Illustration + Design

blog

Little Joys



+ Our new cat becoming friendlier and curling up with us on the couch (he has the softest fur!).
+ Sending off some fun mail.
+ Watching episodes of Call The Midwife.
+ Sixties and seventies home decor (my father in law cringes every time he looks at our seventies dining room sideboard - he is the opposite of nostalgic!).
+ Making my own face scrubs (I have really dry skin - I've been mixing a spoonful of honey, a spoonful of brown sugar and a tiny bit of oil with a squeeze of lemon juice and using it twice a week and my skin feels so much better).
+ Having a bouquet of chocolates delivered to my door, sent from some lovely friends interstate, out of the blue.
+ Having dinner ready when C finishes work (he usually does all the cooking, but I'm feeling the urge to be more housewifey since I'm home all the time and trying out new recipes).
+ Sending C texts with silly jokes (e.g. what do you call a guy with a rubber toe? Roberto!).
+ Painting my nails with bright colours, using nail stickers (see above) - I can't stop looking at them now when I'm typing!
+ Terribly worded, spammy robot blog comments.
+ Leaving blog comments - using Bloglovin is encouraging me to leave more comments because I actually visit each blog to read their new posts. Blogging is more fun when its interactive.
+ Adding pages to my pregnancy collage journal (see above). It's sometimes hard to know what to write, but when I can't think of much, I just try to give an idea of our mundane weekly happenings in each entry - I remember getting a kick out of reading some entries in my mum's old journal a few years ago that just documented daily happenings from when I was a baby. I really recommend keeping a journal to any pregnant (or planning to be) ladies out there.
+ Long back to back phone conversations with my mum and sister.
+ Tiny baby outfits and socks that fit on my thumbs!
+ Finding our two little cats curled up sleeping together. And watching them play fight and grooming one another.
+ Arranging books on the shelves in baby's room, picking the ones that are my favourites and imagining reading them to him (Seuss! The Hungry Caterpillar! Tiddalick!).
+ Week 39 being just on the horizon!

Drawing | Create
d

Here is a messy little drawing I made for an internet friend (Kelly). She said she'd like to collect drawings of artists' tools by different artists to stick on the wall in her studio and I thought it was a very fun idea. Below is the original drawing (sakura gel pens on black paper) that I sent to Kelly - I scanned it and redrew it in Photoshop to make it a bit cleaner (maybe too clean, I kind of like the roughness of hand drawn). Now I'm going to go make something else with some of those tools and listen to some Feist.

aa

Bump | 37 Weeks
IMG_7017
IMG_7047

Whoops, I kind of forgot to take any photos of this giant belly of mine for three weeks. Though it doesn't really feel like it's gotten much bigger since the last time I took photos. I had forgotten all about this dress and I wish I'd remembered sooner; I probably would have worn it a dozen times more during pregnancy - something that fits! (I have had one or two of those weeping "I HAVE NOTHING THAT FITS ME!" days lately).

Yesterday we had a check up and the midwife poked and prodded me and seemed fairly sure that baby boy was breech and hadn't turned around yet. She started making preparations for me to have a formal ultrasound and to have him turned around and began explaining the risks associated with it and I was a bit disheartened, but thankfully I got to pop into the room next door for a quick ultrasound and it turned out he's happily head down - I guess heads and bottoms are kind of hard to tell apart. He's just very high up and is very long (which is possibly why my belly is very rounded. I kept feeling confused when people would say "wow, your belly is ROUND", thinking, aren't all pregnant bellies? But mine does seem particularly round). Perhaps he'll be six feet tall like his dad? (I'm 5'4").

IMG_7020
IMG_7015

I am so happy to be so close to the finish line. Except for some minor sleeping problems, a sore tailbone and getting the occasional stitch, I really haven't had much to complain about in these last few weeks and I'm really grateful for that. I'm still doing a lot of walking about, going into town and I even walked up and down the gigantic hill to and from my house last week (so very steep!). I don't think I'll be doing that again before the birth (I had to sleep for the rest of the afternoon afterwards), but it feels good to still be active. I think I'd go insane if I were bed ridden or told to limit my movements.

IMG_7001

So, baby boy just needs to work on moving a little further down and he should show himself in the next couple of weeks - apparently more walking and sitting on an exercise ball will help with that. We took a tour of the labour ward a couple of weeks ago and it's really lovely there and has some beautiful artworks. I know that I should have packed my bag by now, but I guess I'm still using all of the things I'd put in it. I should definitely get around to that this week (Lauren and I were due to have our babies in the same week but she had her daughter 5 weeks early!). Tomorrow we're going to the open house inspection for a place I am dreaming of living in (though unless a lottery win is imminent I doubt will happen).

Ps. My cute brooch was a present from Holly. She's going to be finishing up her sweet Pannikin range of jewellery and moving on to different things shortly, so you should check out her cute wares before they're all gone.

Papery Things
IMG_6983
il_fullxfull.453606943_qwno
IMG_6967
IMG_6954
IMG_3084

I've been waiting for the past week for a nice sunny day to take some photos of these paper packs, but that perfect day just wouldn't appear so I made do yesterday while the sun changed every ten seconds. I have three packs for sale in my Etsy at the moment and am hoping to put together a couple more. They're very fun, albeit time consuming to put together! There's about seventy bits of papery miscellanea in each pack. Putting them together makes me want to get out my own supplies and make collages and art journal pages. Hope you like 'em!

Today we did some shopping then got home just as a massive thunderstorm broke over the top of us. Thunderstorms are extremely uncommon in Tasmania, probably one little one at most per year, but today's storm rivalled the tropical ones we used to have back in NSW. So much hail and thunder and worried cats, and then, an hour later, a perfect sunny afternoon...

941559_10151587141458734_105751176_n
IMG_3102

+ first image (of hail, not snow!) by ABC Northern Tasmania