June 2024 | lots of art making

It’s over halfway through the year already! Where has the time gone??

June was a very busy art-making month for me! In this blog I’ll talk about the things I got up to, from setting up pet portrait commissions, to starting a monthly zine challenge, to making pieces to submit to a local artist vacancy, and selling at Swindon Zine Fest!

International shipping

We opened up both the letsgetarty shop and the From the Witch’s Scullery shop for international shipping! We can now ship most of our lightweight products to anywhere in the world! I also took the chance to take some more updated photos of all our produts together, as we've made lots more since we last took photos!

I love the colour scheme I created for June in my bullet journal, using some amazing frog stickers I bought in Cardiff by @serenmaddison on IG.

Zine challenge

I decided to set myself (yet another) challenge! I missed making zines on the regular like I used to way back, and I was sad that my That Zine Thing Instagram page was sitting abandoned, so I decided to act on an idea I had: I want to set monthly zine-making challenges for myself (or others too, if they wish!), where I make a moodboard to draw inspiration from at the start of the month and make at least one zine a week, whether it's a poetry zine, photography zine, art zine or any other kind of zine!

It was lots of fun simply making June’s moodboard! I used all my own photos and scans (including things from the shops!) and so was able to use some of the same elements in the zines themselves. I really pushed myself out of my comfort zone when making these zines - getting myself to write poetry again and using subject matters I usually wouldn’t. I mixed in elements of self-love and Pride into my work too, which is a huge leap for me considering my headspace not even two years ago. I’m really happy with how they turned out. You can have a look at the progress photos, the final zines, and any other That Zine Thing posts here.

Ink drawings

In preparation for opening up commissions online and for Swindon Zine Fest, I practised painting pets and buildings with black ink.

I re-did a piece I drew in my sketchbook back in February of St Bridget’s, making a more detailed version of the church. I also made another piece of another church where I strived to make the trees and grass as loose as possible to make a nice contrast between them and the church building.

I did a few pet portraits too - of my family’s pets throughout the years. As I will offer to do this for others at a pretty low price, I made sure I decided on a style that is high-quality but also can be done fairly quickly. I had lots of fun making them.

Open for commissions!

Having said that, I am now open for pet portrait commissions! I will offer them at in-person markets as well as on Etsy. You can find the link for the Etsy listing with more information on how the commission process works here.

Stockton Bury painting

I also did some bigger paintings this month! This is one of them - an A3 painting of some ruins at Stockton Bury gardens. When I visited there last I surprised myself with the amount of sketches I drew in my sketchbook.

One of my favourite sketches was a quick watercolour painting I did of some ruins in a secret part of the garden. I had planned, at the time, to add details after the initial blobs of colour, but found I really liked the looseness of the painting so left it as it is (right). When re-making the piece this month (below), I really wanted to try to keep that looseness. I didn't quite manage to follow through with that but I still like how the final piece came out!

This piece ended up being one of my submissions to a local artist vacancy in an artists’ and makers’ group, along with the painting of St Bridget’s and my zine series ‘Places to Visit’.

New sticker, zines and prints!

In preparation for Swindon Zine Fest on the 22nd I made a few new products! I scanned in the poetry zines I mentioned earlier, edited them, fixed them up a little, and printed them up to add to my collection of zines.

I also created a sticker I have been wanting to make for a loooong time - an anti-Ai art sticker! I also wanted to make some pins of the same design, but ended up running out of time :c

I also worked on a new print, which was a re-creation of a piece I made years ago and posted near the very start of my Instagram page! I wanted to see if I had improved over the years since making that piece, which definitely had a few flaws to it. I’m really proud of the new version! I surprised myself with it, honestly, since I hadn’t planned to make it as realistic as it ended up being!

Swindon Zine Fest

With everything ready I went off to Swindon Zine Fest! It was a really lovely festival in a great location (Swindon Library) and I got to meet and talk with some lovely people! Thank you to everybody who stopped by and bought something from me or just had a nice chat!

Drama Proof Pigeon Club zine launch

The zine I was a part of launched in the final week of June! It’s out now on their website for only £5!! You can find it here.

The zine is filled with so much amazing work from all the contributors - I’m really grateful to be able to be a part of it! Bea and Nathan were lovely to work with too. Thank you!

 Images courtesy of Drama Proof Pigeon Club

Thank you for reading my June blog post! I have quite a few videos to catch up on and post on YouTube, but hopefully I will have a June art vlog up soon to show the process behind the things I mentioned in this blog!

Edit: Here is the vlog...8 months later!!