News & Useful Stuff
(also procrastination fuel – you’re welcome!)
Dream, Plan, Do
Towards the end of last year, I bought the Dream Plan Do planner on Kickstarter. I'd heard good things about it, and had been in a Q&A session with Patricia van den Akker who created it, and thought it might be a good thing to have some structured planning in...
Branding Photography: Alex O’Neill – coach & creative
The gorgeous Alex O'Neill wanted to update her images for her various ventures recently - she's a coach over at A Life More Extraordinary, and a creative joy to be around, and I was very happy to oblige! Full disclosure - Ally is my coach, and a bloody good one. She...
Multipod Issues: describing yourself and what you do
What do you do? Ah, that killer question. I have no idea why it's so important to modern society, but it seems to be a standard conversational gambit, especially when meeting someone for the first time. All too often, we respond as we have been conditioned to do -...
Business Branding Photography: Love You Burlesque
2017 was an exciting year. Having danced burlesque with the Burlesque Jems for nearly six years, when new owners Lizzie Lovelace and Bitsy Sunshine announced a rebrand, I was delighted to work with them to capture a year's worth of their classes, residentials,...
Workshop & retreat photography: Love You Burlesque’s Giant Fans Workshop
Lizzie and Gennie, the ladies behind Love You Burlesque, run regular workshops outside of their usual weekly classes, so that experienced burlesquers and newbies alike can get a taste of different styles, techniques and props. The glorious Gwendoline L'Amour came to...
Juggling like an entrepreneur
Are you finding that life gets busier and busier, seemingly by the day? Since leaving the London job for my beloved businesses & a day job nearer home, I try really hard not to glorify busy - to only say I'm busy if I actually am, and to try and make time to live...
Urban Decay vintage lipsticks | product photography Essex
The lovely folks at Urban Decay sent me these some time ago - I've only just now had a chance to share them! In shimmering and unusual shades, they are a little bit rebel and very mermaid...! If you're looking for product photography for your own...
Tough love, frustration and action
I'm away with my family in Greece at the moment, and while talking, swimming, resting and generally putting the world to rights, inevitably the subject of my businesses and my working life came up. Last month I was granted part time hours for a year, working three...
Building a business: the darker side of mermaiding…
Short but not so sweet today... not one, but two known merverts either friended me, messaged me, asked to join my group for pro merfolk, or a combination of the above in the last 48 hours. WTF is a mervert, I hear you ask?! Sadly, as in every industry and pastime,...
Mindset shift – she’s not my ideal client
Just wanted to record something that happened yesterday, which I felt was a really good marker of how far I've come in business mindset since I started out with Ducking Fabulous in 2009. Popping up to a colleague's office after a meeting, we got talking to a new...
Building a business – the early days
You know by now that I'm a multipod - someone who thrives on doing lots of different things, having lots of varying interests, and pursuing more than one thing at once. My latest venture is a mermaid business, which combines some of my greatest passions with one of my...
What to do when you’re frustrated with your day job
Most of us will have had a day job at one point or another - lots of us still do. They mostly don't light us up, but they tick along nicely, pay the bills, give us some social contact, enable us to experiment and get going with the businesses we dream of, and...
What a stock take really looks like…
We all run, or dream of running, our businesses from home. No more commuting, office hours, small talk with people we have nothing in common with. Some dream of running their business from anywhere - though sandy beaches play havoc with your laptop's keyboard, and...
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing
So many conversations I've had recently about Being In Business. "I don't feel like a proper businesswoman." "I don't feel like the word entrepreneur describes me." "My day job is ok." "I don't want to give up my job entirely." "I want to do lots of things." "I like...
Dreaming of decluttering
Where do you run your business from? No, my desk never actually looks this pretty... I used to have an office in my spare room (I rather grandly called it a studio, but really it was a big desk with a jewellery workbench on one end, big screens for editing, and wall...
Filling your creative well
Recently, my body and brain and heart have all told me in no uncertain terms that enough is enough. (This fluffy cat of mine also regularly gets in my way enough to give me a hint that I should be cuddling her, not working...) They are tired and they need to stop. I...
Even your snapshots are worth printing
There have been a few posts like this surfacing recently, and at first I didn't think much of them. Photos are photos, whether they're digital or printed, right? And you always get the important ones printed, don't you? The weddings, the graduation photos, the...
Be the one who people talk about
In my youth, I was often the subject of whispers and giggling. In one memorable-for-all-the-wrong-reasons occasion when I was fourteen, I was also the subject of a secret bet – how long would the boy I was dating put up with me before he dumped me? (Answer,...
Why a day job isn’t always a bad thing
It can be really easy, when you're looking for advice about your beloved business, to get bogged down in other people's opinions rather than finding the advice you needed in the first place. I've noticed, among some of the mentors/teachers/gurus out there, a tendency...
When the muse deserts you
Some days, you just don't want to blog. Or, more accurately, you want to blog, but the words are just not coming.  And yes, I fully appreciate the irony of this being a blog post. The endless sea of gurus telling you "you should blog" "blog all the time" "make sure...
Kitten interlude
I've been testing out my new camera body on the most easily-available subjects - my two cats, Luna and Clover! And the extra hour of daylight today made SUCH a difference... even if it is making it impossible for me to go to bed at a sensible time. I know you're doing...
