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Skating, friends and a doodlesome evening

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First Tuesday of the month meeting, for the first time in a while (it doesn’t run in school holidays, and got caught out in September by inset days). Small declined on the grounds that none of his specific friends were going today, so I was able to offer a lift to one of Smallest’s friends, which she enjoyed hugely. So much so in fact that she gave skating a go again, and made it round the rink a couple of times, with only one unintended sit down. It was particularly lovely to see her hand in hand with another boy she’s met a few times who turned out to be an accomplished skater and happy to offer assistance.

Tigerboy made me laugh – I was chatting with a new family and he came up and said “I’m very sorry for interrupting your conversation but could I have a drink please?” Very formal for a five year old!

Building up to writing something specifically for families pulling kids out of primary school and worried about keeping up with the curriculum – my experience is that in most areas it’s pretty easy to cover without a lot of sit down work, but it’s tracking down the resources that suit that will allow you to do that. I have some thoughts 🙂

Anyway, easy family meal tonight of macaroni cheese, and I’m hoping my tomorrow’s yoga video will work as today’s was corrupted. And I’ve spent quite a bit of this evening doodling, partially inspired by sktchy again.

How is October kicking off for you?

Diversification.

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That’s a big word for splitting yourself up into lots of different pieces isn’t it? Tell you one thing, I’m going to have to get a whole lot more organised.

Hm.

Anyway, I’ve launched the new reviews/competitions/money making/money saving site over at Not Just Kids Stuff. There’s a Shopkins giveaway running, so you might want to pop over and check it out. There’s also some stuff about swagbucks, and a bonus soup recipe, so how can you go wrong? (Share, like, follow it on twitter or by email or whatever. Please. It’s slightly scary launching a new site so far down the line of blogging it turns out, and terribly small social media numbers are even more scary.)

I’m working on the interwebrescue site. The idea is that it’s somewhere for people to find me when they want a quick web fix – like kicking a recalcitrant forum back into shape, rescuing a wordpress that’s having a bad day, that sort of thing. Or holding your hand through a scary DNS change or disentangling terminology that’s got you confuzzled. I’m paused just now trying to write the pages – I’m very not good at bigging myself up it appears.

I did design a Kofi button though 🙂 For all those tiny little jobs that aren’t quite worth an invoice, or when you’re just grateful for an article or some advice, I’ll be installing one of these. It’s like the paypal donate button, but somehow a bit friendlier.

I gave up on the biro section of my daily drawing challenge and segued neatly on to inktober instead. So it’s all still happening on instagram (check out the pics in the sidebar). I’m also using sktchyapp to practise a bit more – people share pics that you can then use as reference photos and upload to the app so that the originals can see. Well worth a go if you are into drawing.

Still kind of stacked up on things I’m supposed to be blogging about, but I’m working through it. I kind of have a plan, and what’s more I’m kind of following it.

First time for everything I suppose 😉

#NeverRunOut – creating a picture book with #HPInstantInk

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I’m absolutely thrilled today to be taking part in the NeverRunOut campaign with HP Instant Ink. Regular readers will know that we’re huge fans of picture books, and to be approached by HP a little while ago to take part in an activity where a group of bloggers work with a well known picture book author/illustrator to write a book? Dream come true.

We’ve been fans of Tom Percival since we read the book Jack’s Amazing Shadow, so it was really exciting to hear that he’s the illustrator involved in the project.

Inspired by the HP service ‘Instant Ink’, the story theme is never letting your imagination run out. The service, which we’ve been trying out since we freed up our pics and redecorated the fridge earlier this year, works by automatically ordering you new ink online when it senses your printer cartridges are running low on ink. There are a variety of different plans available to suit different printing needs. Find out more about HP Instant Ink here.

Each week a new page has been added and you can keep up with the story and find all the bloggers involved by following the hashtag #neverrunout

Our spread is quite late on in the story. The design process with small children was interesting. We read the book so far, as it’s all available online, and then settled down to work out how to deal with the problem posed on our page. Smallest is incredibly creative – her suggestions were quite off the wall to say the least. First of all she wanted the ink drop to make an egg, which would contain a key, that would unlock the door, that would have more ink behind it.

