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The quotation, as a whole, reads:

"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make our world." -- Buddha

And there's a version that has "the" world instead of "our", but I prefer the idea that it's our world that we are, each one of us, constantly creating, changing, evolving, and choosing to live in.

 

 

Here are a few of the in-progress shots I remembered to take while drawing and painting ...

 

 

It then went for a huge clean-up in Photoshop, and will now be offered as a free printable to subscribers of the Floating Lemons monthly newsletter. So if you'd like to download it (or any of the printables being given away in 2015) to print out for yourself, just sign up HERE.

I'm now off to think loads of good thoughts, and wish you a week full of wonderful ones. Cheers.

 

 

As we head into winter I thought it would be good to have a reminder of sunny days and summery good times to keep us warm when the cold finally hits. As I write this the weather is extraordinarily mild (for the UK!), the sun is shining away brightly, I'm not as yet huddled in front of the fire, and am enjoying every moment of light and clarity ... while it lasts. Here's a little print I've made to lift the spirits during the greyer months ahead, or just to provide an extra glow if you're lucky enough to live where it's warm all year long.

 

 

 

I re-coloured my Painted Flowers pattern for this, and cleaned it up further. Seemed perfect for this month, wouldn't you agree?

As always, it's available as a free printable (along with the past 10 monthly designs for 2014) for all subscribers of the Floating Lemons monthly newsletter. If you'd like to sign up, just click here.

Wishing you good humour for the week ahead. Cheers.

 

Still without internet! I'm sitting at the pub down the road trying to finish up the newsletter for this month as well as the free printable "I Choose" design for October. Pretty apt once again I'd say as I've definitely been scaling heights this past couple of months. The move to the United Kingdom has been a huge one and real life intervened with all the usual little bumps and glitches that accompany such a big event. But ... I've found a temporary home in the beautiful countryside of Oxfordshire, the dogs are happy, the friends are hugely supportive and art college has been an amazing experience so far.

Here's the design for this month:

 

 

My 'mountains' have been almost as numerous of late, and just as colourful. I wouldn't change a thing. I'm hoping to be back online by the end of next week - apparently there's a fault in our landline and an engineer has to come out and check it. Fingers crossed. Let's hope the landscape ahead is slightly less bumpy.

Oh yes almost forgot, the above design is of course available as a free printable (along with the past 9 monthly designs for 2014) for all subscribers of the Floating Lemons monthly newsletter. If you'd like to sign up, just click here.

I should be back to regular blogging soon! Wishing you mountains of joy for the coming week. Cheers.

 

I'm counting my blessings. And apologising for being one day late with this blog post and my newsletter! I've had to attend to practicalities and real life stuff. Who'd have thought moving to another country would take up so much time and energy ... ha ha. It's been a mad scramble to get any art or work done. Internet is intermittent at best here in the depths of the beautiful English countryside, so let's hope this gets posted today. I'm counting my blessings, and there are a multitude of those in my life daily.

Here's "I Choose to Count my Blessings", the illustration/affirmation for September. It is now, of course, another of the monthly free printables that I'm offering to all subscribers of the Floating Lemons newsletter. To sign up just CLICK HERE, and you'll get access to the previous 8 free printables as well as this one.

 

 

Wishing you a wonderful day and week full of sunshine, love and delight. Cheers.

 

This piece was drawn in coloured pencils as an assignment for my MATS Bootcamp e-course. It started off as a preparatory sketch in my moleskine, but I got carried away and ended up putting down layers and layers of colour. This was the result, "I Choose to Embrace the Unknown":

 

 

As always, I'm offering all the "I Choose" designs monthly as A4/A3 free printables to those who sign up for the Floating Lemons newsletter, so if you want to print them out at home for your personal use, or pass them onto friends, just click HERE to subscribe.

I sketched out quite a few ideas before the drawing above insisted on picking itself as the final. Here are some of them, and the prep sketches that refused to stay preparatory ...

 

 

All in all a wonderful nautical exploration. Hope you've enjoyed a peek at it as much as I enjoyed working on the whole project. Wishing you a fantastical day. Cheers.

 

 

I can't believe that it's already June, the year seems to have flown past and it's once again time for our monthly text design which is, "I Choose to Make a Difference". Because I do. Do you? We can all begin with doing one positive thing daily, and bit by bit we can, together, change the world.

 

 

Just a quick recap for those of you who may have only just started reading my blog ... I decided at the beginning of the year to illustrate and post, on the first Saturday of every month this year, a positive affirmation beginning with "I Choose ...". I used to be pretty skeptical as far as affirmations are concerned but have placed cynicism aside and am now a convert. They work.

I'm offering all the designs as A4/A3 free printables to those who sign up for the Floating Lemons monthly newsletter, so if you want to print them out at home for your personal use, or pass them onto friends, just click HERE to subscribe. We've had a really great response, which is wonderful, thank you to everyone who signed up!

Here are the newsletters so far, from January to June 2014:

 

 

Choose to make a difference today ... and spread the positive energy. Cheers.

 

 

Seven years ago I mustered up the courage to make a huge change in my life, despite having been offered my "dream job". I left Australia and moved to France to instead work on my art and build a career and business from it. It's one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life.

I can't say that it was easy, and I've encountered quite a few bumps along the road, but I learned tons, and dogged determination has gotten me this far, with a small but thriving business and a huge love for what I do. Now, however, I'm again faced with massive new decisions to make, both in my work and personal life, and it's time to once again find the courage to make changes for the future. To follow my dreams. So this text design is particularly appropriate and will be my mantra for the days to come.

