November 2024 | writing, market prep, new products

November didn’t quite end up being the quiet, writing-only month I had planned for it to be! Of course this was fine as I had some fun making new products for markets, writing poetry and sketchbooking on little trips, as well as progressing with my novel writing.

NaNoWriMo

Writing every day of the month was a pretty big success, I’d say! I progressed more on my novel than I have in half a year (or at least it feels like that), and it’s become a habit to write everyday now - I am still doing it in December, and hope to carry on into the new year. Pretty early on into the challenge I realised that my goal of finishing the novel was absolutely impossible. No matter how many words I wrote a day, I would never have been able to get to the end in just a month, so I just did what I could!

I plan to make a separate blog post on how the challenge went like I did at the beginning of the month, so that is all I will mention here :)

I will, however, include the few sketches I managed to make. I wasn’t quite able to fulfil my goal of not only writing but drawing a few things from my novel’s world too, but that was to be expected.

Abergavenny castle sketchbook pages

We finally visited Abergavenny after saying we should do for three years. It was a great place - it had a castle and an interesting museum, an art shop that also served as a gallery, and a cosy cafe with nice vegan options.

Clementine Anthology

I am now officially part of the Clementine Anthology team! Last month I submitted a painting for the theme ‘Orange’, and this month I decided to submit a poem for the theme ‘Feminine Rage’. If you’d like to read it feel free to head over to the Clementine website, and have a look at everyone else’s amazing work while you’re there too!

New sketchbooks

I decided to make some new sketchbooks for the market I had at the end of the month, as the ones I made in uni are rather old now. I realised I could make my own cover designs, so had fun printing designs from my ‘Wonky Flowers’ and ‘Cute Critters’ sticker sheets onto kraft cardstock for the covers of the sketchbooks. I also used a design I’ve only used on my bookmark-business cards so far, and called it ‘Uni Days’, as I drew it at the end of my third year to represent my uni experience. I then hand-cut, hand-bound and hand-trimmed 8 sketchbooks using a pad of Seawhite multi-media paper and thread for the binding. It was kinda painful trimming the books as I don’t have an industrial paper trimmer that could slice through all the paper in one go - getting one of these is definitely a big goal of mine, along with a Silhouette Cameo to cut stickers!

The leftover sketchbooks that didn't sell at the markets are now up on my Etsy shop, which you can have a look at here.

Linoprint Christmas Cards

I decided to make some handmade greeting cards to sell too. I re-used an old linoprint design from a year or two ago, cutting up the squares so that I could create new patterns out of them.

Ella's Pop Up Shop

And so I was ready for the market in Cheltenham! It was hosted at Ella’s Hair Salon. It was a great market, filled with lovely people that I got to meet and chat to. Thank you to everybody who had a look at my art or bought something!

Thank you for reading my November blog post even if it came out in January 2025! I ended up leaving out some things as I don't think they were very interesting, or I didn't have the right photos, so it ended up being my shortest blog post! Things have been a whirlwind but let’s see if things calm down in the new year.

If you’ve read this all the way through, consider supporting me and my work by going over to my Etsy shop and having a browse if you like zines, stickers and prints mostly based around nature and travelling. You will also find my pet portrait commissions there! letsgetartyshop.etsy.com <3