It's Boys Week! New Digital Stamps for you :)

Hello everyone!

I've been neglecting being in touch with you all due to (are you ready for all the excuses?!) kids being at home from school, feeling a bit manky and then being snowed under with this new book. Plus it's been hard to write a jolly blog post while the news has been full of such awful scenes - our thoughts obviously go out to everyone affected by the riots.

Back to happier things.

We have two lovely new stamps for you. I've been asking around to see what kind of digital stamps people wanted and it was clear that something for the boys was high up on the list. So as I love my football, the first one is a little boy playing footy. You can colour the kit up to match any team you want and create a card for lots of different ages. I took this design from an Arsenal watercolour painting I recently sold in the shop...

click picture to see in Jellypark Store

Secondly I thought were all in need of a little superhero. Every time I log onto my online bank account I see a photo of a little boy dressed as a super hero which gave me the inspiration - oh and I love, love, LOVE the cards the Design Team made with this one!!

click picture to see in Jellypark Store

Hope you like the digital stamps, ideas for new ones are always very welcome - just add a comment below or email me at jellypark@live.co.uk.

Make sure you have a look at the challenge blog as Jennifer has set another brilliant craft challenge that we hope lots of you will fancy joining in with - you just might win a prize!

The new book is coming along, I've just broken off from painting one of the illustrations to write this blog, but as always deadlines are tight so having to work hard at the moment. I can't show you the pictures yet but I might give you some sneak peeks soon :)

I have some news coming up in the next few days of some rather special stamps you might be interested in so pop back and find out how you can help out a very good cause and get yourself some exclusive stamps too.

Take care everyone - keep finding time to craft!

A New Painting For You!

A nice new painting for you in the Jellypark Store, this sweet pair of bunnies are going off on an adventure in their hot air balloon!

Here is some detail - a little bug watching them pass overhead...

I treated myself to a new set of watercolours as they were on a special offer and I needed a lot of new pans and it was cheaper buying them this way. I have a nice new book to illustrate from a UK company so I thought I would do a few watercolours with the new set to get my hand in...

Jellypark Magazine - Issue 2

Open publication - Free publishing - More card making

It's a Jellypark Friday!

Well it's come round fast but we are ready for the next digital stamp release, ready to announce the winners of our very first challenge on the Jellypark Friends blog...and ready to start the next one!

We have two new images going into the store today, a cute princess and one for all the grandads! The princess one is taken from a one off painting I did for a friend a while ago now, it was a little watercolour with a castle in the background that she wanted for her daughter's bedroom.

This grandad stamp was inspired by a character I created for a story I illustrated about the relationship between a rather quirky but sweet grandad and his little granddaughter. He looks like he would be fun doesn't he?! 

I've started adding little extra elements and greetings onto some stamps, let me know if you think they are a good idea or you would rather I just kept it to one image! I am relying on you to tell me what works best to get these digital stamps just how you want them :)

Well the Design Team have been hard at work again, pop over to the Challenge Blog to see the cards they have made with these new stamps - I promise you they are really good again! I'm really loving what they have done with the Grandad one in particular, brilliant colouring of the image and great choices of papers and colours...proud of this team!

There you will also see the winners names of our first challenge 'Christmas in July' (can you believe how many people entered?) so congratulations to them plus you can see our brand new challenge and some of the DT's ideas to get you going.

 Go on - come and join in!

New at Jellypark - branching out into digital scrapbooking

I told you there would be more new product lines coming! There doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day at the moment, so many projects on the go. The Jellypark digital stamps have been such a success that it's now the plan to also develop a range of digital scrapbooking supplies as well.

Since getting into the world of digital crafts, I have been blown away by the size of the digital crafting community and the range of material on offer. I'm hoping that my digiscrap line will add something a bit different though with a much more illustrated style rather than the slick vector designs that are often used. We'll just have to wait and see if that's what people want!

Here are the first 2 set that have gone up in the Jellypark store. Each set contains several images, each saved to a separate PNG file at 300dpi and emailed out in a zip file. My goodness, that last sentence would have sounded like gibberish to me a couple of years ago, look how far this computer luddite has come!

