Wallpaper Giveaway - Cosy Autumn

It's been a while! Earlier this week, I decided I would create a nice autumnal wallpaper giveaway, but this time I thought I would ditch my usual habit of working digitally and took my paint and brushes out of the cupboard! I was a bit apprehensive, because to be honest, it's been such a long time since I'd illustrated something by hand from start to finish, mixing real paints to get the right colour I wanted, etc. But I kind of liked it and thought it wasn't so bad after all!

Instead of scanning my artwork, I thought it would be best to take photos so that I wasn't losing any details and it wouldn't look so 'flat'. It turned out so much better this way and I think I'm definitely going to carry on with photos instead of scans for this type of artwork!

What do you think? Would you like to see more of this type of painted illustration in my giveaways? Let me know!

These wallpapers are free as usual but I would just like to remind people that they're only for personal use, thank you :)

Download:
WHOLE SET // PHONE 1 // PHONE 2

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Wallpaper Giveaway - Everything will be Alright

It's been a while, I know! But I've been busy, and life happens, and so I didn't really take the time to do anything just for me until now.

I chose this quote because it actually reflects quite well how we've been feeling, and thinking, lately. France so far has been such a good experience, except for the paperwork (like I've previously said, it's hell), and after more than a year living in Bretagne, we finally feel that things are getting sorted. Jason finally has health insurance, we're sorting out our taxes, wedding plans are almost done, and the paperwork for Jason's car is underway. And that's just the most important stuff! As you can imagine, there are loads of other little things that needed to be done too (#adulting).

So since we came back from our holiday, I keep thinking "Everything will be alright in the end". And that's true. We're not the kind of people that give up on something. Even if things are hard, we carry on and do whatever we can to make it better and sort it out. So I think that's a good reminder: when things feel rubbish and you can't see the end of the tunnel, remember that eventually, if you keep working at it, it will all be fine in the end.

It's such a happy and feel good quote that I wanted to have loads of cute and colourful elements around it, so that it brings a smile on your face every time you look at your screens!

These wallpapers are free as usual but I would just like to remind people that they're only for personal use, thank you :)

Download:
WHOLE SET // PHONE 1 // PHONE 2

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Wallpaper Giveaway - Spring (finally!)

I've been meaning to do a new wallpaper giveaway for ages now but never got around to doing it... until today! I'm a little bit late to the game but still wanted to celebrate the fact that we're officially in Spring now, after a Winter that seemed to have lasted forever. I have to say though, the heating is still on in the house because we still have bloody cold temperatures most days and I honestly hope that by April, this whole cold and gloomy weather will be over! At least I don't have snow so I can't complain too much ;)

I hope you like this new lettering I created especially for you! It was quite nice and relaxing to do something just for fun actually.

These wallpapers are free as usual but I would just like to remind people that they're only for personal use, thank you :)

Download:
WHOLE SET // PHONE 1 // PHONE 2

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Portfolio Update - Tenco Coffee

Yay! I'm so happy to be sharing this project with you guys! I started it a little while back now and it's been such a good one. A bit of a challenge with the van wrap, but you know, there's always a first time for everything!

Tenco Coffee is run by a couple, Ashleigh and Cory, who are passionate about the adventurous way of life and good food and coffee. They really wanted this to show on their branding and truck so we started off with the logo and everything came after! Ashleigh also wanted to have some tribal inspired elements included in the brand so it was quite fun for me to illustrate some cool arrows and feathers alongside cups of coffee. I'm really pleased with how it turned out and seeing photos of the coffee truck with its colourful turquoise wrap makes me super happy!

If you'd like to see more of the work I've done for them, head over to my website! And if you want to learn more about Tenco Coffee, it's this way :)

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Coup de Coeur - Alyssa Guerrero

I've discovered this super talented lady through Instagram (check her out!) and I'm so pleased I did. I love everything she does and I'm always looking forward to the next piece of design she's going to share.

Alyssa Guerrero is truly an inspiration for me in terms of her illustrative and lettering skills. She manages to represent a fruit or even a building with only a few lines and honestly, I'm always in awe of people that can do that! Plus, her artworks always have this vintage feel with a lot of texture, which is exactly what I like!

Lately I've been working a lot more digitally for my client projects and Alyssa makes me want to grab my brushes and paint again. If you're digging her art too, you definitely need to have a look at her shop right here. Also, check out her blog to download the 'Just Start Yo' wallpaper!

