Hello, you've caught me in a 'count my blessings' frame of mind today.
For all of you lovely loyal blog followers, I think it is time I shared a little bit of background about who I am and how I've ended up doing all that you see on this blog. So, sit back, relax and enjoy my story...
Once upon a time, back in the days when grunge ruled the radio (no sign of ipods or MP3s) and when anyone under 21 smelled like teen spirit! (there, sort of given away my age!)...a young girl from Somerset had a hand full of drawing pens and a head full of dreams and was busy creating all kinds of illustrative magic for her degree show. She was particularly fond of decorative illustrations for greetings cards, children's books and she did a fair bit of paper engineered pop up greetings cards for her final show. All went well, she walked away with her degree and some sweet memories of good times ;-)
She then headed to the bright lights of London to try and find work in the design industry. Problem was, back in those days, unless you specialised in typography at this particular Uni, you had very little or no access to the adobe design packages you would need to be an attractive prospect to any potential design employers. So, this young lady ended up getting a sideways career in advertising and brand design, as a client service account manager not a designer. Not that she'd ever really complain about that, it was a great career to have as a twenty something in swinging 'Brit Pop' London... besides, she learned loads about business, design and marketing...
Still, none of that compared to the thrill she got when, one lunchtime whilst browsing in the National Gallery's shop, she found a 'Drawing Figures' book that had some of her student life drawings in....
...she immediately rang home from a payphone in the Gallery's basement (it was the early to mid 90's, even ad execs didn't have their own mobile phones back then!) ...she squealed down the phone "Dad! dad! my art is in the National Gallery!.....shop!....in a book! ...still, its under the same roof as Gustav Klimt, I've MADE IT!"...
Ahh, but the years went by, and she fully believed she was happy working in advertising...but the drawing and painting drifted away until she barely had a tube of gouache or bottle of masking fluid to her name :-(
Then, as luck would have it, she finally met her prince charming (actually, she knew him all this time, but that's another story). He had also studied illustration and was known to illustrate cartoon strips on occasion. He charged into her life brandishing an E Mac complete with Adobe Creative Suite ready installed. She wasted no time and set to work getting herself up to speed on those elusive design programmes. A few years later, they married and two beautiful daughters blessed their lives. As her daughters' passion for drawing, painting and being creative grew, she became increasingly inspired - she even began a blog...this blog! :-)...
...So there you have it, my journey to this blog.
What made me write this? Well, with all the jobs and projects I've been working on recently, I've finally began to feel like I'm doing the job I was born to do, which is why I'm counting my blessings.
Also, the main reason is because a few days ago I had another 'National Gallery' moment! It was thanks to a phone call from the publishers who are printing and distributing all my Life is Sweet range of greetings cards. They called to let me know who has placed orders for some of my range. Amongst the list they gave me was the name of a particular organisation I had in my mind as one of my 'dream' stockists for the cards when I was designing them...I never actually believed I'd get an opportunity for my cards to be stocked in their shops. I promise to reveal all to you as soon as I've seen the cards in one of their shops, as seeing is believing in my book. I'm very excited though, as you can imagine! :-)
However, I can let you know that my cards are being stocked in a small chain of greetings card shops called Thoughts Cards, here's their website: http://www.thoughtscards.com/
You'll find my cards on their website scattered amongst the 'blank and friendship cards' category. My spies have been and checked out the cards in their Bath store, the report I got back was 'looking good' - yay! :-)
So, its happy days for which I'm very grateful. And, a very big lesson learned, NEVER give up on your dreams!
I hope you'll all ...
Have a great weekend!
Angie x
