Its taken me a while to get my head round the 'leveraging' my art aspect of this creative business. I was thinking how can I get more work into my portfolio quickly, with maximum impact and create potential work for my (soon) Etsy shop? Answer was create one body of mighty fine work then work it work it (!!) into many different areas/ markets - well thats a plan.

Last month I doodled food for 30 days, and amongst what I drew were cloves, star anise, cinnamon sticks and oranges. My little grey cells had a ponder....it came to me during my entry for last months Tigerprint competition where we were asked to overlay hand lettering over an image. One of them was associated with mulled wine - nice enough image but I felt I could inject a bit more 'flavour'.

I knew I wanted to 'overlap' all the different ingredients as 'mulling' really infuses the cider with lovely delicious layers of flavour. Technically it was the most complex illustration I'd done, testing the limits of my Mac's output. It turned out to be a fruit & spice ho-down and I felt there where many wonderful things happening. You can see the full illustrated recipe at They Draw and Cook