It’s nearly a year since I stopped working in an office and started a journey to re-discover my creative side (which had been lost a LONG time ago apart from my Interior Design courses).

I remember sitting at my desk over the last few months, day dreaming about being a Textile Designer and making my own lampshades. I was inspired by a lady called Helen Rawlinson when I came across her blog one day. There was a picture of Helen in her studio, screen-printing her wonderful, simple designs and I thought “I want to do that!” I also told everyone I wanted to do that and I’m not sure they believed me. They definitely didn’t think I’d actually have a go at doing it.

One year on and I’m not really a textile designer but guess what? Today I went to look at the statistics of my gilhoolie shop on etsy. It’s brilliant, you can see how many visits you’ve had to each of your items and, more excitingly, who ‘favourites’ an item or your shop. Well, someone has liked my gilhoolie windmill lampshade, which is great, but then I realised they had also liked one of Helen Rawlinson’s lampshades! That made it all worth while, I think I might have to come up with another print design to add to the gilhoolie butterfly, tulip and windmill, hmmm what next?…