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:

I've had my week painting without children being in school, and I've got the main features almost finished (only the flippers on the mermaid to paint silver over) and this is what they look like:

 

I'll be moving on to the smaller fish some time next week, but it's going to get a lot harder as the children will be back in on Monday and so I will have to work around that, but hopefully it'll be finished before Christmas...?

A few weeks ago my local primary school (where, in January, I used to go into Reception class and create artwork with the children) asked me to paint them an underwater mural in the infant's cloakroom.

It looked like this at the time:

Not particularly child friendly...

So I drew up some ideas and we decided the main features would be an octopus, a mermaid and a turtle and then I would fill the rest of the wall with fish, seahorses, jellyfish, starfish, crabs and all sorts of sea creatures.

On the evening of the children breaking up (Friday 21st October), myself and two teachers rolled our sleeves up and stormed through the painting of the blue base coat and it looks loads better already:

Today I drew out (in pencil) and filled in (with white emulsion) the mermaid, octopus and turtle. I had traced my designs onto acetate and used an OHP to project the images onto the wall:

Please check out the bags I now have for sale in my Etsy Store.

In other news, I'm off to London (again) for the Demons Never Die premiere in Leicester Square tomorrow. See you on the red carpet!

I'm off to London tomorrow to visit old friends and find out the winner of the Barbican/Ideastap/Wallpaper Animation Competition which is part of the Watch Me Move: The Animation Show. (There is still time to vote for Betty here)

She's travelled round a bit our Betty sine last May!

•  Animation Newport 2010
• Centre Space Gallery, Bristol
• 22nd-25th May 2010
• Animation Degree Show 2010
• University of Wales, Newport
• 4th June-11th June 2010
• Projector
• Mash Cafe & Gallery, Merseyside
• 24th February 2011
• Whirlygiggles
• The Horse Hospital, London
• 11th March 2011
• Prime Cuts - Short Film Night
• CUC Cinema, Liverpool
• 30th March 2011
• Monkey With a Movie Camera
• Look Mum, No Hands Cafe, London
• 13th April 2011
• Whirlygiggles: Movie May Day
• Verge Bar - Brick Lane, London
• 2nd May 2011
• My Obsolete Future
• The Shoreditch, London
• 2nd May 2011
• Whirlygiggles @ Wychwood Music Festival
• Cheltnam Racecourse, Gloucestershire
• 4th June 2011
•  Watch me Move: The Animation Show
• Barbican, London
• 17th-23rd June 2011
• 8th September 2011

Oh dear! What a neglected little blog this is! I swear I have lots of interesting updates: Working as a runner on Suicide Kids (which has recently changed its name to Demons Never Die), animation training at Chapman Entertainment Studios and also I've been making and selling personalised Bunting of all delightful things! There have a been a few screenings of my film Betty too!

I have been working as an Administration Assistant at HASHVCA since Feburary and my contract will be up on 19th August. This has been a great source of income even though it's only 30 hours a week on minimum wage, it's still gives me plenty enough money to invest in materials for my bunting (and to sneak off to lovely places like Turkey with my old housemates. Perfect!). I've been getting orders for the bunting first from my sister, then from a family friend, and now it's stretching to friends of friends and mother-in-laws of friends of friends! Considering I don't really feel like I've been putting my all into the marketing side, I'm pretty chuffed with the amount of customers. I'm going to give it my all when I have more time after finishing my job and I already have a baby's wall mural to be getting on with for my brother in law's sister which I'm really excited about doing.

I will update in more detail the REALLY exciting stuff I've been up to as I'm on a computer in work at the minute and so don't have any visuals to upload, but to put you on until then here are some photos of Emma, Emily and I on our jollies! Yippeee!

Tradtional Ottoman abandoned house

Sea Kayaking

Emily and I snorkelling

Dalyan Market

Rejuvenation at the Mud Baths

Trionyx Turtle

Freezing cold water at Yuvarlak Çay

Stopping for a swim on the 12 Islands Cruise

Getting sunburned on the 12 Island Cruise

Alfresco dining at Bengisu Treehouse Restaurant

Lycian tombs

Güle güle! x