 

 

 

I've also placed it against a white background for the free printable that will be made available to the subscribers of the Floating Lemons monthly newsletter, as all that black may be a bit of a problem for home printers to handle. Both will be available, so you have a choice of whether to print it against white, or black if you think your printer can handle all that ink!

To sign up for the newsletter and get access to the previous free printables as well, just click here.

WIshing you the courage to follow your dreams. Cheers.

 

Still working on sketches for my e-course, The Art & Business of Surface Pattern Design Module 4 ... I did some doodles and sketches with geometric, floral, and typography themes in mind.

I'm not sure if the final results below would be considered strictly geometric but hey, I drew grids and shapes and then got carried away filling them up. There are florals there too, so perhaps I managed to work on two of the themes at one go. Oh, and some typography too ...

 

 

The second one is still unfinished. I 'work' on it whenever I have time, i.e. when I'm uploading designs onto stores. I used to have a dodopad in high school, and used to colour it in with magic markers, does anyone remember those? These grid doodles reminded me of that, and the whole exercise is teaching me tons about colour, and is fun to boot.

I did some typographical sketches with a holiday theme:

 

 

I love playing with text design. And some of you may know that this year I've decided to do a monthly design based on "I Choose ..." as a positive affirmation, that I make available as a free printable to the subscribers of the Floating Lemons Newsletter. It's a hugely wonderful experiment in typography for myself, and these are the ones I've come up with so far, for January till April:

 

 

They count as typographical exercises, wouldn't you say? Next month I'll be doing "I Choose Courage", as I'm going through huge changes in my life that require a large amount of deep breathing, and I'll be plunging into a different life and lifestyle. Scary, but also very exciting. I'm thoroughly enjoying the text designs and the affirmations that are emerging, and hope to do a calendar with them at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, I'll be away for two weeks as of next week. I shall try to blog as much as possible, but as it's my dad's 80th birthday that we're celebrating, I may not be able to do that, so forgive me in advance. I'll be posting up at the facebook page, so follow me there if you want a peek at my updates, and to see photographs of whatever inspiring bits I pick up from the United Kingdom and Istanbul (yay).

Meanwhile, have a fantastic week and don't forget to experiment joyfully. Cheers.

 

 

I loved working on this text design - it really strikes a deep, personal chord, as I've been using this as an affirmation for the last year and it has worked wonders in my life. So I'm passing it on, and hope that you choose to fill your lives with the possibility of facing all its challenges fueled by positive energy. It really does make a difference.

As always, this monthly illustration is available as a free printable for subscribers to the Floating Lemons newsletter, (next issue will be out on the first Saturday of this month, the 5th of April) so go ahead and sign up by clicking on the image above, or right HERE.

Here's the original sketch that I scanned in and then worked on digitally to get the finished piece:

 

 

Wishing all of you a day full of brightness. Cheers.

 

 

Be joyful! March always seems such a transitional month for me. Winter hasn’t quite shed its icy coat but there are signs of balmier spring weather sneaking into the air. A perfect time to choose to feel Joy, especially on those grey, cloudy mornings.

I wanted this illustration to feel natural, simple and spontaneous, so out came the watercolours, and I painted using bright, cheerful pinks, greens, oranges and blues, ending up with the above piece. Here are a couple of sketches:

 

 

The above text illustration is available as part of a series of monthly free printables for the subscribers of the Floating Lemons newsletter. If you'd like to sign up to receive them, just click here.

 

Wishing you a day full of brightness and joy. Cheers.

 

Drag to your desktop and print, willy-nilly.

Add a page of Valentines to color, for your crayon-happy crew.

Enjoy!
This is original art, by me.
It's free for your own personal or classroom use,
but not to be resold.
If you're sharing this, please credit me and/or link this page as the original source.
Thanks for the respect!

For those last-minute gifts that you forgot to buy tags for. I know the feeling! Which is why we made some printable tags for you. Here's what they looked like, first printed out and then on gifts all wrapped up and ready to go:

 

To download the A4 sheet of Gift Tags just click on the image or link below:

 

FREE PRINTABLE CHRISTMAS GIFT TAGS

Feel free to pass them to your family or friends, but please just don't sell them! Have fun :) Cheers.

 

Hello Friends!
Are you stuck in a snowy blizzard this week like so many of us here in the Midwest? We are having more snow than I think we've ever had and the roads are buried! During all of this, I've been sick for the past few days and just haven't been up to doing much pancake making.  Anyhow, do you remember last week when I made all those mini baby animal pancakes? At the time, I made around 60 of those with the idea to make a game with them and then I ran out of time.  But, I did take individual photos of them and made a pattern sequence game in Photoshop for my kids based off those pancakes.  So even though I couldn't use the real pancakes, the photos of them were the next best thing I could offer. If you'd like a copy so that your kids can play too, I've set up five free printable pages Page One, Page Two, Page Three, Page Four, Page Five (for personal use only). I recommend that you print three copies of the game peices. If you have any trouble, please let me know and I can email you the files directly.
I briefly considered making all 60 pancakes again for this pattern game but came to my senses and made the playing pieces out of paper instead.
Well have a happy snow day at home if you happen to be in the same boat as us....and if not, I still wish you a nice day and happy game playing!

Hugs!
Jenni