The alternative to Black Friday/Cyber Monday is Indie Friday (29th November 2024). The idea was conceived of by the Just A Card campaign, to highlight that when you buy from a small business or independent maker, you’re getting more than ‘just’ a card (or a book, or a tea towel, etc). You’re purchasing the time and effort and creativity and community of the maker! In this spirit, I thought it might be fun to provide some suggestions for how one of my Large Square Note Cards can be more than ‘just’ a card, with a little time and a few supplies…

This Plastic Free July, find out how I ensure that there is no plastic in my supply chain so that you can be confident that if you’re buying an art print or gift from me, it will have as limited an impact on the planet as possible.

I’ve had my Folksy shop since July 2023 and thought it would be interesting to share a bit about why I use this platform for selling my range of eco-friendly art prints and gifts.

There are quite a few ‘easy wins’ that I’ve already made to try to ensure that the making of my art is having a minimal impact on the environment, including around the sketchbooks I use as well as my media. I’m planning to make 2024 the year I pay even more attention to my supplies and materials and I’m hoping to start experimenting with making my own botanical inks and pigments.

I’ve worked hard to identify suppliers that share my values around environmental responsibility; all of the companies I work with are based in the UK and take sustainability seriously. I’ve tried to keep to a small range of either beautiful or functional (or both!) items like mugs, tea towels, coasters, cards and prints.

I really love giving people presents - both bought and handmade. In fact, I used to spend hours and hours on Christmas boxes for people, trying to create the perfect mix of handmade goodies (usually edible, but sometimes sewn or knitted) and little things I’d bought over a period of months. By gifting in this way, I could also be 100% sure of what something was made from and it also meant that I could reduce the environmental impact of the gifts themselves, as well as the wrapping and packing. A couple of big life events have made spending that much time on Christmas gifting unfeasible over the last few years. So I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve been doing more recently to try to ensure that my Christmas gifting continues to be as eco-friendly and sustainable as possible.

I love to illustrate simple steps that people can take to live a more environmentally-friendly and sustainable life and incorporate this into my repeat pattern design.

I wanted to create something that celebrated the fact that our family chooses not to own a car and demonstrate that it is (just) possible to travel around the UK by public transport.