I have a new website (& blog)!

Hey everyone! The cat is out of the bag: I (finally) have a new website! And with it, comes a shiny new blog too, where I'll be posting from time to time about my freelancing life and things that caught my eye. I might post some life updates too and share photos of places I've been because I do love sharing these. The thing is, I want my new blog to be a little more professional and in line with my website, and I grew a bit tired of sharing snippets of my life over here purely because I'm already doing it on Instagram via stories! You must have noticed that I've hardly posted on the blog since the beginning of the year anyway ;)

I'm leaving this one live because I really want people to be able to come back to it whenever they feel like it or if there are any blog posts that they want to refer back to. Plus, I've got all these wallpaper giveaways that I want to keep available :)

So if you'd like to see the new website, it's right HERE. And make sure to follow me on Instagram for some day to day updates, behind the scenes and work in progress!

Thanks for everything guys and if you've been following me since the beginning of this blog, then you're truly a rock star!

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The past 3 months!

Hello, it's me! I can't believe I haven't written anything on the blog for almost three months! I think I've been so busy with work and personal life that the blog was the least of my worries haha. To be honest, I feel that people don't really read blog posts anymore and are more eager to have a look on Insta stories instead (ahem, I do this too). BUT, I like to share things with you guys and a blog post is great for doing little résumés of our life in general so I felt it was a good time to let you know what I've been up to since mid-February!

Well first, let me show you the amazing brunch we had at the Café des Orfèvres on the 17th of February! If you remember well, I created the whole brand for them last year and since then, every time we visit Vannes we try to make a stop at the café to eat some delicious treats. This brunch was just so good and it was super nice and sunny in Vannes, which was a bonus!

Life has been good the past three months, although a bit stressful with work but it's all fine in the end! Stress is sometimes part of work life purely because of the type of projects we take on and poor Jason was very very busy at one point with clients that kept coming back to him for more! We feel so lucky, and it's truly amazing to have regular clients coming back to us, but we also need to be careful not to go down the burn-out route and find the right balance. It seems to be a recurrent problem for freelancers!

That said, I was lucky enough to work on some very cool projects (one of them I can't share with you yet but is probably the most important project I've ever worked on in my career!). I collaborated on some more Lord of The Rings and Harry Potter inspired designs for Not Very Lady Like, created a box of inspiring and educational flash cards for Choulala Box (coming very soon!), and helped Innersense Organic Beauty raise awareness for Williams Syndrome Month by creating a hand-drawn lettering that was printed on t-shirts, mugs and make-up bags.

Oh and I've also released two new products on my Creative Market shop! The Magical Forest illustrations seem to be a hit so far ;)

I'm also taking part in the Instagram challenge 'Bon Voyage Week' and so far so good! I'm a bit overwhelmed by the responses I've had so far and it feels great to get so many nice comments on the fun and colourful illustrations I created for this challenge. It does show the importance of doing some personal work alongside client work. Check them out!

On the personal side, the weeks have been flying by to be honest but we've tried to take our time and relax as much as we could whenever possible. We visited my family a couple of times, explored other parts of Bretagne when the weather permitted it and had one or two VERY relaxed weekends, walking by the river, cooking delicious meals and playing Super Mario Odyssey on the Switch ;) Some photos below!

Tasty crêpes and a walk on Guidel Plage:

Perfect day out at the Domaine de Trévarez (jaw-dropping sight):

We also decided to take the day off for Jason's birthday (which landed on a Friday) and visited the Parc de Branféré! I loved walking around that parc and realising that all the animals were not stuck in cages and that a lot of them were completely free to roam around people.

AND, last but not least, I finally got my first tattoos ever!! I created the illustrations based on two of my favourite Miyazaki movies (can you guess which ones?) last Summer and waited a long time before starting to contact some tattoo artists that would be up for it. I was SO scared of the pain and honestly thought that I would be in agony, but overall it wasn't bad at all! Yes, it hurts, but I honestly feel way more pain waxing my bikini line!