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Coup de Coeur - Heikala's Art

Hey guys! I've decided to start a new series of blog posts called 'Coup de Coeur' (a French expression that can translate to 'love at first sight', something that literally captures your heart). I'm seeing so many artists and designers that I admire and inspire me everyday in my work that I thought it was about time for me to actually share it.

I'm opening the Coup de Coeur series with an artist that I've discovered very recently whilst looking at tweets from the Inktober challenge. She's known as Heikala (her first name is Laura), and I straight away fell in love with her illustrations. I started to follow her on Twitter where I've discovered the short videos showing her process. So clever! Also super relaxing. I could watch her illustrating those magical scenes and characters all day! Laura's talent is just so amazing and I've been obsessed with her artworks.

What I love about her work is the fact that it makes me think about all the magical worlds of Studio Ghibli but with her own style and imagination. Some of the characters she paints have a bit of a mystical quality and most of her artworks have such a peaceful, otherworldly feel.

A few examples below!

See what I mean?! Make sure to follow her on Twitter and have a look at her shop! I'm SUPER excited as she's announced that all her Inktober illustrations will be available in an art book at the end of the year. Her originals sold out super quickly and I think this is a brilliant idea if you'd like to have a collection of Laura's work all in one book.

I'd love to know if there are any creatives out there that you admire and would love to be BFF with! In the meantime, I'll try and share a Coup de Coeur every month or so. Keep your eyes peeled ;)

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Something Different...

Happy Monday! Today I thought I'd be sharing a personal project that I've been wanting to work on for a little while now.

I discovered the Japanese anime film 'Wolf Children, Ame & Yuki' a few months ago and I've been very moved by it. Those who know me will already know that I love this type of film and I'm also a huge fan of everything Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, but the atmosphere and the characters were so different from everything I'd already seen that it kind of stuck with me. I felt so inspired that I knew I needed to illustrate what I had in mind, which is something I usually never do.

When thinking about the style and how I wanted to express it, I thought I would need to use a dark colour palette to represent how sad and moving some parts of the film are. It took me a while to take time to work on it purely because it was completely out of my comfort zone and I never work with dark colours and no brief whatsoever. But then I started drawing a basic sketch and felt more confident with my idea.

I started off with Yuki's face and realised that I wanted to show some kind of roughness about it all as I didn't feel that it would be right to show a 'neat' representation of her. So I started to create the shades and bits of colours with some random small lines and it felt right. When I moved on to the Wolf (which is a mix of her and her father), I knew exactly what I was doing then and was very surprised to realise that it didn't take me long to finalise it.

I showed it to Jason very unsure about myself and what I'd done, but as he liked it so much, I thought that I didn't do too bad in the end! The more I look at it, the more I like it and the more it makes me want to carry on. I really want to make some time to create more illustrations like this one!

It really opened my eyes to the fact that I can do different creative things and it would be a shame to stop here ;)

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Wallpaper Giveaway - Create Things & Pay Bills

When Jason and I went freelance last year in the space of two months (yes, we're crazy like that), we knew everything about the challenges it involved and one of them was definitely money. Money might not make you happy, but it pays for your home, bills, food, fuel, and a bunch of useful stuff (thank god we already had our own computers before making this big move).

But because we put enough money aside to prepare for it and that our lifestyle and choices mean that we're the kind of people that don't need much, we definitely didn't want to just concentrate on money.

We're both passionate about our work and really, all we want to do since then is to create things, have happy clients, and essentially, pay our bills. We don't want to be rich, or famous, or have expensive stuff (our home is 50% pre-owned / 50% homemade), we just want to have a life that we enjoy and to put enough money aside to be able to travel from time and time and one day (very far away), buy a house.

I'm sure we're not the only designers out there who think like that so I thought I would make a set of wallpapers to represent this simple, humble thought! I started off with a simple sketch but felt that it was missing something. So when I created it digitally, I went with the flow and had fun adding little elements on the lettering and around it. Hope you like it!

Download:
WHOLE SET // PHONE 1 // PHONE 2

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Wallpaper Giveaway - Summer Love

Hey guys! Were you looking forward to the next wallpaper giveaway?!

July is my birthday month, so I had to create a summer related artwork, representing my love for this sunny and warm month, filled with celebrations and long days at the beach. I always have fond memories of this particular month and even though I'm not super happy to be a year older by the 19th, any excuse to eat more cake and say that I'm wiser is good to me!

