Around the beginning of March, I really started to worry about the Coronavirus. It was a scary time of not knowing what was happening, how bad things would get and what the future held. And then the lockdown happened.
So far, I have been very fortunate. We have had no illness, and very few cases and deaths in my region, so far. But it has affected my life, personally, mentally, physically, financially, socially… pretty much in every way that I can think of. The lockdown caused my part time job to put me on furlough, not ideal, but at least I had a small income. I lost several projects due to the companies/organisations having to re-organise events and services, or close for the lockdown altogether. I have not been able to pick up much new work due to the lockdown either.
It has not been easy, being in lockdown with a small child, trying to stay safe, keep ourselves occupied and getting on with life, and I have found myself gaining weight… and having good days and bad days, but on the whole, we are all okay! There has been much gardening, cleaning, a bit of baking, fixing, hair dyeing and Netflix!
I decided early on that the best use of what time I have when not looking after my 2 year old, would be to keep myself amused with craft projects, learn skills and to improve my business, so that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve knitted a hat, a pair of gloves and nearly finished a scarf, made birthday cards and some lettering and drawing projects, made some scrubs for the NHS and care homes in the area, dyed my hair blue and purple, made a birthday cake, cookies and cupcakes. I even made a window decoration to show our support for the NHS – a giant rainbow mandala on my living room window out of chalk markers (that took a whole day…)
I was very pleased with the rainbow window… here it is in it’s full glory!
So, back to the work side of things… I have been in business as a self employed freelance Graphic Designer for 10 years this month. There’ll be more about that soon, I will be writing a post about how’s it been, what I’ve achieved and what I hope to do in the future in the next few weeks.
I’ve been working my way through some Udemy courses, drawing, painting and calligraphy in particular, as well as. a Centre of Excellence course in Calligraphy. Here’s a few images of the work so far, and I’ll write posts as and when I finish them.
This has fed in to some ideas for more products for Sunshine and Shenanigans, and I’m hoping to spruce up the store in the next month. I’ve also been going through my site, and have new work to upload, I had gotten a little behind this year, so I’ll be posting more soon. I am also going to give the website a bit of a spruce up (I’ve spring cleaned and decorated everything else so why not!) so it may be down for a few hours here and there…! And of course, I have my monthly art project, painting the full moons, which I’ll post about here soon.
So, despite the lockdown, I’ve been keeping busy. And as things hopefully improve, I’ll hopefully be back to work a little more. In the meantime, stay safe and look after each other and yourselves, and see you all soon.