There is the smallest possibility that I am spread too thin these days – I haven’t posted on here since JUNE 2023. It’s now June 2025… oops. It’s been on my list for all that time but I just haven’t found the time and the oomph at the same time!
Not for lack of wanting to, and I have been both stuck in writer’s block and trying to write across my other sites in that time… but I miss blogging for blogging’s sake. Just recording my life, musing on things, saving inspiration and having it all there to look back on months and years later.
What’s brought this nostalgia fit on? I searched for the “Secret” chocolate bar of the 90s after a conversation the other day and found that my own blog post on here is one of the top results. And then found the how it is made thread I’d linked to from an ex-Rowntrees employee, and fell down the rabbit hole all over again.
When I emerged, I remembered why I fell in love with blogging 21+ years ago – because it’s a digital scrapbook of a life well lived.
And of course now I’m here I can’t remember what has happened in the last couple of years to update you on!
I moved studios at the end of 2023, to my glorious little studio/office/tiny reception gallery space at the bottom of Wivenhoe, and it’s been transformational in many ways. Things are still slower than I’d like them to be, but that’s more down to the world being a dumpster fire than anything else, plus the aforementioned doing too many things at once.
Stardust the carousel unicorn came home to live permanently at my new studio in November 2024, and he makes me smile every day. I’ve also acquired a couple of 3D printed dragons which just lift my spirits!
I’m exhausted but still excited about my personal work, have done several Wivenhoe Art Trails and one Nightfair event since I last posted here, and am slowly finding my artistic style. I’m photographing dolls again and enjoying the articulation that was not present when I first found my love for miniatures!
We closed subscriptions for Ink Drops in February 2024, after 13 years, and it has been the most incredible relief not to have the relentlessness of monthly deadlines every month. Since then the shop took off, and then we hit year end and realised we’d be in a much better financial position if we weren’t a limited company any more. So we put everything on hiatus, closed the company and are about to relaunch as a sole trader partnership.
Side note, I thought closing a ltd company when Dad passed away was awful and slow and drawn out because he was dead. No, turns out Anna and I are alive and kicking and cooperative and enthusiastic (if tired) and it was still an awful, slow, drawn out process. Who knew? So for the first time since 2012, I am only a sole trader and no longer a director of anything, which is weird but nice (and makes my tax return a whole lot easier).
Podcast is going strong, I’ve launched a networking group with Utterly Horses Becky, who I reconnected with in early 2024, TEMPRD is still doing its thing, growing well but also suffering like all chocolate businesses from the insane rise in price of cocoa and the relentless rising costs of everything else.
Two years have seen a lot of deaths – I won’t dwell on those – but we do have some new small humans and a couple more on the way this year, which is exciting. Gran’s still with us and we celebrate her 96th birthday on Sunday, and I am still loving getting to know her as a person rather than just as my Gran. She has the best stories from her life in Kenya!
Luna & Clover turn 12 this month, and are still the best decision I ever made, ever – I love them so much and they are silly, fluffy, affectionate balls of purry fluff who make my life better on a daily basis (and also quite stressful occasionally, but they’re totally worth it).
Hmm, what else – I published my first book a year ago this month, Visual Magic – a DIY guide to brand photography – in ebook, and at some point I’ll get organised and get it out in paperback too. I was featured in Bella DePaulo’s Single at Heart book, and recognised in it by an old colleague from UoE at the most recent art trail, which was a really nice surprise.
The last six months or so I’ve been line dancing and rollerskating again – line dancing is still familiar and joyful and I’m just learning new dances to music I love now, rollerskating is still familiar and joyful but I’ve also been on a vertical learning curve around wheels, bearings, pivot cups, maintenance, and customising. Slowly making progress, and really hoping Rollerworld will eventually have a proper permanent home again.
Foiled Again workshops grew out of foiling an old pair of cowboy boots and then my skates, and having successfully completed two test workshops I’m hoping to run actual ones for real people in the not too distant future.
Photography is still my main thing and my first love, and while I love brand photography and always will, I am getting more clarity around the fantasy work and my art – still slow progress, but all in the right direction.
I won’t even touch the subject of AI here, but have been writing about it over on the CWP blog today.
And maybe most dramatic of all, I’ve finally closed Mermaiding UK properly and let the domain name go, and started Colourful Magical Weirdo as an instagram, YouTube channel and Substack to give me one place to talk about all my business stuff at once.
Which I guess here could be, too – but here has always felt more like my personal diary, and I didn’t necessarily want a whole blog on CMW yet… although maybe, now I feel a bit more like I’ve found my writing mojo again. We’ll see.
Health wise, I’m still on Elvanse and still learning to work with its weird side effects, but I think it’s helping; I haven’t yet released my ADHD diaries on here but one day will let all the posts out in one go in the hope they might help someone else. I’ve definitely had some regression which I was not expecting and do not love – but I guess you have to dismantle some stuff to rebuild some better strategies, so we’ll see how we go.
Right now I’m on a course of folic acid which I am desperately hoping will help perk me up after a long, long time of feeling fatigued for no apparent reason. The trigger was when Gran described how she felt in the morning and I felt the same – I’m not 40 yet, she’s 95, that’s a big gap!!
Ok, that’ll probably do for now as I wasn’t planning on doing an enormous update, just popping in because it’s been on my list to update over here forever. And more importantly, I feel like blogging again – a feeling I haven’t had for a really long time, and I want to make the most of it while it’s here.
Hopefully it won’t be another two years before I post here again!!
