So I came on here to post an "I'm not dead I'm just away!" message, since I haven't done anything on here since I featured Chichi, and I suddenly find I have 20 followers.

That probably isn't a big deal for most people, but I guess it is for me because I'm not used to having so many people, that I've never met before, interested in things I write.

So I was going to come on here and go "don't expect another featured seller thing soon", because I'm currently in a work swing on an entirely different track. I haven't done any crafting for a while, instead I've mostly been doing a lot of research in to ancient Egypt for my other business. I need to do more reseach on Roman Britain next XD

I recently bought a book called "Starting Your Business Week By Week" and it's very good. It's got my motivated enough to do this work after several weeks of moping around thinking I'll never make a success of it. Doing the research itself is giving me a lot of ideas, I think I will need to buy a new laptop cable for my old laptop, and then set it up on my ex-crafting desk, disable the internet so I don't feel tempted to log on to it, and then write up things like Presentations on there, then move them over to this laptop using a pendrive to add pictures and tidy the whole thing up. I'll also use it as a back-up for said work, don't want to lose it all if something happens to this laptop.

But having seen that there's now 20 people who vaguely like what I say and do on here, I guess I'll have to keep up with the Featured Artist posts at least XD although it may have to be once every two weeks for the time being, and I'll try to think of something else to do for the weeks inbetween to keep you lot amused :D

So don't worry, I'm not dead, just off on a different mental tangent!

Yes! This week I am on time DESPITE sending my questions to this weeks crafter last night DX

This week we have the lovely Gretchen from chichiboulie. Gretchen is french, currently located in Lille in northern France. Gretchen's work is filled with art in a very french style, which I love, and her shop is full of a wide variety of items from original paintings to little "Boulie Bags".

Since signing on to an agent Gretchen has tried to keep some sort of schedule going but does occasionally find that she has to drop anything in order to get a design or idea down on paper (something I think we can all sympathise with), occasionally her work requires a bit of research which can add to the time it takes to make everything, but other times she will have a day of total creativity and just let it roll.



This is one of Gretchen's items featuring her character "Nellie Bellie". It is a little tea party planner set, featuring recipe cards, a blank invitation that can be photocopied, and cards explaining how to be prepared for the party.

Nelllie Bellie is an original character created by Gretchen, there are also some lovely Nellie badges on sale in her shop, who told me that Nellie was originally made for a project and "she just looked like a Nellie to me". Apparantly Gretchen loves naming things, along with giving her 3 children long names (from the sounds of it she just couldn't settle on one) she also comes up with names for all her characters, her fairies all have names as well, such as Eloise Greengrass and Isla Waterspring.



And this lovely little mirror features The Snowman and the Wee Mouse, I think the wee mouse is absolutely adorable! Sadly Gretchen has sold out of mirrors for the time being, but don't let that put you off visiting her shop as she still has lots of gorgeous items, from original art work to colouring books, birth announcements, and cards!

And as for Nellie's future? Well, I asked Gretchen if there were any plans to write and illustrate her own books featuring the adorable Nellie, and she has said that she would love to do a cookbook featuring Nellie, but it will have to wait until all her children are at school. So keep your eyes peeled, in a few years time there could be Nellie's Cookbook coming to a bookshop near you!

And now I insist that you all go and visit chichiboulie.