Papercut Practise

A little while ago I tried my hand at papercutting.

My friend and fellow blogger Emma Daniels, who I've known since we were this big...

...is a very talented papercutter and she's recently started running workshops at Baker & Barista in Ipswich. She was holding her first craft workshop over the Christmas period and she wanted to try it out on a few friends first. So myself and a couple of others got together to have a papercutting lesson, complete with wine and snacks.

Emma started us with some simple designs that she had drawn; we started cutting along straight lines and then graduated to curved ones.

Eventually, when we'd got the hang of using the scalpel, we created our own designs for a Christmas bauble papercut. My incredibly unimaginative design included my two pets, Jack and Otis, in a cheesy festive motif.

It took me forever to cut, but it was a lot of fun.

Finally, I had my very own Christmas papercut.

I was pretty proud of it, but I don't think it really compares to any of Emma's work.

Papercuts by Emma Daniels

Amazing, huh? I don't know how she has the patience.

The Christmas workshops at Baker & Barista went really well; in fact they were so popular that Valentine's Day and Mother's Day papercutting workshops have now been scheduled. If you're in the Ipswich area and want to create a unique papercut for a special someone then book yourself onto one of the craft evenings. There's also free cake, amazing incentive!

Check out more of Emma's work on her blog: www.made-by-ed.blogspot.co.uk

P.S. Apologies for the rubbish photos, they were taken with my rubbish phone.

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Never Work with Children or Animals

I don't have much experience of children, but I can definitely agree on the animal front. These two did their best to stop me working today.

I think I'd best give up for now.

Still Going: Freelance Copywriting

I know I haven't written anything for ages.
You'd be fair in thinking my freelance writing career had crashed and burned. Luckily it's quite the opposite. I have gradually built up some regular clients and have quite a mixed workload, varying from writing product descriptions for children's clothing to informative articles on haemorrhoid treatment (I kid you not).

I'm still writing for children's fashion and gift company Kidsen, as I described in my previous post. I've been writing descriptions for some of their Christmas stock, including this cherry print dress which I want in adult size.

Mini Rodini Mon Cheri Dress from Kidsen

I've also been working for a medical information site called Health Beacon, writing informative articles on subjects like pregnancy and, yes, haemorrhoids. Here's a link to a few of my health articles, I'm afraid the haemorrhoids one isn't up yet.

As well as that, I'm also writing freelance for www.ineedlinks.com, which, as the name suggests, helps websites build links and increase their audience. I write website copy for their various clients and I've also written a few blogposts for them, including this one on building links.

It's really great to work for these websites as it gives me a chance to increase my knowledge of web writing and SEO. Plus, they pay me, which is always good.

As you can see, I've been pretty busy with work and blog posts have got a bit left behind. I've also been busy as my boyfriend and I have recently adopted a puppy.

Jack

This is Jack. He's about seven months old and was a stray in Bulgaria before he was rescued and brought over here by dog charity K9 Rescue. They do great work helping stray dogs and increasing the public awareness of the plight of Bulgarian street dogs.

Jack's lovely but still a little nervous so we're working on increasing his confidence and socialising him. He already likes hanging out with our cat Otis (who we got from Suffolk Animal Rescue, another great animal charity).

Jack and Otis - Cat Selfie, Dog Photobomb

I don't want to be one of those people who ramble on about their pets all the time, but Jack's part of my excuse for not posting more regularly. He's cute but he's hard work.

So that is what I have been up to. I'll attempt to post more regularly now, when I'm not looking after Jack or writing about bodily functions.