Feathers, Dreamcatchers & a Fishy

It's been a wee while since my last post, but my feather obsession continues :)
I've painted another 2 dreamcatchers and theser are available to buy from my shop

Keep Dreaming #3

Keep Dreaming #4

For now I think my feather obssession is almost cured, I've worked it out of my system..... it's time to move onto something else. Just what, I don't know yet!

The weather definitley changed at the weekend, winter is here! We have a wee dusting of snow and it's freezing.

For the last 2 weeks my house has been turned upside down while I get a new kitchen fitted. To start with I wasn't really happy about having this work done as I would be losing my large walk in larder and the back lobby where we keep wet coats and muddy boots. So walls have been knocked down, outside walls insulated and new platerboard is up, got a new ceiling too. It's all slowly coming together, some  of the units have been fitted, but unfortunately the joiner is now doing jury service, so I don't know when he'll be back. The units are ok, not what I would of chose but I can live with them, but the worktop is horrendous. This is one of the downfalls of living in a Scottish Estate house, someone in the estate office decides what kitchen will be fitted. Also in the last 2 weeks we've had the central heating not working, pipes leaking, washing machine broke down!..............my stress levels this weekend peaked and I thought my head would explode lol so to calm and chill myself I stuck a peice of watercolour paper to my drawing board and when I felt stressed I doodled with the watercolours left on my palette...... I just doodled and doodled and my mind wandered and I created a little fishy doodle.

So I still have workmen in my kitchen with the front door wide open and I'm freezing, but I have a ham joint cooking in the slow cooker and smelling yummy and I'm not going to stress anymore because my dream cooker should be getting delivered today. Hopefully my kitchen will be finished by the weekend and I'm looking forward to cooking on my new cooker :)

Feather Obsession

Over the past couple of weeks I seem to have developed a wee obsession for painting feathers and dreamcatchers. Totally enjoying working away from my computer for a while and discovering more about working with watercolours.

It was my youngest sons girlfriends birthday and he asked me to paint her a dreamcatcher using shades of purple and grey. At last I've managed to get the stringing on the dreamcatcher look better, I created a cardboard template to draw around of the shape I wanted. Still not totally happy with my feathers but my sons girlfirend loved her painting.

I found a watercolour tutorial on You Tube of how to paint feathers and I love this technique. I now have lots of lovely feathers in my watercolour pad.
I decided to use a few of these feathers to create a wee greeting/note/inspirational card design, which can be purchased from my online shop over on Etsy or there's a Special Offer on my Facebook page, both being DeborahDeyDesigns.

I love my puffins so much I have now created some keyrings to share with special people in my life and thes can only be purchased direct from me through my Facebook page, DeborahDeyDesigns.

I also finished a watercolour landscape which I had started, I am very pleased with how this turned out and will be attempting some more landscapes in the future.

It's been a busy couple of weeks, but I'm enjoying all this painting. Christmas is getting nearer and I haven't even started on a Christmas card design, I'm way behind this year. So today will be spent developing an idea I have for this and at the moment I'm thinking this wil be a digital design, but all that could change. :)

Are you ready for Christmas?

Keep Dreaming

I'm still designing and creating on my computer but I'm also trying to spend more time getting back to creating in more traditional ways again. This week it was the turn of my watercolours to come out in my creative space, they haven't been out for a long long time. What fun I had, music playing, standing drawing and painting with a wee dance thrown in too..... much to the shock of my 2 dogs who looked slightly traumatised by my weird dance moves :)

I thought I'd paint something quite easy to start with.......mmmmm did I say easy?

I gave the paper a colour wash background and then gradually built the dreamcatcher up from there. I am quite pleased with how it turned out, having said that though I am not happy with the stringing in the centre. I am going to try another dreamcatcher soon with better stringing

This week I have also added Wings of Change greeting cards to my shop (only 2 available)

and Cool Yule Penguin Christmas cards (larger the pack the cheaper they get)

Winter is definitely on its way now, the swallows have all left to go to warmer climates and the geese are gathering down on the loch, they are my alarm call in the morning when they fly over the croft to go feed for the day. Almost every morning now there's a chill in the air and the mist is trapped in the valley.

Yesterday it took till almost lunchtime for the mist to totally rise and vanish, but then we had quite a warm sunny blue sky day. I even  ate my lunch outside and managed a spot of gardening.

As the sun sets the chilly night air starts to close in again and it's time to get cosy in front of the woodburner.

We've also been having some beautiful clear star filled skies at night, so I'm thinking I should try a little night time photography. If this works out I will post pics here.

