finally beginning to get over my recent bout of illness and get back into my normal routine. As I mentioned in my last post I have a few projects in the pipeline at the moment, the first of which I have started this week. I am creating a wedding card for a special couple that are getting married next Friday. They are both film buffs and are having a movie themed wedding, so to reflect this I have incorporated a cinema into the design of the card. So far it is coming along well, I have sketched out the design and I thought I would give you a sneaky peak of it below.

I hope that you have all been having a good week so far and have not been hit by too much snow! We had a more than the sprinkling that they forecast on Monday, which caused a few problems but it has all cleared now. It's still very crisp outside today but is beautifully sunny which puts me in a cheery mood. So on that note I am going to go and do a bit of colouring before work x

A Lot Of Catching Up To Do!

Unfortunately my week off didn't go quite go to plan, hence my absence! As I mentioned in my previous post I had a number of illustration projects that I wanted to get sorted on my week off, but once again not much got done as I came down with a sickness bug which wiped me out for most of the week. Typical considering that I haven’t had a sickness but since I was about twelve. I got a little tidying done in the flat towards the end of the week when I wasn't feeling as weak, but that was about as far as I got.

So once again I had high hopes for this week just gone with a Mother's Day design in the pipeline, but come Tuesday I got hit with a flu like virus again! I really don’t know what is wrong with me at the moment, I usually have a pretty good immunity but currently I just seem to be catching one thing after another. I'm one of these people that just tends to get on with things if I’m ill but it really has hit me hard, & even though I am so behind with my artwork I know that I just need to sit, recharge and try to ward this off as soon a poss! Since today is the first day that it hasn't taken me half the morning to get up ready for work, I am hoping that I am on the mend now and that that will be the end of it!

On a more positive note I took this image to show you of some beautiful daffodils that our neighbour gave me. She is a lovely lady and we often help her out as she is quite elderly, so she bought them for me as a little thank you which was a very sweet. They definitely brighten the place up and make it a little more spring like.

I hope that you all having a lovely weekend and that whether you are a Mother or have a Mother to treat, that you enjoy Mothering Sunday tomorrow x

Week Off!

Sorry for the slightly longer absence than usual, I had a busy old week last week. Starting last Saturday with the hen night that I mentioned in the previous post, where twelve of us went up to Brighton in a Hummer Limo dressed up as pink ladies due to the fact that pink is the bride’s favourite colour. We all had a great girl’s night out, and I am very much looking to they're movie themed wedding at the end of next month.

Apart from this the rest of my week was taken up working full-time at my retail job, as the schools were off for half-term so we were relatively busy, which didn't give me time to do much else let alone drawing. So after all that this weekend just gone was a pretty chilled literally! We have had few lovely sunny almost spring like days recently, with some beautiful sunsets now that the days are starting to draw out. But over the weekend it has become very grey & bitter again, with the occasional snow flurries.

 

Now onto this week, and as you can see from the title of my blog I have the week off! Yay! So I am hoping to make up the lack of drawing blogging last week and get allot done, including tiding the flat & doing other mundane things that you never normally get the time for. I know that the week is going to fly by so I really do hope it's a productive one, and I hope that you all have a lovely week too! x

Website Goes Live!

I hope that you all had a lovely day both on Tuesday for Pancake Day, and yesterday for Valentine's Day. Today I am pleased to announce that my website has finally gone live! I was hoping to get it up and running for Tuesday as I mentioned in my last post, but unfortunately the server has been down for the last few days so I was unable to get access to it, plus I also came down with the flu so Tuesday was generally doomed as launch day! It's just a basic site for now but I am quite pleased with how it has turned out, and I hope you enjoy browsing it.

 

I have also joined the world of Pintrest this week and set up my own account, which is something that I have been meaning to do for a while now. As well as this you have probably noticed that I have set up a new Navigation bar on my blog too, so Bobby Bunny and Friends are officially taking over the web!

I hope that you all have a lovely weekend; I am out for a hen night which I am very much looking forward to. I just need to dose myself up and make myself well for it, but I am feeling much better today anyway. Have fun and I hope the weather is good for whatever you may be doing! x