Valentines weekend away Sheffield 2025

February 16, 2025February 16, 2025Leave a comment

For this Valentine’s Day me and my wonderful boyfriend Aaron travelled to Sheffield for a romantic weekend away. This blog post is a description of our travels, with accompanying photography, hope you enjoy! ❤️❤️

We travelled by train and arrived at our hotel, Wilson Carlile Centre on Cavendish Street, in central Sheffield, check in 2pm. At first I thought we’d gone to the wrong place, as did not appear much like a hotel, and the accommodation was around the corner in a separate building to the reception. It was a small room, with only a continental basic breakfast in the morning. It didn’t matter so much as we’re both vegetarians anyway. Good location. Cheap and relatively cheerful I’d say…

We exchanged Valentine’s Day gifts at the hotel 🥰

We arrived at 5pm at the El Paso restaurant for a romantic Valentine’s Day meal. It is both an Italian and a Tex Mex. We shared a cheesy garlic bread, Aaron had a veggie Chimichanga and I had veggie enchiladas 😋 The DJ played love songs, and Unchained Melody came on, one of my mum’s favourite songs 😢 (She has passed away). The meal was beautiful 🥰

After El Paso, we went to an adult themed crazy golf ⛳️ called Golf Fang, it was mint 🥰 An 18 hole course, with bespoke art adorning every wall. A massive amount of geeky stuff from films and popular culture etc, amazingly and uniquely designed, each hole; glow in the dark, exotic themes, etc, really cool and immersive. We also drank a lot of the Valentine’s Day special cocktails 🍸😉

Afterwards, we went drinking on West Street, I got very drunk 🤪 We ventured to West Street Live, but mainly we danced like loons in the Irish Bar 😜 The music was fantastic! Grabbed a margarita pizza 🍕 on the way back…

I felt so rough Saturday morning, we’d hardly had any sleep and had to check out at 10am 😭

We had a stroll around the city centre, the Peace Gardens, Millennium gallery, and did a little bit of shopping 🛍

My feet were killing me, my platform doc martens from the night before completely gave me blisters, I kept having to put new plasters on, even got blood on the bed sheets!

😲 So apart from that, it was nice having a little mooch. Aaron bought me a orange/black checked cardigan from Blue Banana 🥰 He bought a pink tie too for our friends upcoming wedding, we wandered around the indoor market, and we also had a McDonald’s and then a MASSIVE pancake each, with creamy lattes… then it was time to pick up our stored luggage, and grab an uber back to Sheffield train station… homeward bound! 🥰🥰

Overall, it was a brilliant little getaway, had so much fun 😍😍

My next blog posts will probably be diamond arts 💎🎨 or amateur portraits (fundraising for Alzheimer’s Research) or an Easter bunny 🐰 pub painting

Thank you so much as ever for reading/viewing.. Lots of love, Lauren xx

https://www.elpasorestaurant.co.uk/ [Accessed 16th February 2025]

https://golffang.co.uk/sheffield/ [Accessed 16th February 2025]

Valentine’s Day amateur couple portrait

February 16, 2025February 16, 2025Leave a comment

Hi everyone! My latest UnicornPostbox blog post is progression photos of an amateur portrait of me and my boyfriend Aaron, as a surprise gift to him for Valentine’s Day.. hope you like! ❤️❤️

I used a light box (cheat lol) to outline me and Aaron. I drew with Derwent professional sketching pencils, mainly HB and 2B. To keep with the Valentines theme, I incorporated red love hearts, made bold with a black promarker pen, I also drew a black line around me and Aaron, to make the images ‘pop’ (I’m a big fan of pop art). To finish, a professional blue colour marker pen coloured the entire background. I also purchased a lovely red frame to display…And here is the end result:

I took me a few days to complete, which isn’t too bad to be fair ❤️❤️

I am advertising if anyone else would like an amateur couple portrait, to put towards my fundraising for Alzheimer’s Research (I am doing a Tough Mudder in the summer in memory of my beautiful mum who sadly lost her long battle with this awful disease) 😢

My next blog post is a travel blog of mine and Aaron’s first Valentine’s weekend in Sheffield 💕💕

There is a new Easter bunny themed pub painting in March, and no doubt I’ll soon be on with another diamond art 💎🎨

Thank you as ever for viewing/reading. Much love, Lauren xx

Valentine’s Day 2019 – portrait progression photos

February 20, 2019Leave a comment

For Valentine’s Day this year, 14th February 2019, I decided to draw an A2 size portrait of myself and my lovely boyfriend, Howard. Please see below a collection of photographs illustrating the progression of my drawing, from start to finish. I do hope you enjoy 🙂

Drawing Howard:

34,35,291,307.027954

34,35,297,310.790283

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34,35,311,327.951599

33,35,303,320.586365

54,35,304,318.511658

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I started off my portrait by firstly drawing my boyfriend, Howard. I worked from a photograph of us both when we went for a meal in Yates, Doncaster. I traced the outline, shushhhh, lol – however, many hours were spent on the shading, trying to achieve a good likeness. As shown above, I also drew a rectangular line around the drawing to match the size of the frame I had purchased, in doing so, eventually losing a small portion of the sketch (my own fault for not checking sizes sooner, silly). Overall, I was pleased with how Howard turned out 🙂

Drawing Myself:

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34,35,315,329.289307

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34,35,280,291.953064

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35,35,310,321.960541

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35,35,269,288.904968

35,35,265,283.530762

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34,35,277,294.766052

35,35,286,303.614990

The second subject I drew was myself. Because I have done quite a few self-portraits over the years, it did not take me as long to draw myself. Saying that however, I wish I had spent just a little bit more time on the fine details as I feel the drawing of myself looks more cartoonish, and less realistic than I was hoping to achieve. I definitely think the portrait of Howard is a better, more detailed sketch, nevertheless I was still quite happy overall with the final piece 🙂 I then started drawing vertical lines with a ruler, in preparation for the portrait background.

Background:

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35,35,303,315.638763

34,35,293,307.199768

35,35,283,296.377563

34,35,296,321.286469

35,35,299,328.704956

39,35,302,322.900146

34,35,306,323.131653

27,35,295,318.188965

34,35,293,319.505493

34,35,276,293.129150

34,35,275,290.682068

35,35,290,309.490112

35,35,304,324.290161

26,35,294,318.037201

35,35,298,322.029297

I decided to do a colourful rainbow background as I believed this would make the grey pencil portraits distinct from the background, and both would ‘pop’ as a result. I drew vertical lines with a ruler, and coloured each strip with a different colour bright colour pencil. I also used a black fineliner pen to distinguish the colours, and the sketch, again for a ‘pop’ effect 🙂

The finished portrait:

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30,31,334,367.460693

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33,31,332,365.632385

30,31,334,368.344208

And here is the final framed product! It took me about a fortnight in total, a few hour blocks every day or every other day. Even though it is not the best drawing in the world, as I admit I am only an amateur artist, I think it has turned out rather well 🙂 Hope you agree?? Something this scale on A2 paper is pretty time-consuming, so I am very glad it was well appreciated 🙂 …