I've just remembered what is was that I forgot at the end of my last post lol There have been Red Kites in the area for a few years but now they are flying up over the croft. The buzzards in the area seem to gang together to frighten the Kites out of their territory. Such beautiful amazing birds I could watch them and the buzzards for ages.

Hows your week been?

Love You....

....to the Moon and Back print.
I have been trying to get back to being creative away from my computer a little more and set myself the challenge of trying some hand lettering. Not an easy challenge but I gave it a go and I will be doing more as I enjoyed it, even though my intial sketch ended up on the computer and was finished off in Illustrator.

If you like it the print is available as A4 or A3 to purchase from my shop.

I have also at long last got my new website up and running and I'm pleased with how it looks. I kept the design simple and clean, so it didn't distract from my graphic designs and artwork. I'm thinking about incorporating an online shop within the website, so this will be a test for my old grey brain cells. Oh well I love a challenge and to be busy. Just realised I seem to be going through a phase of having images in circles!

There was something else I was going to share but can't think what it was now! Old grey brain cells playing up again, never mind I'm sure it will come to me later.

Till the next time I blog byeeeeeeeee

Thanks Fiona & Lin

It has been a wee while since I abandoned any of my art,  at the weekend I did a spur of the moment drop. I discovered in my bag a small ATC sized print of one of my sketchbook pages, it was left over from a previous day of drops. I left it in the supermarket Morrisons in Inverurie, Scotland. It was so spur of the moment I even forgot to take a pic and post it on the Art Abandonment Facebook pages.

So imagine my surprise when I got an email to the address on the label to say the wee piece of art had been found, also the finder, whose name is Fiona, had posted on the Art Abandonment pages. Fiona said "I'd love to find out who put it there, it really is a beautiful piece of art" and " I was so chuffed finding this piece of art, made my day!! Such talent xx"

I love art and I love to abandon art, but what makes it even more special is when you know the art has been found and the finder loves it too and you have made their day :) It is not very often that the finders let us know they have found abandoned art.

This is the photo that Fiona posted on the Facebook pages which was the start of a journey of discovery for me.

I wanted to post a photo of the original sketchbook page, when I outed myself as the artist, but I couldn't find it in the sketchbook that I thought it was in. Since moving house a year ago so many of my sketchbooks and college projects were still packed away in boxes! ...................so the unpacking and searching began...... box after box.....book after book......page after page......but I couldn't find what I was looking for. I did however discover art that I had forgot I had created, it also brought back many happy memories of the friends that I had created designs and art with and also how I had been becoming more free,loose and confident with what I was creating. 

It made me realise that the only time I get my sketchbook out now is to quickly sketch ideas before creating something digitally. I had only had my paints out once in the last year to paint a small canvas which still sits waiting to be finished! Coincidently the canvas is painted in the same colour theme as the piece of art Fiona found.

So I would like to say a big "THANK YOU" to Fiona for her part in making me realise that I have been doing so much digital work lately, which I love, but I haven't really been incorporating any of my mixed media art into my digital art like I used to do. So I'm going to step back from the computer more often and get creative again with paints, inks and papers. I'm also setting myself the challenge (because I love a challenge) to become better with hand-lettering and have already enjoyed sketching ideas for a design I have in mind.

I did eventually find the the sketchbook page I was looking for yesterday morning..... and guess what?....... it was in the sketchbook that I had originally thought it was in...the first book I looked in........but the pages had stuck together :) ......here it is, created using acrylics and inks it has textured parts and the light purple paint shimmers.

To finish off I'd also like to say "Thank you" to Lin at Redwood Gallery in Echt for having my Highland Coos print and  Coos and Puffins greeting cards in her gallery. All of my greeting cards she stocked sold which made me very happy, but sadly the Gallery is closing down on Friday. I wish Lin all the best for her future and thank you for being the first gallery to display my art.

Greeting cards and prints can still be purchased from my online shop or direct from me

.................and finally finally lol I'm still working on my new website design and adding new designs and art, hopefully this will all be ready to go live soon. Some of my older stuff can still be seen on my website though.

Right thats it I've finally finished gibbering on and I applaud and thank you if you got to the end of this post :)

Custom Orders...

..... I love them!
Here are just a few examples of some custom orders I have created for my customers.

Thank you cards for Leanne, using her baby girls foot prints to create a heart

Megan from University of Notre Dame wanted bunting featuring their football teams mascot for their after game celebrations

Jenny was having a party for her English boyfriend, so required the wording to be slightly changed on the bunting and cupcake flag downloads.

Then we have the same bunting file as above with another text change

and another text change

LeAnn was having a Dr Who themed wedding in Florida. I can't take credit for the L & D monogram as a friend of LeAnn's had already created this for her but I did create everything else.

