finding the dress

Like most people, I've gone through phases with clothes I wear. The black phase, the skirt phase, the pink phase, the jeans phase (I'm still in this one).
I have a bit of a love hate thing with clothes shopping. I love the fabrics and patterns but generally dislike my pear shape and find it quite difficult to find things that fit me well. I'm a size bigger on the bottom than on the top so things that fit my hips tend to gape at my bust and vice versa, and because of this I tend not to buy clothes often.
I've been invited to 3 weddings this year and my jeans and floppy tops just won't cut it, so dress shopping has been thrust upon me. I never buy dresses - the last one I bought was my wedding dress - prior to that, I cannot actually remember buying a dress. I wasn't really looking forward to this  shopping experience so was pleasantly surprised when it wasn't actually as painful as I thought it would be:

1. Phase Eight, 2-3. Monsoon, 4-6. Kaliko

You can spot a bit of a theme here can't you. 50's style prom dress suits my shape and I love the bold floral prints.
I am now the proud owner of 2 of these dresses (1 and 2) which should sort me out for all 3 weddings. Thankfully no one from the first wedding will be going to wedding two or three so I can safely do some dress recycling. Now all I need to think about is shoes, bags, hair etc.

Illustrator part 2

It's official, Illustrator is my new best toy. I'm having the most amount of fun with this. Thankfully, despite my wobble on day 3 of the course, I managed quite well on day 4.
I popped into paperchase to pick up a few greetings cards for inspiration and to push myself to learn some of the techniques I've been taught.
The first couple of designs here are designs I have replicated from a greetings card and a book cover

These designs are all my own - in a fifties style

I feel so enthused about this - I'm loving my newly gained skills and what I can do with them. Leaving my job really was the right thing to do, it just feels so right.
These fifties designs have also given me some new ideas for something of a fabric nature, which I'm going to work on next week.