The perfect romantic weekend getaway

The Shepherds huts! How gorgeous are they?!

The past few months have been busy busy busy for us so for Alex's birthday in January I decided to book us a little weekend adventure. I didn't want to go very far and I decided the becon beacons would be an ideal location. I scoured the internet but I couldn't find what I had formed in my mind. I nearly gave up and that's when I discovered sugarandloaf.com. All the properties are fantastic and I found my ideal getaway - a weekend in a shepherds hut!

We decided to book Friday off work and set off early and have a mooch around Abergavenny which is a lovely place! I had a gorgeous cup of hot chocolate and salted caramel :)

Alex still had no idea where we were staying but when I got list I had to give him some clues otherwise we were never going to find the place! Apparently my sat nav decided to completely ignore the post code we'd been given. We started up a little track hoping it was the correct way. My poor new little up! Had no idea what was in store! Thankfully we made it to the top of the very steep hill and found the farm.  Yay!

The lovely owner popped our luggage into a trailer while we changed into more appropriate footwear and off we set, walking behind the ...... It didn't take long but it was so hidden by trees you really felt like the only people in a little haven :) the huts were even more beautiful in person and we could not wait to get the log fire burning.

We had an amazing weekend with no phones, no wifi! Just us, wine and board games!

The stunning views from our climb up the mountain.

On Saturday we decided to climb up Sugar Loaf mountain. We were luckily located at the beginning of the mountain and a path led almost straight out of our door! The weather luckily held out and while it was cold in the wind, it stayed bright and dry. The views were incredible from the top - even if a tad misty!

                 Unfortunately the sun was directly in our eyes so squinty photos it was!

On Sunday we took a drive to Waterfall Country and settled on the walk named Elidir trail (fairy kingdom on the banks of the Nedd) which wasn't the longest of walks at 1.3 miles but the waterfalls we saw were fantastic! 

One of the gorgeous waterfalls we saw during our visit

I highly recommend anyone visiting South Wales to try something a bit different and stay in a hut! I think the only thing that could have made the whole experience even better would have been a hot tub! I have noticed a few of the Sugar and Loaf accommodations do offer this so perhaps something to try next year!

Lottie xo

Blowing the dust off the blog!

Yikes!!

Looks like I accidentally left my Etsy and blog world hanging for quite some time!!

In the real world I've been so busy with house moving and lots of job changes as well as major life decisions that my little online world was unfortunately not so glamorously put onto the back burner for a bit too long!

So, I did try to set up a more personal blog on the side but I've decided that updating two blogs is just too much to manage so I thought I'd add a bit more of my personal life onto here including my crafting, thrifting, gardening, reading and much more!

Whilst I'm writing this post I'm just going to talk a bit more about the thrifty way of life I try so hard to lead. I find that it's so tempting to walk down a high street and see lots of pretty clothes and makeup and end up spending a fortune. In fact, that's what I tend to do, or at least used to do before my major life decisions meant that our household income has drastically dropped from what we thought we'd have as a combined income to what we are actually taking home each month.

But, leading a thrifty way of life doesn't mean you have to suffer!! Hopefully, as well as using this blog to promote my Etsy shop, I can also offer lots of advice and hopefully meet some like minded people along the way!!!

Love,

Lottie xo

New Christmas Decorations

I'm excited to share my new felt christmas decorations with the blogging world!

I have always loved working with felt and a few weeks ago I was playing with the idea of making some decorations and I came up with a few different designs.

I will be adding more to the store very shortly, but here are the two newest ones:

Clicking on the images *should* hopefully take you to the Etsy listings!!

I have been having some thoughts about the page, trying to make it easily accessible and neat but still allowing for some quirks. I really love being able to link directly to my Etsy page at the top of the blog. What do you think?

Romantic Dreams

Unfortunately, as it has a tendency to, life has recently become rather hectic and has taken me far away from my computer and my art! I am back for a bit and thought I'd share my newest treasury with you - I was inspired by my 3 year anniversary with my OH to create something with a bit of romance to cheer up these dull days :) (clicking on the image will take you to the original treasury).

