Portfolio Update - Quinn's Socks

Hey guys! I'm super pleased to share with you one of the latest children's books I've been working on! Quinn's Socks is a cute story about Quinn, a little boy who loves his colourful socks, playing cricket and spending time with his friends. Melita Cyril, the author, wrote the story in rhymes, which adds a fun touch to the book as children can learn the catchy lines by heart quite easily.

I had a lot of fun creating the characters and the various scenes included in the book! I also had the pleasure of creating the whole layout for the book and a bunch of collateral elements Melita needed to promote it. Make sure to have a look on Q for Quinn's website right here to learn more about the project and to buy a copy of the book (and some socks)!

You can also check out my website for more photos of the book :)

Betws-y-Coed & Plas Cadnant

Aren't these the prettiest flowers?! I'm so happy that Spring finally feels like it's here and although the photos I'm sharing with you are from early April and Spring definitely wasn't around much, I couldn't help but have some bright flowers as my first photo :)

When we visited Jason's family for a few days in North Wales before driving the Capri back to France, Jason's mum planned a few things to do outdoors. She remembered how much Jason and I love Betws-y-Coed anytime of the year so we spent a couple of hours over there. We also visited the beautiful garden in Plas Cadnant (which was almost empty!). More photos below!

It was so nice to be back there, even for just a couple of hours, and I enjoyed walking along the same footpaths Jason and I used to take all the time. Jason's brother and his girlfriend were with us too so it was lovely to have some quality time all together.

We stopped at our favourite café the Alpine Coffee Shop where I had a delicious Welsh Rarebit (posh cheese on toast) with bacon and Jason had yet another burger. It's just his favourite food, along with pizza, so what can you do? The moment he sees it on the menu, he has to have it ;)

The day after we explored the hidden gardens at Plas Cadnant just me, Jason and his mum. There wasn't many people around, probably because the weather wasn't the best, and it was actually very refreshing and relaxing to be almost on our own. I was stopping every few minutes, camera in hand, taking photos of all the colourful flowers I could find. The place made me think of a smaller version of Bodnant Garden but in Menai Bridge! The tickets felt a bit expensive knowing that the gardens are not that big but we still had a great time :)

A (rainy) day in Dublin!

Hey guys! It's time for me to share all about our week off earlier this month with Jason's family! Our holiday consisted of many parts: first, we were staying at my parents' for a couple of days to celebrate my sister's 25th birthday, then we hopped on a plane to visit Jason's family in North Wales for five full days and left with the Capri to the Cotswolds before taking the ferry in Portsmouth and drive to our house! Oh yes, we didn't really have a minute to ourselves but we had such a good time. It really felt like it lasted forever though and I have so many photos to share with you!

Just after we arrived, Jason's parents organised a day trip to Dublin by taking the ferry from Holyhead, which was only 25mins away from their house. Handy! It was quite a long day as the ferry takes 3h to arrive and we of course took the first one available in the morning and the last one running in the evening. We didn't go to bed until 1.30am but it was all worth it :)

Here are a few photos!

We arrived around lunchtime in the rain, and it just didn't stop during the whole time we were there so we didn't spend much time outside! However, it was a good excuse to visit the many galleries dotted around Dublin.

We first stopped at the Dublin City Gallery where I completely fell in love with the impressive architecture of the building and the tall elegant room with pastelly blue on its walls (as you can see!). They really had a good mix of artists and types of art and it was quite refreshing to find very traditional paintings alongside contemporary and abstract ones.

Also, we loved the fact that they had an exhibition about Francis Bacon and his way of working. They recreated the entirety of his studio as a perfect replica of how it was when Bacon left it. Quite amazing!

Jason and I started to feel pretty hungry so we took his parents to a very familiar place: Grand Canal Dock. This is where the festival OFFSET was taking place about 6 years ago and where we started to really get to know each other. Memories! We started dating just after going to this festival and the rest is history (haha). Anyway, we remembered that there was a really nice place called Fresh which is a supermarket/deli where you can get pretty much anything you fancy. It was a hit! I had the most delicious salmon bagel there.

Once our bellies were full, we headed to the National Gallery of Ireland which was also really good. Some of the paintings were much bigger than in the previous gallery and we could really see the details up close. I mean, how amazing are the details on the pieces of jewellery and clothes from one of the photos above? Amazing. We found plenty of art pieces that were really inspirational too and it's nice sometimes to look at different types of art that you wouldn't usually be interested in.

The Natural History Museum was close by (and free!) so we went inside briefly and were lucky enough to be leaving it just when loads of school groups were entering! I always have mixed feelings going to these places because yes, it's really interesting and you might see some species of animal that you didn't know about, but at the same time, I feel a bit sad seeing these poor animals that most of the time were killed on purpose in order to be stuffed and exhibited there. Oh well! I loved the building though and I have to say, the exhibition was very well thought of.

After that we made our way to Temple Bar (obviously) and had a drink and some food at The Old Storehouse, which was delicious, whilst listening to a guy singing some Irish songs! It was so lovely that I didn't want to leave but we had to get back to the ferry at a certain time and it would have been a shame to be late and miss it!

Hope you liked this little guide :). The two galleries we went to were also free and we used DoDublin to get around town. A bit expensive but very handy when it's raining all day ;)

Happy Easter!

Is everyone looking forward to ALL the chocolate?! I know I am! Although to be honest, I didn't wait until this weekend to crack open the bag of Milka mini eggs!

Life has been a bit a bit tough lately and I try and concentrate on the positive around me instead of feeling like everything is going wrong, but honestly, why is all the rubbish/stressful stuff happening at the same time?? It's like the universe is trying to send me a message ha.

Anyway, Jason and I are focusing on all the good moments together, the projects that we love working on and the amazing families that we have (oh and food! We're having all the comfort food). We keep telling ourselves that life is too short to worry about "the little things", and with a couple of our family members currently in hospital, we realise this even more and feel lucky to be healthy.

So, to finish on a more positive and uplifting note:
Enjoy this weekend with your loved ones, eat too much chocolate, laugh until your belly hurts and give extra hugs to everyone around you! We all have our worries and things going wrong in our lives but at the end of the day, we just need to concentrate on all the things we're grateful for, with a big smile on our faces :)