New Beginnings

 It has recently occurred to me (although occurred is too passive a word for any of the realisations this year has brought)that theme and consistency just aren’t quite working for me. 

Not at the moment anyway. 

Certainly, I’ve stuck to things in the past, stuck like glue. But all I can really stick to now is the actual act of doing whatever it is that I’m doing. What I read will not always be in my usual genres, what I write might not be what I used to write, what I paint might be different to what I would have painted a few years ago. 

In short, I’ve changed. 

In truth, we all have. 

The selves we used to know intimately, completely have slipped away to make way for new selves. 2019 feel like another era, not just another year. It’s possible that as the oft quoted line from “The Go-Between” almost says “The past is another country” and one we can’t go back to. 

So, time to start over. 

Where do I begin? 

I suppose, with the things that go on. Do I still love art and history and literature? Yes, yes, yes to all of those! Am I a social butterfly? No. I wasn’t before and I’m even less so now. My social anxiety has social anxiety at the moment and I have no idea how long that will take to rebuild, but there you go. 

 Do I still like vintage clothes? Yes, in a new floaty, I don’t want anything to pinch or nip after a year of wearing indoor dresses. Yes, in a pass me all the soft, pretty, pastel colours I hardly ever wore before because right now I want to feel like a meadow, or a drifting stream.

 Do I still write? Yes, but differently. I mean, I’ve even been experimenting with the first person narrator (unreliable ones too) which I used to hate and now… No idea why that changed. Maybe, I’m just enjoying escaping into other peoples minds for a little while? Whatever it is, I’ll roll with it, that and occasionally using that most horrific of things to my uni creative writing tutor: the present tense. I can’t describe how much he hated present tense. I can’t describe how much I no longer care! 

Am I still creating art? 

OH YES! Though it’s gotten both cuter and, err, spookier recently. There will be festive ghostie images appearing later in the year if that floats your boat or the boat of anyone you know, love, or count as a frenemie. 

And now we come to that last big question. It’s probably the most relevant question in terms of this blog too. 

Am I still wearing perfume? 

Well… 

Ahhh… 

Yes… 

Sort of. In short it’s lots of roses. I’m loving rose perfumes all day, all year round. 

I’m dipped in Elizabethan rose from Penhaligons, drenched in Ralph Lauren’s Romance, dabbing on Yardley’s English rose (it’s actually pretty delightful for a scent so ubiquitous so do try it out). I’m here for all the roses, and I’m being completely comforted by them. 

Will I change from roses? 

Eventually, just not yet. So, if I talk about perfumes, they are going to be rose perfumes and that’s just one of those inescapable facts. 

So, there it is, the start of the start, what’s written on the other side of that new leaf.I hope, whoever you are now you find happiness and joy. I’m certainly questing after those particular questing beasts on a daily basis!

Easter 2021 Printable Colouring Pages! Including FREE colouring page!

 I loved creating colouring pages for you all last year, so this year I thought I'd do something similar!

This year, I'm offering two options: one colouring page which will be free to download on the blog, or the option of buying a set of two pages from my Etsy shop (also downloadable).  See below for link!

Etsy shop Easter Colouring Pages

So, without further ado, here's my FREE 2021 Easter colouring page. 

And, here are some sneak peeks at the option for sale in my shop!

Priced at  just 96p! 

If you do decide to use either, or both of the colouring pages, I would love to see how you decorate them! So, if you post them to Instagram tag me at @mauveink

That's all, lovelies, I hope you have an eggcellent Easter!

Bunnies Christmas Colouring page!

                             Time for something festive! A Free Christmas colouring page!  

The blood is the life. An ever so slightly Gothic perfume review...

 "Come in, I bid you welcome" 

So, here you stand on the threshold of that delightful Transylvanian castle where you are supposed to be drawing up some legal papers for the Count who resides there. It hasn't been an easy journey, has it? Not with the driver kicking you out of the coach and the locals being so unwelcoming. Not to mention the wolves in the woods, how they howl and wail all through the dark hours of night! But you are here now: journey's end, It could be a little more welcoming, there are no warm and comforting lights at the windows, no homely sounds from within and along with the mist which has been almost omnipresent since you stepped from the train a day ago, there is a curious metallic, moist scent here that you are struggling to place. 