I hope you like this pretty little treasury and I will be back soon.

Love from,

The Curious Deer

Flower photography

So - I love animals, I'm sure that is pretty evident considering my shop name has an animal in it - and so far all my paintings are of animals!!

But my other love is flowers - anything to do with nature really. Nature is just perfect. I especially love photographing flowers and here are a few I have taken over the past week - I hope you like them! I'm considering putting prints into my etsy shop but we shall see!

I hope you like them!

The Curious Deer x

My art equipment!

So, for the last day I have been attempting the most infuriating sewing project (for me anyway!!).

Because I have recently bought some expensive (for a poor struggling artist like me) pens for my artwork, I decided to make a roll to keep them in and whilst I was making it, to fit my pencils and paintbrushes in too!!

Well, I decided to just measure as I was going to create the right sized 'pouches' to keep the different bits in - probably not the greatest idea I've ever had!! It might not be perfect, it's a bit wobbly but it actually works so here it is...

I love the stripey fabric! It was from Ikea, I couldn't resist buying some!

Whilst I'm here, writing about my new pen roll, I thought I'd share the rest of my equipment with you...

My Promarkers (at present I have around 40 but there are so many colours I need!!)..

And my watercolours...

The Curious Deer x

Cute little bunny!

I have now added some more drawings into my Etsy shop :)

I hope you like this little fellow though, I think he's my favourite in the shop at the moment :)

Click here --->  TheCuriousDeer to see the listing! Don't forget to check out the other items in my shop - let me know what you think :)

The Curious Deer x

Etsy shop is open!

Just a quick little blog post to say that my Etsy shop is now open!! Although there is only 1 listing up for now - I have been having internet connection problems so hopefully more will be listed over the next few days..

I will be updating later on some new images and ideas I have been working on.

To view my shop just follow this link:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/TheCuriousDeer

I will be adding a badge to my blog as soon as I learn how!

The Curious Deer x

Dear little deers..

So, I thought it would be fun to produce some deer sketches for my first items in my Etsy shop - and boy were these cuties fun to do! Inches tall but jampacked with detail - check out the stitched frame. That one is my personal favourite and I will be sad to it go but that frame was so much fun to make, watch out for similar in the future!

Each picture was created using pencil, fineliner, pro-markers, coffe staining and stitching on one.

I hope you like them and I welcome you back soon for some more art :)

The Curious Deer x

An adventure across Kenya!

One of my most special memories is of a trip I took to Kenya with my partner. We spent 6 amazing weeks there. 4 weeks volunteering in Mlolongo, near Nairobi, 2 days in Mombasa City, 1 week on Diani beach and then a few days spent travelling back up the country through three fantastic safari reserves: Amboseli, Tsavo East and Tsavo West :).

During this trip I took hundreds of photographs, some of these will be available as prints in my Etsy shop. Before the grand opening of my shop, I thought it would be nice to start sharing some of these photographs with you, which ones do you like?

I will be sharing my more personal photographs as I expand the blog but these show you some of my main interests in photography - animals! I'm also very lucky that my partner is about to qualify as a vet because thanks to him I was able to hold a 6 week old leopard cub!! Photographs will be put up at a later date! 

 The Curious Deer x

Previous Assemblage Installation work

So I guess it might be quite fun to post up some photographs of my previous installations to give you a bit of a taster of my style.. These are very much curiosity cabinet inspired pieces of work. They all use found -/+ lost photographs of eras past.

Anonymous 2011

This first piece 'Anonymous 2011' was inspired by the combination of the idea of lost photographs simulating lost people. I am always fascinated by those articles of people, who seem to vanish from the face of the earth, never to be found again - the photographs placed up on posts, milk cartons and other generic every day items always seem so uneventful with their eyes not sharing the horrors of their future disappearance. This is the reason I chose to blank out the eyes - I didn't want them to expose normality.

Various mixed media assemblages

'Existence is futile no's 1,2,3 &4' below various mixed media assemblages

All of the above assemblages were inspired by a similar train of thought.. lost people, lost objects. Re-united and stitched back together...

The Curious Deer x