I'm going to be 28 years old guys. Now, if you've been following this blog for a while, you must know by now that to me, age is just a number and that what matters is how you feel in your head and your body. But still, this year I've felt a little bit different about my age. I think I'm realising that people see me and Jason as proper adults now... And we don't want to be!! Haha. It's funny how when I was much younger, I always felt that people around 30 years old were totally in control of their life, that they were proper adults. But now that I'm around that age, I don't see myself like that at all! In my head, I'm still 22. To be honest, I don't think it's a bad thing ;)

Anyway, I'm not going to carry on forever with this! There are obviously some highs and lows in our life but right now, I'm just feeling so lucky to be living with my favourite person in the world, doing what I love professionally, and be healthy. Here's to another year!

Download:
PHONE 1 // PHONE 2 // WHOLE SET

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DIY - Mid-Century Inspired TV Stand

Have you ever been swooning over a piece of furniture that you know you'll NEVER be able to afford? I have. Many times. And then you get frustrated because it's so beautiful, and you can't have it, and it would look so perfect in your living room.

Well, when I showed Jason (my DIY master of a boyfriend) the type of mid-century inspired TV stand I would love to have instead of using our poor coffee table, he straight away looked at a couple of websites and realised that there was a very simple (and affordable!) way of doing one yourself.

Today, my friend, I'm going to show you how we did it all!

We took a trip to our local Leroy Merlin and managed to find everything we needed there. We went for the most basic and affordable shelves called Multikaz and thought about how we could customise the whole lot by adding some fancy legs and handles.

If you're not in France, Leroy Merlin is very similar to a B&Q in the UK for example. But I guess you could find this type of basic furniture in various shops, including Ikea probably!

I would just like to add a little note to say that this is not a paid advert whatsoever and we were just lucky to find everything in the same shop!

We started off with the legs. We felt that they would look much better with a darker tint but didn't want to spend too much on wood stain. So Jason found out that we could use acrylic paint and a tiny bit of water to spread on the legs with a piece of sponge.

I already had the paint (and the funny mug thanks to Jason's mum!), so I started playing around with the colours to get a dark brown tint that we were happy with. At the beginning, I put too much water into the mix so the legs were still too light once dry. So I applied another layer, this time using less water, and they were perfect!

A little tip, it was much easier to paint them once the legs were temporarily mounted on the plates ;)

Then we carried on with the doors. We wanted them to be fitted on each side of the shelves and the main thing for us was for them to be painted in a colour that contrasted really well with the white. Introducing: Leftover paint! We already had the dark grey paint from when we were painting our old wooden bed (more here!) and I applied it on the doors without sanding them down. Two layers was perfect!

And here's another tip for you: make sure to elevate them on some kind of box. Way easier to paint like that!

Jason made sure to drill the holes for the handles beforehand though so that once the paint was dry, we could add the handles without worrying about messing it all up.

Then onto the main bit! These shelves were pretty easy to put together, but I thought I would leave Jason to do it, you know, because I'm not very good with that kind of stuff ;)

To get that mid-century vibe on the TV Stand, we placed the legs towards the centre of the shelves. Jason measured accurately each corner to know exactly where to drill the holes to add the legs later on. The clever thing is that even if the bolt in the centre of each leg was too long by a few millimetres and was sticking out the other side, we didn't care much because they were placed just behind where the doors would be, so completely hidden :)

Now to the final touch: The fancy handles! We weren't too sure what to choose whilst in the shop because there were so many good options. But we knew we would want something that stands out and as we thought about our coffee table with its golden legs, we opted for gold/brass round handles that we could twist on their sides.

You need plenty of patience to fit the doors (they thankfully came with all the parts you need to mount them), but once they're in, you're done! Marvellous.

I couldn't finish this post without a Before/After. Have you seen the difference it makes? We absolutely love it. Jason, being a genius, managed to put all his games consoles, phone, etc. behind the doors, and took ages to make sure that we couldn't see the trillions of cables hanging under the stand. Pretty good right?!

We can now use our coffee table as a real coffee table and the stools as real stools. I also painted parts of the stools' legs to customise them a bit. I liked the effect too much not to include them in the photo ;)

I hope you found this step by step tutorial very handy and let me know if you have any questions! Also, sorry for the rubbish photos, but at least it all looks very real (with the mess and everything) haha.

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