 Letter flags to add with the Jubilee Bunting download to spell the name Ariel for Lisa

Cath Kidson colours for Mylien

Party tags for a going away party

I was also asked if I could create a file with just 1" Union Jack flags for Jill at Jills Cakes. Jill has a printer that prints with edible ink onto sheets of icing and she needed tiny bunting for a wedding cake. Can you believe this wonderful creation was the first wedding cake Jill had made....it's absolutely amazing 

So as you can see the possibilities are endless, so if you need something created just for you please contact me.

Seagulls are ...

... in the news quite a bit just lately, because of their food thieving and occassional human attacking ways. Many people don't like them, but me, I love them them. Such a big bird, they always look clean and so white, I love watching them following the tractors ploughing fields. It seems it doesn't matter where you go there is always a gull flying around.

I took the photo below a few years ago on a visit to Fowlsheugh, I'd never seen, heard or smelled so many birds all together nesting on the cliffs. I also had my first sighting of puffins that day. Anyway this photo was my cover image on my personal Facebook page for a wee while and I felt it was time it had a facelift so I could use it again.

So after a wee bit of manipulation and some additional layers in Photoshop, it now looks like this.

I'm loving the colours and texture of the background, what do you think?

Digital Downloads & EU VAT Legislation

This is all heed nipping boring stuff and is just making people who run a micro business which sells digital downloads question weather it's worth all the hassle to continue selling digital downloads! I am now questioning if I should or should not add my downloads to my website when I get my new online shop up and running.

On 1st January 2015 a new EU legislation came into force which affects businesses that sell digital services, such as e-books, online courses, apps, or downloads to other EU countries. VAT is now charged in the country where the products are bought, as opposed to where the seller is located.

Now I thought this is ok it won't apply to me because my revenue is very very very much below £81,000 which is the UK threshold for VAT. Unfortunately for digital goods there is no threshold, I have to collect VAT from the first £1 and every EU country has its own VAT rates ranging from 8% to 27%.

Complicated? Yeah!

I'll try and simplify this

I have a digital download in my shop priced at £1 a customer living in Switzerland would have to pay £1.08 (Swiss VAT 8%) for this.
The same £1 item is purchased by a customer living in Hungary, who would have to pay £1.27 (Hungary VAT 27%).
I would have to register for the VAT MOSS online service so I could pay any VAT that I have collected quarterly. Now if the above examples were the only EU sales that I had in a quarter I'd be sending 8p + 27p a total of just 35p to HMRC who would then send 8p to Switzerland and 27p to Hungary.
I would also need a postal address and IP address for every customer which I must keep a record of for 10 years. This all sounds really ridiculous and a lot of work for such small amounts of money.

You even need to collect the VAT if you link to online content or a download sent by a manual email! But how will they know?
Yet it is ok for me to charge just £1 (as in above examples) with no VAT and send a manual email with the digital file attached :)

So EU customers feel free to contact me if you would like to purchase a printable download and I will PayPay invoice you for cost of item minus VAT and will email the file to you within 24hrs, this in fact is how it used to be done before Etsy let us store our download files on their servers.

If I was to go ahead and add downloads to my online shop on my website then I would also need to look into software that would work out all the different VAT rates for my EU customers.

I realise that this legislation was put in place to catch the big fish like Amazon, Apple etc. but it's all the little fish that are being caught and drowned! I don't think it was really thought through.

Even with my little shop being on Etsy this still affects me, yet Etsy have implemented a system that works out and adds the VAT to my downloads for EU customers. As Etsy is based in the USA though my UK customers get charged VAT too, which they shouldn't as the £81,000 threshold does apply in my own country!

Still confusing!

Then theres this other thing thats annoying me...... If my EU customer pays with PayPal then PayPal charge me fees on total amount that gets paid into my account...ie. cost of item plus the VAT. Then when Etsy sends me my monthly bill which will include any VAT that I have in my PayPal account, they charge me the full VAT thus I'm out of pocket here!!!

This legislation affects so many micro businesses around the world and because of this some would rather not sell to EU customers.

So I'd like to say Thank You to the barmy Eurocrats for once again overly complicating something and putting yet another hurdle in the way of ordinay people trying to eek out a living and build a little business.

***Disclaimer: I do not claim to know everything or understand everything about EU VAT Legislation, this is just my very simple take on it. 

A few links below, but do a search there are many people and reports about this subject online.
VAT on Digital Services in EU
facebook page Digital VAT 2015  with helpful discussions
The Guardian
The Telegraph

So after all that heed nippy stuff lets finish with a little something that made me smile :)
Last week I went to the Falls of Feugh near Banchory and there is so much love happening there :)
Can you feel the love?

