April 2024 | market prep, stickers, zines and animations

April was a lot of prep work for an Illustration and Animation festival in Gloucester, making new zines, stickers, prints and notepads! I also made new Thank You cards, began work on an animation and filmed a sketchbook tour :)

New Thank You cards

I decided to make Thank You cards to include in purchases from my shop (both from online orders and in-person markets). The card acts as a little ‘Thank You’ message, has a little information about my recyclable packaging, gives a code for 10% off products in my online shop, and has a print on the other side! It was fun designing these, using my toad illustration from my sticker sheet design, as well as going through artwork that I liked but didn’t feel was quite good enough to sell as a print - so making a freebie out of it was perfect. I began with only 4 designs for the print side, but decided to add about eight more before my market at the end of the month! I gave a card to anyone who bought something from my stall.

Colouring in my colour-in page!

I submitted a colouring-in page for a zine at the end of last month. My submission was chosen to be included in the zine! Woo!

However they already had a lot of colouring-in pages submitted so let me know they would be using my piece as a normal page. I sent them this coloured-in version so that they could decide which would look best in the final zine.

I’m super excited to see their progress on the zine! They are @dramaproofpigeonclub on Instagram if you wish to follow them too!

More mini zines!!

I was on a mini-zine high this month! I made 3 more zines for my Places to Visit series: for Portchester Castle, Highcliffe Castle, and Kilpeck Church. That’s 6 zines in this collection now - I’m having lots of fun making them and seeing the series grow!

New prints and a note pad

In preparation for the market coming up at the end of the month, I made some new products on top of the new mini zines.

Using some of the 26 illustrations I made during Drawtober last year, I made some super nice-quality prints and a new note pad!

The note pad uses 12 different designs and has 24 pages all together. I made sure to vary the position of each illustration on each page, and even got the idea to split apart illustrations that had multiple assets and place them on opposite sides of the page. I’ve been using some pages in my own journalling and really enjoy using them.

Both the note pad and prints will be on the From the Witch’s Scullery shop very soon.

Matte stickers

I was able to invest in some waterproof matte vinyl sticker paper! So I had fun making stickers with it. The print quality is AMAZING and the vinyl is super soft. I printed more Drawtober stickers on it (as I only had them on transparent sticker vinyl) and added 3 new designs.

I also printed a matte version of our ‘Treat this Witch Well or I’ll Make You Croak’ sticker on FTWS, and of my Motivational Pop-up sticker pack.

I made a new sticker with the matte paper too! I scribbled down an idea for a sticker in a little notebook late at night sometime in 2020. The concept behind it was that you’d stick it on the cover of a sketchbook, journal or notebook in the corner. The design is that of the corner of a page being lifted to reveal the saying ‘It’s mostly just scribbles and feelings in here…’. It was a fun little thing to make.

Artist Collective zine

My group of artist friends and I decided to make a collective mini zine together to use as a way to advertise ourselves. The idea is that the zine is free to give out at any markets we may sell at in our respective areas of the country, so people may have a look through and (hopefully) find new artists to follow.

The zine is also a free downloadable that you can print at home! You can download it here.

If you're not sure how to fold a zine, you can find instructions here.

My From the Witch’s Scullery partner also made some amazing woodwork pieces for the market. We put together these wooden keychains and she also made some chakra wall hangings!

Fine Lines Festival

Fine Lines Festival was a brand new illustration and animation festival at the University of Gloucester. As well as the market it had guest speakers and an animation showcase.

With all my new products ready and older ones restocked, my prep for the market was done! The day before, I experimented with my set-up, using my display cubes for the first time to use as much height as possible (since I always find I don’t have enough space for everything!)

The day itself was very busy and somewhat stressful to begin with, but it got better as the day went on. I had some lovely neighbours and I truly appreciate all the comments on and purchases of my products! Thank you so much! It was a very good day in the end and I look forward to the next one!

Animating! (Progress so far)

As mentioned at the end of last month’s blog, I’m doing a little animation project! It’s a short, silly, self-initiated animation inspired by the ‘Battle of Wonk’ theme Cardiff Zine Fest is using for their market in May. I’ve drawn out a rough animatic and am currently drawing out the backgrounds. I found myself really zoning in to the background-making during the long hours of the Fine Lines Festival, so was pleased to get a lot done in one day! I should have the final animation ready to show by next month’s blog. Here are some screenshots of the animatic and a couple of the backgrounds so far!

I really enjoyed making my May spreads in my bullet journal at the end of the month, using a bunch of my own journalling things in the FTWS shop and stickers from my shop. I love the colour combo - it makes me so happy when I open my journal!

A sketchbook tour!

I filmed a sketchbook tour for YouTube this month, showcasing a sketchbook I’ve been meaning to tour for a good while. I decided to make two versions of the tour: a silent version where I simply flip through the pages with music playing, and a chatty version where I talk through each page. I did this knowing that different people like different types of videos! I personally prefer silent flip-through videos of sketchbooks, but know that lots of people like chatty ones!

Here are the links to both versions:

Thank you for reading my April blog post! I am still editing together an April vlog for YouTube to show more of the prep work for Fine Lines, making the Thank You cards for an order, colouring in the zine submission and lots of other things! I will add the link here when it's up :)

Edit:

Here is the April Studio Vlog! Enjoy :D