I'm so pleased I did it and I'm already planning my other two (it will be a set too)! I'm also planning on taking some better photos than these ones with a better light and setting ;)

Hope you're all doing well and you enjoyed seeing this little recap!

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Life Lately... 2019 so far!

Well hello guys! No, I'm not dead! I just took a very long break from the blog and let me say this: the past month and a half has gone by in a blur.

This year didn't quite start like I hoped it would. It was a bit slow and painful to be honest! We came back from North Wales at the beginning of January and went back to work on the 7th. I think it didn't help me to think that a week had passed already and I hadn't done anything in particular. I was putting quite a lot of pressure on myself to achieve more with my work at the end of last year (still kinda am) and because of this, I felt even worse about starting work again!

Getting back into the swing of things was a bit hard and I mainly felt like hibernating haha. But then I started to feel a lot more motivated mid-January and all of sudden, loads of ideas for personal projects came. Since then, I've been struggling to find a balance between client work (which really is the most important and pays the bills), my personal projects (which are important too as there are so many things I'd like to do!) and my private life (my poor husband and I are not having a lot of time to relax together lately...).

So I've been fighting against time the past month, trying to do everything whilst keeping a schedule that means I won't end up with burnout! I keep thinking: How do people with kids manage? Honestly though, we're working so much that when we're not working, we'd barely have the time or energy to look after a child.

We love to take some time during the weekend to go for a walk, get some fresh air, discover a new part of Bretagne and eat something nice along the way. These moments just the two of us are always so good and we definitely feel like we need more of this and less of work. But you know what, we love what we do so sometimes it's hard to switch off, and when we do, if I'm still at home, I'll find a way to get my iPad and sketch some ideas. Funny isn't it?! It's very hard to have a good balance, but all that said, I'm the happiest I've ever been for a while and it must be that we're doing something right :)

A few photos below!

From top to bottom: Afternoon shopping and bagels in Lorient / Winter walk in Pont-Augan / Sunny day in Guéméné-sur-Scorff where we visited Les Bains de La Reine and discovered the castle walls / Gloomy Saturday spent well in Domaine de Kerguéhennec

I've been creating more for social media as well, which has been really good for me as I participated in the #kidsincolorz challenge earlier this month and absolutely loved it! I have more ideas about templates and freebies (wallpapers mainly) that I'm planning on sharing on my stories and adding on my highlights as I'm probably not going to do wallpaper giveaways over here now. I'm still working on getting my new website right but I'm still at the stage of sketches and I only just started to create some custom typography for it, so you'll have to wait a little longer to see it!

You might have noticed as well that I've finally opened my Creative Market shop! Something I've been thinking about doing for a very long time. I've realised mid-last year that having a stationery shop on Etsy wasn't really working for me anymore. The main issue being the fact that I couldn't invest anymore in printing more goods that I wasn't sure were going to sell. I've been having a massive sale on Etsy since then as I would love for my little greeting cards to not gather dust in the spare room! On top of that, Etsy has upped their charges (which means that I'm loosing a bigger chunk on my profit) and shipping from France is getting ridiculously expensive. I mean, people don't want to pay shipping costs that are actually more expensive than what they're buying right?!

So I decided to take a step back, have a real good think about what would make me really happy to create and how I could potentially sell it, and I came up with the conclusion that digital goods was the best idea. There's no need for shipping or paying for prints up front not knowing if it will have any success, and I get to create illustrations and graphics that other creatives will use, which is kind of cool! I'm still at early stages as I have just a couple of bundles available at the moment, but I'm planning on adding more bit by bit :)

So that's pretty much it guys! Things are going well and we're happy with where we are at the moment, but we keep in mind that there's always room for improvement ;)

I'm so grateful that I get to live from my passion and for Valentine's Day yesterday, I decided to give a big shout out to all my followers. I wanted to send my love to each and every one of you that have been sticking around, following my adventures, supporting me and my work, and motivating me in my every day life <3

I hope you've liked this little catch up, and make sure to follow me on Instagram if you'd like to see what I'm up to!