I think I'm going to have fun designing some more of these!

So pleased to see loads of entries for our 'Christmas in July' on the Jellypark Challenge Blog - still plenty of time to grab your free snowman digital stamp though and get your entry in. Don't forget there are prizes to be won!

Our Design Team have been working away and are getting ready for the next issue of digital stamps. They get the new stamps early and are sworn to secrecy while they create some brilliant cards to inspire you. Their beautiful designs will be revealed along with the sparkly new stamps being released into the store on the 29th July (I've seen some of their cards already and you are going to LOVE them, can't wait to show you)

Winding down to the school summer holidays here, the kids are a bit tired and hyped up as we have just a few more days left. Love, love, LOVE the summer hols, no getting up early, no packed lunches, no uniforms - lazy days!

Now remind me I said that when we are five weeks in, the kids are bored, fighting with each other again and we are counting the days until we can pack them back off to school again...

Do you Doodle?

I am a serial doodler, give me a pencil and a an old envelope and I can keep myself happy for ages. There is something so relaxing about doodling away with no reason or end in plan, just going where the pencil takes you.

Emma Stacey won the National Doodle Day competition in March

I tend to always start with faces which then become odd characters, which in turn blend into patterns and shapes until the page is merged into one big doodle. Sometimes out of doodles come ideas for illustrations but often as not they are just random bits of nothing with no purpose.

I'm working on the interactive book app again at the moment and, as with most projects, I started with a more directed kind of doodle, a page filled with scribbles of possible ideas and notes. I know it's not true doodling but it's a nice relaxing part where imagination can run wild and there is no pressure to get it right or wrong at this stage.

doodling while thinking of ideas for the new interactive book yesterday

I try to encourage my kids to doodle sometimes rather than always produce a finished picture. As they get older they can be far too hard on themselves when their ideas don't come out quite as they wanted on the paper, when younger they were simply just happy just to experiment. We lose that as we get older and get frustrated if we don't produce a finished image we think is 'good enough', it's nice sometime to take that restriction away from ourselves and just draw for no more reason than to make some interesting patterns and marks on the paper.

Look, it's even good for your brain:

According to a study published in the scientific journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, doodling can aid a person's memory by expending just enough energy to keep one from daydreaming, which demands a lot of the brain's processing power, as well as from not paying attention. Thus, it acts as a mediator between the spectrum of thinking too much or thinking too little and helps focus on the current situation. The study was done by Professor Jackie Andrade, of the School of Psychology at the University of Plymouth, who reported that doodlers in his experiment recalled 7.5 pieces of information (out of 16 total) on average, 29% more than the average of 5.8 recalled by the control group made of non-doodlers.

So there you go, lots of reasons to keep on doodling!

It's another BIG Friday at Jellypark - are you ready for this?

Hold onto your hats, it's a huge Friday here at Jellypark as the Design Team reveal their amazing designs using the two new digital stamps we are launching in store today, the Challenge Blog is buzzing with it's very first challenge and the online Jellypark Magazine has arrived!

click here to find this new stamp in store

click here to find this new stamp in store

Where do I start?! The Design Team has been busily meeting up in their Yahoo group, getting to know each other and loading up all their creations. I've been itching to show you their work so let me give you a list of their blogs for you to pop along and admire their beautiful Jellypark cards:

Diane

Suzie

Ruth

Mel

Jennifer

Lisa

Tracey

Now on to the Challenge Blog's very first ever challenge - 'Christmas in July'. Just click on the image below and you will be taken to a Winter Wonderland as our Design Team kick start the challenge with their brilliant designs. Pick up your FREE digital snowman stamp and just get creating - love to see lots of you joining in!

And finally, we now have an online Jellypark Magazine where we will be featuring new products in the store, finding out more about the Design Team, giving creative ideas and tutorials for your craftmaking and having special offers and competitions. We will be featuring cards and other creations made by our lovely customers so make sure you send us pictures and links to your work - you never know we might just do a special feature on you!

Our Lovely New Jellypark Magazine!

Open publication - Free publishing - More art