Hm. Not sure it would have quite fitted with the thread of the story!

We covered lots of paper trying out ideas.

drawing-time

The most important thing though for our page? Shared creativity. Harrison isn’t working on this alone after all 🙂

600x600-spread-9

And as if a picture book isn’t enough, I’m also hosting a giveaway to win an HP Envy 5644 All-in-One Inkjet Printer plus a years supply of ink. You can view details of the printer here the ink subscription here. All you need to do is enter via the rafflecopter below and good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure: this is a sponsored post in association with HP. Competition listed with the Prizefinder: UK competitions at ThePrizeFinder

Circle time.

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It will surprise no one who knows me that I’m pretty much making this up on the fly 🙂 (If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, pop back to the first post about creative circles here. I’ll wait.)

What I have in mind is a situation in which we all support each other. The support each person needs/ wants may be different, and that’s something that we’re going to have to be flexible about. What I think we should do first is introduce ourselves and what we’re looking to get out of a creative community. Is it pure support for effort? Are we looking to skill share, learn from each other? Are there targets you want to set for yourself? Or is it more about aspirations and wishlists?

So I think the first thing to do is an introduction and goal setting post or comment. If you want to use your own blog/site/profile to do this that’s fab, and after I sleep I’ll drop a bloghop into this post so that we can all find each other. I’ll use a bloghop rather than a straight linky so that people can travel blog to blog rather than having to come back here. (All a bloghop is is a shared linky – when you join in you get a snippet of code to paste into the post you’re entering, and then the linky list will show up on your post too.) 

If you don’t have a blog – maybe you’re going to be using instagram or flickr to share images? – you’re welcome to join in by leaving a link in the comments 🙂 

The sort of thing I have in mind is this:

I’m Jax. (Yes, I know you know that.) I’ve been writing fiction since I was in my teens, but I’ve never had anything published. My long term goal is to change that 🙂 My intermediate target is to have a finished manuscript that I’m pitching out by this time next year, and I’m going to try to use nanowrimo to kick the writing off. I’m probably going to need constructive criticism and virtual biscuits, and kicking off twitter every now and then. 

Alongside the writing is my drawing.  I want to get into a habit of creativity, and to stop worrying about it being perfect, or always better, and get on with just doing. I took part in a great sketchalong challenge with a couple of friends, but life got in the way and I just kind of stopped. I want encouragement to keep it going.

And finally, actually making stuff. I’ve been saying for two years I want a new reenactment outfit – that has to actually happen. And I’ve a stack of unfinished objects of the crochet variety that I’d like to get finished.

So there you go, that’s my bigger picture. Looking forward to hearing yours. When we’ve got an idea about what everyone wants out of this, then we’ll work out how it works. I have a whole bunch of ideas, from joining in with creative events, to encouraging each other to submit work, being beta readers, and maybe even sharing actual real life bits of art or craft.

Still up for it?

  

Opening a creative circle

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I have written stories for as long as I can remember.

I’ve never joined a writer’s group.

I’ve started drawing and painting and general art. But I’m not sure about the local art club.

And there’s knitting and sewing and crochet and spinning, costume to make and felt to, well, felt.

Creativity is something that gives me great pleasure, but I have a habit of losing focus.

At the back of my mind is this idea that if I could create a creative community around myself I could give and receive support and direction. Perhaps I could take a story from first idea to novel. Maybe I could illustrate a picture book.

(There was a self taught artist who has only been painting for two years shared on instagram’s own account today. There is no limit to where we can reach if we let our dreams lift us. )

So I have this idea that we could build a creative circle. Share our goals. Set challenges. (I have some ideas) Offer encouragement, gentle constructive criticism and support. Anyone fancy joining in? Please comment if so. And feel free to share. You don’t need to have a blog to join, just some way of sharing your work, be it photos or whatever really.

Hoping there are a few of you that think this sounds like a good idea!

  

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