Teaching with Watercolor Summit 0.2 Gouache Edition

One of my big goals for this year is to teach my first online workshop, and I am so pleased to announce that I am! I am so, so excited to be teaching along with seven other amazing artists in the Watercolour Summit 2.0 Gouache Edition. It’s an online creative summit, which means people from all around the world can join in.
I’m so excited to be sharing my knowledge on painting with gouache, with a particular focus on painting people.
Registration opens in April. Go to artsummits.com/emmab to sign up.

Weekend:IN at Kreativ House

A few weeks ago I was invited to take part in a day of creative workshops run by independent brands with weekend:IN. As someone who teaches a lot of workshops it was lovely to be on the other side for once and learn some new skills. 

Creightons Chocolaterie

We started the morning with an introduction to chocolate making with Creighton‘s Chocolaterie. We learnt to temper chocolate, before pouring it into moulds and creating beautiful swirled designs. I had a go tempering chocolate, using palette knives to lift the molten chocolate up aerating it and allowing it to cool slightly. Cooling the chocolate in this way insures the finished chocolate has a glossy shine and a smooth crack when broken. For my bar I swirled together dark chocolate, white chocolate, raspberry infused white chocolate and real petals, which created a very pretty marbled effect. It was lovely to see how different everyone’s final bars of chocolate work. Creightons are a mother and daughter run independent chocolate producer who have been selling design lead chocolate since 2011. They release new collections of on-trend chocolate bars every season, just like a fashion brand.

Meylor Goods

After lunch we were introduced to Meylor Goods, a minimalist stationery and homeware brand. Taking inspiration from their collection we learnt to embroider T-shirts. Being me I picked something too ambitious and didn’t have a chance to finish it in the session, but it was lovely to sit, chat and sew. Grace, the founder of  Meylor Goods, had bought a selection of her beautiful prints with her. I picked up this minimalist bouquet of flowers, which is now on my wall. 

Leafage

The final workshop of the day with Leafage was possibly my favourite. Leafage teach people how to make beautiful enclosed terrariums. These miniature ecosystems are perfect for gardenless londoners, all they need to thrive is a warm windowsill. It was so fascinating to learn how these miniature greenhouses are constructed. I loved all the specialist tools like the very long scissors and tweezers for reaching down into the glass container. Arranging a perfect minute garden inside a glass jar is not easy, but I’m pretty pleased with how mine turned out.

Thank you weekend:IN for such a lovely and inspiring day, thank you to all the brands you took park for sharing their skills and passion, and thank you Sophie allowing to to use your beautiful photos.

All photos by Sophie Carefull

2017 in Review

It’s that time again, the year in review blog post! I’m terrible at remembering what I’ve done in a year, and tend to think I haven’t done much of anything, which is why I’ve got my diary out so I can go through the year month by month and remind myself of all the exciting stuff that’s happened. My hopes for 2017 were to grow my business in bold new directions (hello book deal!) but also to achieve more work-life balance and spend more social time with my husband and friends. I’m very happy to say I think I’ve done it!

January

My year started off with some pretty exciting work as I traveled to Berlin in January to live illustrate for SisterMAG. In January I started hosting my own watercolour and brush lettering workshops at West Elm. Until then I had been running workshops for soemmmebody else, and taking sole responsibility for teaching, promoting and running workshops was a little bit scary. I kept having dreams that I hadn't sold any tickets or that I turned up without any materials. I’m happy to say neither of those things happen and I have now taught a whole year of sell-out workshops at West Elm. I’m very excited to be adding some new workshops to my repertoire next year, including my gouache workshop which has already been very popular. I worked on a couple of book covers in January and provided illustrations for the Mollie Makes Creativity magazine. My husband and I also booked tickets to Peru!

February

This was the month but I got my book deal! At the end of 2016 my amazing agent sent out my book proposal to a few different publishers, and by February I had an offer! I read the email on my phone walking back from a Pilates class and when I met my husband for coffee I started crying out of shock and happiness. This month I taught a couple of brush lettering workshops with Etsy, which was really exciting as I wanted to work with them for a long time. I also did some illustrations for the Betty Collective website.