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Le Manoir de Correc

Last weekend we were lucky enough to be able to visit the private manor house called Manoir de Correc in Saint-Gelven, thanks to the autumnal festival Le Bel Automne that's been happening all around the Côtes d'Armor area in Bretagne this year!

The owners themselves did the guided tour (well the husband mainly) and their story is quite amazing! His wife spotted that manor house in 1991 when it was in a shockingly terrible state and they still went on and bought it. Since then, they've been working very hard to restore this traditional Breton building built in the 16th century to its well-deserved glory, and when you see the photos when it was bought, you realise the amount of work they've had to do! The gardens were completely overgrown, parts of the walls were falling apart, the roof was in a very bad state and the wood beams inside were almost all rotten...

They were a lovely couple and I don't think they realised just how many people would turn up so they were a bit taken aback! We loved going around the house and learning about the work they've had to do in each room and outside. You can see photos of some of the rooms below :)

They were quite elderly people and the husband even joked about the fact that the manor house might not even be finished by the time they pass away! I have to say though, they've done an amazing job already and I could tell that they love their house and they're passionate about the whole process. I guess you have to be when you're starting this kind of project ;)

It was such a great afternoon, the air was cold and crisp and the trees were different shades of oranges and yellows everywhere around the building. We had a break after the guided tour and ate some yummy crêpes outside (there was a little food stand for the occasion).

Towards the end of the day, as people started to go, we spotted that a classical band was getting ready to play inside the house so we had a look and managed to grab some seats before it started. We didn't regret it! Although it's not the type of music I would usually listen to, it always feels different when you hear it live and the fact that we were in that beautiful building made it quite special :)

We came home at the end of the day when it was pitch black, very content of our well-spent afternoon.

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Vive les Mariés !

Aaaaaah! It was almost two months ago, but I still remember this very happy day vividly! From getting ready early in the morning as we were all in my parents' house (with only one bathroom!), to the mad rush to get to the Mairie, the ceremony where I cried like a baby and of course the rest of this amazing day at the Domaine... Pure joy!

We got married in the morning at the Mairie in Bouguenais (where my parents live and where I grew up) which is very similar to a registry office in the UK. It was perfect, just 11 of us and 'Uptown Funk' from Bruno Mars blasting out before and after the ceremony. As we wanted it to be a bit more personal, we asked to each do a little speech before the exchange of the rings and I'm so glad we did! My dad filmed it all and we haven't had the chance to see it yet, but it's a good thing I did my speech first as the moment Jason started his I was crying so much that I wouldn't have been able to do mine after haha. His words were so beautifully written and I was already very emotional of course, so I couldn't avoid it. Never mind the beautiful make-up my sister did!

Straight after the Mairie, we headed off to the Domaine de Rochevilaine, in Bretagne, to have our delicious meal and spend some time all together. We were lucky enough to have the sun out most of the day so it was perfect for the photos! We didn't hire a photographer so my dad took most of them on our camera and of course we managed to get more photos from everybody else. We didn't mind of course and had a lot of fun finding places to pose, even to the point of climbing over rocks with me being completely barefoot!

I can safely say that it was just perfect and Jason and I were so happy about it all. It felt very special indeed to share this great day with our closest family.

As a wedding gift, my parents booked a room at the Domaine for the night so when everybody left in the early evening, we went up to our room (with a beautiful view on the sea!), had a shower, and headed to the swimming pool in the luxury spa! The whole pool area was open to guests so of course we had to take advantage of it ;). We finished the day with another lovely meal at the restaurant (Jason still remembers the 18 year aged Whisky he had!).

In the morning, we had our breakfast sent to our room and we were lucky enough to have a massage booked just before going. It was heaven! Although I'd say the only downside is that we are not used to any sort of luxury like this and most of the time we felt like we definitely didn't belong there, but hey ho, it didn't stop us from enjoying it!

It was the most simple wedding of all time probably, but it was perfection for us, and we are now proud to be Mr and Mrs Chevalier-Roberts :)

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