I thought it would be good to do a post about me and my journey to coloured pencils and how I came to stumble across them.
So here goes…….time to ramble on….lol – Oh this is a long ramble – Be warned.
My only hobby was cross stitch until now.
When I was 21, which feels like a lifetime ago now, I was introduced into cross stitch by my step mum, I’d never had a hobby before then, mainly because I never had patience, or I should say I never thought I had patience, I can never really sit still long enough.
I was a perfectionist too so if I couldn’t get something 100% right I’d lose interest or I’d get frustrated. I have to say before I get sidetracked and forgot to add this bit, that since finding Bonny Snowdon last year in 2022 and her academy I am now very slowly learning to let go of my perfectionism and to go with the flow more. If my drawing doesn’t turn out exactly as I’d like it to, it’s ok, I’ve had a go and I’ve learnt something from it. I have something to look back at and to smile at, that yes I’ve done that, little old me.
See I’ve started rambling already, that’s how my brain goes, it never stays still. It flits from one thing to the next and so on…..anyway here goes…..
……back to cross stitch for a second.
So yes I started cross stitching, I found it rewarding to have found a talent for something, something I could do that I could say I did that. I never thought I could draw back then but I wanted to create something and this was the alternative, I could put tiny crosses into fabric and end up with a picture, that I could put on my wall and say I did that.
I have always suffered with depression and anxiety for all my adult life. Having a breakdown in my early 20’s, I found cross stitch helped me to lose myself and to stop me thinking about my problems at the time, a way to switch my fast brain off, to calm it down a little just for a little while.
I stitched for many years until I was about 32, I’d stitched many pieces, some for me and some for friends and family.
I took a break then for about 10 years and never stitched anything, it was all boxed away. My first marriage broke down, I still never stitched until 10 years ago.
I was struggling with depression, anxiety and panic attacks again, I was in a new relationship and felt I needed something to help me through the tough times that life throws at you from time to time.
I decided to go to the internet and to create a forum to bring other cross stitchers together. It was the days before Facebook. I made some brilliant friends and some of those friends are still close friends to this day and I often look back at those days and smile.
One of those friends worked for the cross stitching magazine as a model stitcher, she would stitch pieces up and they would be used in the magazine. She’d said to me why don’t you give it a try? so I did, I approached the magazine editor and I was taken on as a model stitcher. That was back in 2012, wow, where does the time go!
I’ve had many, many pieces over that time published with my name against them. I still do the odd commission for different publishers and have my name in several cross stitch books on the market.
This is my best personal piece that I have ever stitched. It hangs on my landing wall and it’s huge. It took me about 927 hours to stitch, over a 2 year period. I finished it back in April 2017.
Here’s one of my cats admiring it on the wall, when I first got it framed. I moved it from there because of the sunlight, I didn’t want it fading after all those hours of work.
Covid then hit us all in 2020, my 2nd marriage broke down at the exact same time. The magazine had to downsize, so that meant no commission stitching for me, not that I was in a place at that time to stitch.
I still always secretly wished I had the talent to draw. I’d had a commission drawing done by a fellow model stitcher at the time called Caroline Lord of one of my cats back in 2014.
It isn’t in coloured pencils, I think it’s coloured pastels on velum paper. I still have that drawing on my living room wall to this day, sadly Freya my cat has passed on to rainbow bridge in 2021.
I often looked at the picture and wished I could do that. Here is the picture that she drew me.
Caroline inspired me with her amazing talent.
Are you still with me…….blimey, I didn’t realise how I could ramble on, back to present day nearly……
In February 2022, I started to try polymer clay, I did that for about 2 months, I loved it, but, there has to be one doesn’t there.
I found with having a few cats and cat hairs it wasn’t the best hobby to have, yes I still had my cross stitch.
It was the start of the cost of living crisis, money was getting tighter and the cost of clay was way over my budget, so I started to watch more YouTube videos, I’d seen a few coloured pencil tutorials but kept saying to myself oh NO I can’t do that, I can’t draw.
I then found watercolour painting, I tried that for a couple of months, I loved it but I just couldn’t get my brush to do those finer strokes and I was getting frustrated so back to YouTube I went and again I kept coming back to coloured pencils.
I then found Bonny in around July 2022, signed up for here academy in September 2022 and haven’t looked back.
I just love my coloured pencils. I take the lid off my coloured pencils in the morning when I go and draw and the smell hits me and I just love it.
Everyday I seem to grow and have so enjoyed the past month, having a new website and actually having the ability and the undiscovered talent that I can actually draw is truly amazing.
I wished I’d started to learn many years ago, but it wasn’t the right time for me back then, we didn’t have the technology back then either to bring people together and to learn in a virtual environment like we do today. I think covid opened the door to more people using the zoom platform, and needing a way to cope with the world we live in today, that is one of the good things about the journey we all took back in 2020 to present day.
Now with the help from all Bonny’s hard work and dedication and her desire to help others in her academy, hope to grow in my self belief and to change my mindset to become a much better person and to grow my skill and talent and see where my journey takes me and to the friends I’m going to make.
If you’ve managed to get to here, kudos to you after my long ramble.
