A Little Update

I have rather neglected the blog recently so I thought I would do a little update.

I’ve hardly done any art for the past few weeks as I have been preparing to move, helping my youngest move out for her trip to Australia, and dealing with a relatively mild but very lengthy bout of Covid.

I have lived in my current property for nearly 15 years and have brought up and homeschooled my 3 children from here, so it very much feels like a base. I am now officially an empty-nester with Rose’s recent departure so it’s time for a change, and I am moving locally to a property which is a little more manageable.

On the back of the last 4-6 weeks I have decided to shelve my idea of Birds of Christmas as I simply don’t think I can get it ready in time for printing in October, and in addition, I am slightly wary about how people will feel this winter about spending money and buying gifts, and another title is a wonderful thing but does increase the unit cost and I have to be realistic about the margins as my printing costs have increased somewhat and I’ve not been able to pass that on because of the nice round £5 RRP and standard discount I have to offer the retailers to make it worth their while.

I have recently had a couple of nice orders from Essex Wildlife Trust and the Anglian Birdwatching Centre at Rutland Water. All of EWT’s Visitor Centres now stock the logbooks, and I’m hoping that despite the lack of Ospreys, the books will do well at Rutland Water. Both have ordered the habitat books which is great as I love doing the bespoke editions but as mentioned above, it does create a financial commitment and I am still learning about stock control and how to manage that effectively.

My art classes have started up again at Wilderness Wood but I have a slightly younger age group which is fun; today we are doing the hands-down crowdpleaser that is plasticine. There is a brilliant account I follow in Instagram: the artist is Martha Haversham. She makes the most amazing found art mixed media collages and I wondered about doing something similar with the children:

I think if I cut out some legs, arms, heads and torsos from a magazine it could be fun. Now, back to packing…