Mimi's Newsletter - Time Off In Sweden (Patreon)

Hello beautiful flowers!

I just had the most wonderful two weeks off in Sweden and wanted to tell you about all of the lovely things I saw and what I've been up to.

I spent the first two weeks of the month doing lots of work and finishing some draft illustrations for a picture book before I went away, and then on the 13th Dan and I flew over to Stockholm.

Our plan was to spend most of our time hiking with a few days in the city, so we spent about 10 days hiking The High Coast Trail and then had about 3 days in Stockholm before flying back to England yesterday.

The hike was a lovely way to disconnect because I left my laptop behind in England so I had no chance to do any work or computer tasks. We walked about 10-15km most days through beautiful fields of wildflowers, along rocky coastline and through old forests, and then spent our nights camping under the trees.

It was Midsommar while we were there and since we were so far north it never really got dark which was a new experience for us! The sun would set and then it would be twilight for 3-4 hours before the sun would rise again.

^This is how light it still was at midnight!

One of my favourite things about spending so much time hiking was the beautiful wildflowers we saw everywhere. There were fields upon fields of gorgeous white, yellow and purple flowers that looked like they were out of a fantasy movie, so I think in the coming weeks I'll have to draw lots of them!

I also loved the sweet, colourful houses in the countryside.

At the end of our hike we got to meet up with my Instagram art friend Sanna (@sannadorable) who just so happens to live really close to the town we ended up in. She was so sweet and we spent all day at a cafe talking about art, Sweden, and Instagram - it's always such a delight to meet other artists and it was the perfect way to spend the day.

Then we had a few days in Stockholm and it is such a beautiful city with lots of green spaces and room for pedestrians. The Swedish culture in general felt very calm and respectful and I really liked that about it!

I had such a lovely time off just soaking up all of the nature inspiration, and now I'm back at my computer and super excited to do some illustrating and get started with July. 

I think I'll go to a cafe tomorrow to start planning what I want to do next month, does anyone else like sitting at cafes to work or plan out some ideas?

I hope you had a lovely June! Let us know if there's anything particular that you've been working on 🥰