I wouldn't think about that too hard, not if I were you. 

No, what I'd do is take hold of that bell pull and... well... pull it? How deeply that bell's sound seems to echo within! But, you have summoned someone, there are footsteps getting closer, and closer and, just as you are about to faint, the door creaks open. There's a blinding sliver of light and then you can make out that the light comes from a candelabra held in the hand of a surprisingly handsome (one might even say, devilishly handsome) gentleman who, it turns out is the Count himself. He might not be in the first flush of youth, but he's cut from the same cloth as a Greek god. A real silver fox, or should that he wolf? 

What the castle lacks in welcome outside, it more than makes up for inside. There are rich velvet drapes, gilded frames (oddly, without a single mirror in sight) and bright, woven carpets on the floor. In the fireplace, a fire crackles and smokes quite comfortingly. From the ruined castle chapel wafts the warm, dense scent of incense swung, long ago, in bejewelled censors.  Ah, and there is wine waiting for you on a table! 

How kind the Count is! 

However, that metallic scent lingers still, although it been joined by such a symphony of other odours that you don't find it at all unpleasant anymore, just one facet of an old house which has stood for many centuries, which has accumulated it's own delicious darkness. 

If you want to get a sense of Bloody Woods by Liquides Imaginaires, than I hope I've managed to impart a slight sense of it with that little sensory picture in prose. This is a gorgeous Carpathian castle of a perfume; a perfume which imbues the skin with a sweet, spicy, blend of violet and woody notes from the outset and slowly deepens and expands to include more penetrating layers of wine (and this is wine that feels as if it has lain long in the cask, soaking up the wood and the centuries) and ripening fruit. It's a late autumnal scent, holding within it some of the golden hour between the sun setting and twilight's blue hours. An hour or two later, the perfume shifts again into a powdery layer of incense, still sweetly tinged, but now taking on just a little more of the metallic edge you realise was always there. No wonder it's called Bloody Wood, you think. This wood's sap runs very red indeed and not just with the wine. And yet all these notes seem contained by a chill note, something crisp and cold, as if  all those other rich notes were reverberating of  cold, creamy stone walls. 

As the perfume dries down and begins to fade the reverberation becomes more and more like an echo, you are descending deeper into the castle now, hypnotised by it. And you don't regret the hypnotism, no, not one bit. Just as you don't regret looking into the Count's dark, albeit slightly bloodshot eyes as he swore he loved you, loved you to death, in fact.

Within a few hours, of course, the fire will have died low, the night will be creeping in, the wolves will be singing in chorus and the perfume will have died down to an echo of it's echo; the shadow of it's shadow. 

Just a few hours and it will have faded away entirely. Oh, say six or seven; long enough. That moment when you just might find yourself standing at a crossroads with the moon high and silver above you and you look around to see that the castle is so far off in the distance, far beyond the woods. Were you ever really there? Was it a dream? And then you put a hand to your throat and realise that there are two little scars just there and you aren't imagining those. And there's a bottle weighing down your pocket, your very own magic elixir in the form of perfume. Just one spray and you'll have made a choice. Just one spray and you'll be right back there at the castle door.

You shrug as you uncap the bottle and lift the spray to your throat. 

It was inevitable, one sniff and you will want to return.   

Ms. Bunny reads! A new FREE colouring sheet from me to you!

I have a new colouring sheet for you today, this one is perfect for all the bookworms out there who love to snuggle down with a stack of books!

A new colouring page!

My second FREE colouring page is completed! 

This time, Ms. Bunny is baking in her pretty little kitchen! 

Ms. Bunny baking.

A gift from me to all of you...

Hello, my friends,
    Recently, I've been thinking about what I can do to make people's days a little brighter as we live through these uncertain times. As an artist, I realised there was one thing I most certainly could do: make some colouring pages and provide them, free of charge, to anyone who needs something fun to do!
This is the first page I've made (hopefully not the last), "Ms. Bunny in her Garden"
Just click on the JPEG image below and print it out to start colouring!
Note: This one might be best for slightly older art lovers, as there is a lot of floral detail in the picture that little ones might struggle to colour in!

Ms. Bunnyin her Garden.