I have treated my blog to a little bit of tlc. I think the new look is rather lovely, but I would be very interested to know what you think.



On a phone it does not look so different, but on my iPad or on a normal laptop the presentation looks much cleaner and more modern - well in my view anyway.

But none of this is my doing. I had a bit (ok, well a lot!) of help.

I was feeling the need to give my  poor old blog a bit of love. I have not posted quite so regularly of late (2017 was not the greatest of years in some ways- understatement!) and I thought to help me get back into it I should adopt the mantra 'new year- new look'.

But where to start?

I was perusing some of my usual blogs, the ones I follow on a regular basis, and one I really do admire, because it is so lovely to look at, is Junkaholique, the blog of Isle of Wight resident and jeweller Artemis Russell.

This lovely lady and her husband take the most beautiful photographs. I mean really beautiful. In fact I think Artemis did study photography at art college, so I should not beat myself up too much.

Now, just before Christmas I noticed that her blog had changed style; it had a new look. And I scrolled down the page and lo - at the bottom it credited 'Design by FCD'. So, thinking this was going to be some trendy London design studio and with a somewhat heavy heart  (how was I ever going to be able to afford that!) I clicked on the link - and just look where it took me! 

Now I don't know much about Fearne Creative Design - except that it is run by Eve, not Fearne. And I think she is in Bulgaria. But what I do know is this - Eve has some lovely designs and you can buy them either from her website here or from her Etsy shop here. And they are cheap!

In fact, my biggest problem once I had landed on her website and realised this was well within my budget, wasn't to decide whether I should do this, but rather to decide which design I should go with.

I settled on 'Maeve', or rather I thought I had until, on closer inspection, I found one or two little features which weren't quite 'me' (on the face of it the designs all look very similar, but you need to look closely at the details).  So that put me in a bit of a dither. But I persisted and settled on an alternative that suited my purposes.

Then I fretted for how the hell would I be able to install a template?

But lo - it turns out that for the modest fee that Eve charges for the template she will, if you are like me and a bit of a computer dunce, do it for you! You just have to give her admin permissions.

The whole process only took a few days and a couple of email exchanges. And then it was all shiny and new.

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Gosh, dear reader.



The start of a new week and it's a rhetorical question rather than a fluffy 'here is what I've been working on'.

And I have asked it before, but i think it's a question worth asking again. Why spend time,  in my case usually early in the morning over that first cup of coffee before the dogs are awake, composing a blog post for you to (hopefully) read and enjoy?

So why do I do it?

To keep me working - without a doubt my blog has spurred me on to keep making art. In the early days in particular, when I had not started showing any work and with a fairly full on day job, without you, dear reader, the art would have ground to a halt. I used to feel a pang of guilt ( bonkers I know) if I did not have something to share.

To learn new techniques - linked to the above really. "I need to write about something new. I can try this and share the outcome on my blog". Some of the techniques have not made it much past the blog post. Others I have incorporated into my work more frequently. Now, I guess, it's not so much about new techniques as new materials and new work I produce and of course all those inspirational days out in between. But there are also all those other techniques that you have to learn when posting a blog - writing, taking half way decent photographs (still got some way to go on this) working out how to make a nice looking blog etc. I hope I have improved with all of these over time. 

What is it with Facebook?

Is it taking over from blogging?

Is it just me or are more people using FB for mini posts rather than publishing more considered things on Blogs?



Now, don't get me wrong. I love FB. I lurk there far too much, if truth be told. Its like being in a crowd and just going "Hi, hows it going? Yes, love that. Hmm, not so sure about that. See you later".  And then moving onto something else.

Whereas blogging is, well for me anyway, more of a diary. Or rather, instead of being in a crowd, taking time out to sit and have a coffee and a good catch up.

It takes time to blog. I think about what I want to say, I consider it carefully and sometimes a post sits for a while unpublished while I fiddle and faddle about with it.  Blogging, for me, is never an instant thing.

I love my blog - I feel quite proud of it sometimes. Proud of it in the way that you might be proud of the achievement of a child or pet? No, that is not quite the right analogy. I suppose it's almost part of who I am (or rather part of a part of who I am! There is also the 'work/day job' me. It's not part of that!)

But I miss some blogs that used to be regular posts and now seem to just pop up on FB. But then I am partly guilty of that because I don't think I read as many blogs as I used to. Instead, some of my online time is on FB. Oh dear!

But in case you are wondering why I have taken time out to muse over this very 21st century conundrum, be assured that I am keeping up with my trusty blog.

Post script - I have just looked at my stats for the post about the altered map/book (which you all seemed to like very much indeed) and most of you found that page because I posted the link in a couple of places on Facebook.  So it seems that we like blogs but we are finding them in different ways.