When I was going through my bookmarks for my monthly update, I realised I had bookmarked a whole load of great advice, so here it all is together. Inspiring stuff!

- Melody Miller posting about the long road to success is so spot-on – people really have an idea that success happens overnight. It DOES of course, but usually to people who have put in years of work in preparation.

- Lara Cameron on the self-perpetuating myth of successful creative business owner with perfect life, family and home (she forgot the red shoes). High five! More honesty from creative bloggers please. We’re all human.

- Crafting an MBA on how products are never ‘finished’ and you need to give up perfection and get on with it. “You can’t profit from ideas. You profit from execution”. Damn straight.

- Lizzy House at WhipUp – great tips on creating your own niche in a saturated industry (fabric design), but these tips are universal.

- George Monbiot’s career advice. Amazing advice – these are words to live by. If you want a job doing something then start doing it instead of waiting for your dream opportunity to arrive. It seems so obvious but so few people are willing to make the leap. This is also universal and what I started doing a while back – want to be a fabric designer? Make a collection on Spoonflower. Want to design more fun websites? Redesign your website in a hyper-kawaii style = no more enquiries about boring sites. Once you’ve proved you can do something, people will want more and be willing to pay you for it. Plus, for creatives, the best bit of doing it for yourself is you get to keep all the profits for yourself!

(And the Nice Advice postcards are by hellojenuine. I have the do something excellent one on my wall)

I promised ages ago I would share my original spooky wooky doodles so here you are! This is a page from a notebook I had with me when I went to Oban for my dad’s birthday last Summer. We spent a fair amount of time on ferries and much smaller boats so I imagine my train of thought was boats >  ships in bottles > pirates > ghost ships > mad scientist. Obviously.

Also Zelda of course, which has entire sidequests involving capturing things in bottles. I have never really gotten over the moment when the Wind Waker game made us realise that capturing fairies in bottles wasn’t fun for them. Sadface!

Here are photos of some of the zines made at the Zine Workshop. They were all amazing. Above is Jen‘s which she made on the train to Glasgow!

Bronwen made her first ever zine, on the subject of things she is unable to throw away. I think this has the makings of a full length zine :)

Neil made a super cute comic zine about things to do if you’re a ghost.

Aurora was the only one to use kraft paper and made an awesome zine of gestures. I think we all learned a lot from this one!

And Emma made two zines! All about the things she loves about Japan.

I also loved this zine which was made for her daughter who really wants a dog. Sorry, I forgot your name! Great use of all the materials.

This one is by Douglas. Not everyone managed to finish their zines but I think everyone was inspired to continue zinemaking. We used the 8 page booklet fold to keep things simple. There’s a video here which I think shows how to do it.

Lots more photos of these zines and others over at Flickr. If you’d like to make a zine then don’t forget to sign up for the Zine Challenge, and there are still some free zines left – see my previous post for details.

Oh, and I didn’t make a zine. After doing nothing but make, think and talk zines for the previous 5 days I was all zined out! Got lots of plans for new zines though.

Ha! How much fun am I having with Hipstamatic? This neat little app lets you turn your iPhone camera into one of those old-skool wide format vintage cameras. You even get a selection of lenses, films and flashes to get that perfect arty scratched up photo to show off to your hipster friends. You can also buy add-on packs if the default lenses don’t quite do it for you.

I love this app partly because it does take awesome photos but probably also because this must be killing those elitist photographers who think anyone with a digital camera should be shot. Mwahaha. Expect lots of these to crop up on my Flickr.

Hey. remember my Zine Challenge? If not, I challenged myself and some creative friends to make a zine this year (or, um FIVE if you’re me). Well, someone finally did it!

I got one of these lovelies in the post a few weeks ago from Jen aka hellojenuine. Not only has she managed to be the first (and so far only) one of us to get a zine out but it’s full of her lovely illustrations and with a gocco printed cover to boot.

She’s also just opened up shop on Etsy where I was delighted to make the first purchase of these awesome Nice Advice postcards. Unfortunately, not only are they so awesome I am never sending them to anyone but they’re so prettily packaged I haven’t been able to bring myself to even open them yet. I should though, so I can put a couple in my ever changing desk frame.

Anyway, I heartily recommend you pop over to her Etsy shop and get yourself something too.

The other good news is that I have just about finished ONE of my zines, so hopefully I’ll get that out before the end of the year. So, only four more and load of patterns to do by January…

I’ll also sneak in a little reminder to – Alice of Peapods, Elise of Argyle Whale
and Kim of Madness of Many – I would still love you all to make a zine.

(All photos by Jen!)

DaWanda is probably my favourite of all the marketplace sites I sell on so I’m extra-glad about their new offer. All this week, if you buy from a shop for the first time, you’ll get 15% off your order!

Obviously, you can choose something from my shop, but you might be surprised how many of your favourite Etsy sellers are on DaWanda too, not to mention lots of Europeans who don’t sell elsewhere. Go have a look!

As an extra bonus, every order I get from DaWanda this week will get a free Cakeify postcard.

In other news, I am a bit sunburnt and my purse is a lot fuller after a lovely Saturday doing Bungo in the Back Lanes. We basically set up in the back garden of  GCM member Rosie and then sat around in the sunshine selling stuff. Lovely!

I won’t be doing any more markets until August so that gives me some time to play with new product ideas and build up my stock. I have lots of ideas too so watch this space.