March

In March I went up to the north Norfolk coast to visit my aunt and uncle. One of my goals for 2017 was to take more time off, and visiting family who happened to live in a beautiful part of the country was a great way of doing that. That month I also did some live illustration with Dermalogica in Selfridge’s, and Viktorija and I hosted a second London Drawing Club event at the beautiful Barbican conservatory. I also illustrated some very popular postcards for Mollie Makes and illustrated a lovely article for Stylist Magazine.

April

In April we celebrated my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary, and the day afterwards my own wedding was featured on Love My Dress. I had a super busy month of workshops, trying to squeeze in as many as possible before my trip to Peru. I also did some live illustration with Reiss at Brent Cross shopping Centre. I also made time to see the amazing Hockney exhibition with Viktorija.

May

I spent most of May travelling.  I had a quick trip back to Suffolk to see my parents at the beginning of the month, and then I was home for one night before heading off with Nancy to a trip to Somerset with Joules, and then three days later I was heading off to Peru. Our time in Peru was absolutely amazing, and you can read more about it here. It was such an incredible trip and a great way to celebrate our first wedding anniversary.

June

In June I taught a really lovely watercolour workshop for Pinterest as part of their interior design awards, at the beautiful Bourne and Hollingsworth Building. I also taught a very special watercolour workshop with Oasis that took place in London Zoo. I got to chat to the zoo keepers and feed two pygmy hippos, which made it one of my top workshops ever. June was also the month that I initiated my Monday afternoon dates with my husband. He is a jazz musician so mostly works evenings and weekends, which means we need to be organised about spending quality time together and not just working all the time. He rarely works on Monday, so we decided that was the best day to take an afternoon off and do something fun together. In the last year our Monday afternoon dates have included trips to the cinema, exhibitions, lunches out, walks in national parks, vintage shopping and we've explored lots of new neighbourhoods in North London.

June is the month that I really started writing my book properly. The last few months I had been waiting to get the contract sorted, and I didn’t want to start actually writing it until everything was signed, although I had been researching and planning it in my head. It was so exciting to actually sit down and start writing my book! For me the challenge was finishing up all my other projects and saying no to new work to give myself the time I needed to do it.

July

I spent most of this month writing my book and enjoying the heat wave in London; going to barbecues, street fairs and summer parties. I also had the chance to go to a really lovely bloggers event in Somerset, which was such a lovely break away from the city and work. I had to hand in the first half of my manuscript on the first of August, which meant the last few weeks of July were very busy getting things finished and organising hundreds of images and pages and pages of writing.

August

August was all about writing my book, and I only taught one workshop all month to make sure I had plenty of time to focus on it. People always say how difficult it is to write a book but I actually really loved it. It was so nice to just work on one creative project continuously for three months, and not have to deal with contracts, negotiations invoices and everything else that comes with being freelancer. I also managed to enjoy the sunshine in London a bit and visited Columbia Road flower market with friends. I also worked on some content with Pink Lady Apples.

September

In September I had to hand in the second half of my book. This time I was much more organised, having named all the files correctly as I went along and kept the manuscript in better order. It turns out writing a book in order from start to finish makes life a lot easier than writing it in any old order you feel like! In September I also taught my first ever Instagram workshop which completely sold out and was a big success. I’m teaching another one in February.

October

In October my husband and I headed off to Lisbon as a post-book writing treat. Whilst I might have finished writing the manuscript and painting all the illustrations, there was still edits and changes to make, which I worked on during October. Fortunately the edits to the book were very light and not much needed to be changed. In this month I also personalised notebooks with brush lettering for Papier at Brides the Show, and did some live illustration at Harrods. I also had an interview and photoshoot with Moo in my flat, which was really exciting as Moo were one of my very first clients, read the interview here. I also worked with my friend Kathryn on the branding for her new company Wander for a While. I also developed some new products for my shop including note books and new Christmas designs.

November

November was a bit of a funny month. I had so many hospital appointments and social engagements that I felt a bit all over the place. The hospital appointments were for my wrist (for my ongoing RSI) and for my troublesome tooth. Fortunately both seem to have settled down for the moment. I also spent a lot of time preparing for an onslaught of festive workshops in December and sent out lots of Christmas Etsy orders. I also worked on some lovely magazine illustrations that I can't show you yet and some branding for The Market Beautiful. I also got to attend Weekend:IN again, this time in East London.

December

In December I taught lots of Christmas bauble painting and lettering workshops with clients including Topshop, Battersea Power Station and Seven dials. I also finalised the cover of my book with my publishers and got to see a first proof copy of my book. It was so exciting to see all those months of work come together into 250 beautifully designed pages.

