Tag: lifestyle blog

Wandering among the Spring Wildflowers

On By ArtyMissKIn Photography2 Comments

Hello my friends! 

Who doesn’t love a flower in the spring?

Firstly I meant to post this yesterday but forgot to click schedule and it sat in my drafts, which is a bummer because its kinda broken my posting streak…oh well!

I’m not really a massive fan of Valentines day and while I thought about writing something cutesy I’m personally of the opinion that you should show love to the people you care for everyday not just the one day that our calendar dictates.

*Not that it matters now being a day late!

Still, we’ve miraculously had a few days of sunshine which I’ve taken full advantage of and tried to spend as much time outside as I can. There are so many pretty spring flowers in bloom at the moment that I thought I’d go for a wander with my camera and wanted to take you with me so you can enjoy the pretty countryside too! I hope these little glimpses of spring colour bring as much joy to your week as much as they did mine.

Ready?

Let’s go!

To start my spring wanderings I was met with so many Snowdrops, these jolly little flowers are truly a sign that winter is ending and the sun is coming out more, they are also known as the ‘fair maid of February’. There are a multitude of different varieties of Snowdrop including these ones that have a grumpy face (which I’ve never noticed before!).

Also as a side note while we look upon these little flowers and think they’re cute have you ever noticed that some Snowdrops have little green hearts on the insides of their inner petals!

There’s an old English superstition says that if you bring a snowdrop into your home your eggs and milk will spoil…I’ve pressed snowdrops and can confirm this didn’t happen -although I drink oat milk, which isn’t really milk.

Completely off topic and unrelated to spring time flora but my neighbours have sheep! They’ve been moved into the fields my garden backs onto and I’m totally in love. Aren’t they beautiful!!

Anyway, on we go…

Continue reading “Wandering among the Spring Wildflowers” →

Embroidered Butterfly #18 & 19 {Ringlet & Mountain Ringlet}

On By ArtyMissKIn Art, Needlework Bugs9 Comments

Hello my friends! 

A couple of weeks ago I posted some photos of Ringlet butterflies that I took during last years gloriously sunshine filled summer and compared them looks-wise to their much rarer mountain dwelling cousins (who I’ve yet to see).

It was so lovely seeing such a large amount of these butterflies just living their best life out in the wild!

So I decided to make both a Ringlet and a Mountain Ringlet to add to my increasing collection of embroidered butterflies… 

Ringlet (the bigger one) – #18 on my embroidered butterfly challenge – are a member of the ‘brown’ family of butterflies and are an unassuming light brown to almost black butterfly with little decorative black eye-spots, with a wingspan 48mm (male) 52mm (female) so in keeping with my twice life size scale my needlework Ringlet has a wingspan of about 10.5cm. 

The much rarer Mountain Ringlet (the smaller one) – #19 on my embroidered butterfly challenge – is much smaller than their cousins, with a wingspan of 35mm (male) and 38mm (female) and are much darker brown with orange rimmed eyespots. Even when doubled my Mountain Ringlet still only has a tiny 7cm wingspan!

Continue reading “Embroidered Butterfly #18 & 19 {Ringlet & Mountain Ringlet}” →

Robin {One frame}

On By ArtyMissKIn Photography4 Comments

Hey friends! 

Can you believe it will be February tomorrow?!

I’ve got a little one frame to share with you this week, now I don’t often don’t often snap photos of bird (I really struggle getting them to appear sharp instead of overly soft) but while I was wandering recently, between the storms we’ve had over the last couple of weeks this rather friendly little robin came and stood beside me on the low branches of a tree.

He or she is a obviously a Robin (Erithacus rubecula) which is, according to the RSPB the UK’s favourite bird. Males and females look pretty much identical and like to sing nearly all year round and despite their cute appearance, they are aggressively territorial and will fight off intruders to protect their patch of garden.

It really was very beautiful moment!!

And once I got home and was able to have a proper look at my snaps, I was pleasantly surprised at how clear the photos were, you can see the definition of his little feathers and everything!

In other news the first disasters of 2026 have happened, they say things always come in threes! Firstly my washing machine tried to take flight and promptly smelt like burning rubber (not nice!), secondly my air source heat system died and has got to be completely replaced including all the pipes and stuff and the radiators are being moved which is gonna mess up my wallpaper (yay!) and thirdly my butterfly house/shed kinda flooded this week – I was super upset I’ve never owned a shed and had worked really hard to make it pretty, the worst part is I literally can’t do anything to fix it until the rain stops and it has a chance to dry out.

So onwards and upwards I’m hoping to get all the bad stuff out of the way early in the year.

Thanks for stopping by to check out this post, is the Robin your favourite garden bird? I’d love to know. As always thanks for reading and have a wonderful week!

Ringlet butterfly photography!

On By ArtyMissKIn Photography2 Comments

Hello my friends! 

