The Great British Summer Sticker Set. I have been thinking about making stickers for quite a while. But just like any other personal projects, I always struggle for time to create anything personal, especially as I only have three days of the work where I can only focus on work. The reason I only work three days a week is because my daughter now only goes to nursery Monday to Wednesday (we’re trying to cut down on costs) but luckily my business was a bit quiet in April so I was able to get on with a few personal projects I have been dying to do in the past.

By the time you’ll read this blog post, I’ll already be 2/3rd’s of the way to completing my second sticker set but for this article I’ll just focus on this first sticker set. I decided to illustrate “The Great British Summer Sticker Set” for my first sticker set because I love summer time in the UK. It’s never too hot (unlike my home country) and it’s sometimes a bit fresh. I love how it can be roasting hot in the sun but you still have cool shade.

I remember one of my favourite memories since I moved to the UK is when my husband and I travelled to Whitby in Yorkshire. Whitby if you’ve never heard of it is a really pretty seaside town on the Yorkshire coast and folklore states that Whitby is the first place in the UK Dracula visited. I remember we were sat by the beach having a beer and eating fish and chips and there was a grumpy looking seagull stood inches away from me eyeballing my fish. My husband and I sat there giggling, chatting, drinking, eating and of course teasing the seagull, and that was one of my favourite UK memories.

So to celebrate my love of the British summer, I illustrated some of my favourite things that you can see, do and experience in the UK during the summer time. There is a camera, because people always travel and take lots of photos to capture their fun holiday memories. I illustrated a pair of wellington boots because you will need them when we have one of our favourite British summer showers. Whenever I think of the beach I always think about the rows of really beautiful and colourful beach houses on the seaside. A pint of icy cold beer is a definite UK summer time must and summer is tennis time in the UK (Wimbledon). I love light houses and light houses are another thing that remind me of the seaside. Ice cream with a chocolate flake is one of my favourite British summer snacks and of course we can’t forget the previously mentioned grumpy seagulls. What summer would be complete without those grumpy sods.

Below are the illustrations I created for The Great British Summer Sticker Set.

I also made some patterns from the sticker illustrations I made and made them into several products. If you like these products you can have a look of my redbubble page: http://www.redbubble.com/people/livillustration

I finally printed out my sticker set and picked them up from my printer. I hope I didn’t drive my printer mad during the process of printing out this sticker set but it was my first time and I do like things how I want them. I was a little clueless at first with the layout for the printers I use but a few wee changes and everything looked great. The printer even offered to put the outlines on the stickers for me but I think if I’m going to produce stickers regularly for my business I want to fully understand the process in the future. So here are the stickers printed out, I hope you like them.

Stay tuned! I will update my Etsy shop and my website shop very soon with this new sticker set!

Another big thing about my illustration business is I started a shop on this website. You can purchase my prints, notebooks and stickers directly on my website and you won’t have to go through my Etsy shop anymore. So if you like my work and you don’t want to register with Etsy this is probably your best option.