So that was my year. I achieved my main goal of getting a book deal and writing a book, I also managed to travel and spend lots of time with friends. I think there’s a bit of a myth that as a creative freelancer you have to be badly paid, working constantly with no social life, and definitely no exercise routine, and it’s just not true. This year has been all about saying yes to exciting opportunities, no to the projects that aren’t right for me and learning to look after myself.

I’ve got some pretty big goals for next year, which include travelling more and hopefully writing more books. I’m so excited to see my first book come out this August, and I can’t wait to share it with you. Thank you so much to everyone who has come to my workshops, bought something from my shop or just followed me on Instagram, Your support means so much to me.

Instagram for Creatives Workshop

Last month I hosted my first ever Instagram for Creatives workshop. The aim was to share what I had learnt about using Instagram to grow my business with other creatives. I wanted the talk to be inspirational, but also packed full of useful information and advise the students could implement straight away. There was a big focus on not seeing Instagram as a popularity contest, but using it as a tool to grow your business and we started the workshop by defining and writing down our goals. It was such a lovely afternoon and I had such a nice bunch of women to talk to.

I am very pleased to announce I have a another Instagram for Creatives workshop coming up in January. You can book tickets here.

The workshop was hosted in a beautiful East London venue and refreshments were provided by My Little Cake Tin. My good friend Nancy came along on the day to help with a bit of styling and took the photos. I booked the space via Breather, get £45 off your first booking with the code BKA5JG. 

Flower Crown Workshop

A few weeks ago my good friend Migle, owner of Your London Florist invited me to a workshop at her brand-new studio in Crew Hill, North London. You might have seen me mention Your London Florist before as they did all my wedding flowers.

At the workshop we learnt how to construct floral crowns from scratch. It was a really interesting and technical class. We trimmed garden roses down to size then threaded florist's wire through the stem, criss-crossing the wires before pulling them down and wrapping them with florist's tape. Once we had a pile of trimmed, taped flowers we are ready to start constructing the crown. We bunched together the flowers and foliage then wrapped the wires with tape working round gradually until all the flowers were incorporated. We also added a few succulents with the help of a hot glue gun. The lovely florists then showed us how to measure it round our heads to create a loop and tape the whole thing in place. Doesn't it look amazing! The best thing is the class was so thorough and well taught that I would definitely feel confident making myself a flower crown from scratch again. There was such a lovely bunch of women at the workshop that night, including Katie from Oh Squirrel who it's always lovely to catch up with

All the beautiful photos  were taken by photographer Tia Talula. Find more details for the Flower School here.

Writing a Watercolour Book!!

I announced over on my Instagram and I forgot to share the news on here: I am writing a book!! Last summer I had an idea for a book. I realised that most watercolour books are very old-fashioned and very traditional, and I wanted to write something modern fun and accessible. I got in touch with my friend Lesley who helped me write a book proposal, which ended up being a whopping 23 pages long, and presented to some publishers. In the New Year I got offered a book deal and I am spending this summer writing the book. I am used to having ideas for illustrations in my head then making them happen on paper, but having an idea for a book then turning it into a real book deal with the big publisher is something completely new. It's just crazy that this project went from dream to reality. I am loving the process of writing this book. I am just having so much fun coming up with projects for it. The publishers have given me a lot of freedom to choose what I want to teach in the book which has been brilliant. I love teaching people to paint and encouraging them to find their creativity, so it's really exciting to be able to do that on a much wider scale due to this book. I would describe this book as everything I know and love about watercolours. It's for people who want to paint colourful, joyful things to put on their wall and not take it all too seriously. At this point I have just passed the halfway mark and I've handed the first half of my manuscript to the publishers. I can't believe I've written a half a book already. I've got just over a month to finish the second half. My book will be coming out next summer. Follow me over on Instagram for sneak peeks of my progress.

Brush Lettering with Etsy

I was very excited to be asked by Etsy to teach some brush lettering skills to the attendees of its pop-up wedding fair at West Elm. The workshops were ridiculously popular and the tickets sold out within three minutes of launching. Across two days I taught 24 students how to create beautiful brush lettering, ideal for brides (and grooms) hoping to DIY their wedding stationery. The workshops received a lots of interest on Instagram and on the day from other people attending the fair.