blue

The last month has been filled with paint. I've designed a range of christmas cards that will be entering my empty shop very soon, as well as painting a few different projects and starting early on christmas presents. I'm starting to long to spend time with my sister, India and by keeping busy I don't miss her so much during our favourite time of the year. These figures are keeping me company during the day (I'm having a bit of a blue phase).
My plans for the next month are to sort out my shop (its been collecting dust for over a year), and put on a few bits a pieces. Then start taking on a few comitions. I'm new to all this (apart from seeing my papa do it during my childhood) and all the organising things is still quite thrilling. Today I spoke to a few printing companies on the phone and loved being all businessy with my notebook full of various scraps of paper. Liam is really pleased because I've started to use iCal and I'm making reminders and actually sticking to my to-do lists. What a grown up I am becoming!

We are planning a last minute get together with friends for halloween this weekend and I'm thinking papermache masks and pumpking soup whilst watching the Birds. Whatever you get up to this weekend, I hope you have lots of fun! xo

Italian adventure - Venice

Our few days in Venice were mainly taken up with lots of walking through narrow streets in the stifling heat looking for places to eat! The fish market was incredible! We had to travel in on a bus because we were staying off the island in a tent house on a campsite. It was quite luxurious having our own space and there was a pool, so a couple of days we came back early and swam and lazed in the sunshine.

Towards the end of our stay the weather dramatically changed and we had a very scary night with a crazy lightening store just above us! We made a blanket fort and tried to do many sudoku's to distract us from the -what we thought- inevitable death. 

Venice was beautiful, but we'd recommend going when it's a little colder. 

After Venice, we went to Bologna where it rained constantly and we ate loads of good food and shopped for two days before flying home again. I did take some snaps here (despite it being pretty ugly in comparison to everywhere els in Italy), but have misplaced the film I shot them onto.
So there we go, our Italian adventure is complete. I'm sorry that it dragged on, and that as it did so, I got more brief and lazy with my explanations.

This week I have been working on a few painted illustrations I'm making into a series of cards and I'm very excited to share these with you. At the moment I am trying to source the best place for me to get them printed, but I'm hoping to get them for sale online within the next month.

Italian adventure - Sienna and Pisa

From florence, we took a train to Sienna and spent the day there. We stayed in a strange hostel outside the town. It was pretty grey and damp, so we spent a lot of the time in restaurants, shops and church. The church in Sienna was amazing. We thought the Duomo in Florence was incredible, but this place blew us away. It was again too dark for any of my photographs come out. It was worth a trip to Sienna, just for that. (there wasn't really anything else to do there, and most of the restaurants were quite touristy, so not great quality food)

The next morning we returned to Florence via Pisa. I somehow managed to take a picture of the leaning tower that actually looks straight. oh dear. 

That night we stayed in a different hostel in Florence, that actually worked out to be someones house. We slept in a fold out bed in somebody's kitchen. It was a bit creepy but we were far too too tired to argue. And the woman who seemed to own it spoke hardly any english.

Italian Adventure - the rest of florence

More photographs from Florence. Some taken in the Pitti Palace gardens. Others around the town and of course scrumptious pizza's. We stopped taking so many photographs because we were a bit too trigger happy the first few days in Rome! 

(I'm going to start grouping more photo's together to speed up this blogging experience. I've got so much else to show you all!)

Italian Adventure - day 4 & 5, Florence

I was awoken at 5am with a combination of loud neighbours slamming doors, Liam snoring and really bad back pains. Our plan was to visit a flea market and then get a train over to Florence.

We missed the train, so caught the next one and it took four hours, where we got away with being on first class! We made friends with a lovely tour guide from Tuscany, who told us all the best secret places to visit.

Our new hostel was great! It was a beautiful old convent building with giant hallways and big windows. The staff were lovely, and they had a resident DJ!
After a great sleep (with many mosquito bites), we had an even greater breakfast. Fruit, yoghurt, cereal, pastries, juice and toast!

We liked Florence a lot! It is definatly our favourite place. We spent the day walking around, then visited the incredible Duomo. We also went all the way to the top, 463 steps to the Dome.

Italian Adventure - day 3, Rome, continued

Two things: whoops, I posted the last post before I actually finished it and it took me a month to notice.
And secondly, I am very excite about Autumn and want to do new posts but I have all these Italy posts to catch up on. So I really, really, really promise to sort myself out and finish off all this holiday nonsense!

After we visited the Sistene Chapel, we were exhausted, hungry, aching and very hot. We were getting tired of tourists so we decided to get a train out to the edge of Rome (after we shared a tasty Margherita) and visit the Museo Civico Di Zoologia. The woman in the entrance desk, couldn't believe that we actually wanted to visit it and it took her a long time to persuade her we really did want to wander round rooms of animals with heaps of information in a different language. We had such a great time. The place was deserted and it was so nice to get some space and time together. There was an incredible collection of taxidermy, with over 10,000 species of birds alone!

After the Zoology Museum, we sat in the park under beautiful trees and people watched before grabbing some dinner and returning to the hostel for our last night in Rome.