January 2018 - Winter Dreaming

Mood board with Makelight #YearofColour palette.

January of the "New Year" is heading fast towards February and I thought it was high time I updated this News section, since I don't seem to have written anything since last summer. This isn't strictly true as I've been updating my Wordpress blog and there has actually been plenty of "News" to report.

Last year was probably the best year ever for Witchmountain; thanks to the beautiful galleries and shops who took my work and also in great part to Cumbria Printmakers group who have given me not only opportunities to exhibit but also new friendships and the all important sense of starting to "belong" in Cumbria. Thanks also to everyone who bought from this website in its first year or subscribed to my newsletter, you are all now entered in a monthly prize draw as a reward for being fabulous.

This year has started slowly, taking the time to evaluate and make plans using the "Dream, Plan, Do" planner from the Design Trust (lots of plans in just one sentence!). One of the important lessons I keep trying to learn is that as a self employed, creative person, these "quiet" reflective times, far from being wasted days, are vital for coming up with new goals, researching and testing ideas. So, as well as reading by the stove, baking batches of polar bears and sour dough bread, I'm constantly thinking about ways to make my work even better and more desirable (not only to my customers but to me). Time to dream is a luxury but an important one to indulge in once in a while.

Gingerbread bears ...they didn't make it back from the walk up to Alcock Tarn.

I have decided not to attend BCTF this year, working instead towards more direct to the public art fairs and gallery exhibitions such as Art in the Pen, and hopefully Printfest ... I await the selection process with baited breath. I've also entered the #LibertyOpenCall competition (along with about 5,000 others!) on Instagram because you never know what might happen and I've decided to aim high! One of the images I entered features a fantastic colour palette made by a new FREE Instagram tool created by Makelight which has extracted the most used colours from my posts in 2017 and is endlessly fun to play with. Wonderfully clever Emily and Stef Quinton, thank you so much.

I've been  trying to use Pinterest more, without losing years of my life to visual overload,  as it is supposedly one of the best ways to attract more visitors, and ultimately customers, to a website. What do you think? Have you ever bought anything you've seen on Pinterest? If you use it please do have a look at my boards and let me know what you liked. 

Now it is time to do some "Doing" and put plans into action. Thanks for reading this and visiting Witchmountain - at least you didn't need an ice axe and crampons. Don't forget you can read more of my ramblings on my Wordpress blog and watch this space for exhibition dates, new stockists and other illustrated news! x

imagining my lamp in the wild for #libertyopencall