Behind the Scenes - April

And we're back on the road

Namibia

By the time this reaches you we’ll be in Namibia, Mr Dean is taking part in the Namibia edition of the Racing the Planet series of 4 Desert races 28th April - 4th May, he’s no. 95 and if you’re interested, you can track his progress here

This is Mr. Dean on top of a Namib desert dune back in 2017, the last time we were there.

Whilst he’s running through the desert I’ll be volunteering on the race and will be dishing out water and cheers at the checkpoints, camping out in the desert, moving with the race and not having a shower or access to the outside world for a whole week. With about a week to go, I start to question why I’m doing this and perhaps I’d prefer to stay at the hotel for the week instead! But then I remember that I laugh the hardest, I meet the most amazing and sometimes the most crazy people and I’ve made friends for life at these events, purposefully putting myself out of my comfort zone brings great rewards and once I remind myself of this I get quite excited about what the next race will bring.

Me, helping at the competitor check in, also back in 2017

Theres no time for sketching or painting anything during the race week but I hope to have something in my sketchbook either side of the event to share with you next month. The race starts at 8am tomorrow (we’re an hour ahead GMT +1)

Sketchbook

Last month, I only had one person download the phone wallpaper so I think really that idea has perhaps run its course, instead, I thought you might like a little look inside my sketchbook.

I’m fascinated by other people’s sketchbooks, so let me know what you think, would you like a longer version of this?

There is some commentary too, so sound on…or off, I don’t mind!

The Shop

Sadly the shop will not be reopening exactly like it used to be. I’ll no longer be selling cards and coasters directly from my website.

I’m assuming you read last month’s post, if not click here. While it was great to offer to send out individual cards, my warehouse probably wasn’t earning enough from me for it to be worth their while. Sadly their service levels dropped off a cliff towards the end too leaving me and therefore my customers with a bad experience and with me really not wanting to pursue a replacement warehouse (well not for now anyway)

You can always buy my cards from Thortful (I am paid a royalty amount for every card sold) and I’ll be featuring some more of my current stockists over the coming months where you can also buy my cards if they happen to be local to you.

So the shop will be re-opening but only to sell products fulfilled by my most trusted partners, which are T-Shirts, Art Prints and Dicky Bags too, fulfilled directly by them from Cornwall.

The shop will reopen on Sunday 12th May

Commission news

I’ve been working my way through my commissions list. I’ll be closing them down on 31st July this year

There’s nothing to show just yet, all of my recent paintings are surprise gifts so sharing will have to wait. That also means if you want anything in time for Christmas, please book it with me before the end of July.

Something new

In the meantime I’ve been writing up all my memories, hints and tips for getting started as a Greeting Card designer/publisher, these posts will not be clogging up your inbox as

a. there are a lot of them

and

b. you might not be interested (I’m aware a lot of you are here for the dogs, art and the travel, you might not want to start up a greeting card business yourself!)

Instead, I am publishing them directly to the Substack platform and you can find them all grouped together here, I’ll pop a link to them every month just in case you would like to read them or you can check my publication on Substack to see for yourself anytime.

All the greeting card posts on my main publication page on Substack

If they happen to take off, I may move them into a publication all of their own, it’s an experiment for now and I’ll let you know how it goes. If you know of anyone who may be interested please share this with them.

Think of me as I wake up in the desert tomorrow morning on day 1 of 6 showerless days, wet wipes at the ready! See you at the end of May (if not before) with a full report on how it all went.