I hope you’re well!

This weeks post is a butterfly centred photography collection. 

Admittedly I took these photographs last summer and because of life never got around to posting them so I thought I’d share them now. 2025 was an amazing year for chasing butterflies, the weather was glorious and there were so many more pollinators than the previous year. 

I met so many Ringlet butterflies…they were everywhere, Cabilla Wood (an amazing ancient woodland near to Bodmin), the village churchyard, almost every lane I walked down and even in my very own garden. It. Was. lovely.

All in all I took nearly 3000 photographs in 2025…mainly of bugs, nature and my dogs.

Continue reading “Ringlet butterfly photography!” →

Fleeting thought #11 {Post-Christmas blues & Peanut butter cookies!}

On By ArtyMissKIn Fleeting thoughts2 Comments

Hey friends, I hope you had a good week!

Today I wanted to share my eleventh Fleeting Thought with you. If you’re reading one of my blog posts for the first time (hi/friendly wave) and if your back and happy to read more of my ramblings (massive hug!!). 

I haven’t written one of these for awhile, basically if you haven’t caught one of these posts before Fleeting Thought is something I’ve come up with while trying to post more of my feelings and be a little bit more blog-ish, these wordy posts might sometimes include stories or poetry or be a bit random and rambling about various things I think about.

So lets go…

The Christmas decorations have been well and truly taken down and safely packed away for the distant festive season…I don’t know about you but I’m always so sad when the decs come down, the house looks so dull without the Christmas trees (yes I have more than one!) and the outside is still too dark and wet to play outside.

Its the time of the year when the Post-Christmas blues can creep in. A period when the excitement of the season has worn off and we’re all back in the real, slightly grey world.

There are a few ways to combat these feelings of sadness, and I’ve got a number rituals that I like to do to get back into the swing of post Christmas living.

Continue reading “Fleeting thought #11 {Post-Christmas blues & Peanut butter cookies!}” →

Embroidered denim jacket {Pt.4}

On By ArtyMissKIn Art4 Comments

Hello my friends!

How are ya!

I thought I’d post an update of the progress I’ve been making on my embroidered denim jacket as I feel its really moved on leaps and bounds!

Now that I’ve added to naughty daffodils and the elegant Lily and Iris it looks so much more ‘full’.

This denim is so super tough I’ve had to change needles. Where I made the decision to cut away the excess design and re print it so I could literally cut out the flowers I want to include and play with the layout as I go along, has made the process much more enjoyable and gives me the chance to really play with the pattern before its final.

The wildflowers from Disney’s Alice In Wonderland (the 50’s disney cartoon) are literally my favourite part of the movie and I’m particularly pleased with the Lily its been quite a hard shape to try and create depth with and I love how layered the whole image is beginning to look!

There’s only a few more flowers to go, the next part I’m going to be working on is the tulips and sweet-peas to go either side of the rose and I’m contemplating creating some tiny bread-and-butterflies (to kiss the tulips). Weirdly even though I don’t actually have a set design in mind it actually looks how I imagined it would.

I can’t wait to see what it looks like without the stick and stitch paper!

So that’s it for this weeks denim-jacket-project post…I hope you enjoyed it.

As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely week!

Ps. Its really hard to photograph this nicely in its current state!!

Looking back on 2025 {reviewing the year!}

On By ArtyMissKIn Photography2 Comments

Hey friends!

I truly hope you had a magical and happiness filled festive period!

Its already the first weekend in January and I’ve made to executive decision to move my post day to Saturday, for a multitude of reasons but mainly that I always seem to be busy on Fridays and then rush posting. So I’m back for 2026 and my New Years resolution is to definitely try and post something every week without fail (a girl can dream right?!) I began 2025 by reviewing the previous years ups and downs and thought I’d try that again to get the ball rolling…

…and explain my total disappearance from the blog.

Ready?

Lets do this…

The biggest highlight of the year/things I did, I decided at the end of 2024 that I was going to learn something new, a language or a musical instrument – I picked up an old violin in a charity shop near to the beach at Perranporth and was totally set on learning how to play it (spoiler: I didn’t). Instead I learnt to drive!! Literally I’m so damn pleased with myself after finding an instructor I actually managed to learn how to drive in exactly six months. My mum has been a legend and was happy to chaperone me in the car every day for an hour or two until I had my test in the middle of October which I passed first time with only 4 minors!! If you’re reading this from the UK you might have heard on the news how hard it is for learners to get tests so I really didn’t want to fail and have to wait months to try again…I put myself under so much pressure which I didn’t need to and I was just so relieved to have the test over with that for about three weeks I was just randomly saying ‘I’ve passed my driving test!’ If I’m really honest it didn’t sink in for about a month and it was weird to not have to go and practise everyday come rain or shine. The post-learning-to-drive burn out is real though, I’ve never been so mentally exhausted and I got into such a tizzy that life could go back to normal and not just focus on this one thing, that I panicked and stopped blogging/a few of my others hobbies, so its quite nice now that I feel I can pick up all of that again.   