Love locks on the bridge

I wonder if Trish and Brian are locals

Laura's Logo

Laura from Laura Spence Photography asked me a few weeks ago to create a new logo for her business. I've known Laura for a good few years now, in fact she is family and I have always admired her work. She is an award winning baby photographer and she also photographs families and weddings, pop over to her website and see some of her work.  Laura wanted a round style logo and it had to have a baby within the design.

It was time to get my creative thinking cap on and after many stages of development I created the final logo design. Laura loves her new logo and is so happy with it, she couldn't wait to show it off and add it to her website. I love when my clients are happy :)

A little more about the process of developing the logo can be found in my portfolio on Behance.

My Puffin Heart Art is now printed on greeting cards and is available to purchase from my new shop and the Redwood Gallery in Echt, Aberdeenshire.

I've just mentioned my new shop but I will tell you more about this, my new website and Facebook page in another post soon. Over the next couple of days I will be working on a new design for my website, shop and Facebook page and get them all updated. I also need to make a section on this blog for Graphic Design.

Busy busy busy...

so busy I haven't had time to blog for a few weeks, but I'm back now with lots to tell :)

I took a week off and drove south to Fife to visit my family and friends. I had a great time and didn't manage to fit everything in that I wanted to do but that's good 'cause it means I'll have to go back again soon. Catching up and spending time with all my grandkids (I've got 7) was the best bit and they keep me young.

Since coming home I've been doing a mixture of  more decorating when it's been raining (we've had a lot of rain) and gardening when it's been sunny.

My Highland Coo Heart Art greeting cards have been selling well in the Gallery, so I got to work creating some more heart art. This time I did puffins, I love these strange wee birds, they have such a sad looking expression and a comical wee walk. I'm very happy with how this turned out and will be getting greeting cards and A3 prints printed soon.

I've also had some Graphic Design work for a client that I had to keep quiet about until the event had been launched. So now I can shout about it..... I created the logo for the Mary Queen of Scots Festival which is taking place in Kinross, Scotland in September. You can find their Facebook Page here. Below are examples of how the logo could look on promotional items.

I've also just started working on another logo design for a client, that I'll show off when it's completed.

As I'm doing more design work at the moment I was thinking it was about time I got around to updating my website, but me being me have decided to give it a whole new look, so that will keep me busy once I decide what I'm going to do. My portfolio can be viewed on my website or more images for each project can be viewed in my Behance Portfolio.

One decision I have made though is to keep Ainjewelz online shop just for Craft and Party Downloads and open another online shop for my Digital and Mixed Media Art, where I will sell prints and greeting cards. Once this shop is open I'll announce it here :) I have made a start though and have a new Facebook page for my Graphic Design Services and Digital & Mixed Media Art, this can be found here. Please pop over and give me a 'Like' and  a share. Eventually my website, Facebook page and online shop will all have the same look, once I decide on a design I'm happy with......I'm so hard to please! I'm my own worst client lol

I'm also working towards having enough work to display and hopefully sell at a local Art and Craft Fair so it's a good job I love to be busy!

..... and finally the sun came out and we had a day out, of course Gregor McGregor tagged along

Taking in the sea air in Banff

I was so busy taking photos I never noticed Gregor down a can of lager lol

the sea at Gardenstone looked like the Mediterranean, but it was unbelievably windy.

Had a great day out and hope to go back to the north east coast with my camera again soon when I have time to take a day off.

Where have you been on your sunny days off?

Introducing Gregor McGregor

I'd like to introduce Gregor McGregor, farmer, photographic model and all round nice guy :)

Gregor McGregor

Just a bit of fun and Gregor is small enough to stow away in my camera bag as he is only 3 3/4 inches tall.

 

Flowers for the Mrs

Gregor now has his very own Album on Flickr called The Adventures of Gregor McGregor where I will be able to keep a record of all of Gregors wee adventures, so he better start having some. If you're as daft as me pop over to his album and see what he got up to today lol

I used to have a wee buddy called Morag, but when I moved house she decided to stay in Fife and moved into my grand daughter Ellies dolls house. I've heard runours that she now has a fireman living with her, hopefully I'll meet him when I next visit. I will of course be taking Gregor with me so he can meet other little people, he might end up staying with them in the dolls house and partying all night. Who knows what goes on with these little people when we're not looking lol

Morag (taken with my mobile)

Oh well if my family read this they will think I'm starting to lose the plot talking about little people lol, but Gregor will help me with my photography and I can't help it if I have an overactive imagination.