February 2024 | stickers, sketching and designing
- Emily Randall
- Mar 11, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Aug 5, 2024
Hello! This is the start of a monthly blog post I plan to make at the beginning of each month to show what I was up to the month before! I will mostly talk about the art I make, any little trips I go on that are art-related, and updates on my two small businesses. I think this will be a nice way to keep track of the stuff I get up to each month, whether I’ve already shared it on social media or not!
I achieved quite a bit in February! This month was the month I decided I really needed to put on my business hat and amp up the marketing and general management of my two online shops.
Website re-vamp!
The biggest project I did this month was re-vamping my website/portfolio. It was a little out-dated (having not added any of my more recent work in a long time) and I realised it was still very much in a format created to try to entice potential employers. I designed this layout after graduating from university almost two years ago (yikes), so even though I didn’t know what my next step was back then, I was still hoping I could get seen by others, and kept my website formatted in the way we were taught to. This month, I decided to change it up! Since I am no longer looking to be employed (although obviously if something good was to come along I’d consider it) I realised I could change the format I had into something less rigid and more fun. I decided to change it into a place to browse the work I’ve done over the years, and see the current projects I’m doing – sort of like a gallery; like a more permanent Instagram feed.
I spent a good week or so working on this, and am pleased with how it looks! If you’re reading this blog post you’re already on the website, so please make sure to have a look around while you’re here :)
Plein-air sketching
I did a little bit of plein-air sketching this month, what with the weather getting slightly better for going out in. On a walk in the woods I played around with my Ecoline brush pens and with my favourite black fine-liner (which I have since misplaced :( ) drawing the ancient moss-covered trees. I then cleaned up the drawings back at home. I have a short video of the process on my Plein-air sketching page here.
We also went out for the day to a village in Wales called Skenfrith. We had visited in January to go to the National Trust castle again and when it was getting dark we’d discovered the unique-looking church nearby, and decided we definitely had to go back when it was light. So this month we did! We also explored the village a little more, ogling an abandoned mill beside the castle (very much wanting to go inside to explore) and finding new walking paths beside the river. I spent some time in the graveyard, using an old stone wall as my working area to draw St Bridget’s church in the last spread of my travel sketchbook. I love how this drawing came out and really want to make more like these! I have a short video of the process on my Plein-air sketching page here.
My monthly spread showcasing the free printable moon calendars I make for every month (on the left page) and the 2024 calendar I made and put up in our shop From the Witch’s Scullery at the start of the year (on the right page)!
Also using: Witchy Froggies sticker sheet (FTWS shop), Vellum pattern papers (FTWS shop) and cut-out test prints of my Garden Sketches stickers (letsgetartyshop)!
Sticker sheets
February was a sticker sheet month! I ordered in 3 sticker sheets for both shops.
The first one was a sticker sheet we’d been waiting to order and put up on the From the Witch’s Scullery shop for a very long time, waiting for the funds to do it. We were finally able to order them, and they look fantastic! (Even if we do say so ourselves). It’s a collection of butterfly photos we took when visiting a local butterfly zoo. The colours are so vibrant and they are just perfect for collaging or decorating journal pages. I’ve been having fun using them in my own spreads! You can have a look on our Etsy shop here if you’re interested :)
The next 2 sticker sheets I got made were for my letsgetarty shop, and it was very exciting and nerve-racking, as I was using a more pricey but better quality company to make them for me (Zap! Creatives).
These are my first ever vinyl stickers! I’m incredibly pleased with how they turned out. I really hope others like them too!
I wanted to make a sticker sheet out of my ‘Cute Critters’ sticker pack after almost selling out of them at my last market in November. Seeing how well they were received, I wondered if I should outsource them to offer better quality versions of them (as the stickers I sold out of were ones I printed at university and cut out by hand). I finally decided to go for it, using the profit I made at that November market to pay for them. When on the website I realised it wasn’t that much more money to add a second sticker sheet design, so decided to make another and chose my ‘Garden Sketches’ transparent sticker pack. I’ve been wanting to make opaque versions of these stickers as I use them all the time in my journals and sometimes find myself wanting them to have a white background.
So now I have two matte vinyl sticker sheet designs up on my shop! You can find them here if you are interested in having a look.
New business cards
With the addition of The Green Zeen Mini that I made in autumn last year, I needed a new business card for The Green Zeen as a whole, so designed this one! Now I can add these to TGZ orders and display them at in-person markets!
In other news, at the end of the month we found out that we had baby rabbits living in our garden! They are the cutest things ever, and it’s so lovely to be able to look out at the garden and find a bunny nibbling on the grass. We just really hope they stay safe as the farmers living around us are not kind to small animals like them…!
Commissions
I’ve been thinking about offering commissions for a long time, but have never had a good enough idea of what to offer or felt confident enough to do it. However, with financial problems, this month I decided I need to do it! Creating the sketch of the church at Skenfrith reminded me of how much I love using black ink and sketchy brush strokes. I keep meaning to get back into using my inks as they are probably my favourite medium to use apart from digital! My ink drawings are the ones I feel confident making, so I decided I should focus on making simple black-and-white ink pieces to offer as commission work. I gathered together my best ink sketches and created a post for Instagram, asking for help with what sort of commission pieces I should offer (animal portraits, home portraits, wedding bouquets…). I’ve got some nice feedback so far – if you have any ideas please feel free to comment on this blog post :)
Next month I’m going to practise with the style of drawings I want to offer and make a little portfolio ready for the listing I’ll make on Etsy.
This month I’ve been trying to teach myself to have fun with art again, slowly getting back to using my sketchbook as a place to put down my ideas and play. One morning I decided to use my Ecoline brush pens to create abstract shapes based on the emotions I was feeling and experiences I’d been having. It was a very new experience and I enjoyed it!
Physical advertisements
In order for my two shops to reach more people, I created little advertisements for both to put up in physical places like shops with public bulletin boards. The one I made to advertise the From the Witch's Scullery shop was especially fun to make – I got inspiration from home-made ads I’d see when I was younger, where the bottom of the poster was cut into strips for people to rip off. They’d usually have a phone number on them, but I decided to make ours into mini business cards: one side has our logo, and the other side has all of our contact details (Instagram, Facebook, Etsy) and one of the little frogs from our ‘Witchy Froggies’ sticker sheet.
The ad I made for the letsgetarty shop was done on the morning we were due to go out into town so it was a little more rushed, but I like how it turned out all the same.
We will slowly put these up wherever we can!
On-going projects
A The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom fanart piece I began sketching one morning. It’s still in the works. With this piece I decided to do something a little different and start off the drawing by using a big airbrush pen on Procreate to block in the colours first. I will eventually use smaller and smaller brushes to get more and more detailed. I haven’t really used this technique in a long time, if at all, so I’m having fun experimenting!
I am currently in the beginning stages of designing a new note pad to put up in the From the Witch’s Scullery shop. I’ve had this idea for a while and have only now got around to making it! I want to make a note pad similar in design to our sticker pack of taped-up pieces of paper. I'm currently playing around with pieces of paper and tape, and will begin scanning things in soon.
Thank you for reading my February blog post! I also filmed a lot of what I mentioned and posted a vlog of it on YouTube, so if you are interested you can see a more detailed process of the things I made over there!
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