I still can’t believe the freedom I’ve gained by being able to just get in the car and go anywhere I feel like. (In the city I always used public transport but now I live in the middle of nowhere I really need a car!). 

Even when friends were asking what I wanted for Christmas all I could say was ‘I’ve got my drivers license what more could I want!’.

Literally I’m so pleased with myself.  

Continue reading “Looking back on 2025 {reviewing the year!}” →

Embroidered denim jacket {Pt.3}

On By ArtyMissKIn Art4 Comments

Hello my friends!

Welcome back to another episode of what-have-I-been-up-to-recently!

This week I thought I’d post an update of the progress I’ve been making on my embroidered denim jacket!

I’m sure it’s going to look awesome when I finally finish it, denim is super tough to embroider but the stick and stitch paper is magic. Once I’d finished the dandelion and dandetiger I decided to cut away pretty much all of the excess design and and reprinted the pattern so I could literally cut out all the flowers I want to included and play with the layout as I go along, its made the process feel much more organic and if I want to move something from A to B it doesn’t mess with the overall design as I’m now making it up as I go along. So that I have plenty of room to manoeuvre I reprinted the whole image on the sticky paper flipped the image over and printed it again which means I’ve got more flowers to play with.

The wildflowers from Disney’s Alice In Wonderland (the 50’s disney cartoon) are literally my favourite part of the movie and I’m so excited to finish this project.

The pansies were actually really hard to do, I did actually completely unpick one as it was looking so evil! (I really don’t recommend trying to unpick on denim) because these flowers are so much smaller than the ones I’ve already finished I decided to outline them in tiny black stem stitches that I could just colour in between the lines which did speed the process up.

The next part I’m going to be working on is the iris and lily, the stem of the dandelion and I’m thinking of adding a couple of naughty daffodils at the bottom.

Hopefully it wont be too long before I post another update to track how everything’s going! So that’s it for this weeks denim-jacket-project post…I hope you enjoyed it.

As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely week!

Ps. Its really hard to photograph this nicely in its current state!!

Psps. if you want to see part 2 its HERE

Ladybug beetles {One frame}

On By ArtyMissKIn Photography4 Comments

Greetings Friends!

Autumn is upon us!

So is a short post from me…

The leaves are falling, the warm clothes are out – along with my favourite winter boots and there is also a total abundance of ladybug beetles!! Over the last week they’ve literally decided that since the weather has turned chilly its best to go and find somewhere nice to hibernate for the winter…although quite a few of them have made their way into the kitchen. My butterfly house is also filled with them, its been like flying ant day but prettier.

Its been a couple of months since I last posted a One Frame so while I was watching (and wearing) the ladybugs I thought I’d take as many photos as I could in hopes of a few good snaps to share here.

Like this one, I think they’re harlequin ladybugs, but I’m not an expert and I think all beetles are pretty cool. I actually find it really hard to photograph these teeny tiny fellas, so when I get a snap thats in focus I get quite excited!

So with that in mind I really hope you like this ladybug post and are enjoying the beginnings of autumn wherever you are. I’m planning to post an update to my Wonderland flowers denim jacket embroidery next week.

Thank you so much for reading this post, and have a lovely, peace filled week!

Creating a caterpillar nursery (Red ads & Commas)

On By ArtyMissKIn Conservation, Photography, Raising Butterflies2 Comments

Hello my friends,

I’ll admit the last couple of weeks have got away from me slightly, I genuinely cannot believe how busy I’ve been and at the same time don’t feel as though I’ve achieved anything (if that makes sense!).

Still, I’ve got a new butterfly tale for you this week. All summer I’ve been raising various butterflies (like I do each year!) the garden has been wonderfully filled with Comma (Polygonia c-album) and Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta) caterpillars in the nettle patch that grows under the apple tree in my garden – unfortunately the nettles themselves are giant and literally grow up into the branches of the tree, I try to leave them alone as much as possible but once the spears are over six foot tall I clip them down to the ground and challenge them to grow again!

When it comes to cutting them down I actually check each spear and save the bugs, this year there were so many caterpillars I decided to create a ‘caterpillar nursery’ and try to recreate the nettle patch using potted nettles (yes, I also grown the stingy stuff in pots!).

Red Admirals in particular are always at risk of being attacked by parasitic flies/wasps which is a horrible way for them to die. So I get very excited when I them in the garden.

I’m totally fascinated with caterpillars, Red ad cats are fairly beige when tiny but when fully grown can be either black with a light green stripe or green which I magical! And Commas are little black cats that that become black/white/orange as they grow – its quite a pretty caterpillar, they have such cute antennae.

Continue reading “Creating a caterpillar nursery (Red ads & Commas)” →