Deborah Panesar 1/10/20 Deborah Panesar 1/10/20

Hello 2020! A little look back at 2019 (PART II)

Carrying on from Part I, I’m sharing all the things that brought me joy, and made me proud in 2019, from July through to December.

JULY

Prints arrived of my new ‘Prove them Wrong’ design and I was over the moon with how gorgeous the foiling turned out.

Then I was off to London to sell at the House of Illustration Summer Fair!

Ophelia had her first trip to the Golden Mile in Leicester, and her first taste of the exquisite Bobby’s.

Renovations continued, this time taking the carpet up in our bedroom to reveal these stained floorboards.

More eco swaps - this time for a disposable razor and shaving soap bar which I bought from Shop Zero Nottingham

We then did a little up-cycling project to breathe some life into some old garden furniture my Dad had passed onto us…

… with just some garden furniture paint from Wilkos!

…and were replaced with these beautiful new composite doors.

I was asked to paint Puneet’s beautiful logo on a feature wall of her new Wedding Ring Workshop (and boy, was that a hot week!)

Nottingham’s Pride brought so much colour and positive energy to what was a VERY wet day

And Ophelia had her first proper visit to the Gurdwara for a family member’s birthday.

AUGUST

More eco swaps, this time this gorgeous shampoo bar when my bottled shampoo ran out.

The Nottingham Etsy Team leaders came over and we had the incredibly hard task of choosing who we were going to pick to sell for Etsy Made Local! It took us a few hours with many snacks/cups of tea.

Our beautiful friends Dan and Ruby tied the knot in the most amazing wedding venue - and I mean, look at Ruby!

I designed some custom privacy vinyl for the glass in our new front door and it casts the dreamiest shadows on our floor!

I had a wonderful client meeting with Matthew, author of The Alphabet Children, at this amazing cafe called Fika. We hatched some awesome illustrated plans for his book!

I made some edits to an existing pattern I had created for Lola’s Apothecary and these beautiful samples came in the post.

And in the summer sun we visited more stately homes and festivals celebrating Mother Nature.

SEPTEMBER

I designed the promotional materials for our Nottingham Etsy Made Local - and it was exciting to start shouting about our event at our new venue in the Council House.

That moon illustrated back in August? Got turned into this huge wall hanging!

I finished designing my Christmas cards! These were my best ever selling designs for Christmas, and I can’t tell you how thankful I was for every re-order (there were 5!)

My Grandad (who’s is bossing life at 92 by the way) treated myself and my mum to a day at Ragdale Hall Spa

The Nottingham Etsy Team had another amazing meet up, this time with a talk from the incredibly talented and switched on business coach Debbiedoodah , who talked to us about the importance of email marketing.

Injected with that new enthusiasm from Debbie’s talk I decided to put more effort into my email marketing and started creating illustrated freebies for my email subscribers.

I joined with the Global Climate Strike in the Nottingham Market Square, standing in solidarity with children and adults alike to try and make positive change for our climate crisis.

We had more adventures, this time at Newstead Abbey

OCTOBER

I created my first downloadable product for Etsy, these print at home Halloween Masks in a wolf, black cat and bat design.

and we went pumpkin picking in the biggest mud field you’d ever seen!

NOVEMBER

More autumnal walks which are honestly my favourite

Oh yes, more renovations! This time getting rid of the awful dark/grey brown vinyl in our kitchen, and getting this faux Victorian tile vinyl.

For the first time ever I sold at the Craft Fair Contemporary and it was amazing!

And then a family of 3 became a family of 4…

That monkey illustration from a few months ago? Got turned into these awesome patch t-shirts for kids!

Etsy Made Local Nottingham finally arrived and it was our biggest and best event to date! (photo courtesy of the Nottingham Etsy Team)

DECEMBER

And fetive activities like this beautiful light show at Belton House gardens

And finally visited the vegetarian restaurant of dreams, No. Twelve.

Keeping our Christmas more eco I stamped a HUGE roll of recycled brown paper to wrap all our gifts in.

I was then back in London for the House of Illustration Winter Fair!

After wrapping up some commissions and smaller projects it was then time to unwind for Christmas with plenty of family visits, biscuit baking and a huge vegetarian feast for Christmas!

We ended 2019 out in the garden; fire on, hot chocolates in hand, enjoying all of our neighbours fireworks!

Phew! What a year! If you made it to the end of this two part blog post spectacular I applaud you.

I hope this inspires you to go back through photos of your 2019 to see the highlights and celebrate all the wins you achieved. I was so cynical about the whole thing before I started writing this post, but I have to say it has been cathartic, and an incredibly powerful way of owning my own achievements. Just documenting it here has been a process, and I have to say it’s given me a very positive surge of work energy for the year ahead!

We have so much to look forward to this year - welcoming our baby boy into the world being the main thing we’re gearing up towards - but I would love to know what things you’re looking forward to in 2020 and what things you were proud of in 2019?