Miriam and I took a trip to Liverpool today to have a look round some crafty shops, kitsch shops and charity shops. Whilst stuffing our faces with burgers and milkshakes in Rockerfellas, we had a good discussion about what we are making for the Cracking Christmas Craft Fair, where we have a stall and will take place in Preston on 10th December (2 weeks arghhh!).

I found some lovely books for 95p each that I am going to cut up and make new stuff with (although I'm keeping the beautifully illustrated Augustus and His Smile to give to my nephew as part of his Christmas box).

A New House for Eeyore, Vicky's New Hat, Augustus and His Smile

I also found an ordnance survey map from 1961 for £1.99 in Oxfam. I love old maps and intend on framing the ones I have collected to put up somewhere in my future home. So far I have one of South Wales (where I went to uni) and this one which I bought for Dan as he is from Liskeard and it has all the places we have adventured in Cornwall together.

Here is the blue canvas, owl fabric and ribbons I rooted out in the wonderous world of Abakhan where we spent most of our time admiring everything and being very indecisive.

Also from Abakhan, I got some grey, silver, purple and mustard velvet (each half a metre and 60p for all 4) and then a set of Reeves Watercolours (for £3! Bargain) to replace my trusty Windsor and Newton Watercolours (lost those ones - sad face) from the most random 'Craft Shop' I've ever seen in my life.

What a lovely looking blog this is! I've just finished playing around with the layout and I'm pretty happy about how it looks now. All the illustrations are done by myself (recycled doodles from two years ago) and I really like how fresh it looks with the white background rather than being grey.

What does anyone else think?

I have also been in school tonight painting some more. I only have a few photos because the camera is rubbish quality, and I don't want to mither what little followers I have with a million photos of unfinished fish, but here are two of my favourite finished fishes:

And here is a me finishing off the seahorse that Miriam started:

Last week I signed up to the Second Hand Secret Santa over at Eleanor's blog: Pretty Much Penniless. I have since been assigned to a gift receiver (eeeep! I love buying gifts!) and had a look at said gift receiver's blog and have loads of ideas of what to look out for, but I've also come to the conclusion that my own blog is pretty rubbish...

I've been trying to keep it professional so I can use it as a kind of free portfolio website (hence the boring grey theme (although I do love the colour grey)) so, I plan on giving this poor little blog a little overhaul, a little more love and a little more of myself.

I'm off to my nephew's first birthday party in an hour so I don't have much time to be messing about with the layout or going into hopes and dreams and whatnot, so as it's his birthday, lets start with a photo of my dribbly bezzie mate:

So today I've started to paint in some fish and this is how it looks now:

The little guppies, showing their heart to the beautiful mermaid, are the only ones fully finished and here they are: