10 Years Old

I made my first post on this blog 10 years ago today!
I love blogs. They've changed a lot I think because of how many places there are now to share online and maybe because it became something that could be a job. I don't post as much as I want to because I worry about repeating myself across platforms, because it might be off-putting to people who follow me in more than one place but also because is it a waste of my time to upload things and talk about things in more than one place and then I should probably share where more people are looking if what I'm sharing is somehow linked to work. And I think most of what I have to post now is linked to work because I also wonder if at the minute I'm actually a bit more boring than I used to be and don't have much to share! Or maybe I've just lost the knack for it and I need to find it again. I don't know but I do know blogs feel special and I plan to keep having one.

I think maybe blogs having a smaller audience will help let me just have a place to share and ramble without worrying too much about it and it can be more and more like when I very first started blogging, even before this one, when there weren't established ways for a blog to be, people were just doing whatever they thought was cool. I think it's more common now for people to try and have an "online presence" that fits into certain rules of "successful" (to attract sponsors maybe) and these blogs seem to be easier to come across but don't tend to interest me and it seems harder to find personal blogs because I guess people just use instagram or twitter or tumblr because it's easier?
I wonder if it also has to do with more people being online. I feel like the internet used to be more for the weirdos and now it's for everyone and the average person is not a weirdo so there's going to be more stuff that I find boring and it's just harder to find the thing you like if it's mixed into a bigger pile of stuff than before.
(I'm using weirdo in a very broad sense, covering a variety of weirdo types. I'm not articulate enough to explain myself any better!) (And I'm not saying that if I find it boring it's bad, that's just personal taste.)

I'm not complaining, things change and that's fine. I'd love blogs to have a comeback though, they give me similar feelings to zines. Zines and blogs aren't quite the same but they do have that aspect of being able to just share whatever you like without it being attached to a load of other stuff. How you feel looking at something on a feed is going to be influenced by the other thing you saw a second ago and the thing you're already seeing next, whether you notice it having an influence or not. How you would connect with a post on a blog and the same post on a feed you're scrolling through is different and it's just something interesting to think about.

There are probably loads of active blogs that I would love, I just need to figure out how to find them! Please share yours if you have one! Or point me towards any you like.

Most of my posts on here will be broken now because I was using flickr for hosting my photos and they made changes recently and will have deleted most of my stuff :(
I went through my hard drives though and put together a little 4 x 4 for each year because I love a look back at photos and an anniversary is an obvious time to indulge in it ^-^

Thanks for reading to the end :3

Patchy Mistakes

I've been making some new embroidered patches this week. All of them except the newest one have gone wrong so far but it's ok because I can see why they've gone wrong and I will do them again better.

I have a really hard time doing things if they might go wrong. When it's work, wasted time and wasted materials can matter a lot. If I spend a whole week making mistakes then I haven't made anything I can get paid for. (even when I make lots of good new things I still might not get paid if they don't sell. haha, laugh away the panic.....)
But sometimes I worry so much about getting things wrong that I do nothing and that's so much worse than making mistakes.

I've said that here before I think but I'm saying it again because I'm now actually teaching myself to just do things and see what happens. It's hard to re-train yourself out of bad habits but it's really nice when you start to see it working.
So this week I spent time on these embroideries even when they started to go wrong so I could fully figure out what worked and what didn't and now I'll make some edits to some designs, choose some different threads and make them again and be proud of them.

I'll also be trying out some bonding web stuff (I've forgotten what it's called) to back them with instead of using felt like my other patches. I've never used it before and so need to learn it and also I want to see if it is something that can make my patches be "iron on" instead of "sew on". I'm happy to sew my patches and like that I could take them off and use them somewhere else but I assume a lot of people would prefer iron on? It'd be nice to have it as an option.
I can use the gone wrong embroideries to test the new webbing stuff so when I make mistakes with that it won't matter so much!

I also ordered a couple of coloured fat quarters on ebay, all my patches have been on calico till now, I'm looking forward to trying some coloured backgrounds. See how many mistakes I can make choosing threads to use on them :)

New Growth or something

I just wrote a very long, negative blog post and deleted it because it was not helpful.

I am tired, I have a poorly rat on my shoulder who every time he seems to be better gets worse again, I have eczema in my elbow that won't go away and is sore, I have no money and am in the middle of a creative block that is making me feel awful about myself and I feel utterly useless.

I am tired.

I don't think that talking about the negatives is a bad thing but I do think dwelling on them doesn't help either.

I need to figure out what I can do to make me feel better and focus on that.

What can I get done on the sofa while keeping Sharky company while he's ill.

What can I get done without needing to buy anything.

What can I do to improve my work and share it around online and maybe gain more audience.

I'm not sure I have any answers yet tbh but I need to change the direction of my thoughts. I need to take control, not everything is something I can control but I still have a lot of power over what I can and can't do and I need to figure out the best way to spend my time and how it will help me.

I need to make some positive changes. I'm going to be better.

Hello! I wrote the above last week and never posted it but here it is. I'm still feeling lost but I'm also feeling a bit better than I was. Nothing has really changed except Sharky is staying in the cage much more which makes things easier and although nothing has really changed I feel like I maybe can start changing things. I don't know, sometimes I feel like I'm just going round and round, not getting anywhere but sometimes I feel like maybe I can change that.
I need to get out more. I need to do more. I need to make more. I need to relax more. I just need to live. I let too many days pass me by hoping for better but then I'll run out of days right? Gotta just enjoy what I've got.

PS Bun, Tsundere Dog and Rats Pattern ~ Shop Update

I'm not sure why I hadn't seen a rabbit face in my playstation controllers before now but I'm glad I finally did because I love my PS Bun ^-^
I made PS Bun stickers and to go with them some memory card badges, deco'd with tiny stickers obviously (❁´◡`❁)

This dog looks like they might be a bit tsundere but at least they're giving you a positive message. I love key rings, I have more stuff hanging from my keys than I have actual keys and I love to hang things like this on my bags too and we can all do with seeing more positive messages as we go about our days (・ω・)

And lastly I made a pattern out of all the rats I drew and added it to my redbubble shop. I love using patterns on redbubble, I feel like they suit more of the items better and editing them is less stressful because however they get cropped during manufacture I know it'll still look good!

If you buy anything from me I love to see photos, be sure to tag me @_beckygarratt_ on twitter or instagram and maybe even use #beckygarratt on there too ^-^

A Sort Of List

I have been reading so many comics (21 already this year!) and this week I read Bee and Puppycat vol1, Fruits Basket vol9 and Yostuba&! vol6. I love them all.
Bee and Puppycat has qr codes so you can listen to the music boxes in the story! It's so precious.
Fruits Basket has a new anime coming out this year and it looks beautiful.
Yotsuba honestly makes me think about how I approach my life. She may be a fictional 5 year old but I try to be more like her. Things are hard, I want to spend my time seeing the good and being excited.

Sharky had his check up and has been given the all clear!! It's a chronic condition but for now he's good, which is very good. (I've never used the blogger video uploader before, I wonder if it'll work...)

I drew this PS Bun. Maybe the best pun I will ever come up with.

The weather was really nice today and I was going to go out on my bike but I managed to let all the air out of my back tire and can't figure out how to make the pump work. Never mind, I'm sure there'll be other nice days for bike rides lol.

I'm feeling like a boring little house goblin lately and not in a good way. Need to sort that out.

Desk Mess Is Good

I love to be surrounded by things that I like and my desk is a pretty good example of that. Although this first photo is a bit too many things, there's no space for me lol (＝⌒▽⌒＝) Every now and then I have a big tidy up and make a big clear space on my desk and then just let it fill back up as I work until it's not usable anymore and then I start the cycle again. I like it, it's a good system for me.

I do tidy up at the end of each day. These stickers and pens got put back in their places and mugs get taken downstairs but somehow there's always a few things that get left out.

I love ephemera and bits and bobs and I think that just means I will forever be surrounded by little things that make me feel cosy. One of the constants my whole life is my love for cutting up bits of paper and sticking them down somewhere else. I remember going to the library after school for my half hour of free internet and printing out pictures of my favourite bands, taking them home and pritt sticking them into diaries and notebooks. I think that's just how I want my surroundings to feel, like I've cut out all these things from the world and put them where I like them.

Hearts, Rats and Gacha ~ Shop Update

Some new things are in my shop! These cute heart girls come in two colours and started life as a tiny doodle in my diary at a coffee shop. That sounds like such a normal thing but I actually don't go out much and going out for a drink is a bit of a treat. It reminded me that getting out of the house is actually really important for being creative. I know it's just a simple drawing but something felt different about the process. A change of environment just gets your brain working a bit differently. Being stuck in the house is a bit of an evil circle, I don't go out because I have no money but not going out is maybe holding me back in my work so how will I get money...

I had this gacha idea, doodled it out, worked it up and made the badges all in one day. It's fun to make something quickly without letting it drag on for ages, getting over-thought. These were so difficult to photograph, the colours just wouldn't photograph accurately, I'd get the text right and then the background would be wrong and on and on. I had trouble with the rat sticker photos on the same day, I think the light was just really blue or something? I always feel like my stuff is much better seen irl but how do you get that across in a photo? I will keep practising though!

And some rat stickers! I've wanted to make something with rats for a while but I think I let myself get intimidated by how much I love them and just couldn't get the drawings right but then it just suddenly clicked and I ended up with enough rats for two separate sticker packs and I'm really proud of them.

I'm having some ups and downs but generally I'm feeling pretty good about my work so far this year, I just want to keep making as many things as possible. Let myself do whatever pops into my head without worrying too much about whether it's what I should be making.

Thanks for being here and please check out my shop and remember sharing artist's work is super helpful even if you can't buy anything yourself ^-^

Here's a vlog from when I made the heart twin tails stickers.